Thankfully I remembered something from various previous visits to France with the family. Nearly every town would have at least one boulangerie open on a Sunday morning for people to get their bread. All we had to do was find one. A quick circuit around Saint Witz failed to turn up anything open, however nipping across to the other side of the autoroute brought us out in Fosses, a much larger town, which thankfully had no fewer than three boulangeries open. We pulled up at one outside the town hall and picked up some pastries for breakfast: RJ had a couple of croissants and I plumped for a chausson (basically an Apple Turnover). That filled the gap, but we were still worried that we were running terribly early as we pulled up in the Parc Asterix car park at 8.55am, with over an hour til the published opening time.
We were by no means the first, however - a dozen or so other vehicles had arrived. We headed towards the admissions gates and were surprised to see soldiers carrying guns posted around the park. I know there's a security alert in France at the moment but this seemed rather extreme. There was a bag check and metal detectors for everyone to get through as well - clearly they were taking no chances! After all this, we queued up at one of the entrance gates to wait for park opening.
It was at this point we noticed how many people around us were smoking. As an asthmatic I have a pretty bad reaction to cigarette smoke so it was a recurring issue throughout the day, as the "no smoking in the queue lines" rule was even more ignored than it usually is at the likes of Thorpe Park. It's a shame as it's the one thing that really spoiled the atmosphere for us.
At 9.30 the gates were opened and we were into the park. Well, a bit. The main street leading into the park, lined with shops, was open, but a cordon across the top kept people out of the main park before 10am. Because of our early arrival we were right near the front, but behind us were hundreds of people. This was when we realised that today might not be the quietest! Posters were advertising a €20 queue jump ticket and I was seriously considering paying for one. People who've been to theme parks with me will know how unusual that is for me!
Parc Asterix was going to be a particularly interesting park for me, as I'd always enjoyed the books as a child, though some of the jokes may have escaped me aged eight (e.g. the druid being named Getafix in the English translations!) I was trying to explain some of the storylines and jokes to RJ but there was quite a bit I'd sadly forgotten - I may have to re-acquaint myself with the stories at some point!
Once the park opened fully we walked over to our first choice ride - Osiris. This is a rather big B&M inverted coaster (think Nemesis at Alton Towers, but about 3 times the size). It's themed around an Egyptian magician hypnotising people to think they can fly, so you enter the crypt of a huge temple and queue through rooms of sarcophagi and scrolls with some humorous wall decorations (if you understand them) and eventually work your way up into the loading station. Since we were one of the first into the ride, we didn't have to queue at all, and were seated straight away. The ride itself is exceptionally good, we enjoyed it massively but were disappointed to find the on-ride photos hadn't been working so couldn't claim the souvenir.
No matter - we pressed on to our next ride, La Trace du Hourra, which was a bobsled coaster. This was a lot of fun, think Avalanche at Blackpool but again much longer. One thing we noticed here was that on pretty much all the rides except Osiris you took your bags on with you, which is something we weren't used to from UK parks where you almost never do (except perversely on water rides where you might actually not want them to get wet!)
Speaking of getting wet, our next ride was the Oxygenarium. It was a busy day in the park and several of the major coasters were now boasting queues of over an hour, whereas this didn't. For those familiar with Thorpe Park this is the same sort of ride as Storm Surge, only with a vastly improved capacity thanks to a more sane load/unload procedure, where two boats are loaded as two are unloaded. The course is also a lot better landscaped too - in fact the whole ride's theming looked as if a fair amount of effort had been put into it, something that continued across the park.
At this point we thought we'd see about this €20 queue jump ticket, so we went to one of the advertised retail points and asked for it. We were told that you could get one for free if you won a game that was included in the park mobile app - we had a quick go and didn't get anywhere near it so tried to buy one. At this point we were told that they didn't actually sell them until 2pm anyway, which seemed odd.
Instead we figured we might as well get the other coasters done. Gouderix was one I was curious about, as the online reviews almost consistently slated it as one of the worst coasters in the world. However, I'd been reading up on it and more recently the track had been revamped and the trains replaced, so I was keeping an open mind. The queue for the ride was coming out of the entrance, but we joined it anyway and were pleasantly surprised to find that rather than the hour or so advertised it only took roughly 30-40 minutes to reach the station. The new trains had a reasonably comfy headrest which was designed to stop you banging it from side to side. We ascended the hill and then proceeded through a twisting track with a once record-holding 7 inversions - the layout was a combination of Alton Towers' The Smiler and the Corkscrew - both the latter and Gouderix were made by Vekoma. I didn't find it too rough at all - I've certainly ridden rougher, and it was pretty thrilling from first drop to the end. Definitely nowhere near as bad as it was made out to be!
The final one of their large coasters we did was Tonnerre de Zeus - a wooden coaster. From the front it doesn't look like much but after queuing around 90 minutes we were pleased to find it was a much bigger and longer ride than initially apparent. The track occupied a rather large area of the park and mixed both airtime hills and tight twisting corners to create a layout that kept the punches coming. Like pretty much every wooden coaster I've ridden it was a bit rough but the sheer pace of the ride just kept it going right to the whiplash-inducing station brakes. Again, I enjoyed it much more than I'd expected. Thanks to the number of guests in the park we noticed that ride opening times had been extended to 7pm, which made us feel less inclined to spend anything on queue jump tickets.
By this point it'd gone 2pm and it was time for lunch. RJ grabbed a hot dog and fries from a kiosk while I decided to get a sandwich. The sandwich shop in the Ancient Greece area had perhaps the slowest service I've ever seen - even beating the fish and chip shop at Wicksteed Park. Somehow taking a sandwich out of a box and a bottle of drink out of a fridge was taking up to 5 minutes per person, so by the time RJ had bought and consumed his lunch I'd barely reached halfway through the queue. The sandwich (when I finally got it) was very good quality though. They had a very puzzling meal deal on which seemed to make no sense whatsoever. I paid €7.70 for a baguette and a 500ml bottle of drink, but for €9.80 I could have had a sandwich, bag of crisps and a 330ml can instead - this didn't seem great value to me, especially if you added the optional extra dessert for €2.40 (normal price €2.60, so saving a whopping 20¢! Oddly enough I skipped this option.
Taking it easy after eating, we did the rapids ride (good fun), followed by Le Défi de César, which was... bizarre, to say the least. You start off by being batched into groups of 10, and proceed into a room where you look through a hole in a wall, where your face is transformed into that of a Gaul, with comedy moustaches, beards, etc. You then enter a large room where a procession of animated figures march across a large screen with the faces just photographed in the previous room superimposed on each body. As you can imagine, this was rather amusing for the families of those depicted!
From there we went into a room with a tiered standing area, and an animatronic Caesar addressed us. As far as I understood it, the storyline was that we were being sent into Gaul undercover as spies for the Romans. Then the room rotated and Asterix and Obelix came onto a large screen and had a little discussion about whether or not they should let us into the village or not, because they'd heard spies were coming. After that I sort of lost track of the storyline, as for some reason we entered a room done up like a Roman spa, with fountains everywhere. Some narration I couldn't hear clearly might have explained what was going on, but basically it was an excuse for fountains and water effects. Which was nice. The finale was a Madhouse ride - for those familiar with Hex at Alton Towers it's basically that - for those unfamiliar I won't spoil it. Needless to say it was nicely done and well-themed, though I'm still not entirely sure what it was about.
Continuing the water theme we went on Le Grand Splatch, which was a bit like the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios, only with a smaller drop and no dinosaurs. Other than a quick spin on some sea-monster inspired ride, that was about it for individual rides. We went back and had another go on Osiris, where typically the ride photo for the back row where we were sat in hadn't worked, and so at the end of the day we returned for a third and final time, where I had to explain to the attendant seating us that we preferred not to sit in the last row as we were very keen to get our photo - I think he understood! Finally we got our coveted on-ride pictures!
Leaving the park around 6.45 it was RJ's turn to drive, and he got a baptism of fire on the busy autoroutes around Paris, heading for Disneyland. There was a short section of heavy traffic on the A104 but within 40 minutes we arrived at our hotel. The Explorers Hotel turns out to be very similar to Alton Towers' "Splash Landings" hotel - very family-oriented - our room contains a large double bed and a pair of bunks, and is decorated with a nautical theme.
Feeling sticky from our day in the park we had a quick dip in the hotel pool. Due to some odd French custom, you have to wear speedos (or similar) in the pools, so poor RJ felt a bit self-conscious. Thankfully many weekends wandering round the docks in lycra for rowing has made me quite blasé about the whole thing. The pool's fairly compact but features a couple of water slides and one of those tipping bucket things that shower everyone with about a tonne of water every few minutes. Sadly no jacuzzi, but you can't have everything.
At about 9pm we were ready to eat. The hotel's food offerings weren't massively wide but we were tired and didn't want to have to go anywhere else, so had to pick between the table service restaurant and the all-you-can-eat buffet. We opted for the latter, and managed to scrape together an acceptable meal each - despite it being quiet and the seating areas being prepared for breakfast in the morning, they were continuing to bring out fresh dishes of food. I took two trips to the main food counter, and then filled a plate with a mixture of desserts that'd make Mary Berry upset. Thus well-filled I waddled back to the room to get ready to sleep it off and write a much longer blog entry than I meant to!
| The scores so far | |
| Favourite Coaster | Osiris, Parc Asterix |
| Least Favourite Coaster | None so far |
| Favourite Non-Coaster | Le Défí de César, Parc Asterix |
| Least Favourite Non-Coaster | None so far |
| Best Food | Parc Asterix |
| Worst Food | Disney Explorers Hotel |
| Most Idiots Smoking | Parc Asterix |
| Best Theming | Parc Asterix |
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