You can’t get much closer to the beach than Belmont Park — steps from the sand and crashing waves. Yet the nearly century-old amusement park in Mission Beach isn’t always the draw it could be for luring sunbathers and ersby strolling the boardwalk to venture inside.
That’s likely to change in the next couple of years as the park embarks on an ambitious plan to add new thrill rides, reimagine the longstanding Beach House restaurant and update the arcade with an indoor-outdoor bar featuring sweet treats, draft beer and cocktails.
While parts of the new vision for the park still require approvals from the California Coastal Commission and city of San Diego, Belmont management is hoping its current plans will become reality starting next year, with the bulk of the redevelopment ready for the public by 2026.
“We’re redeveloping the northwest corner of the park for a couple reasons: to increase the rides and attractions and two, to increase access to Belmont Park from the beach side,” said park General Manager Steve Thomas. “We realized at the park we have a little disconnect between the boardwalk and our rides and attractions, so we want to create a walkway that connects the boardwalk to Belmont in a more direct way, and we also want to add three more rides to attract a different demographic — the 12-year-old to adult range, which we’re missing today.”
That’s not to say, though, that Belmont Park is standing idle in the meantime. Pacifica Enterprises, which holds the lease for the 7-acre park, has been regularly investing millions of dollars each year to keep the park spruced up while also regularly adding new attractions.
Just in time for the park’s peak summer period, there is a new tower ride called Shipwreck Cove that mimics the sail of a ship, to be followed later in the year with an accompanying play structure designed to look like the busted hull of a ship.
And as part of Belmont’s effort to elevate its food and beverage offerings, it’s bringing more local purveyors into the park. It just opened a Pizza Port venue that replaces Roundtable Pizza. Pizza Port has been a presence in San Diego County for decades, having started as a pizza restaurant in Solana Beach in 1987 before adding its first craft-brewed beers five years later. The local chain now operates six Southern California brew pubs, most of them located in San Diego County.
“Our whole angle is to work more with local partners,” Thomas said. “A lot of the food over the last few years we’ve been getting is locally procured. For instance, all the beef that we use is from a local ranch in Brawley. It’s hormone-free, steroid-free beef. We’ve also used Fallbrook Winery, Thorn brewing for beer, and we’re using Moo Time out of Coronado for our ice cream.”
Part bar, part arcade
As part of the park’s effort to broaden its appeal to a more diverse demographic, it has been planning a project that would not only add some sophisticated adult beverages to its game-filled arcade but also be designed in a way to entice people walking by to come on in.
Barcade, as it is currently known (its name will eventually change) calls for converting the western end of the arcade structure into a 400-square-foot indoor-outdoor bar area with garage-style doors that open up to the outside. The more open design will allow people to see through the arcade into the midway area, Thomas explained. Currently, the building acts more as a barrier to interior views of the park.
“We have people of all ages, from those who want rooftop sushi all the way to the people who love the corn dogs and the churros, but we realized that we’re still missing some of that in-between,” Thomas said. “So the barcade is filling that gap a little bit.
“And we also see that the park, the way it’s situated, feels very closed off in areas where it’s almost disconnected from the boardwalk or beach side to the midway side. So this new barcade is going to act as the bridge that kind of connects those two together, where you can see from the beach and look all the way through and see the midway.”
With the Coastal Commission approval in February, Belmont can now begin work on more detailed construction drawings and apply for permits from the city. The menu also needs to be refined, and Belmont will also have to find a new name for the venue. Barcade has already been trademarked by a Brooklyn-based arcade bar chain that has several locations, including one in Los Angeles.
Thomas said his goal is to break ground early next year and open in time for spring break.
Ride upgrades
Over the past several years, Pacifica has not only added a few new rides, it’s also replaced others with new parts and cars, while retaining the original design.
Since 2019, it’s done that with four of its rides.
They are:
- Tilt-A-Whirl got new cars that were rebranded as ice cream cones to match the nearby Sweet Shoppe.
- Mic Drop tower ride, formerly known as Vertical Plunge, was replaced but has the same ride design.
- Dip and Dive was replaced and rebranded. It was formerly known as Crazy Submarine.
- Flip Out, formerly known as Control Freak, got replaced just last year.
“This is such a beautiful piece of real estate and deserves to be treated as an iconic piece of San Diego,” Thomas said. “And we’ve really committed to that over the years. For the last five years, I’ve spent about $3 million a year on park improvements, whether it’s just the walkways throughout the park or adding new rides.
The introduction of entirely new rides have been less frequent. The Zero Gravity drop ride debuted in 2019, and three years later came Wave Jumper, a ride more suitable for younger kids.
Shipwreck Cove is now the newest, allowing seated riders to pull themselves up on a rope and let go as fast or as slow as they want. Thomas said that it’s something of an homage to one of San Diego’s early developers, John D. Spreckels. The ship is called the Venetia after the boat he sailed into the area a century ago. Spreckels was also responsible for building Belmont Park, including the iconic wooden roller coaster, the Giant Dipper.
“The idea behind it is that we replaced and added some rides, and they all have this water theme,” Thomas said. “So it all ties together very well and is on theme for all of those rides and the beachside location of the park. So it’s not just hey, here’s a random ride here and here’s a random ride there. There was more thinking put into making it thematically cohesive for that particular area.”
More thrills and a new beachfront restaurant
Since Pacifica Enterprises took over operation of Belmont Park more than a decade ago, it has made substantial changes and upgrades, including new oceanfront restaurants, an expanded arcade, a new escape room attraction, and an extensive rehab of the historic Plunge swimming pool that included a new glass-enclosed building and gym.
Next up is a planned redevelopment of the park’s northwest corner where the longstanding Beach House restaurant and former Wave House now sit. Thomas said the plans call for gutting the all-outdoor Beach House eatery and replacing most of the sandy area where diners sit with decorative diagonal concrete. The design is still a work in progress and nothing has been submitted yet to the Coastal Commission, but Thomas envisions a resort-like theme with a patio overhang, a couple of mini swimming pools, and a deck area for additional dining.
Because the current restaurant tends to block access to the midway and the park’s interior, a pathway would be created that would run through the middle of the restaurant, Thomas said.
“We’re trying to elevate Belmont Park as a whole and create a beautiful spot because of the location, so we feel it deserves this kind of detail. It started with the Plunge remodel, and we’re using the same designers,” he added.
But that’s not all. Three new thrill rides are planned that Thomas said should appeal to older teens and adults. If approved, they would be located where the former Wave House was, next to the Beach House.
One is a classic swing carousel; another rotates enger cars on horizontal and vertical axes, flipping riders upside down; and a third has riders sitting on motorcycle-like pedestal seats while they rock and spin along a track, the ocean view below them.
Thomas hopes to get the plans for the northwest corner of the park before the Coastal Commission sometime this year. In the meantime, the park is making plans for celebrating next year’s centennial. It will turn 100 on July 4 of next year.
“This will be a July-long celebration with various activations, like music, live bands characters walking around the park, lots of photo-ops where we build these structures where you can take photos with your family and friends. Maybe we will have some nice dinners or cocktails hours for locals. And I’d love to get the city to declare a Belmont Park Day.
