Parc Asterix Discussion Thread

[Satchboogie3]

I'm heading to the park tomorrow for the first time.  Very interested to see how Tonnerre 2 Zeus is and of course Toutatis.   Not sure if I'm hoping it's better than Kondaa since Kondaa is 2 hours closer to me... but excited.

[Satchboogie3]

Apparently it's still considered a Holiday weekend as it was absolutely packed today, my bad.   I ended up breaking down and getting their 'FiloToMatix' skip the line pass.  It seemed a bit expensive at 45 euro for 1 single use skip-the-line on 10 attractions, Toutatis not included.    I think I remember Walibi Holland having an unlimited use skip-the-line for 50 or 60 euro.     I also ended up getting 2 single skip-the-line for Toutatis at 10 euro a pop, but between the crazy line and the ride being down all morning, it seemed worth it.    I ended up getting 3 rides total on Toutatis; one front row, one 2nd row 2nd car, one 1st row 4th car.    

The morning started not so great.   Heavy crowds, I arrived a half hour before opening and already there was a massive crowd waiting to rush to Toutatis.  I joined the crowd, a big mistake, as Toutatis wouldn't be ready for open and even if it was, I was way back in line.   I wasted about 20 minutes before deciding to head over to Oziris.  By this point, there was already about a 45 minute line, but it is what is it.   Oziris was great, more on that later.   I then headed to Tonnerre 2 Zeus after a little wandering around trying to figure out how to get there .   I walked past Goudurix, whose line was out the entrance and then saw that Zues line was also out the entrance, estimated over an hour.   At that point I decided to look at what, if any, skip the line passes they had, hence above.    Of course on the app, there was no link to use bancontact and I left my credit cards in my car so now I had to go all the way back out to order the pass.   By the time I got back into the park, it was already 11:40 and I had 1 single ride on the day.     As much as I love a quiet park, I absolutely hate a busy park.

With the pass purchased I then headed to Goudurix and then Zues.  More on them later.   Once I got off, I noticed that Toutatis was showing as open.  I purchased a pass for it and then hopped on Pegase Express while waiting for the slot to open.   By the time I got off and checked my phone, Toutatis was down again.    After checking it out in person, I went on Trace Du Hourra.   I then hung around Toutatis for a bit and it started running again, around 1pm.   My pass was showing as 'cancelled' since the ride had closed, as was almost everyone else waiting to go in by the Filotomatrix entrance.  I noticed though the option to purchase another pass for Toutatis, so I simply did that and got an active QR code so I managed to get passed all the people complaining about their cancelled pass and head up to the station.  I got my first ride in the 2nd car.   I then jumped in line, which was about 2 hours.   About an hour into the line I was able to purchase another skip-the-line pass for Toutatis, so I got pretty quick back to back rides between 3 and 4.  After that the line looked to be down to 1-1.5 hours.  I made the bad decision to go use up the rest of my rides on the pass (Oziris and the water rides) and wander around taking photos, instead of getting back in line for a 4th ride, because when I came back at 5pm, the line was the longest of the day, way out of the entrance, probably nearly 3 hours long (and the park closed in 2 hours).  

Besides the crazy crowds, I really enjoyed the park.  I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting it to be as pretty and well themed as it was.   The only complaint would be the food didn't look very good, very fast-food/convenience store level and not a lot of variety.   Completely different than the great food at most German/NL parks I've been to.    Especially the sandwiches, they all had really bad looking generic bread.   I really expected more for France!

Another big pet peeve of mine that Asterix was guilty of: having single rider lines and not using any of them.    Early in the afternoon the ride ops were dispatching a lot of trains with empty seats on Toutatis, probably only hitting 85% capacity for a while, meanwhile a perfectly good single rider line sat there roped off...    To be fair, as the day progressed, the ops got into a better rhythm and did a good job of filling empty seats.  They were very quick to dispatch as well (2 train ops), so props to that.  This was the first park I've seen that wheels out big bins and collects everyone's bags while they are in their seat.  They were pretty quick and I can see it being a faster solution than the typical bins, assuming the staff are moving quickly, which they were.

Ok now on to what you're waiting for Toutatis:

First, I have to mention the reliability issues.   I knew it would be a risk going when the ride hasn't even been open 2 weeks, given Intamin's reputation with new rides.   Still, it's getting a little ridiculous.  It pretty much didn't open until after 1pm, with a few short downtimes in the afternoon.   I'm just happy I got on it as it was looking pretty bleak in the morning.  Now onto the ride.

It's everything I hoped Kondaa would be.   Nothing against Kondaa, it's great, but the flaws like that pointless non-inverted cobra roll and the kinda slow 2nd half simply don't exist on Toutatis.  There's not a single 'that could have been better' moment that I can think of and it's still flying when you hit the brakes.    It's claimed as having 23 moments of airtime, which might be generous, but not far off.  On my last ride (in the front row), I counted 20 moments, including the hangtime on the inversions, spike, rollback, and start/finish of the top hat the 2nd time through.   The two little bumps on the transfer track before the top hat gave really great airtime in both directions, the top hat gave surprisingly good pops of ejector air as well as sustained floater air.   There were a lot more ejector air spots than I was anticipating and a number of the transitions were taken at a good speed with nice snap and aggressiveness (probably not the level of Maverick, I still haven't ridden that though).   My home park got the wrong Intamin!     I'm still not sure I can put this ahead of Expedition GeForce, cause I'm just a massive fan boy of the classic layout loaded with ejector air hills, but I think Toutatis will easily become most peoples favorite coaster in Europe with Untamed being the only competition.    (If I'm honest, it's a better ride than Expedition GeForce in everyway minus not having that classic 1st twisted drop).

I think Toutatis clearly puts Parc Asterix on the map as a must-visit.   It might now have the best coaster in Europe with a solid #2 B&M invert and a few other fun coasters.   Just too bad Zues sucks.  

Just a few photos for now, I'll upload more and my impression on the other rides later.    And a quick note on Zues: the re-tracked sections are pretty smooth, though I didn't get much in the way of airtime really anywhere and the old-track sections are brutal.   If the replaced parts were even worse, OMG I can see why some people would like Goudurix more than it.     I really didn't like how the ride kept switching backing and forth from smooth to jackhammering.  I'd almost rather they replace the entire track or none.    The smooth sections seemed to accentuate the roughness of the old track, it was extremely jarring every time it switched.   I normally can love rough wooden coasters but I have no desire to ever ride Zues again unless they completely re-track it.  Yuk.

 

Oziris themed section is awesome, pretty Montu esque, and the ride was really fun with a nice layout.   Strong #2 coaster in the park.  Pegase Express was fun to.    The bobsled, I don't get the theme at all.   

                     

[bert425]

when we did the construction tour last year, the park reps mentioned there were going to be two flat rides over near Toutaris in that section.

are those installed?  what kind of flats are they, if so?

[Satchboogie3]

7 minutes ago, bert425 said:

when we did the construction tour last year, the park reps mentioned there were going to be two flat rides over near Toutaris in that section.

are those installed?  what kind of flats are they, if so?

Yeah, you can see one of them in the background here:

 

There was another in the area that I think was more kids oriented?   I'm honestly not a big flats fan so I usually don't pay too much attention to them so I'm not even really sure what the one pictured does.

 

Also, I like the touch of detail with the Easter egg in the nest on top of the giant Toutatis figure 

[bert425]

^ oh. . that looks like a pretty well themed Zamperla Nebulaz ride.

it does this:
 

 

[RCT3Bross]

I've been curious to know how they added Toutatis to the park. I was there last summer for my first visit only to realize the ride was actually behind Trace to Hourra. So can you tell me anything about that? I have seen a picture that suggest a relocation of the queue line and you enter the area form underneath Trace, so I checked the map on the website and this seems to be the case.

It's seems logical to me, because when I was there the only option I thought was a thing was a long dead end path around Trace to get there. But I haven't been able to find anything to really make me understand what they changed to open up the area.

Also I am planning a return visit for this year, because I really like to try Toutatis myself. Also love to get some extra rides on OzIris. 

Also I cannot recall if last year was a bad as you said about Tonnerre 2 Zeus, I remember it being a bit rough and me regretting going on it backwards though.

[Invertalon]

Bummer on Zeus, we will be there in about a month on our trip and looking forward to it. Thought it was running better than it sounds, though. Oh well.

Still really looking forward to Oziris and Toutatis, though! (And the rest of the park).

[Satchboogie3]

 

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[Satchboogie3]

12 hours ago, RCT3Bross said:

I've been curious to know how they added Toutatis to the park. I was there last summer for my first visit only to realize the ride was actually behind Trace to Hourra. So can you tell me anything about that? I have seen a picture that suggest a relocation of the queue line and you enter the area form underneath Trace, so I checked the map on the website and this seems to be the case.

It's seems logical to me, because when I was there the only option I thought was a thing was a long dead end path around Trace to get there. But I haven't been able to find anything to really make me understand what they changed to open up the area.

Also I am planning a return visit for this year, because I really like to try Toutatis myself. Also love to get some extra rides on OzIris. 

Also I cannot recall if last year was a bad as you said about Tonnerre 2 Zeus, I remember it being a bit rough and me regretting going on it backwards though.

The whole area is ifront of Hourra.  I don't know how the queue was before, but now you enter to the west of the ride, the queue snakes through the ride and the exit is a bit further down the path.

Queue entrance down on the right.

Exit on the left.

And just across from the entrance is the Toutatis plaza, a big restaurant on the left, the Tatoutis platform in that hill and the entrace up on the left.

9 hours ago, Invertalon said:

Bummer on Zeus, we will be there in about a month on our trip and looking forward to it. Thought it was running better than it sounds, though. Oh well.

Still really looking forward to Oziris and Toutatis, though! (And the rest of the park).

I could have just had a bad ride, I only did ride it once, maybe you'll enjoy it more!

[bert425]

loved it last June. . and the backwards seat was pretty smooth.

I'd say just a bad ride.

[Satchboogie3]

Last of the photos. 

 

Oziris feels a lot like a smaller version of Montu.  Not as intense, but still really fun and just looks great!

 

I quite like how Goudurix looks by the water, though I would have kept the original color scheme and just painted the rails black or blue instead of yellow.   I also found Goudurix slightly enjoyable, though you really need to brace yourself for each transition, especially that pretzel loop unless you want nasty whiplash.   I like the uniqueness of the whole ride, though I do have a soft spot for the old big and unique Arrow/Vekoma loopers (not the SLCs, those can go die in a fire).  

 

Pegase Express was a nice surprise, good theming and that backwards bit was a lot of fun!

 

I really liked the theming around the station for the log flume, but unfortunately most of the ride was the typical elevated track with no theming.  I'll never understand the point that.

 

The indoor themed streets were really cool!

Camera struggling in the low lighting.

I couldn't find anywhere to get good photos of Zeus unfortunately.

 

A very beautiful park.  I'll definitely go back later this year if I head to Paris for a weekend (or just a day trip, Parc Asterix only 2.5 hours from me), I would like to revisit Zues to get a ride in the front or back and I need to get a backrow ride on Toutatis and just get some more rides as the weather heats up.  If it's already kicking-ass in mid/front rows in early April, it'll probably be a monster in the summer heat!

[Invertalon]

Just got back from our Euro trip and while I do plan a small TR in the future for each park, I will say Toutatis was sooo good!

We both thought it was a very solid upgrade over Pantheon. Theming aside, it just had a better flow of elements, more complete layout and especially the first half being significantly better prior to the swing launch. Add in the theming, easy win for Toutatis.

I still keep VC as my top Intamin for those types of rides, but Toutatis is pretty close! Really great ride.