Absimilliard

SFMM Disneyland DCA DLP Nigloland La Ronde Great Escape SFNE Lake Compounce Kings Island Indiana Beach plus 2 water parks in Quebec: Mont Saint Sauveur and Super Aqua Club.

French, but you'll find employees who speak english. Signs and menus are bilingual.

Open at 10am or 10:30 am, close at 10:30pm. I'm free... want to meet up?

La Ronde is a very sad park... Before Six Flags bought it, it was owned by the City of Montreal and mismanaged into the ground! Le Monstre was left to rot and turned into an unrideable mess. The park was dirty and paint was flaking everywhere. Graffitis were the norm, the bathrooms were still straight out of the 70's and the Boomerang had turned to "rust color". The park main entrance looked like a bad highway toll plaza. In 1993, they bought a multimedia show... but the thing was so bad, no one went to see it a week after it opened! They even sued the company who provided the show and won... They also installed a motion simulator that year. In 1994, the park turned the little "village" into the Medieval village. You had some horrible shows, plus, they got an Intamin indoor coaster. Sorry, but we got the budget in half for it, so the "Dragon" turned into a 25 seconds, no speed, no airtime, only little kids get excited, ride. Effects were ok for the first few years with some nice rotting bodies hanging from the ceiling and a great smelly cloud when you passed through the belly of the dragon! But, the bodies and cloud got removed and the music is half gone. In 1995, they bought the Cobra, which was already in poor shape when it arrived in Montreal and when they installed it, they tried to connect a power line to it and... oops! Sorry, we forgot to notice it came from Europe, so it doesn't work! So, they had to install a huge power generator next to the lift motor to provide power to it! They got 3 trains for it, but the poor employees complained it was "useless" and "too hard to run", so the third train was disassembled and used for spare parts. 1996. No new rides, but they spent 5 millions (canadian) on a new fireworks, laser, live actors and water screen show! Called "Mirage", the show was a costly flop, since those guys decided to charge people an additional 20-40$ to have a seat with a view! They even boarded up the sides of the lake, so people would have to pay. 1997, Mirage is free now in its final season and they installed "La Tornade", a Huss Top Spin. The ride is a lemon through... It barely works and when it does, it has a short and lame program. 1998, they changed the movie in the motion simulator. Its now "Super Volcanozor 3-D". Its the french version of "Escape from Dino Island 3-D". Fine movie... except the geniuses in management forced maintenance to remove the seat belts and add OVER THE SHOULDER RESTRAINTS to the seats! So now, La Ronde has the world's roughest motion simulator! 1999, Orbite is added, its a used S&S Space Shot bought from the infamous Action Park in NJ (home of the looping water slide). They decided to install it over the lake, so it ended up costing more than a brand new one! They also opened a new section of the park, which had trees, flowers and grass. They even moved the Huss breakdance there and they ran it on psycho mode! The park received new paint, got cleaned and operation was... great. Boomerang was hitting interval (the train was ready to dispatch before the catch car grabbed the train!), Supermanege, Monstre and Cobra were also hitting interval. Great season, with record crowds. So good that they decided to install a new wooden coaster in 2000. Sadly, the union, which is part of the Montreal Blue Collar Mafia, decided to strike and used the anti scab laws to actually close the park for 10 days. Sadly, that made the city of Montreal figure that they don't want to deal with that mess again. They cancelled the wooden coaster. 2000: The City of Montreal put the park on sale. They don't invest a single penny in the park that year. Six Flags and Parc Asterix signified their intention of buying the park. 2001: Six Flags buys the park... Sorry for the long post... but this is what leaded to Six Flags buying the park and how good it was.... for a year.

A fair is coming to my town in a few weeks. Judging by what they had elsewhere, should be interesting! They should have a Larson freefall, Dartron Zero Gravity, Big apple and Dragon Wagon kiddy coasters, musik express, Scrambler, etc. They also have a weird thing called the "Full Tilt". Since their Inverted sucked so much (like every one of those!), they got it converted to this strange flying carpet kind of ride. You sit, inverted style on the arm and it goes around. The Tilt part is the seats tilting forward! Should be fun...

Just look at the Paris resort! In 2000, they pulled 12.5 millions people in with one park. This year, DLP pulled 10.6 millions and the Walt Disney Studios pulled in 2.2 million visitors. That's when most tickets are park hoppers and there's a ton of visitors.

I'm 6'3 with barefeet, which translates to 1m91 in metric system. In 2001, I went a few times to Six Flags Belgium (Walibi Belgium now) and rode their Intamin freefall a few times. Last time I went, the operator pulled out a second height stick and told me I could not ride, since I was over the 1m90 height restriction! I was shocked and we all laughed about it.

My favorites... Indiana Jones Adventure at DL, Pirates of the Caribbean at DL and Men in Black at USF. I don't really care about Spiderman at IOA.

Congratulations! Looking forward to seeing her next week.

Goliath at La Ronde got magnetic brakes too and they're pretty forceful... but still smooth. Regarding Silver Star, it would not be an Europa Park coaster if it does not slam into the brakes!

I worked at Disneyland Paris in 2000-2001. I was trained and alternated between Space Mountain and Star Tours. Boooo Mission 2! I then worked one summer at La Ronde in 2002, as a lead park cleaner. It was ok, as I had the least busy area of the park. Seriously, there was 3 rides and one show in my whole area! But, it changed in 2006 when they built Goliath in that area. Schedule was wacky too... 12.5 hours shift on a strange 2 weeks schedule... One week I'd work monday-tuesday, off wednesday-thursday, then work friday-saturday-sunday. The other week, it would be the opposite! In 2002-2003... I was hired on the WDW international program as a Guest Relations cast member at Epcot.

I can't stand Harry Potter and personally, the Lost Continent was one of the 2 islands that I liked... The other is Jurassic Park. For me, its a major stepback.

I just checked my schedule and I'm off from the 10th to the 13th. Who's crazy enough to fly from Montreal to Los Angeles for 2 days? LOL

There will be a ride themed to Cars that will be like the Ladybug Boogie ride (at DCA) but with double the number of cars. Second attraction is the interesting one: a Maurer-Sohne standard layout (like at Lagoon) spinning coaster with a dark ride beginning and various effects! Name is "Crush Coaster" and is based on Finding Nemo's. The coaster portion is in that large blue building and they're building the rockwork that will serve as the facade of the ride and the car is even supposed to do a short trip outside before starting the dark ride portion.

Thanks for posting. Dragon at La Ronde is its close cousin. Same train but without those huge headrests and with padded lap bars. The ride is very tame, but some nice effects. The lifthill has some fireball lights on the wall, eyes through a window, dead bodies (there was originally 3, but the most graphic one was removed) and some floating eyes. A fence with sparks over our head and you see the dragons. You go through the mouth and stomach and you have an helix around a lighted up crystal to finish... Very short, but great for families!

Lightning Bolt sounds like the "Dragon" coaster at La Ronde. Same train and a really short ride!

1- Splash Mountain at WDW 2- Menhir Express at Parc Asterix 3- Grizzly Rapid Run at DCA 4- Jurassic Park at IOA or USH 5- Roller Soaker at HP

The brackets for the trim brakes on the "picture drop" before the second lift are there... but they're not installed! The airtime on that drop must have been amazing...

Well, I just read through a newsletter from Mack that talks about the various attractions they're installing in 2007. 2 interactive dark rides, a Wild Mouse for a small, awesome french park and something for Knott's... They sold a spinning coaster like Euromir! Only difference is that instead of using motors to spin the cars, they will be free spinning and will use a train, cause Knott's wanted a high capacity ride. Well, that's a great news for Knott's... Let's just hope the height restriction is not 48 inches like that other family ride!

Intamin: Cobra at La Ronde... Ouch! Followed closely by Temple of Peril at DLP... Worst trains ever. GCI: Wildcat at Hersheypark... Interesting layout, but shakes too much! B&M: Superman: Ultimate Flight at SFGAdv... boring layout and it gave me an headache.

Hard to imagine Premier Rides are the ones who supplied the cars and ride system! Were they reliable? If it works there, it could be an idea to retrofit the other Autopia to that system... saves on gas!

It was announced today that a judge rejected the demands of MSSI Inc. owners of skiing resorts and 2 waterparks. They wanted to build a small amusement park next to their small Cascades D'eau waterpark. They bought a carousel, bumper cars, go-karts, observation tower and the Thunder Eagle wooden coaster (it came from a defunct park in Pigeon Forge, TN) and wanted to install them in 2003. Unfortunately, the citizens of Piedmont, the small village the park is in protested, arguing it would be too noisy and "too high", as a zoning law passed by the city doesn't allow any buildings that are more than 30 feet tall. Never mind the facts: the water park already has a water slide tower that is 90 feet tall and that the water park is right next to an highway, without anyone living close to it! MSSI took them to court and the judge rejected. Also, what's interesting is that the leader of the citizens of the city that protested against it became mayor after! Rumors are saying that MSSI is looking at installing the park somewhere else. If I was them, I'd close the Cascades D'eau waterpark too. Its fledging at best and only does 80000-90000 visitors a year. Let the village deal with the hole in their budget.

Worst tail (lol... that's what "queue" litterally means in french!) I've ever been stuck in is Nightmare at Great Escape. Imagine. You got a nicely themed queue outside in some kind of cowboy camp. Fine... then you get inside the "mine" which is just a dark area you can barely see in with rusted steel walls. Nothing else! You see there's maybe only 150-200 people in front of you. Even in the worst cases... that's not more than 10-15 minutes... right? Not for the Nightmare. Its a Schwarzkopf Jet Star in a steel shed with no theming inside the ride. Somehow, Great Escape ended up with only 4 cars for the ride! Since they keep one spare in case one breakdown, that leaves only 3 cars. Then, add the fact that since the brakes are old, they only allow... 2 people per car. The ride only cycle 6 people every 2-3 minutes. We're talking 120 pph here! The ride was closed all year in 2002 and when it reopened in 2003, they rerouted the indoor queue, making it a more or less straight shot to the station. So, you're not trapped in that steel shed 2-3 hours anymore.

The acces rapide are 13$ and are valid for all the major rides, except Monstre and Boomerang. So, if you consider using them, start with Monstre. They're valid for a 3 hours period too. 10 to 1 pm, 1 to 4pm, 4 to 7pm. I suggest the 1 to 4 pm period. That way, you can judge if you need them. You cannot pick your seat on any coaster with the acces rapide. You will be assigned a middle row. Orbite (Space Shot) is down for the rest of the season, unfortunately.

Premier Rides is doing very well. They sell a tons of spare parts for other rides that they haven't necessary built and they just sold 5 new trains to NY-NY in Las Vegas for Manhattan Express.