Sunday 3rd June
Plan today was get to
La Ronde then get the hell out of the country.
Wasn't a long drive from Ottawa to Montreal, so didn't rush and stopped for the traditional roadtrip McDonalds on the way. Route planner reckoned
it was ~2 hour drive, but Google was telling me there were loads of roadwork-related road closures near the end of the trip (which my phone
based GPS thingy would not be aware of) so I was expecting a bit of diversion a few miles from the park.
True to prediction, it seems that they were reconfiguring some pretty major freeway roads in the city, so there was some traffic-faff while I
diverted off and back on again to the required route.
Only then it got a bit silly.
Once back on the right route, it suddenly appeared that I could not take any of the turnings that I wanted to ; roads were all blocked off by
police cars with lights all flashing. Odd. I ended up in outskirts of the the city centre, desperately trying to turn left so I could get onto
the big bridge that you need to get onto but road after road was no-entry. How annoying.
After a while (and my satnav freaking out at me) I figured it wasn't happening (I could even see the pigging park a few hundred yards away) and
I needed to find another way to the park - the problem being that the park is on an island in the middle of the river and so there is literally
only 2 ways to get there (East or West on the bridge) and I couldn't get on the one side at all.
Parked up, looked at a map and diverted North for a bit, across the river through a big tunnel and back down the other side sorted!
Or so I thought.
Travelling back down the other side of the river, I could see the bridge and the junction I needed to take, but.... it too was blocked off.
For ****s sake Montreal you are not making this easy. I wondered whether the junction was blocked off for the same reason all the roads had been
(I figured that there just must have been something going on in the city centre that day that they didn't want cars around for) but I could see
traffic on the bridge - clearly not traffic that had come down the road I was on.
So I carried on South for a few miles, turned around and headed back North where I could exit the road to get onto the bridge. YAY!!!!
That all had put me in a pretty crappy mood, taken about an hour of detours to get there. Stupid bloody city / park.
(Turned out that there was some city based cycle race/event on that day, hence the road closures. Had I stopped to ask a cop they might have
helped me out I guess - did occur to me I could have parked up and got public transport to the park but I didn't expect the last road
closure to get in the way as much as it did. SPOILER - thats not the end of the day's road-closure issues either!)
Anyway, park is on an island in the middle of the river - sounds lovely, is not really.
Its all a bit grubby outside the park - dirty dusty car park, no trams to get you to the gate so wander under the bridge.
Get into the park, have a look at the season-pass processing Q - huge, so I'll do that later and off looking for the coasters I go.
Yay a Boomerang to start...
Only its not running 'pour des raisons techniques' ; SPITE#1.
Next door to the bad boomer was one of my guilty pleasure rides - a Vekoma corkscrew just like Alton's olde-thing ;
Super Manège which
had a negligible Q (saw it a lot longer later in the day).
Obviously was not great, but brought back lots of memories for me - ahhhh.
(its the wrong colour though, should be yellow)
Carrying on around the park, next up was the big woody
Monstre which is actually 2 different tracks - hurrah for the +2.
Bit hard to take pics of from the park though - it kinda looms over a lot of it but you don't get to see the train in action much.
Only a station wait for each side, that means its either awful and no-one wants to ride it or its still a bit early in the day and the locals
haven't turned up? Ride was OK though on both sides - big lumbering old woody, shakes you about a bit as it rattles around the course, pretty
fast in places but not at all graceful. They don't dispatch the two sides at the same time either so the racing/duelling element is lost too.
Not awful, not great then. Prime RMC territory though (if I thought that anyone would spend any money on the park that is!)
I hadn't wandered through much of the park by then, but what I had seen was a bit rubbish I thought. Just general upkeep issues / tired and
old looking midway things.
Didn't ride the monorail because Qs.
I couldn't hold back any longer and headed to the back of the park for perhaps the only reason to come here, the B&M hyper
Goliath.
Even this had a short Q - but then I guess its pretty high capacity and they were running 3 trains.
Anyway this was good, very good. Very B&M hyper at least. Its not greatly different than say Carowinds' one, doesn't have the helixes like
Georgia's - just good old out and back airtime machine. I liked.
Sitting rather picturesquely on the lake nearby was a non-credit for me (since I'd ridden it at Astroworld (RIP) many years ago) - the nasty
SLC
Ednör - L'Attaque. I've Q'd longer for worse SLCs that I already had so rode it anyway. I recall riding it twice when it was in
Houston, the first ride being really good so I re-rode it and the second ride being awful - this ride was just what you'd expect from an old
SLC, brace yourself and you'll get through it relatively un-scared.
It is quite pretty though.
Last coaster up this bit of the park was next - annoyingly you can't walk around the lake, you can only walk around 3/4 of it so you get to a
dead end where you have to double-back on yourself ; stupid park. This was an indoor coaster
Dragon - an Intamin, not that that was any
great sign of quality. Standard family coaster in the dark - bit of a Q too, ugh.
So doubling-back and walking through the middle bit of the park, which got no better - lots of people milling around lots of mediocre midway
attractions - came across their wild mouse with a huge Q so left that for later and their spiteful kiddie cred;
Denied;
Back at the front of the park is another B&M though
Vampire - a Batman clone. Great rides these in their day, still serving up a big heap of forces as well - great stuff, but no novelty
of course.
Final cred is the mouse I skipped earlier,
Toboggan Nordique
I Q'd for this for FAR TOO LONG. When I get to board the ride-op point out the single rider queue to me - thanks for that.
its a mouse, non-spinning at least.
The park is really crummy though. Lots of "abandoned" areas, disused buildings, crappy upkeep.
There is part of a scrapped log flume just sitting in the lake;
at least the logs were re-purposed;
I mean come on, when you can't even keep the signs on your in-park McDonalds up to scratch...
So things I liked about La Ronde;
The big bridge looming over it all;
The (relatively) cheap Six Flags season pass that got me into a few other parks.
The B&Ms
2 woodies checked off.
Things I didn't like about La Ronde ; everything else.
Glad I've been (+8), hope never to have to go back though.
--
Getting out of Montreal proved almost as vexing as getting in. Got back on the highway, heading for the USA, needed to change onto another
major highway to do that, but true to Montreal-form, that junction was closed off too. For ****s sake.
Stupid diversion through 30mins of residential streets gets me on the right highway and a while later (after some discussion with the US border
guards about exactly what sort of person drives around looking for roller coasters) I get into Trump's America and find my hotel for the night.
No convenient drinking establishments though tonight, just a local fast-food place (did not want to do any more driving to find somewhere
more interesting just in case I encountered more roadworks!)
Oh, and checking the internet that night, the park I had planned for the next day (Canobie Lake Park) had put up a notice saying they were not
going to open because of the incoming storm. Oh just great.
