I Am A Polar Bear

Welcome to the least festive of festive blogs ever posted on Christmas Eve! This is the tale of my trip last weekend to Parc Asterix for their Noël Gaulois, Gallic Christmas, event. If you’re not familiar with Parc Asterix, it’s a theme park north of Paris dedicated to beloved long-running French comic album character Asterix the Gaul, whose adventures are divided roughly between resisting the invasion of the Roman Empire and travelling across ancient and classical Europe, from the ancient Egyptians to the Vikings – two civilisations who do not line up chronologically, as no doubt none of the others do either. It means the park is divided into zones themed by civilisation – Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and the Vikings are the ones I noticed, plus the Forêt d’Idéfix, the children’s play area, – and it’s all overlaid with a Christmas theme.

On Friday morning, as I headed to the airport, I was wondering what I was letting myself in for. I’d decided to go to Parc Asterix back in the summer on a total whim, after watching one too many Instagrammers or YouTubers prancing off to Disneyland Paris, which made me start to wonder “Why does everyone go to Disney? Why doesn’t anyone go to Parc Asterix? Well, I shall go to Parc Asterix!”. And then December finally rolls around and I realise I may have made a mistake in this proclamation. I don’t like theme parks. I don’t like rollercoasters, I don’t like rides and I don’t like crowds. But it’s too late, I’ve got the tickets, I’ve got a hotel at the airport because that’s where the shuttle bus goes from and I’m going to have to go to Parc Asterix.

My first hour or so inside the park didn’t increase my confidence in my decision to be there. The crowds weren’t too bad and none of them had that “caaaaastle” zombie face on as they walked around but I couldn’t find anything. I just couldn’t match up the map, either on the painfully slow app or on the boards around the park, with what I was seeing in real life, so I couldn’t find anything and I just couldn’t navigate at all and I hated it.

At last, and by a convoluted route, I arrived at my first ride, which is in Ancient Egypt and it’s not actually a ride, it’s a 4D cinema show. It’s called Attention Menhir! and it might have ended up on my to-do list because I confused it with Menhir Express, which is an actual ride – a log flume and it’s closed during the winter. Attention Menhir! didn’t immediately sell me on Parc Asterix either – they shepherd you into a room with a slanted floor where a little film is occurring in silhouette and entirely in French on a backdrop of an ancient military camp. Not at all what the pictures of the attraction looked like. And that’s because this is just a holding pen and when everyone’s in, they open the doors to the real cinema for the actual show and that was pretty good.

I didn’t entirely follow the story – it’s all in French and mine isn’t up to following it but it’s a 3D film enhanced by rumbling and moving seats and wind and water sprays. Oh, I daresay it’s nothing special but it gave me a kind of introduction to the world of Asterix and a glimpse of some of the characters so it’s probably not a bad place to start if you’re a complete novice.

I’d looked through all the rides on the website in advance and added some of them to My Adventure in the app, so I knew which ones were going to be suitable for someone who’s scared of rollercoasters but is too old for the children’s rides. The next one on the list was L’Oxygénarium and once I’d coaxed the app into life, I discovered it was right behind me. Navigation win! It’s a water ride, where you climb into big high-sided rafts and slide down rapids, just like at the waterpark I take my Rangers to, except you’re sitting on your own ring there rather than in a big inflatable tub. You do need to be holding onto the handles – I did it again on Sunday and one of my handles ripped out of the tub halfway down, which meant I was flung onto the floor, utterly unable to get up as we spun and bounced down the slide, finishing up with headbutting my poor unsuspecting tubmate (and it was my neck that made a horrifying crunch, not his side!) and spending the rest of it crouched on the floor. But when the handles stayed put on my first attempt on Saturday, it was quite good fun and I came off it deciding that was just my level of adrenaline.

Now I lose track a bit. I think Epidemaïs Croisières came next, a nice sedate boat ride through a few scenes. Then my favourite: Le Vol d’Icare, which is in Ancient Greece and it’s a family-friendly rollercoaster meant for the sort of children who are too old for the little kid rides but not yet old enough for the terrifying stuff, which is exactly the sort of level I’m at with rollercoasters. Honestly, I came off that thing a little shellshocked but having decided that was just on the edge of what I’m comfortable with. Next door is another really sedate but really cute little boat ride, La Rivière d’Elis, which takes you through some ancient Greek gardens adorned with figures from mythology.

Because Parc Asterix doesn’t open until 11am and because I’d lost at least half an hour being lost and confused and angry, it was already 2pm by then and time to head towards Rome for the Quel Cirque! show. Now, that may have been a mistake. Oh, not the show. It was very good, although between taking both the Brownies and the Rangers to the circus and the circus acts between scenes at the Moulin Rouge, I’ve seen plenty of aerial acts and balancing acts this year. No, the problem is that you’re sitting effectively on the ground on a set of concrete steps in a draughty building for the best part of an hour. It was December, it was drizzly on and off all day and by the time I got out, I was frozen.

It took half an hour to queue for a chocolate-covered waffle right outside – everyone had had the same idea and there were only two staff working and so half a dozen people in front of you take twenty minutes to get through. I dripped chocolate all down my raincoat, all over my hands and face and if I’d looked closely, I’d probably have found chocolate on my shoes too so job one was to wash it all off and job two was to put on all the warm layers I had in my bag. Then I went down to the lake for the Pirates En Galère show, which is held just on the pavement in front of the lake. Again, my French was able to follow very little of it but I gathered that the pirate captain retired and the crew fought over who took over, I enjoyed the costumes and at least I was able to tick it off my to-do list.

Afterwards, I warmed up in L’Aventure Astérix, which is a little gallery on the history of the comics. It’s inside! It’s very short but at least you’re not being rained on! And now it was properly dark, it was time to do Les Jardins Merveilleux du Père Noël, a trail of Christmas lights and lanterns. I’d done it first thing in the morning before realising what it was and that it needed darkness but of course, half the park was there by 5pm so it was less a walk and more of a shuffle while keeping out of other people’s photos. Spectacular lights when you haven’t got people’s heads in the way of them or you’re trying not to make accidental gormless faces in everyone else’s pictures.

Since the queue was short, I had three rides in a row on Le Vol d’Icare. Didn’t I say it was just my level? Then I went down to the Viking Christmas market, which is just a couple of stalls selling mulled wine, sausages and pastries. Yes, mulled wine. There was mulled wine at pretty much every food and drink kiosk in the entire park, which felt like something Disney probably doesn’t do. I tried to get a salted pretzel, which I’d seen earlier but they were sold out.

Now it was time for the Christmas parade, the highlight of Gallic Christmas! Being down at the Viking end of the park, I was pretty much at the end of the parade, which I figured was fine. I can see everything! I don’t have to run off to Via Antiqua, it will come to me! I hadn’t anticipated everyone who’d watched it further up dancing along behind it and otherwise in celebratory mood (presumably fuelled by that mulled wine!). It’s a very short parade, only three or four floats plus dancing Romans and security spends a lot of time pushing the crowds back because the floats are very wide.

The last thing on my to-do list was the fireworks finale but that was still an hour away. I opened the app and discovered that one of the two rides I’d decided to leave for Sunday had a five minute queue, after never dropping below 35 minutes all day, which is why it had got left for Sunday in the first place. It took a while to find it – my ability to navigate was improving but this was in a corner of the park I hadn’t been to and the app remained painfully slow. The ride was La Trace du Hourra and it’s hiding up int he Toutatis Festival area. Toutatis is one of the scariest rides at Parc Asterix, so it wasn’t on my to-do list. If I’d read La Trace du Hourra a bit better, I might not have done that one either. As I marched around the empty queue area, listening to it rattling overhead, I began to change my mind but the description on the app of “for all Gauls, including the youngest ones!” reassured me a bit.

Well, I nearly changed my mind once I was on. There were signs saying things like “take off all hats and glasses and make sure everything is securely stowed” which sounded terrifying and when I got up there, it was a long bobsled of a train that ticked its way to the top and then flew down – and I only learned afterwards, it comes off the tracks and literally bobsleds down – going sideways as it rounds bends at high speed. I am not the sort of person who can scream in delighted terror. I’m the sort of person who can make small terrified noises and say out loud “I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die” – and then it was over and I wasn’t dead. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing that this ride had been running all day – and for over two years – without any fatal accidents, and that it’s far from the scariest ride in the park.

And that left one thing, the firework display, or L’ile aux voeux, as it appears in the app. It’s a combined light show and firework display over the lake, sitting on the steps the same as during the pirate show. The fireworks steal the show, obviously. I’d been a bit confused that it starts at 8pm, the same time the park closes, because the park clearly isn’t closed. What time does the last shuttle bus go? What if I stay for the fireworks and then get stranded? It turns out it runs for an hour after the park closes, which presumably means either people keep trickling out for a full hour after closing or you can spend a long time in the queue. It seems that perhaps “closed” means “stops letting new people in” because it must have been at least 8.30 by the time the fireworks had finished and the crowd had made its way to the gates and people were still screaming on Toutatis as I was getting on the bus.

And I was back on Sunday! I had one more thing to cross off my to-do list, and I’d added one more ride the night before. I was on the bus at 10:15 and got to Parc Asterix about 10:30, astounded to be let through the gates when it didn’t open until 11. Well, the park doesn’t; they corral you into Via Antiqua, the Gaulish village by the entrance made up of shops so you can spend all your money while you wait. I’d done most of my shopping yesterday, so I found a bench and waited patiently. When we were let in, I headed straight for my last major ride, Pégase Express, back in Ancient Greece. Despite the park having literally just opened, we queued for probably 35 minutes, which is about the same as the queue had been for most of Saturday. But it was mostly inside and as it was raining, I didn’t object. Besides, this was my last thing, it’s not like it was taking up valuable ride time. I liked Pégase Express; it’s themed around a railway between three classical towns so the building is a station with a vending machine (favourite touch: it contained Ares bars, in their distinctive black, red and gold packing – Ares being the Greek equivalent of Mars!) and a ticket machine and a departure board that actually changes as you stand and watch it. Love, love, love. Didn’t love the ride so much. I was directed to the front carriage with a stranger and I’d had 35 minutes to listen to people screaming. What really kind of concerned me was that they screamed from the second the ride started moving and then it angled far too far over for my taste and all in all, I’d clearly made a big mistake.

I filmed that one. Would you like to watch it?

You can see my mouth moving for some of that but you can’t make out what I’m saying. It’s the same as what I said on La Trace du Hourra yesterday: “I’m going to die, I’m going to die” over and over again. Yes, when it reaches the Temple of Medusa, the track swings away behind us to redirect us down a different bit of line and the second part is indeed done at speed and in reverse. The ride itself actually isn’t as terrifying in reverse – at least, it’s just as terrifying but it’s because you can’t see what’s coming up rather than because of any twists and turns. I was very glad to get off.

I’d added SOS Tournevis, which is a very tame little runaway mine train meant for medium-small children, which is much more my taste. Now, everyone knows that they don’t release the brakes on rides until the back end is ready to drop but I really got a demonstration of that here. I went on it twice because there was virtually no queue but the first time I was in the front and the second, I went straight to the back. On the first major drop, you’re at least halfway down before they release the brakes if you’re sitting at the front. If you’re sitting at the back, you’re actually not quite over the hump after the climb, so it’s all a lot faster. I mean, it’s only really scary if you’re ten, so this was great for me, especially after Pegasus. Next I went off to L’Oxygénarium again, which is quite nearby – this is when the whole debacle with the broken handle happened.

Sitting in the bottom of the tub rather than on the inflatable bench seat is quite wet but luckily, there’s a massive fire right outside in the middle of the Circus with people standing round it warming up. It’s so hot that you can see your clothes steaming as you stand there and within five minutes, my raincoat had turned from sodden mid-blue to dry light blue. I headed back to the Christmas market to get my salted pretzel and then wandered along the lake to the Viking ice rink. That had been on my to-do list but I’ve already skated once this year and I just couldn’t be bothered to take off my damp shoes and put on a pair of uncomfortable plastic skates so I just watched and ate. Then I followed the lake round, past Goudurix, the only ride left that opened along with the park in the 80s and is beloved by the general public but hated by rollercoaster enthusiasts, past Tonnerre 2 Zeus, which bumps you into the air 14 times, past Discobélix, which is a giant discus that spins and slides back and forth on a track, up and down and is surprisingly popular, and then I was back in Ancient Greece.

With all my rides done, I decided to go and see the Christmas show, because I’m here for Gallic Christmas and although there are trees and decorations everywhere, the actual experience of being here isn’t actually all that festive. Qui veut la peau du Père Noël? is on a kind of industrial set under an industrial roof and it’s a…. let’s say, multidisciplinary ice show which culminates in fire and disaster and the triumph of (biker) Father Christmas over the forces of evil trying to sabotage him. Good points: it features something utterly unrelated to skating that I never imagined could even be possible on skates. Bad points: it features two characters – two toys, to be fair, but played by human dancers – dressed as Red Indians. Red Indians in the finest Peter Pan cowboys-and-Indians tradition, not Native Americans in genuine American style. I suspect this is something you can get away with in France but almost certainly wouldn’t happen these days in either the UK or the US. Other than that, it was quite a spectacular show and I’m glad I decided to make the last-minute decision to see it.

I then wasted half an hour waiting for a second go at Attention Menhir!, since it was damp and I’d got chilly sitting in the open air theatre, and since the app said it was a 5 minute wait. That is a lie. The show is 20 minutes long and if you’re not actively walking in when you arrive, you’re going to be waiting a minimum of half an hour while it runs. Longer if the queue is too long to fit everyone into the cinema and you have to wait for a second showing. This is one where the queue-jumping system, Filotomatix, isn’t actually going to speed up the process – either way, you have to wait for the show to finish before you can go in but at least you get to go in before the people queueing opposite. When you go into the shadow show, stay on the right-hand side and go through the upper door for seats further from the big 3D screen and your choice of seats in the centre.

The queue lasted long enough that I gave up. I was running out of time. I had a plane to catch. So I left and went round taking photos of the Christmassy stuff in the Gallic village and the Christmas market and a selfie with Julius Caesar and then it was time to go. I had to get a bus back to the airport, pick up my luggage from my hotel, get across to Terminal 2B and get a plane home and you can’t stay at Parc Asterix forever.

On Saturday morning, I hated it and thought I’d made a huge mistake in spending my entire weekend here instead of just going into Paris. By Sunday afternoon, I rather loved it. It’s having some new attractions and zones built, so I’m going back when they’re done – probably 2028 – to see what that’s all like. If you’re into rollercoasters, you probably want to come here. I’ve told you about Toutatis, Terre 2 Zeus, Discobélix, Goudurix and La Trace du Hourra but I haven’t mentioned Cétautomatix or OzIris. Cétautomatix is a spinning rollercoaster – your cart spins as you whirl around the track and you couldn’t pay me to get on something like that. What it’s doing in the family-friendly category, I don’t know. OzIris is one of those hanging rollercoasters and it turns you upside down half a dozen times as it goes round. I only have to look up at OzIris and I start going “Nope, nope, nope”.

Part of the reason I came here was that no one comes here – that is, no one on Instagram or YouTube except dedicated theme park accounts. The lifestyle girlies who flock to Disneyland Paris every other weekend don’t seem to even know Parc Asterix exists. So when I look for videos to give me an idea of how scary the rides are, it’s all rollercoaster enthusiasts and they say that Parc Asterix has some “world class rollercoasters”, so if you’re into that and you didn’t know Parc Asterix exists, let me be the one who enlightened you. Go and roll and I’ll stay on Le Vol d’Icare like a child and meet you for a drippy waffle afterwards.