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Hey guys,

Just yesterday, I went with my friend to Six Flags La Ronde, which is located on the Ile-Sainte-Helene island besides Montreal. It is the largest amusement park in Canada, with the most rides, period. Not to brag on Canada's Wonderland, but La Ronde has some amazing stuff! Fireworks competitions have been held at La Ronde every year for the past 25 or so years. The rides, are classic. Vampire, a mirror image of Batman:The Ride, Ednor L'Attaque, Le Monstre, Boomerang, Goliath, Cobra, Orbite, you name it. All those rides I really loved. It was a shame to hear that Le Tornade, a very once popular Top Spin attracted, was taken down. I believe next year they will be installing a new coaster (we hope).

So after two months of procrastination, I finally went to La Ronde to get my season pass (half the years over already -- lazy me) and ride some rides like I promised my friend. The season pass was $70.00 CAN when I got it for my birthday as a gift from my brother. Fact is, almost every year, I've gotten a season pass (it is worth it). So once you go to the building where they demand your information in case of theft of losing the pass, identification and a nice mugshot/photo (in which I didn't expect was going to be that quick). I am a strong believer that 80% of the coaster riders at this park that have a season pass are ridiculed by the look of their photo on the pass. What the woman behind the camcorder didnt tell me was that she took the photo while telling me to walk backwards in order to get a clear shot. Too good to be true, this picture sets a bad example for anyone who steals my wallet. Haha.

First ride I rode was the Monster, and I think if you are a La Ronde fan, or a coaster fan for that matter, the Monster is for sure the biggest thrill you'll ever get on a wooden coaster (click the hyperlink to watch the POV I took). Note: I have an INSIGNIA NS-DV720P camcorder, in no way is this a bad quality camcorder. I don't think anyones camera could get a steady shot of the entire ride.

After that was Ednor L'Attaque. It was recently relocated to Montreal in 2010 from New York (that was defunct) and Texas (Serial Thriller at AstroWorld). Althought the 1 hour and 35 minute wait in line, I finally managed to try the coaster. I did not think bringing my camcorder 115 feet above water was the brightest idea, especially being that this ride is a Vekoma coaster. It's a bad, yet true stereotype about Vekoma rides in which the riders have their heads hitting both sides of the shoulder restraints.It was very uncomfortable, and probably the most uncomfortable Vekoma ride I've been on in a long time. Besides that, the drop was very speedy and it went through various transitions at great speeds. This ride isn't as tall or as fast a the Vampire, but it wasn't meant to be. The scenery of this ride was actually well put. Very eerie music was played on high powered speakers hidden around the location of the entrance. Several frames about the sightings of the "sea monster of the Saint-Lawrence river" while the ride was in construction and nice added touches like heavy fishing equipment. While in line, we are located in the center of the ride. The line stands right in front of the sidewinder element and continues on towards the lift. A unique touch that made this ride increase popularity were the water jets (one located at the bottom of the drop and in front of the sidewinder element) that would automatically shoot at great power close to the riders embarqued on the train.The mist of the water jets would fall down on the very thirst drenched people waiting to ride a very short durating ride.The effects added to the ride is mainly the brownie points that La Ronde wanted to push in order to get good critics and high revenue from the ride. What really made the ride very unpleasant was that one train was in use for the entire day. It wasn't a weekend, and the line managed to be 1 hour and 35 minutes. The trains are really bad, because they do not hold as many people as they should and two seats per car is nonsense, B&M, Giovanola and Intamin AG had the perfect 4 seater that would allow the right amount of riders to embarque.

Following Ednor, was Goliath. And for anyone who hasn't ridden a Bolliger & Mabillard mega coaster, I strongly encourage you to do so within the remainder of the summer. Goliath IS the highlight of La Ronde (besides the classic Monster). It's height, speed, duration, beg you for more. And because of it's very quick loading and unloading and large capacity trains, qeue lines normally range at about 20 minutes of waiting (on a non-overpopulated day; in which might climb up to 45 minutes - an hour). It's always talked about in almost every area of the amusement park, and I don't doubt that this ride is one of the the most unique B&M mega coasters built.

Because the weather was incredibly hot, we headed to the McDonalds located in the near middle of the park and had ourselves a milkshake, 3 bacon cheeseburgers, a fry and an apple pie (I took full advantage of this with my 50% employee discount card). The food at La Ronde is overpriced. Instead of it being $7.74 with taxes included at a regular Montreal McDonalds restauraunt, they charge $7.99 without taxes included. It's $10 for a burger with an extra bun, three extra raw patties with unfresh burger condiments, a soda in which the ice has melted and changed the flavor, and last, a very salty and room tempature fry. In other words, the food there is crap. My friends who work at my McDonalds even regret going there. They are paid minimum wage ($9.50) and are the busiest group of employees serving a restauraunt inside the park. All the restauraunts in the park are over-priced. But hey, it's business. If you're dying of thirst, you need to buy something, and that's how they profit from your money. It costs $4 for not even a 1 litre soda of juice. The prices for these things are so high, popcorn is more expensive than a glass of beer! Anyways, going back to the coasters...

We rode the Monster again, and then headed to the Vampire. The Vampire is a mirror image of Batman: The Ride. It is the only inverted coaster in Quebec, and the tallest, fastest inverted coaster in Canada. This is my favorite coaster. Besides the insanely quick duration, the line was barely empty and we were lucky to have waited only 15 minutes, making it the fastest wait for a ride of the day! The pull from this ride is incredible, the roar of the ride echoing across the park, the heavy forces pushing you further into your seat you barely levitate while upside down. This was my highlight of course, and my friend's as well.

Following the Vampire, the Cobra was next. Because my friend was interested in the ride, she dragged me along for the most painful ride I could ever encounter. This ride is built by Intamin AG (formerly known as Stand Up at Skara Sommarland), and by the looks of it, should be taken down. It is very rough, very loud, and very very uncomfortable. It's certainly not the first time I've riden it. Truth is, it was the first actual adult sized thrill ride I ever rode which was about 5 years ago. I still cannot remember why I loved the Cobra over every other ride. Well, gladly, my favorite is still the Vampire after 4 thrilling years. Unfortunately, I deicded not to video tape a POV of this ride, this being the most roughest ride, I was bound to drop out of my hands sooner or later, therefore I chose to leave it in my bag for the remainder of the day.

Fun fact: This image, along with several other images of other rides in the park were taken by me and are available on RCDB.

Finally the last ride of the day, to cool things off, was the ferris wheel. This ferris wheel is the signature of La Ronde and has been there for a very long time. It's massive height is a few feet shorter than the Goliath which measures 175 feet.

I believe this adventure was very exciting, and I did manage to have a lot of memories brought back from when I was young and when I used to always go to La Ronde. Hope this story has been informative enough for you, and I strongly encourage whoever is planning to visit La Ronde to do so. I may be doing another review next year, based on new things happening at La Ronde.

Thanks for reading!

well it sounds like u had a great time  the rides there look very good and in all my life i have never rode a woodie  Alton towers needs to get 1 just for me lol  

Hey Pat! I haven't been to LR so far this season, I am way too busy hahaha. Nice TR! Love those descriptions about the rides. By the way, I believe you don't have to translate Le Monstre's original name hahaha And I agree, Goliath is indeed one of the most unique B&M ever built, it is simple, unlike many, and of course very fun.

Handfield at July 31, 2011 at 3:41 AM

Hey Pat! I haven't been to LR so far this season, I am way too busy hahaha. Nice TR! Love those descriptions about the rides. By the way, I believe you don't have to translate Le Monstre's original name hahaha And I agree, Goliath is indeed one of the most unique B&M ever built, it is simple, unlike many, and of course very fun.

I've always titled it as Le Monstre, but because this is an anglophone forum, I seem to be translating alot. Haha. Nice to see you're back on the forum!

Sounds like fun!  I want to try and get there someday. I haven't been to an amusment park for a while now.  I did go to disneyland a few weeks ago, but that doesn't count because I've already been on every single ride in both parks.    Anyway, nice pov's.

I have been there before, and I must say Goliath is the most fun thing in that park   But great Trip Report!

Hello fellow readers, today I bring you this year's second report (I believe one more or so will follow) at La Ronde.

Thanksgiving Day 2011.

This year, my thanksgiving didn't require no turkey, stuffing, gravy or even a warm jacket in the midst of the fall. It required speed, forces, and great amounts of fun. Not sleeping from the night before, I ended up sleeping the day of the event (at 6:45am) up until 9:30am, leaving me with bearly any sleep. At eleven, I left my house, headed to the bank, retrieved money and headed to the subway station. Finally arriving at Jean Drapeau metro station (the station located on the Ste. Helen's Island where La Ronde is) and met up with a good pal of the forums and of mine..

Me & Frank.

So the plan was for the day, meet up with him and my companion and have a blast. Finally arriving at the park, we went to the paying booths (in order for Frank to pay for his ticket). He showed the cashier a coupon for $10 off with the presence of a season pass holder (also known as me), and somehow the cashier gave Frank a free entrance ticket, without even making a payment. Frank, being the smart one and not having the opportunity to save his $45, take the ticket and walk away, told the cashier the wrong one was given. In the end, he gave his $45 for the entrance fee and it was time to go past the turnstiles. La Ronde is crucial about safety now. If you enter with a bag, security guards are obliged to inspect it thoroughly for any dangerous particles that could be of harm to another person (weapons, pyrotechnics, glass bottles, etc). Yours truly, Frank, gives his bag to be inspected, only for the security guard to find a pocket knife that Frank forgot to remove before coming in the park before. This caused him to get the last look at that pocket knife.. forever... the Splash (a water coaster) and La Pitoune (another water coaster) were closed indefinitely due to fall arriving soon. The splash had a very nice theme to it for the halloween spirit.. blood red waters which made it look pretty awesome. Our first priority, was to fill Frank's stomach with some food (seeing as he was only complaining about his hunger and not the long lineups), head over to Pizza Pizza, get his food, watch him eat it and head on out to commence the thrill ride extravagazna..

Now, you can take me for a fool, but technically speaking, Frank is a complicated guy when it comes to thrill rides at La Ronde. He refused to ride any Vekoma rides (this included 3 of the 8 roller coasters situated in the park), the Monster, and (I can't complain about the following) ride ONLY B&M coasters. The first ride we all rode was Goliath with a good hour in-line wait. The 165 plunge woke us all up with excitement, adrenaline and want for more rides... It was already almost two hours spent since we entered the park. We headed across the park to get in line for Vampire, which I admit, beats almost any coaster out of the park (besides Goliath). An in-line wait of almost an hour made it quite boring, yet got quite entertaining with the converstations shared between me, Frank and our fellow companion. After riding this, it was time to eat a little bit, we were also quite thirsty from the 23C degree heat. Once we finished eating, we vowed to try out the only thrill attraction called the Manitou, a Zamperla Frisbee type of attraction. Finally, we decided our last ride(s) would be Vampire once again... Because the rides were closing at 9pm, we had about an hour and a half left of ride time to end off the night. After about 3 or 4 consecutive rides on the B&M invert (with very short in-line wait times, also why it's my last ride when I usually go there), we questioned ourselves if we could run to the Goliath in less than ten minutes (seeing as how it was already 8:50). We ran across the park, almost as fast as we could. My laces kept undo-ing and Frank was sometimes behind us a lot.

The route than we ran. Certain areas were closed off that made shortcuts impossible.

Lucikly, we made it in line at 8:58pm, two minutes before close time. Running clear across the park in eight minutes is probably the fastest I've ever done. To end off the night, we were the second last train being dispatched for the ride, riding in the eighth row where airtime is very present. We only rode B&M's and one Zamperla thrill ride, but that night was among one of the most fun outings this year. An hour subway ride back to my stop, a fifteen minute bus ride and a two hour span of typing this, gave way to the end of my night. It would have been more enjoyable if I hadn't worked the next day. But I oughta admit, it was worth it.

In line for Goliath.

Frank, being a boss.

Me.

An edited shot of Vampire.

Thanks for reading!

Nice pictures and trip report, might I ask who Frank is though? Haha
(Just wondering if he is on CoasterForum)
I wonder why your pictures are distorted like that, I would suggest you resize them before uploading them next time, that should keep this from happening. 

might I ask who Frank is though? Haha (Just wondering if he is on CoasterForum)

Yes. If you don't recall his ride Fusion.

Duh Helloo0o0oooooo0ooo. It's me, Kevin. An amazing day indeed. I'm not picky on rides, I am just a bit too disgusted by the lovely Vekoma coasters and their excistence Ohh yeahh... I'm dumb, I should've listened to Pat, lost like 40 bucks right off the bat. /:

Hehe, Frank, that's true. Always listen to me. To add, OwnagePranks has gotten a hold of your life. Lika sum booooo deeee.

I wonder why your pictures are distorted like that, I would suggest you resize them before uploading them next time, that should keep this from happening.

I believe the re-formatting of certain things on the forum (all the changes lately), have caused certain images be distorted a little. Is it possible to re-size the images a little to give it a better look?

cough cough CW still owns.

GravityFlyers at October 13, 2011 at 11:27 AM

cough cough CW still owns.

Even if you claim CW owns, La Ronde has been a theme park since 1967. That's 14 years of difference between each other. Others have their fair opinion of their own local amusement parks. I'm even happy it's a decent park rather than one that has just flat rides. If CW weren't owned by Cedar Fair, it would be in the same position as Marine Land, which is terrible. The City Of Montreal made a sour deal with Six Flags in 2001, and the american theme park chain screwed us over. I do admit CW is better. But if it were ever in the same position as La Ronde is in (which means, sold to Six Flags, which'll never happen), it wouldn't even be a big difference between each other. The biggest fact that I hate about Six Flags, is their lack of attention to other parks besides the major ones (Magic Mountain, Great Adventure, Over Texas, Over Georgia) that cause population to decrease slowly. Six Flags has been skyrocketing prices for almost everything at our park. It costs $3 dollars for a 710ml bottle of soda, water or juice. Cedar Fair, in the end, is the better choice..

True, but in all fairness, CW is the only competition for La Ronde. Here in California, its different. Magic Mountain has to go up against Universal, Disney, and Knott's Berry Farm, the former two being the most attended theme parks in the world, and in the U.S. Against that level of competition, both Magic Mountain, and Knott's respectively, need to get new attractions almost annually.

Great Adventure has equally tough competition coming from Busch Gardens and King's Dominion, even though they are quite a bit of distance away.

But now that the new managment has promised new attractions for all of the Six Flags parks, I suspect that La Ronde will be the next to get a wingrider. Given that CW is building a B&M giga, La Ronde should take this chance to build something that CW doesn't have or has a better version of while being a high capacity thrill ride.

Nice report and pictures! Sounds like you had fun!