All the fun of the fair as Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach reopens
Watch a video report by ITV News Anglia's Natalie Gray
The famous Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach amusement park is re-opening for the first time since lockdown.
The family who own the seafront tourist attraction in the Norfolk resort say numbers will be restricted to keep staff and visitors safe.
For Albert Jones and his sons at last something to smile about as for four months their beachside funfair has been like a ghost town.
The amusement park will open for the summer season from Saturday 11 July but it'll look a little different.
Every other seat on the 88 year old wooden rollercoaster will be unused for a start.
Last summer 4,000 people a day would have packed into the Pleasure Beach. New rules mean a thousand people at a time will be allowed in three-hour sessions with a deep clean in between.
After Norwich, Great Yarmouth has the largest visitor economy in Norfolk worth £635 million pounds a year.
Thirty four per cent of local people work in tourism in the town and during a normal summer the population effectively doubles with all those visitors.
The hope is with more people having staycations this year Yarmouth will attract the crowds again. The Chancellor slashing VAT on hospitality and tourism to 5% should help this town recover too.
The local council leader Carl Smith is upbeat about the tourist season ahead. He said: "We're getting great news from the holiday parks that they are all fully booked up maybe to the end of October.
Pleasure Beach director Jamie Jones says they are excited about opening the gates again.
"You can see by the smile on my face we are raring to go. I think people have to have the confidence to come back to us because we've made so many safety measures and put everything in place."
"We've even moved to a closed gate system now where we encourage people to book online just so that we can monitor how many people are in the park at one time."
Visitors have been coming in their millions to Great Yarmouth's Pleasure Beach for decades.
The hope is the rest of this year will be no different. A new white knuckle ride should help but it will be a nail biting time for now.