Mushroom
Goon of the Year
The original plan earlier this year was to do a lot of French parks, however, most of them were closed when we wanted to go, that's why we mopped up Germany. Now with a few extra spare days, we decided to go off and plan in Parc Saint Paul, Parc Asterix and Plopsaland.
The trip really started on Saturday (23rd), where I had to work a long flight down to Malaga and back, landing at 11:30pm! Not good! But managed to get back early enough, get home, get changed and out again at around 12:15am, and gunned it down to Peterbrough where we had to pick up Dave (10WaTT). He ended up getting to the services a little bit late at around 2:30am, however we had a 2.5 hour drive to Dover to contend with, to catch a 7am ferry, yes plenty of time, but not much time really. Managed to get there at around 5am, and could relax after that knowing we were there. Boarded the Ferry on time, and departed on time, grabbed some breakfast. Not the greatest brekkie, but it did the job. Got off the ferry, and set the sat nav up to head to Parc Saint Paul, our first destination, a 2 hour drive. Oh joy. On the drive I was feeling very sleepy, so had to stop, get a drink, and wake myself up a bit. Considering I had already been up for around 24 hours by this point... Not fun. Got to Parc Saint Paul at around 12pm, and was greeted by a ton of crowds, but hey, we got here!
Got our tickets from the automated ticket machine, made our way in, found the closest toilets, which took a age really! And queued for our first coaster, Aérotrain.
This was a relocated Vekoma family coaster from Portugal. It was all-right, nothing too special. We proceeded to do the park in a anti clockwise direction, and past a neat looking pirate ship.
And further along it gave us views of Aérotrain
Now for Mini Mouse Cartoon
Got on after about a 15 minute wait. Meh, +1
We didn't want to take photos of the train going around, just because of kids around, and being sensible brits in case they get arsey with us. Now next door was Telepherique. Which was once on RCDB, so we were totally counting it!
I gave myself a massive push off, bit of a mistake that was! Went spinning around, and I think I hit a support, oops! Oh well. Now to their spinner, La Souris Verte.
Which also had a picture of a UK ride on their sign....
But yep, it was a Zamperla Spinner...
1/2 hour queue later, we were on. Meh. Now onto the more interesting things at the park. First up, Formule 1!
And joined this queue which was spreading out of the entrance -_-
And the coaster had a lot of casual copyright infringements...
After a little wait, we were on, yeah, very strange, but something I would not rush to get back on really. Oh forgot to say, there was a circus with animals there, so here is a elephant...
Now onto the 2nd PAX coaster, Wild Train...
Great sign of quality!
Train looked fierce, should that be a sign?
While in the queue, we heard a roar of a plane, so naturally I looked up, and yep, of course we are near Paris (Beauvais) airport...
We got on, managed to get a back row ride, which actually offered a bit of ejector airtime off the top of the lift. Well the rest of it was okay. Now it was off to the next coaster, Le Grande Pomme, well Family Coaster.
Annoyingly they were replacing one of the tyres on the lift hill, but they said it was going to be 10 minutes, so we hung around, and got a ride. Was actually nicely themed too. But my overall impression of Parc Saint Paul? Just a glorified fun fair really. Not in a rush to get back. Luckily I got some POV's to upload. We decided earlier on to get out by around 4:30, which we managed to do, and wanted to grab the extra coaster at Jardin d'Acclimatation.
An interesting journey to the park, seeing the Eifel Tower in the distance. And a big ol' oh S*** on a road when I saw the Arc De Triomphe directly in front of us. But luckily the sat nav took us off that route to get to the park. After some confusion with parking, and with the gate, we paid our €3 to get in, and our tokens too for the rides, and headed up to find the coasters, and found the first one, Dragon.
Nice little Asian theme, and not too bad of a coaster. Now it was time to find the other 2 coasters, forgetting what exactly they were. And we saw some pink track in the distance, and Dave deduced it was a standard spinning coaster, but we will come back to that later. We found Tacot Express, the powered coaster.
Awesome little powered coaster. Now since we knew where the last cred was, we headed over to there. And to by our surprise it was not a standard spinner!
Les Pappilond D'Alice was indeed a spinning coaster, but we didn't know what it was exactly, but hey, it was a fun ride.
Now with them out the way, we made a exit from the park, and headed to our hotel in Saint Witz. Relaxed a bit and headed to McDonalds with the worst ordering system ever. But we found we were close to another park, Mer de Sable, and it had a hefty price tag. But we decided to go and grab that in the morning before Asterix.
Day 2
So we had a nice sleep, which made me feel better as I had not slept for a while. Grabbed some breakfast from McDonalds, and off to Mer de Sable, a 20 minute drive away, not bad really.
We tried to convince them to let us in for free to just ride Tiger Express, but they said no, and we had to pay. But oh well.
And since this was on coastercounter.com, we rode this for a +1
Rode it, and decided to go and find Tiger Express, which we did easily.
This coaster was originally Flying Dutchman Goldmine at Walibi Holland, but they made it a nice Asian theme.
Now with that out of the way, we headed out and drove to Asterix, our intended destination, and on the drive up to the park, saw Oz'Iris, my main reason for coming back after nearly 8 years! Paid our entrance money, and headed in and straight to it. I was just in awe with it!
I am going to leave my opinions of this coaster for Roller Coaster Review Show. But we got back row too =] And that was Reb's 200th coaster!
Now with that out of the way, my day was done in the way of getting new coasters, but Reb and Dave had the whole park to do, and the rain had started to set in at this point. But next was the coaster next door, Los Numeros.
Yup, done that, now onto the Mack bobsled, Trace Du Hourra
Not many photo opportunities with this, but this standard one.
Nice tidy front row, and onto our next ride. And since Reb had done her research, we had a new mad house to do, in the form of Le Défi de César.
A really good pre-show with all sorts of effects. Now onto the ride itself. Which actually broke down mid-ride! Which left us like this for 5-10 minutes!
And a quick selfie during the break down!
Grabbed some lunch, a okay burger and chips. And headed to Vol D'Icare
They were only running the front 2 cars due to the rain. And Dave noted it was exactly the same as Hornet at Flambards (his local park!). Which was true. Looked across and saw what was waiting for us.
Now it was over to Zeus.
And the standard up the skirt shot
20 minutes later, we were on. It was running stupidly fast, and was very rough. Not very fun at all, considering what we were about to endure.
Few photos of Goudrix were taken...
And one of me walking down the queue line.
By our surprise, it was a walk on. Got on, not the greatest of rides, actually smoother than Zeus on the day. This was possibly due to the rain. Oh well. Now it was time to head back over to Oz'Iris. But we stopped at a few other attractions along the way. Along with these towers
And decided on this dark ride.
It was okay, not fantastic. Went through the parade of shops, brought myself a jacket as I had left mine in the car as it was looking hopeful for dry weather. Sadly not. And onto the spinny boat ride.
Great fun, and still the best example of this type of ride out there. Now it was back to Oz'Iris for a front row ride. Just a tad damp, but got my POV for it for now. And it started to come down even more than it did before, and we decided it was time to go. 2 hours drive up to Lomme (near Lille) for our next hotel. Wasn't great at all, but it was a bed for the night. But found some restaurants nearby, and elected to go to Buffalo Grill, and their 'Famous Bacon Burger' which was a extremely good call. Lovely burger where the meat just fell away. Went back to the room and slept it off.
Day 3
So the day we planned was a trip up to Plopsaland just inside Belgium. So we stocked up on some food at the local Carrefour and headed to Plopsaland, about a 1 hour drive. The rain on the way was torrential. Got to the park, and it wasn't letting up, so I was sent to goto the information desk with my Pleasure Wood Hills umbrella which I won at Ghosterforce (which kept me pretty damn dry!) and ask about what was open before going in and paying. The lady as very helpful, and found out 1/2 the stuff we wanted were going to be closed (including Anubis). So I got a ticket to get out the car park for free. (Parking has gone up to €9!). So we headed to Cité Europe for the day to kill time before our ferry (which was supposed to be at 19:50!). Spent a few hours there, and decided to say sod it, and went to the ferry port, and managed to get a earlier ferry for £20. Just made life easier, and got us home earlier.
Landed back in the UK, and drove to Peterbrough services to drop Dave off. And we decided to get some food. I needed the loo. Coming out and saw someone with a awesome looking Twilight Zone Tower of Terror t-shirt. Looked up and saw none other than ATTACKHAMMER and his dad. So we sat down and had a chat with them, they said they were coming back from Lightwater Valley. And just had a general chat too. And another selfie at the end of the day.
We said our byes, and had another 2 hours drive back to Leeds, and got in at around midnight. And promptly went to bed.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this. I will be posting the POV's etc. over on my YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/mushroomproductions )
=]
The trip really started on Saturday (23rd), where I had to work a long flight down to Malaga and back, landing at 11:30pm! Not good! But managed to get back early enough, get home, get changed and out again at around 12:15am, and gunned it down to Peterbrough where we had to pick up Dave (10WaTT). He ended up getting to the services a little bit late at around 2:30am, however we had a 2.5 hour drive to Dover to contend with, to catch a 7am ferry, yes plenty of time, but not much time really. Managed to get there at around 5am, and could relax after that knowing we were there. Boarded the Ferry on time, and departed on time, grabbed some breakfast. Not the greatest brekkie, but it did the job. Got off the ferry, and set the sat nav up to head to Parc Saint Paul, our first destination, a 2 hour drive. Oh joy. On the drive I was feeling very sleepy, so had to stop, get a drink, and wake myself up a bit. Considering I had already been up for around 24 hours by this point... Not fun. Got to Parc Saint Paul at around 12pm, and was greeted by a ton of crowds, but hey, we got here!
Got our tickets from the automated ticket machine, made our way in, found the closest toilets, which took a age really! And queued for our first coaster, Aérotrain.
This was a relocated Vekoma family coaster from Portugal. It was all-right, nothing too special. We proceeded to do the park in a anti clockwise direction, and past a neat looking pirate ship.
And further along it gave us views of Aérotrain
Now for Mini Mouse Cartoon
Got on after about a 15 minute wait. Meh, +1
We didn't want to take photos of the train going around, just because of kids around, and being sensible brits in case they get arsey with us. Now next door was Telepherique. Which was once on RCDB, so we were totally counting it!
I gave myself a massive push off, bit of a mistake that was! Went spinning around, and I think I hit a support, oops! Oh well. Now to their spinner, La Souris Verte.
Which also had a picture of a UK ride on their sign....
But yep, it was a Zamperla Spinner...
1/2 hour queue later, we were on. Meh. Now onto the more interesting things at the park. First up, Formule 1!
And joined this queue which was spreading out of the entrance -_-
And the coaster had a lot of casual copyright infringements...
After a little wait, we were on, yeah, very strange, but something I would not rush to get back on really. Oh forgot to say, there was a circus with animals there, so here is a elephant...
Now onto the 2nd PAX coaster, Wild Train...
Great sign of quality!
Train looked fierce, should that be a sign?
While in the queue, we heard a roar of a plane, so naturally I looked up, and yep, of course we are near Paris (Beauvais) airport...
We got on, managed to get a back row ride, which actually offered a bit of ejector airtime off the top of the lift. Well the rest of it was okay. Now it was off to the next coaster, Le Grande Pomme, well Family Coaster.
Annoyingly they were replacing one of the tyres on the lift hill, but they said it was going to be 10 minutes, so we hung around, and got a ride. Was actually nicely themed too. But my overall impression of Parc Saint Paul? Just a glorified fun fair really. Not in a rush to get back. Luckily I got some POV's to upload. We decided earlier on to get out by around 4:30, which we managed to do, and wanted to grab the extra coaster at Jardin d'Acclimatation.
An interesting journey to the park, seeing the Eifel Tower in the distance. And a big ol' oh S*** on a road when I saw the Arc De Triomphe directly in front of us. But luckily the sat nav took us off that route to get to the park. After some confusion with parking, and with the gate, we paid our €3 to get in, and our tokens too for the rides, and headed up to find the coasters, and found the first one, Dragon.
Nice little Asian theme, and not too bad of a coaster. Now it was time to find the other 2 coasters, forgetting what exactly they were. And we saw some pink track in the distance, and Dave deduced it was a standard spinning coaster, but we will come back to that later. We found Tacot Express, the powered coaster.
Awesome little powered coaster. Now since we knew where the last cred was, we headed over to there. And to by our surprise it was not a standard spinner!
Les Pappilond D'Alice was indeed a spinning coaster, but we didn't know what it was exactly, but hey, it was a fun ride.
Now with them out the way, we made a exit from the park, and headed to our hotel in Saint Witz. Relaxed a bit and headed to McDonalds with the worst ordering system ever. But we found we were close to another park, Mer de Sable, and it had a hefty price tag. But we decided to go and grab that in the morning before Asterix.
Day 2
So we had a nice sleep, which made me feel better as I had not slept for a while. Grabbed some breakfast from McDonalds, and off to Mer de Sable, a 20 minute drive away, not bad really.
We tried to convince them to let us in for free to just ride Tiger Express, but they said no, and we had to pay. But oh well.
And since this was on coastercounter.com, we rode this for a +1
Rode it, and decided to go and find Tiger Express, which we did easily.
This coaster was originally Flying Dutchman Goldmine at Walibi Holland, but they made it a nice Asian theme.
Now with that out of the way, we headed out and drove to Asterix, our intended destination, and on the drive up to the park, saw Oz'Iris, my main reason for coming back after nearly 8 years! Paid our entrance money, and headed in and straight to it. I was just in awe with it!
I am going to leave my opinions of this coaster for Roller Coaster Review Show. But we got back row too =] And that was Reb's 200th coaster!
Now with that out of the way, my day was done in the way of getting new coasters, but Reb and Dave had the whole park to do, and the rain had started to set in at this point. But next was the coaster next door, Los Numeros.
Yup, done that, now onto the Mack bobsled, Trace Du Hourra
Not many photo opportunities with this, but this standard one.
Nice tidy front row, and onto our next ride. And since Reb had done her research, we had a new mad house to do, in the form of Le Défi de César.
A really good pre-show with all sorts of effects. Now onto the ride itself. Which actually broke down mid-ride! Which left us like this for 5-10 minutes!
And a quick selfie during the break down!
Grabbed some lunch, a okay burger and chips. And headed to Vol D'Icare
They were only running the front 2 cars due to the rain. And Dave noted it was exactly the same as Hornet at Flambards (his local park!). Which was true. Looked across and saw what was waiting for us.
Now it was over to Zeus.
And the standard up the skirt shot
20 minutes later, we were on. It was running stupidly fast, and was very rough. Not very fun at all, considering what we were about to endure.
Few photos of Goudrix were taken...
And one of me walking down the queue line.
By our surprise, it was a walk on. Got on, not the greatest of rides, actually smoother than Zeus on the day. This was possibly due to the rain. Oh well. Now it was time to head back over to Oz'Iris. But we stopped at a few other attractions along the way. Along with these towers
And decided on this dark ride.
It was okay, not fantastic. Went through the parade of shops, brought myself a jacket as I had left mine in the car as it was looking hopeful for dry weather. Sadly not. And onto the spinny boat ride.
Great fun, and still the best example of this type of ride out there. Now it was back to Oz'Iris for a front row ride. Just a tad damp, but got my POV for it for now. And it started to come down even more than it did before, and we decided it was time to go. 2 hours drive up to Lomme (near Lille) for our next hotel. Wasn't great at all, but it was a bed for the night. But found some restaurants nearby, and elected to go to Buffalo Grill, and their 'Famous Bacon Burger' which was a extremely good call. Lovely burger where the meat just fell away. Went back to the room and slept it off.
Day 3
So the day we planned was a trip up to Plopsaland just inside Belgium. So we stocked up on some food at the local Carrefour and headed to Plopsaland, about a 1 hour drive. The rain on the way was torrential. Got to the park, and it wasn't letting up, so I was sent to goto the information desk with my Pleasure Wood Hills umbrella which I won at Ghosterforce (which kept me pretty damn dry!) and ask about what was open before going in and paying. The lady as very helpful, and found out 1/2 the stuff we wanted were going to be closed (including Anubis). So I got a ticket to get out the car park for free. (Parking has gone up to €9!). So we headed to Cité Europe for the day to kill time before our ferry (which was supposed to be at 19:50!). Spent a few hours there, and decided to say sod it, and went to the ferry port, and managed to get a earlier ferry for £20. Just made life easier, and got us home earlier.
Landed back in the UK, and drove to Peterbrough services to drop Dave off. And we decided to get some food. I needed the loo. Coming out and saw someone with a awesome looking Twilight Zone Tower of Terror t-shirt. Looked up and saw none other than ATTACKHAMMER and his dad. So we sat down and had a chat with them, they said they were coming back from Lightwater Valley. And just had a general chat too. And another selfie at the end of the day.
We said our byes, and had another 2 hours drive back to Leeds, and got in at around midnight. And promptly went to bed.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this. I will be posting the POV's etc. over on my YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/mushroomproductions )
=]
