|
La Ronde Montreal, Quebec, Canada Weather: Warm, mostly cloudy, low 80s Crowds: Heavy Yet another wedding brought us back to the east coast, and another side trip gave us the opportunity to hit a new amusement park. This time we were headed north of the border to Canada, specifically Montreal. We wouldn’t have a ton of time to explore the famous city, but we were able to squeeze in a visit to La Ronde - but of course. After the festivities in New York and New Jersey, we were headed up via Amtrak past the Adirondacks into the great white north. While I’ve been to Canada several times (this was Megan’s first visit), this was my first time to Quebec, and I was curious to see this, the largest Francophone outcropping in North America. We arrived into town a bit late, 9:30pm, thanks apparently to the earthquake in Virginia. I guess they needed to make sure the tracks were safe. We eventually found the Metro stop, made it to our hotel, checked in, and after a nice stroll around the neighborhood and a late dinner at a brewery, we were in for the night. The alarm went off at 8:30am, and we enjoyed the included breakfast at the hotel before making our way to the park. La Ronde is in a curious and very unique spot. It sits on an island in the middle of the river that borders the city. It’s easily one of the largest parks in the world situated this closely to a major urban area. It’s a bit odd to be climbing a lift and see skyscrapers and the cityscape laid out before you, but is easily one of the most interesting settings for a park. Despite the proximity, it was still a bit tricky to get to. There is a Metro stop on the island, but it’s on the other end and a good mile from the park’s entrance. There are shuttle buses, but I’m always wary of taking those to parks. (I had some bad experiences in Atlanta trying to get to Six Flags Over Georgia without a car). The alternative was to walk, which seemed reasonable being this early in our visit. Playing it by ear, we saw the buses just outside the Metro station and decided to climb aboard with a few other folks. It was at least a 20 minute walk, and with a couple buses ready to go behind us, we figured it wouldn’t be too long before we were on our way. We were right, it just took a few more minutes before we were off, and a couple more before we were at the park’s entrance. Couldn’t have been easier, actually. We had printed tickets online (the $5 discount for booking online is frustratingly negated by a $5 processing fee), so at least we had the convenience of going directly to the gates. It was about 10:00am at this point, giving us what I thought was a 30 minute wait before opening. There weren’t more than a dozen parties at this point, and we had no trouble finding a spot directly in front of the gates. The only worry was the fact there were all of six - SIX - turnstiles. As we would see later, this was the very first in a long, long list of operational inefficiencies. With some time to kill, we looked at a map I had printed out and planned our strategy. Of course I had been reading up on trip reports and reviews, and they all unfortunately came to the same consensus - be prepared for awful operations. I wasn’t naïve enough to expect anything close to the same emptiness I found at Six Flags America just two months prior, but I hoped on a weekday we would be spared from the most crushing crowds. In the end, we probably were, but it still wasn’t pretty. The park is set up like a backwards capital "L", with the entrance being at the point where the two legs meet. As you can imagine, there’s no way to avoid backtracking in getting through the whole park. The entire left side of the park is bordered by a nice, large lake, but unfortunately it’s not connected around the back corner. That means no convenient loops. As for the rides, there were said to be a few unconventional favorites. Yes, of course Goliath is the headliner of the park, but more recently a Vekoma SLC called Ednor: Le Attaque was build over the water and themed after a sea monster. This is what was really drawing the crowds - but the key fact is that it had a fraction of Goliath’s capacity. According to reports, Goliath typically ran with its two trains, and each carried 36 passengers. Ednor, in typical SLC fashion, only carries 20 - but was said to almost always run a single train. Ugh. Apparently this was standard operation, as in on all the coasters, and Goliath was the exception. Gah. In addition, there was a very popular wild mouse, loosely themed as toboggans. Monstre, the only wooden coaster in the park, did have two sides, but again, usually only ran a train on each side. There was also a B&M Batman clone, sans the themeing, called Vampire, as well as Cobra, an Intamin stand-up and Dragon, and enclosed family coaster. Let’s not forget the rest of the Vekoma clones, and Boomerang and an ancient corkscrew coaster. The collection gave the park nine adult coasters. The kiddie coaster, sadly, required a kid to ride. Jerks. It was an interesting collection, though hardly especially stellar. The widespread mediocrity means predicting crowds and waits would be tough to gauge. We knew heading directly to Ednor might be the smart choice, but that would require a lot of backtracking being at the back of the park, especially considering I wasn’t too worried about getting on the adjacent Dragon and Goliath. We would take our chances and start with the short leg and Vampire and Cobra. The way I figured, whatever we didn’t hit first would have had long lines later, which we would have to endure no matter the order we chose. With this in mind we were set for the 10:30am opening. Well it turns out the park wasn’t scheduled to open until 11am, so we spent the extra 30 minutes grumbling. We now realize, even though that is insanely late for a major park to open during the summer, their eventual opening was pretty much on time. I take back this portion of ire. Just a quick word about the park - it’s been around since the World’s Fair Expo of 1967, built as the fair’s midway. Like we’ve seen a dozen times over, it was chugging along for a few decades before Six Flags bought it and took over in 2001. Whatever the park was like then, and I have absolutely no indication of its quality one way or the other, this takeover surely has no helped. Reviews range from modestly pleasant at best to not worth a visit or even condemned by some as the worst of the chain. I’ll always want to see for myself, but as has become par for the course for Six Flags, our expectations were already astoundingly low. By opening, the crowd clamoring outside the gates had grown to a good size, and our position was fortunate considering the dearth of turnstiles. The gates opened automatically and, fortunately, at the same time - and we were easily ahead of the surge getting our tickets scanned and allowed into the park. I didn’t even want to look back at the mass of humanity in the bottleneck behind us. We wanted to test out the baggage policy on Cobra, though it looked all but silent as we approached its somewhat obscured entrance. Instead we continued on to Vampire, which is immediately adjacent. This is my first mirror-image of the Batman model, of which I’ve been on four, and is easily my most ridden model of coaster (we’re talking over 200 rides). It means it was all quite familiar, but in a slightly skewed way. The park clearly doesn’t have any licensing tie-in to the typical Six Flags mainstays - DC Comics, Looney Tunes, etc. Not that this meant the park was missing out on a gold-mine of themeing exactly, but it seems as though they have made no effort to make of for this. Perhaps the park was originally built as a traditional amusement park, but, with very little exception, there is nothing themed to be found. This was oddly apparently as we entered the queue for Vampire. So used to the Gotham City park theme for the Batman rides, one that always at least got the token theme treatment from Six Flags, the layout of the queue was almost identical sans any stitch of scenery. Nothing even related to vampires, I should also point out. We found an empty station and went right for the back row of the only training running. As I had hoped, the ride was predictably intense, and certainly quite familiar. It easily matched up to the quality of the other Batman, even if the setting was bare. We were off to a good start, and circled back to Cobra. This stand-up was one of B&M’s last while they were still with Intamin. The engineering is all but indistinguishable from Vortex or Iron Wolf, though the layout was somewhat simplified. With just a vertical loop as the only inversion, the rest of the layout was a series of spins and curves. Considering the mediocrity of Great America’s Vortex, we expected very little, and were pretty much spot on. Definitely not downright awful, but its mildly unpleasant ride easily canceled out what little thrill it provides. Having made quick work of the two coasters on this side of the park, we headed back towards the front gates and found Toboggan Nordique not too far up the midway from there. We joined an ever-growing line and waited about 20 minutes. Not the wildest of the Wild Mouse genre, but open brakes and a pleasant enough thrill. Continuing across the park, we made it to Monstre, a visually impressing dual-track twister style wooden coaster - and a big one at that. Think of it as an interesting version of Colossus (at SFMM). There were two sides, each with a decent crowd already in their respective queues, but there was absolutely no way to tell which side was shorter. We took a quick peek at both and went back to the first one queuing guests come to, I believe labeled "Track 1" - the leftmost station. This queue is a straight shot up a ramp into the station, immediately parallel to the brake run. I mention this because the proximity to the track meant it was so very easy to see how rarely the trains ran. As you could guess, this is where the frustration really began to set in. I’ll save my rant for when we hit the absolute worst of it, but here we saw the Flashpass system in all its glory. Every couple minutes a handful of folks, usually between two and six, would walk directly into the station. Now when you’re running two trains, this is may slow down the main queue a bit. With a single train, and all of 24 rides being put through every four or five minutes, it comes to an absolute standstill. There were some cycles where the station had been filled up entirely by Flashpass users, and our line didn’t even budge. It took almost 30 minutes for us and the roughly 100 guests ahead of us to make our way into the station, and from where it was a few more cycles - meaning another 15 minutes before we got our ride. Just wanting to get on the ride, we settled for somewhere in the middle. We were out of the station, and slowly up the lift. Near the top, it kicked up a gear - to what felt like should be the normal pace to climb a lift, leaving us wondering why it wasn’t going that speed the entire time. It’s not like there was an issue with a second train on the track. Thankfully, the ride was pretty good. Good maneuvers, a layout that was hard to follow but flowed well and was quite long. It did have a lot of bump to it, while not going entirely up to the jarring level, it was right at the limit of what I consider acceptable. Anything more would have been distracting and detrimental to the ride, but where it was left us able to enjoy one of the more unique wooden coasters out there. Having lost any advantage of our early arrival, we would be hitting the most popular ride a good 90 minutes after the park had opened. We made our way to the back of the park, and found the entrance to Ednor all the way around it. The queue starts with an interesting, if modestly detailed display recounting the exploits of this mythical sea creature (think evil Loch Ness Monster). The odd thing about it was that it was at the very beginning of the queue, leaving guests to simple walk past the themed effort to join the end of the line a good bit further down. Kind of a waste. We joined the queue in the lone switchback, so the line was long, but after this was mostly a straight shot under the lift and into the station. For a split second I felt a glimmer of hope as I thought I saw two trains running. This was not the case. Instead of running at the still mediocre capacity a Vekoma SLC would have with two trains, they decided to run one, and crush my soul. One "interesting" element to the ride is huge water geysers that shoot as the train enters and exits the trademark rollover double inversion element. I guess that’s supposed to be the monster? It’s hard to tell because past that initial room, there is not a single lick of themeing. Either way, I later found some irony as the riders whip about completely unscathed, and the folks in the queue instead received a dousing every time a train goes by. I supposed that’s the silver lining of four or five minute cycles: it gives you plenty of time to dry off. Megan saw the unfathomably slow operation mixed with the periodic soaking that would need to be endured for the first portion of the queue, and understandably tapped out. I would be on my own for the duration. I’ve waited in lines by myself. I’ve waited in long lines by myself. This, however, resulted in one of my most trying experiences as an amusement park-goer. The line. Just. Crawled. Every few minutes, you’d take a few steps forward. There could not have been more than 300 people in line ahead of me, but at 20 riders every 4 minutes, that requires a wait of an hour. An hourly capacity for the park’s newest and clearly most popular coaster of 300 riders per hour? Unbelievable. But the most excruciating moment came when I eventually rounded the corner and could see into the train shed. There it was, the second train. Just sitting there. All you’re left to think in this situation is, "It feels like this place doesn’t care". It was a new low, even for Six Flags. I would again be dismayed by the Flashpass folks joining the crowd directly into the station, and more than a few times a cycle was filled just with them. Only at Six Flags will you find a company that profits from its incompetence. The slower the lines, the more chumps are willing to pay to cut the line, the less incentive the park has to improve how they operate their rides. Say what you want about Disney’s Fastpass, but there are two monumentally significant differences. First, it’s free. That not only means equal access to all, but also that there is no relation between its use and Disney’s profit. Disney has no direct financial stake in whether people use Fastpass. Secondly, and just a important, Disney is a master of efficiency. If they hand out 300 fastpasses for a ride that’s running at 2000 riders per hour (which is actually way below some of their higher capacity rides), they’ve increased your wait time by all of 9 minutes. If the same 300 guests pay to cut in front of you on Ednor, you’ve just lost an hour of your life. I had to laugh when I got off the ride, because I knew fully well it wouldn’t be worth the wait. Aside from the nice placement and passive theme, this is your average, unfortunate Vekoma SLC, and a relocated one at that. I was so eager just to get on the damn thing that I ended up in the last row, and got the beating I expected back there. All told I endured a ridiculous hour and fifteen minute wait, and will suffer the scoffs of enthusiasts, as they’re entirely warranted. More than a few times did it seem entirely absurd, and the best part of riding was the relief that it was over. Now all I had to do was find Megan. She had just picked up a late lunch, which worked out well as I had no interest in waiting in a line to get food. We shared a chicken sandwich and fries, and were quick to get back at it. Having felt like I had earned a penance, it was finally time for Goliath. Just around the corner we found the massive marquee and entrance. The plain queue loops around behind the station building, so it was somewhat hard to judge how long the wait would be. In laughable contrast, a few minutes had passed and we had made our way all the way to the station stairs. The huge capacity of the trains was somewhat diminished both by consistent stacking outside the station, and even more Flashpass users. All told we waited only about 10 minutes before climbing into the second to last row. This was my 4th B&M hypercoaster, and I knew that guaranteed some fun. If you check out the layout, you’ll notice that it sports a very traditional circuit - it’s all about the airtime hills with its simple out and back footprint. But don’t let that fool you; what it lacks in creativity it makes up for in execution. Trains come out of the station straight onto the lift, and we get to the peak quite quickly. It’s over the crest and down steeply some 200 feet, hitting a nice 75mph or so. The up-and-down of this ride is unrelenting - first with three great hills providing multiple seconds of airtime each. In some spots you could actually count to 4 or 5 before your butt was back on the seat. The turnaround is a mid-air helix, more graceful than G-force packed, unfortunately, but ends in a steep drop to get the return trip started out right. A handful of more, shorter but even more intense hills take you back towards the station and things end with a quirky double-up into the brake run. I could feel the memories of Ednor wash away. Just kidding - I’ll never forget that. We did walk back past its entrance, this time to get to the very back of the park, for the enclosed Intamin family coaster - Dragon. Here we found a full, though nicely shaded queue. With one train operation we weren’t surprised the line wasn’t flying, but even it wasbetter than Ednor. We made our way into the building, glad to see the station being kept empty, and got the front seat after about 30 minutes of waiting. Before we hopped on, however, we noticed a sign that caught our attention. No, it had nothing to do with the second rate themeing - rather it was seemingly meant for the staff. Now my French is about as far from fluent as you can get, but reading has always been my strong suit, and it looked as though the sign read something to the effect of "Hourly Target", with a big "250" written beneath it. Don’t get me wrong, this could mean anything. But I’d be willing to bet this was referring to ridership. For a split second, I was encouraged. To see that Six Flags not only cares about the hourly throughput of rides is refreshing, and to actually have targets is a great way to encourage efficient operations. And then I did the quick math in my head. I realize this isn’t exactly a crowd churner and may be pretty far down on the ride priority list for most guests - but even with a single train carrying 24 riders this was an absurdly low bar. The ride lasts, generously, a minute. That means to hit that goal, the LONE operator would have almost five minutes for unload and loading. This wasn’t a standup, this wasn’t a flying coaster. The thing had a lap bar. I’ll be very generous and give the guy 3 minutes to manage the "throngs" of guests. At 4 minutes a cycle, that should be closer to 360 guests, more than 110 more. Might not seem like a lot, but that’s actually a 44% increase. Point is, any praise Six Flags may deserve for having a target is instantly wiped away for being so absurdly low. Moving beyond the continued frustration, we were off on our ride. Trains climb the lift quickly and spend the rest of the circuit dipping and spinning around props and other haunted castle themed set pieces. The ride wasn’t all the exciting, though I was just glad it wasn’t too jarring. The props were good to see, though weren’t more notable than a nice effort. Breaking up the monotony of all the coasters, we exited and walked across the midway to the absolutely massive Ferris Wheel. We’re talking 40 arms and cars. There was almost no wait, and we were taken a good 150 feet into the air to enjoy some spectacular views of the park below us, and the city just across the river. Having worked our way to the very end of the park, we just had a few more stops before we would call it a day. Not wanting a great coaster like Goliath go unappreciated, we queued up again, looking forward to another tolerable wait and terrific ride. This time things didn’t go so smoothly, the line had gotten longer and was moving much slower. No real indication of why, just more stacking as both trains were still being used. Instead we worked through the queue, obnoxious pop and dance music blaring all the while. That’s what passed for atmosphere throughout almost the entire park. Don’t get me wrong, the visual aesthetics of the park are quite nice. In addition to the river and lake, there were lots of trees, even nice flowers and landscaping. But, again unsurprisingly, Six Flags did all they could to distract you from anything approaching serenity. We tried our best to ignore the gaggle of tween girls immediately in front of us in line. We were in no mood, however, when a couple additional kids tried to join them at the last second, cutting in line just before the station stairs, after we had waited a good 15 minutes already. There was no language barrier as I made it clear that they would not be cutting us, and we asserted our way right past the late arrivals. But that wasn’t enough. Apparently I had hit my limit, and I explained what happened to the station attendant in charge of merging the Flasspass guests into the station. I pointed the kids out, and with no mistake explained they had jumped the line. Her response disappointingly was a shrug, and some rationalization, in French, that it wasn’t a big deal. Now maybe something got lost in translation, or maybe this was beyond her jurisdictional duties (i.e., pay grade), but this was the low point in a day of lows. Six Flags has taken great effort to talk the talk over the past several years - better training, better enforcement of rules, more visible park policies. Hell, we’d been seeing signs all day that line jumping was cause for ejection from the park. But the hypocrisy was clear. Here, at ground zero, they had yet another chance to improve their park. And, yet again, they failed Perhaps I expect too much. Maybe I’ve gotten used to the way Disney treats its guests. Maybe I’m delusional to think everyone will run their rides like Cedar Point. Am I too hard on Six Flags? It’s possible. But even if I am, there is no one out there who could convince me that the company hasn’t brought it on itself, and has forfeited their right to the benefit of the doubt. I’ve seen line jumping at Disneyland. I remember stacked trains at Cedar Point. But those are exceptions at places like that. When you’ve anticipated and then received disappointment visit after visit, year after year, you can’t help but acknowledge the pattern. And this is where it struck us - they don’t give a crap. More specifically, they don’t care what your experience is once you enter the park. They just don’t care. If they cared, they’d run more than one train. If they cared, they’d enforce line-jumpers and queue smokers. If their priority was actually to make sure you had a great visit, they would do it. But they have your money, and they don’t care if you ever come back. If they cared, they would be able to charge more than a non-discounted one-day visit for a season pass. I realize it wouldn’t be easy. I’m not suggesting it is. But let’s not act like it’s impossible, and let’s stop making excuses about it. They don’t care. Before you wonder why I bother going, I want to explain that I don’t hate Six Flags. I don’t even have a bad time when I go. It’s more about frustration than anything else. This is a nice park with a good collection of rides, in an amazing location. There’s no reason this couldn’t be one of the best parks around. And this is the case with so many other parks in the chain. It’s all about wasted potential, and more sad than anything else. It’s really quite sad to see to be honest. Oh, and in typical Six Flags fashion, the coaster was awesome. Top 20 even, behind SFOG’s Goliath and Nitro, ahead of Apollo Chariot as for the B&M hypercoasters, and just ahead of the SFDL and SFA Superman on the Intamin side. Having gotten this far, it was just a few more coasters to get them all. Back towards the front of the park was Super Manage, an aging Vekoma double corkscrew that has seen better decades, let alone years. Of course one train operation, and with a relatively small crowd in the county-fair level queue, it was around 20 minutes for our ride. I’d have been more pleased about the relatively short wait if there had been more than 110 people in line. That’s what it was. I counted. There were so few people ahead of us when we joined the queue, I was able to count. On the plus side, the ride wasn’t nearly the torture I expected. Not worth the wait or discomfort really, but why change the theme now? And the last entry in that chapter was Le Boomerang, your, say it with me, standard off the shelf Vekoma. The situation was similar to the corkscrew, in that the line wasn’t really all that long, but even 100 people meant a 20 minute wait. Hey, at least on this they had an excuse for only running one train. The ride was having some issues as I joined the queue, but seeing as the line was getting shorter, as a result of the breakdown, considerably faster that it would have if it were actually running, I decided to stick it out for a bit. Megan wisely sat this one out, though after only about a 10 minute delay, the thing got running, and I had that 20 minute wait before riding. There was one ray of sunshine here. Since the station was kept empty, it was easy to fill in open seats. In a moment of desperation, I let the operator know I was a single rider. (I don’t want to know how much time I would have saved this day if the park had offered single rider lines, but that’s just way too much for Six Flags. Their policy is to have you pay them if you want to avoid their awful lines). He saw an open spot, and possibly at the cost of capacity, called me up to ride. It was as forgettable as all the rest. Megan and I had had our fill of rides, though we did stop for a couple hot dogs and a Coke. $15 later, we finished our snack, and leisurely made our way out of the park, stopped by the shore of the lake and snapped a few pictures. We were aiming to spend our evening in the Vieux (Old) Montreal neighborhood, so we exited the park, grabbed the shuttle buses back to the Metro, and were off to continue our sightseeing. It had unmistakably been an exasperating day, though at the same time, I had pretty much the experience I had expected. In reality, a couple long waits and some crummy operations isn’t the end of the world, and I’m glad we went. To its credit, all the coasters were running, and I added all of the nine possible, bringing my tally to 289. It’s been 22 new coasters this season, my best year since 2004. Somewhat superficially, that made the trip worth it, even if it seemed more like an endurance test at times than a fun day out. I’m not one to take such travels for granted, and we were glad to have the visit. The next day we toured one end of the city to the other, and greatly enjoyed Montreal. Four (French) words for you, though: Au Pied du Couchon. One of the best meals of my life. We were back down on the train the following day, and after our return plans were shot down by Hurricane Irene, we did eventually make it back to California. Recovery for this trip will have to come fast though, because in less than two weeks, we’re finally headed to Japan. Among the requisite touring, we have visits planned for Fuji-Q Highlands and three days at Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that we have even more fun at these parks than we did at La Ronde. Back to Trip Reports
|