So in August I received a random email from Parc Asterix telling me that they're celebrating 25 years of being open and to celebrate they gave me one free ticket and up to 5 additional tickets at only €25 (which is dirt cheap compared to the normal gate price). Such a deal can't be left alone so I managed to round up 3 more peeps for a little jaunt over to France for a little weekend break.
On Friday 5th September I met up with Patrick in London and we got the train down to Ashford where Danielle and Nic met us. We then got in Nic's car and headed down to Dover to catch the ferry over to France. Once in France there was lots of driving and not a lot of food, silly France and their early closing times. We then checked into our hotel which was a Campanile. It was ok, very basic. There was a silly heater lamp in the bathroom which had a switch above the loo. We tried to turn it off which resulted in us pressing said switch lots of times but it turned out it was on a timer and about 2 hours later it finally turned off after turning our bathroom into a sauna.
Saturday 6th September
We got ourselves ready and made our way to Parc Asterix, stopping off en route for some breakfast at a motorway service stop. We then finally arrived at the park just before opening. We got our cheap tickets and then headed in. I absolutely adore Parc Asterix, it's such a well designed park with some of the best theming. The entrance street is so full of detail and interesting things, such a great start to one of the best parks around.
As the crowds were heavy we aimed straight for Oz'Iris but then I remembered that La Trace du Hourra gets horrible queues so we stopped off for that first. So glad we did as when we passed a few hours later it was grotesque. For those that don't know it's a Mack bobsled coaster which is really long and pretty forceful. I think it's quite fun even if it is a little stretched out.
Then it was over to Oz' Iris. It was one of my favourite coasters when I rode it back in 2012, I was hoping it wasn't just the hype making it seem better but yep it genuinely is one of my favourite coasters. From the excellent queueline (brilliant views of the ride AND epic Egyptian themed station building with lots of rooms <3 ) to the overall Egyptian theme and soundtrack, the new fountain show to the actual ride itself. That first drop is just superb and while not overly intense it's just a very entertaining rollercoaster layout from there. I love the little dip into the tunnel after the vertical loop and the drop into the water area tunnel. It also has two perfect zero g rolls, like, totally blows all others out of the water. I love it and the others agreed which made me happy.
We then made the decision to head over to Goudurix. We went via the medievil area, I love this area despite it lacking in good attractions. I was also sad to see that the craft workshops have closed and they no longer sell real swords (I suppose they no longer trust their customers).
Anyway, on to Goudurix which seemingly had a silly queue. Turns out that the real queue just isn't that long and we only waited 45 minutes. It has to be said that all day the operations were outstanding and super efficient. Part of the queue was spent watching the girl who had a bee fall in love with her. It was just chilling out on her t-shirt, she was sensible and didn't panic (can't say I would have been sensible) which led it to just wanting to just live there. When her friends finally got it off her using a lead to calmly take it off and put it on the floor it just flew back to the same spot. WTF? In the end they managed to confuse it by doing the leaf thing again but putting it in the middle of a bush.
Umm, oh yes, the ride. I remember it being ok apart from a few kinks and they'd since re-tracked a fair amount of it. Oh gawd, those 'kinks' were atrocious. Still, the rest of the ride is actually fine, so with new style trains and some further track mending this could actually be awesome.
So Parc Asterix are celebrating 25 years, Magnum is also celebrating 25 years. Both companies joined forces to create one of the best cross-promotion campaigns I've ever seen. Around the park they had 6 giant Magnum ice creams themed to different areas of the park. They had something about tagging it all on Facebook too, not sure if there was more to that or not. Anyway here is me on a Viking boat thing next to the Viking Magnum...
We were going to queue up for Zeus next but with a long queue (over 90 minutes) we opted to do the other creds first. So next up was Le Vol d'Icare. It had a fairly long wait but it's maze like queue themed to ruins passed by quickly enough.
It's a rather meh ride, very vibratey. I think we decided that food was now what was needed so we headed back over to the other side of the park where we'd seen a buffet restaurant we liked the look of. To get there we passed back through the Medieval/French area. In the indoor section of the French area there was like a mini animatronic show thing, I'd never known about it before and I was confused by it, to be honest though the whole area is still a mystery, it seems like it used to have more interesting things going on.
We then reached the circus themed buffet restaurant. You first pay at a little booth outside which is nicely themed. The interior was also far better than we were expecting. Shame the same can't be said for the food. There was an odd selection of items on offer that can only be described as something between home and pub food. Still it was filling and didn't kill us.
We decided to not doing anything too thrilling next and somehow ended up doing SOS Numerobis, a standard Tivoli cred. At the back these things are quite entertaining, the fling off the lift hill is ridiculous.
We then did the boat ride which goes around the Gaule area. It hasn't been open on my previous visits but they touched it up and re-opened it again for the 2014 season. It basically shows off the main characters from the various book themes (so Egyptians, Greeks, Romans etc). It was nice and then it had an indoor bit and they had this absolutely fantastic piece of projection mapping going on. This rock wall would start smashing into pieces and then waterfalls would pour out of the new holes. Unfortunately the projection of water didn't really work but everything else was superb.
We then went into the Gaule area where lots of characters were roaming. It really is a fab little area of the park and fans of the books/films/shows must absolutely die over when they enter this section, it's just awesome. I met the chief's wife (or something) and she was like Amanda Thompson in cartoon form. She started by making me kiss her hand and then she forced me to sweep up some leaves. She was amazing. She then decided that the bottom of Nic's shoes needed brushing (I assume a reference to something?)....
We then went into the brand new area themed after the dog, Idefix. Patrick and I were going to go on the spinny house ride but you have to accompany a small child if you're over a certain height.... Boo! Still, the whole area looks fantastic and it looked excellent for the little ones.
We proceeded to make our way over to Defi de Cesar. This is the park's madhouse attraction with 3 (yes, THREE!) pre-shows. I love the sheer amount of effort that has gone into this attraction, not only does it look great but it does something completely different to all the other madhouses. For once it's not themed to a haunted house!
We then hastily walked over to the stunt show arena for the show. Patrick and I watched it on a trip with Benin years ago so we were excited to be seeing it again. It's one of the best stunt shows I've ever seen. Instead of just being 'here's some stunts' there's an actual story (silly police can't stop 3 separate villains from stealing the Mona Lisa painting). The set is absolutely ridiculous (including a moving train, some industrial buildings and a huge ship). There are plenty of smoke and fire based effects and the show is also full of slapstick and some extremely dangerous stunts. I feel like it has something to appeal to all and there's no dialogue meaning there's no awful language barrier.
Oh and did I mention that the finale is the ship having lots of blasts of fire bellow out of it and then fall over.
So after all that excitement we decided to go over to Zeus to join it's long queue. However it turned out not to be as long as we feared as for some reason two of it's extensions weren't in use, yet the queue was far outside the entrance? I don't understand their logic. Still we got on it in a reasonable amount of time and we sat at the back. The first drop is just as amazing as I remember it being but the rest was mainly painful due to the sheer roughness of it and the very uncomfortable trains. Patrick and I both gained bruises on our sides where they kept banging into the metal side of the train car. Basically, it'd return to being epic with new trains with padded seats.
We then went back over to Oz Iris for one last ride. There was quite a queue still but it went by quickly. Yay for decent park operations.
We then spent a fair amount of time looking around the mass of tat shops at the entrance before getting back in the car. A few hours later and we had arrived at our F1 hotel. What a joyful place it was. We made a crazy friend outside and the receptionist nearly died (maybe exaggerated) when she had to come and fix Nic and Danielle's room keypad thing.
We then walked over to Buffalo Grill where we ate some meat. Nic gave me some colouring pencils which then turned into me spending way too much time colouring in the animal sheet (blue bulls are normal right?). We then went to get some sleep at the hotel.
It was a really fun day, the weather was a lot warmer than anticipated. The park was amazing (yet again), the entertainment department really outdo themselves, the ride operations were just amazing too and the rides are generally great fun. It's a shame we didn't have time for either the big splash (it's amazing) or the log flume but their queues were just too unbearable (considering the time frame we had).
Thanks for reading, I'm aiming to get part 2 up tomorrow night.
On Friday 5th September I met up with Patrick in London and we got the train down to Ashford where Danielle and Nic met us. We then got in Nic's car and headed down to Dover to catch the ferry over to France. Once in France there was lots of driving and not a lot of food, silly France and their early closing times. We then checked into our hotel which was a Campanile. It was ok, very basic. There was a silly heater lamp in the bathroom which had a switch above the loo. We tried to turn it off which resulted in us pressing said switch lots of times but it turned out it was on a timer and about 2 hours later it finally turned off after turning our bathroom into a sauna.
Saturday 6th September
We got ourselves ready and made our way to Parc Asterix, stopping off en route for some breakfast at a motorway service stop. We then finally arrived at the park just before opening. We got our cheap tickets and then headed in. I absolutely adore Parc Asterix, it's such a well designed park with some of the best theming. The entrance street is so full of detail and interesting things, such a great start to one of the best parks around.
As the crowds were heavy we aimed straight for Oz'Iris but then I remembered that La Trace du Hourra gets horrible queues so we stopped off for that first. So glad we did as when we passed a few hours later it was grotesque. For those that don't know it's a Mack bobsled coaster which is really long and pretty forceful. I think it's quite fun even if it is a little stretched out.
Then it was over to Oz' Iris. It was one of my favourite coasters when I rode it back in 2012, I was hoping it wasn't just the hype making it seem better but yep it genuinely is one of my favourite coasters. From the excellent queueline (brilliant views of the ride AND epic Egyptian themed station building with lots of rooms <3 ) to the overall Egyptian theme and soundtrack, the new fountain show to the actual ride itself. That first drop is just superb and while not overly intense it's just a very entertaining rollercoaster layout from there. I love the little dip into the tunnel after the vertical loop and the drop into the water area tunnel. It also has two perfect zero g rolls, like, totally blows all others out of the water. I love it and the others agreed which made me happy.
We then made the decision to head over to Goudurix. We went via the medievil area, I love this area despite it lacking in good attractions. I was also sad to see that the craft workshops have closed and they no longer sell real swords (I suppose they no longer trust their customers).
Anyway, on to Goudurix which seemingly had a silly queue. Turns out that the real queue just isn't that long and we only waited 45 minutes. It has to be said that all day the operations were outstanding and super efficient. Part of the queue was spent watching the girl who had a bee fall in love with her. It was just chilling out on her t-shirt, she was sensible and didn't panic (can't say I would have been sensible) which led it to just wanting to just live there. When her friends finally got it off her using a lead to calmly take it off and put it on the floor it just flew back to the same spot. WTF? In the end they managed to confuse it by doing the leaf thing again but putting it in the middle of a bush.
Umm, oh yes, the ride. I remember it being ok apart from a few kinks and they'd since re-tracked a fair amount of it. Oh gawd, those 'kinks' were atrocious. Still, the rest of the ride is actually fine, so with new style trains and some further track mending this could actually be awesome.
So Parc Asterix are celebrating 25 years, Magnum is also celebrating 25 years. Both companies joined forces to create one of the best cross-promotion campaigns I've ever seen. Around the park they had 6 giant Magnum ice creams themed to different areas of the park. They had something about tagging it all on Facebook too, not sure if there was more to that or not. Anyway here is me on a Viking boat thing next to the Viking Magnum...
We were going to queue up for Zeus next but with a long queue (over 90 minutes) we opted to do the other creds first. So next up was Le Vol d'Icare. It had a fairly long wait but it's maze like queue themed to ruins passed by quickly enough.
It's a rather meh ride, very vibratey. I think we decided that food was now what was needed so we headed back over to the other side of the park where we'd seen a buffet restaurant we liked the look of. To get there we passed back through the Medieval/French area. In the indoor section of the French area there was like a mini animatronic show thing, I'd never known about it before and I was confused by it, to be honest though the whole area is still a mystery, it seems like it used to have more interesting things going on.
We then reached the circus themed buffet restaurant. You first pay at a little booth outside which is nicely themed. The interior was also far better than we were expecting. Shame the same can't be said for the food. There was an odd selection of items on offer that can only be described as something between home and pub food. Still it was filling and didn't kill us.
We decided to not doing anything too thrilling next and somehow ended up doing SOS Numerobis, a standard Tivoli cred. At the back these things are quite entertaining, the fling off the lift hill is ridiculous.
We then did the boat ride which goes around the Gaule area. It hasn't been open on my previous visits but they touched it up and re-opened it again for the 2014 season. It basically shows off the main characters from the various book themes (so Egyptians, Greeks, Romans etc). It was nice and then it had an indoor bit and they had this absolutely fantastic piece of projection mapping going on. This rock wall would start smashing into pieces and then waterfalls would pour out of the new holes. Unfortunately the projection of water didn't really work but everything else was superb.
We then went into the Gaule area where lots of characters were roaming. It really is a fab little area of the park and fans of the books/films/shows must absolutely die over when they enter this section, it's just awesome. I met the chief's wife (or something) and she was like Amanda Thompson in cartoon form. She started by making me kiss her hand and then she forced me to sweep up some leaves. She was amazing. She then decided that the bottom of Nic's shoes needed brushing (I assume a reference to something?)....
We then went into the brand new area themed after the dog, Idefix. Patrick and I were going to go on the spinny house ride but you have to accompany a small child if you're over a certain height.... Boo! Still, the whole area looks fantastic and it looked excellent for the little ones.
We proceeded to make our way over to Defi de Cesar. This is the park's madhouse attraction with 3 (yes, THREE!) pre-shows. I love the sheer amount of effort that has gone into this attraction, not only does it look great but it does something completely different to all the other madhouses. For once it's not themed to a haunted house!
The first pre-show you have your photo taken and then it appears on random Roman soldier bodies up on huge screens. Then you enter a room where a large animatronic Cesar comes out and does a large speech in French, the room spins, you see Asterix and Obelix in a room and Obelix decides it's a good idea to punch the building resulting in the room spinning further round to the exit into the corridor for the third room. The third room doesn't make as much sense but it's truly outstanding. There are water fountains and effects everywhere, the floor is actually soaking wet when you enter. There's even bubbles!
Then you enter the madhouse part of the ride which is themed to a Roman warship. The 'windows' allow us to see that we're in a harbour and shortly after we make sail we see Asterix and Obelix on a little boat, they come over to us and decide to spin the boat around and around. Remember this is set in a cartoon world so you then spin down in the depths of the sea where an angry Octopus spins you back up to the surface. It's very unique and I love it. There's just so much going on and it is so different and original, gah why can't more parks be like Asterix?
Then you enter the madhouse part of the ride which is themed to a Roman warship. The 'windows' allow us to see that we're in a harbour and shortly after we make sail we see Asterix and Obelix on a little boat, they come over to us and decide to spin the boat around and around. Remember this is set in a cartoon world so you then spin down in the depths of the sea where an angry Octopus spins you back up to the surface. It's very unique and I love it. There's just so much going on and it is so different and original, gah why can't more parks be like Asterix?
We then hastily walked over to the stunt show arena for the show. Patrick and I watched it on a trip with Benin years ago so we were excited to be seeing it again. It's one of the best stunt shows I've ever seen. Instead of just being 'here's some stunts' there's an actual story (silly police can't stop 3 separate villains from stealing the Mona Lisa painting). The set is absolutely ridiculous (including a moving train, some industrial buildings and a huge ship). There are plenty of smoke and fire based effects and the show is also full of slapstick and some extremely dangerous stunts. I feel like it has something to appeal to all and there's no dialogue meaning there's no awful language barrier.
Oh and did I mention that the finale is the ship having lots of blasts of fire bellow out of it and then fall over.
So after all that excitement we decided to go over to Zeus to join it's long queue. However it turned out not to be as long as we feared as for some reason two of it's extensions weren't in use, yet the queue was far outside the entrance? I don't understand their logic. Still we got on it in a reasonable amount of time and we sat at the back. The first drop is just as amazing as I remember it being but the rest was mainly painful due to the sheer roughness of it and the very uncomfortable trains. Patrick and I both gained bruises on our sides where they kept banging into the metal side of the train car. Basically, it'd return to being epic with new trains with padded seats.
We then went back over to Oz Iris for one last ride. There was quite a queue still but it went by quickly. Yay for decent park operations.
We then spent a fair amount of time looking around the mass of tat shops at the entrance before getting back in the car. A few hours later and we had arrived at our F1 hotel. What a joyful place it was. We made a crazy friend outside and the receptionist nearly died (maybe exaggerated) when she had to come and fix Nic and Danielle's room keypad thing.
We then walked over to Buffalo Grill where we ate some meat. Nic gave me some colouring pencils which then turned into me spending way too much time colouring in the animal sheet (blue bulls are normal right?). We then went to get some sleep at the hotel.
It was a really fun day, the weather was a lot warmer than anticipated. The park was amazing (yet again), the entertainment department really outdo themselves, the ride operations were just amazing too and the rides are generally great fun. It's a shame we didn't have time for either the big splash (it's amazing) or the log flume but their queues were just too unbearable (considering the time frame we had).
Thanks for reading, I'm aiming to get part 2 up tomorrow night.
