Absimilliard

In 2002 or 2003, they tried banning lunches and outside food from La Ronde.... but, the GP complained and protested so loud they had to back off and still allow people to bring in food... They managed to get rid of the "Babysitter" park through by raising passes a lot (90-95$ this year) and stopped selling passes to schools directly.

At least the park has some families visiting now! Before Six Flags bought it, the park was 90% teenagers who smoked in line, cut in line, brought their lunch, so they would not spend a dollar more than the 50$ season pass their school sold them! The city of Montreal also let the park get rundown during the 90's... its only in 1999-2000 that they started to clean up the place. Six Flags came in in 2001, didn't do much beside figure out what they didn't work and then ripped out and rebuilt the 2 park entrances, all the park's bathrooms and started running restaurants themselves. Six Flags did some good work with the park, but between maintenance (who are in no rush to inspect rides and coaster trains..) and employees (37.5 hours at work in 3 days... that's their excuse for being tired and slow on sundays! Don't you dare tell me to move faster or I'll drop a grievance on you!), the lines just don't move.

Crush Coaster is always a 90-120 minutes wait! What the park figured out to make the stampeding at opening easier... If the park opens at 10am, they'll actually open the gates 20-30 minutes earlier and allow people to line up in front of the entrances. We showed up early enough that we were the 3rd group in line, the ride opened and by 10:05am, we were on the ride! There has been talks ever since the ride opened of adding a single riders line. They tested it at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, it worked good there, so we can only hope Crush Coaster is the next one to receive it... They tested fast pass on the ride shortly after opening and it was a nightmare! The stand-by line barely moved and it had turned into a fast pass only ride when you start counting in the ride's shutdowns.

A pro union governement party here passed a law that doesn't allow companies to hire scabs! So, during the strike talks, the poor dolphins got neglected and died... In 1999, La Ronde got park executives and ex employees to come here as "volunteers" to still open the park. They weren't paid, but were given a tank of gas for having showed up... Sadly, the union got in court and "proved" that it was violating the anti-scab law and the park closed for 11 days. The loss of revenues and headaches were bad enough that the city of Montreal cancelled the planned Gravity Works! (the guys who did the Dania Beach woodie in FL) and Inverted coaster (they wanted to buy Eurostar!), put the park on sale and it eventually went down to either Parc Asterix or Six Flags as the companies who wanted the park. Six Flags won, got the park in 2001 and did a great job getting the park out of its permanent fair look!

To put this into context: La Ronde was owned by the city of Montreal until 2001, so, due to that, the employees are unionised and represented by the all powerful Montreal city workers union... The kind of union where trying to see the union president without an appointment will have you thrown out like trash out of the building! During the 1990's, the park was held captive by a serie of ugly strikes. One strike had all the park's dolphins die due to a lack of care! The last strike in 1999 soured things so bad that the city put La Ronde on sale. La Ronde employees can enjoy, right now: Guaranteed hours after a certain point of the season. Meaning that even if the day is a complete washout and 500 guests show up, you're still paid for your whole shift! Wacky schedule guaranteeing a weekend out of 2 off. Starting wages near 10$/hour. This year, Six Flags originally wanted to get rid of the guaranteed hours, but this was a guaranteed strike or lock out situation, so they got the following clause in: Six Flags can use 5 rainout days, but those hours will be compensated on busy days. La Ronde employees accepted Six Flags offer and so, there won't be any strike this year!

Six Flags installed a Wipeout at Six Flags Belgium (now Walibi Belgium) in 2001, so that would make 2 permanent Wipeout yet... Anyone know why they dissapeared so fast?

The prize for dumbest idiot who tried to film on a ride goes to this spanish (from Spain) guy who on Star Tours at DLP decides, right after the ride started, to take this HUGE camera out and it has a huge external light! The camera was a feet long and the light was so bright we could barely see on the camera! I was in the control tower and did an announce. French, english, some words in italian (I had asked a collegue on how to say that in italian), nothing works and at this point, the people in the cabin are starting to make gestures so he would stop! I call the cast member who was running that bay and we agreed it was better to stop the flight and see what the deal was. I stop the flight, he gets in and the guest with the camera starts screaming at him! It got so bad management and security got involved and eventually, they let him stay in the park only if he surrendered his camera to Lost and Found for the rest of the day and that he stayed quiet.

I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain and I have to say this... wow, I'm impressed. My first time at SFMM was in 2005 and it was horrible. Never wanted to step foot within 10 miles of the park. Last year WCB was fun and so this time, needing to get my Six Flags season pass, I went... Season pass processing was fast and very efficient, except for one slight glitch: the system where you enter your infos doesn't recognise canadian postal codes (6 characters long, under the format of either letter-number-letter-number-letter-number or the opposite). ALL the coasters were running 2 trains, even if crowds were light. Dispatches were fast and all the employees were nice and helpful. We had dinner at the indoor food court near Goliath and the prices were reasonable and the food was good and tasty. The new museum is an awesome idea, but my mom had one slight complaint: they need to add dates or years to the various items. All in all... for management: Thank you for a great day and keep up the good work.

Being that its the first Asterix themed attraction or ride since forever, you won't miss much not knowing the comic books. Menhir Express is themed to Obelix (the tall, fat, but he's not fat, insanely strong gaul) favorite thing: standing stones or menhir. The ride is basically his new transportation device for menhirs and each boat is a floating menhir. Trace du Hourra is themed to Asterix ancestors (cavemen) having fun going down a slide and screaming "HURRAY!". Tonnerre de Zeus and the whole Greece area is just themed in a general way to antique Greece. Goudurix used to be themed.. to nothing, but they recently themed the loading station to a Viking oarsboat. Transdemonium (dark ride) is themed to medieval people being scared of year 1000. Rue de Paris is themed to late 1800's Paris. Oxygenarium is a spinning raft ride (like at SFNE and SFA) themed to "clear air breathing". Main Basse sur la Joconde is personally the best stunt show in the world. It involves Marcel, a painter, who went to paint the port hotel... but he's surprised by the "rat d'hotel" (athletic girl in tight leather, that loves to use zipcords) and then, a train pulls into the port, with a team of policemen who are pretty bad and funny! The Mad engineer loves to use bombs and the masked thief is a pretty sneaky fellow... They all try to steal Mona Lisa or la Joconde, Da Vinci's most famous painting, before it travels to America.

Only in french, as is the rest of the park! Parc Asterix caters to local french visitors, not international tourists.

Its from wrestling, but look for the "Mountie" theme song. I am the Mountie! I am the mountie and I enforce the law... You can try to run, but you could never hide! The Mountie always get my man! I'm the Mountie and I'm handsome! I'm brave! I'm strong! You get the idea? Add to that the wrestler, in complete mountie red suit and a cattle prod (back in 91-92!) and the real RCMP got so offended they sued the WWF to remove most references to them. In Canada, the wrestler had to use his real name too.

I guess I'm boring! I drive a 2007 "liquid grey" Ford Focus SE. Only weird thing I did to is put some Superman carpets in it. Great car, no problems and is great in winter (important here!). The dealer even gave me heated seats and heated side mirrors (perfect in winter).

20/20! The "most woodie" one is the one that confused me...

Le Cellier is very difficult to get reservations at for this reason. The cheddar cheese soup and pretzel bread are fantastic! If you get reservations right at when they open for lunch, they make all the employees sing the Canadian national anthem. Singing the national anthem? I'm lucky I didn't work there! I'm french canadian from Quebec... While I don't think Quebec should separate, singing the national anthem most of my work days is a little too much!

I prefer the standard Frisbee or Afterburner to the Giant Frisbee... One reason why they haven't sold as many Giant rides is according to a few maintenance guys who posted on forums, Huss is horrible when it comes to after sale service. Weeks to get parts among others. Talocan is a floorless top spin, like the one at Knott's and Kings Dominion.

Regarding getting to Everland, its actually really easy. You got buses from Incheon airport and all over Seoul going to Everland. http://www.everland.com/htm/MultiLanguage/english/htm/In/InTra.htm Lotte World is really easy too. Jamsil station on the subway and you're there! In case anyone needs the Seoulland credits, I think they're easily accessible too, but I'll have to check which station.

Same for me! I liked it so much I ranked it number 1! Yep, ahead of Superman at SFNE.

Oh my... there's going to be some violent reactions (on certain websites to Eagle's Fortress ranking). TPR is again going to be blamed for messing up the poll!

16/20. I guessed about half of them...

Oh my... after working at Disneyland Paris as a ride op on Space Mountain (which has 3 loops...) and enforcing the complete opposite of HW loose article policy, I'm just baffled at them... We told people to keep their bags, glasses, etc. with them. Put your bags at your feet and they won't fall down. Glasses? Unless they're really loose, no problems! Its ridiculous and I guess the park has that "great park aura" that means that stuff like this that would get pointed out and used against some parks just gets ignored. I'll visit HW for the first time this year and based on a few TR's here, I'm not planning a full day and we'll try to hit SFKK the same day.

I rode all 3, within the same year, so my memories are pretty fresh... Dinosaur.. blah. Just stupid. What a waste of great technology! Between the 2 temples, my favorite is the Temple of the Crystal Skull. The waiting line is very impressive with that river of death (complete with skeletons) and the various rooms after. Good points for not being held in a room for a preshow! The ride itself just feel more complete... Like it was previously said, areas that are just dark in California got stuff to look at here. You know what's amazing? Universal bases and name an attraction after a tornado effect while TDS just plants it in an attraction without hyping it... and the effect works so much better in Tokyo!

I wondered if it ever had a trim brake on the first drop? Going up the lift, I noticed some brake brackets on the track.

Eagle Fortress... AMAZING RIDE! It actually sits at number 1 on my steel coaster ballot for this year's poll! French Revolution ahead of Phaethon? Huh? Where's Horror Express/Black Hole Scramble? That ride was actually pretty good for a Vekoma.

Their Phantom Manor is amazing! The exterior look is that of a western manor, since it is located in Thunder Mesa (Frontierland). The exterior waiting line goes around the abandonned gardens of the house, before reaching the front door. SPOILERS: Once you're inside, some of the scenes are different. The story here is that Melanie was supposed to wed her fiance, but alas... in the stretch room, we see that her fiance was hanged by the Phantom. So, during the ride, we see her, desperately searching for the fiance, aging as the ride goes on... It is the only version of the Haunted Mansion/Phantom Manor where we see the "Ghost Host", in this case, the Phantom.

I already went to Paris 2 weeks ago for a quick trip to Disneyland Resort Paris. Confirmed: Japan and possibly South Korea in june. I got vacations in both april and september, so we'll see where I end up.