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Even though Parc Saint Paul is less than 2 hours away from where I live, I somehow never bothered to visit the place. After several delays and figuring out a public transportation/uber strategy to navigate in and out there, it was finally time to discover Parc Saint Paul and its reported quirkyness The entrance sets the tone with a plastic-y gate that wouldn't feel out of place at a fairground. The Campion family - who founded the park and still operates it to its day - were originally fairground ride operators which explains the very funfair look of most scenery there, as well as the nature of the rides. Started the day on Aérotrain. The ride op which was actually very warmful and friendly, was the most remarkable thing about my experience on this tame Vekoma kiddie. It makes for some nice parking lot mini-skyline, but of course I forgot to take a picture from that angle Toilet humour. Next was the local shameful cred, Pomme (apple in French). Actually make that 2 shameful creds! Never seen this sort of hairpin style kiddie before. It's obviously fairly uneventful, but the tight hairpin turns actually deliver some soft laterals which are rarely found on the usual kid-targeted coaster. There is actually a lot of trees around the paths, which alleviates the whole tacky scenery and basic, flat pathwork of the park. Since I didn't really research into the park, was surprised to find some sort of authentic village houses around the chairswing area. They look nice enough even though they feel too realistic to fit the otherwise carefree, fun atmosphere of Parc Saint Paul. But anyway, moving on to the main draw! Wood Express is really fun! There are so many little pops of ejector air taken at a good speed thoughout the layout. It doesn't provide much if any laterals at all unlike its older French cousin Timber at Walibi Rhône-Alpes, but I found the Parc Saint Paul woodie to be smoother. Also, the second hop on the double down midway through is remarkably strong! Like all other hills the airtime is very short, but it is definitely felt there in particular. Since chest-belt GoPros are accepted here - as with most smaller French parks - I took the chance to use my camera and test its 4K abilities. Parc Saint Paul clearly made a very clever move buying Wood Express. It's a lovely ride for the whole family, but thrillseekers will certainly enjoy the fun, airtime-filled experience. I'm very pleased to see another nice new ride in France, we're truly in a good phase after years of frustrating stagnation Next door is Formula 1, my first Pax coaster :eek: The Russian manufacturer has a reputation for making wonky rides, and this one surely has its share of weird transitions! Tbh, I didn't find F1 to be really rough. It has quite intense moments, especially the main drop which is quite sudden. The bad banking and above all horrible restraints prevent me from truly enjoying this however. Still something very unique and worth trying at least once though! Ending the cred with another fairground-ish coaster. Une Souris Verte is your typical Zamperla spinning wild mouse. After trying the horrible SBF equivalent (with OTSR...) this one feels like a relief. It's still a very mundane experience. Piece of trivia: Une Souris verte is actually named after the eponymous folk song for children. The sign above actually displays the lyrics! But wait, isn't there another cred here? That's correct, but Wild Train is SBNO for the year. Shame as it was reportedly the better Pax of the two at Parc Saint Paul. Oh well... Make of that what you will 😛 Tried the drop tower. The ascend to the top is actually, really, really slow! The ride's not very tall, but the drop itself is decent I guess. With all the main trill rides ticked off, it's time for some re-rides on Wood Express! Luckily the line, which went up to 30 minutes before, ended up shortening to a 5 to 10 minutes wait at the end of the day. Kudos to the good ride employees who kept the ride running and often tried their best to fill up empty seats Ended up with 11 rides on Wood Express eventually - and it was consistently fun! I found the front row better, but the difference is very slight anyway. Parc Saint Paul was fun! Obviously it is mostly about Wood Express from my enthousiast perspective, however the rest of the park has decent enough filler to keep me interested for a short day. The employees are friendly, and the place overall has a warm, unpretentious atmosphere. It does lack the charm of other French parks (Le Pal and Nigloland come to mind in particular) and I would not want to revisit any time soon, but the good dynamic of the park has to be acknowledged Next on my trip schedule is Holiday Park, where I return for a +1 kiddie cred and more Expedition GeForce bliss!

Definitely a poor choice of location to do it in, right in front of MDMC

Speaking of taking flight....

If you try to follow what's going on on the coaster scene, where do your get your info and updates from? Was curious to know if we share the same sources, and maybe discover a few more insightful sites Personally, I usually get new info on social media posts (CoasterForce, rcdb, the amazing VH Coasters for Asian stuff, and also official park/manufacturers pages) but also like to check the forums (CF mostly) to keep track and get a more in-depth look at the news. Forums are also great for discussion and insights on a broader perspective, much more so than the comparatively forums. I loved following the construction of DC Rivals here for example! Even though I do not have the opportunity or think immediately of going there, also discovered blooloop which delivers great coaster-related content with a more professional and industry-based angle. What's yours?

The r/rollercoasters and coaster bot discords are where i get most of my international news. I'd say I get my Australian news from here but sometimes the guys on these discord servers are faster to learn about aussie stuff than I am. There's a really great group of people on there who I recently went on a coaster trip around the UK meeting. A few odd balls are annoying but where doesn't have that on the internet? If anyone wants to join, here's the invites: r/rollercoasters: https://discord.gg/zJf3Gz CoasterBot: https://discord.gg/2Ez9M9 Feel free to @PooDiePie (me) if you join. People are always having really in depth discussions on coasters and parks, or about anything really. They love hearing the Australian view on things, if you've ridden dc rivals they'll all be jealous.

Merci pour ces postes!

Good point there, also thanks for sharing the article I don't have a burning desire to visit such a park, but still have some curiosity about it. Sort of a 'how bad can it be?' curiosity (if it's actually bad at all), but yes, it's fascinating in a way. Actually this reminds me of Nara Dreamland, the Japanese loose equivalent - which however had a more subtle backstory. Defuctland made a great video narrating this (maybe this was shared here already):

Whilst I understand what you're saying, in the end, you still wanted to ride Thunder River Rapids & Rocky Hollow Log Ride. The rides themselves were fine but external non-ride factors made you decide to postpone your participation. Think of it the opposite way around using skiing as the example. People want to go skiing but they can only do that in the winter. Skiing is still popular and universal but it has low statistics due to it only being possible for roughly 3 months a year. So whilst the statistics show that, in 1 year, not many people went skiing compared to say playing basketball, skiing is still a universal activity. Again, that's why the level of 'ridership' shouldn't be used as an indicator of popularity. The other 2 'indicators' I was arguing against - capacity & queue length - can be illustrated again using the skiing example: Closing long skiing runs doesn't mean skiing is less popular - maybe they couldn't afford chairlift maintenance? Short queues to chairlifts doesn't mean skiing isn't popular - maybe they are high capacity chairlifts? And back to the 'ridership' indicator, no one at a ski resort doesn't mean skiing isn't popular, maybe there is no snow? You note the "low or non-existent" restrictions are more of the reason why Thunder River Rapids & Rocky Hollow Log Ride are popular but that is exactly the first criteria in determining a ride's universality: How much of the market can ride this? The ride's quality (perceived entertainment value) then narrows that universality down followed by the experience (perceived intensity), which narrows it down even further if it is high intensity. Then you have the amount of the market who want to ride this. Clearly, the latter 2 requirements could change after your 1st ride. Using that methodology, you can see how Thunder River Rapids & Rocky Hollow Log Ride are the most 'universal' whilst Tower Of Terror II isn't. I agree with everything else you said though but i-Ride, which I agree would have been the perfect Thunder River Rapids replacement for DW, isn't that in my opinion anymore because of it's proposed exterior and future expansion around Australia & New Zealand. A lot of the non-Gold Coast Australia/New Zealand market would not visit Dreamworld for the i-Ride if it becomes available in their nearest capital city and it's exterior doesn't help you feel like you're on a holiday. It reminds you of your daily visits to a shopping centre and walks around a bustling city on a work day to business conventions. It does everything to make you forget you are on a holiday.

Didn't someone say it had a new train?

Because it breaks the immersion and the illusion they're trying to create. It's the same reason you don't have behind the scenes footage in the middle of a normal movie. The themeing and immersion is supposed to suspend your disbelief, the behind the scenes stuff breaks the 4th wall and tells you how it was done.

Ideas? I think the girl at the front is lost.

I dunno... they have hired bakers to do it...

Actually, there's this thing about China where they really don't care about international copyright law. This doesn't cover it exactly, but was literally the first thing on google for those who aren't lazy... https://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/02/china-copyrights-and-fair-use.html The thing is, while they have laws about infringing on copyright and trademark, its not really the highest priority of the communist chinese government to assist foreign, capitalist organisations from prosecuting the chinese citizens. I'm sure Disney thought about and quickly rejected going after the knock off due to the sheet futility of the process. Of course, with parks in Hong Kong SAR and Shanghai, The dragon may be opening up to Disney, and may very well be a little more amenable to IP protection of a 'close partner'.

Hahahhaha, love the costumes😂 these are the ones that used to be worn for the show in gold rush like 2 or 3 years ago!

Not only does it not thematically fit, but the noise from TOT, GD and MDMC (the second 2 not as much) would hinder the audiences ability to hear what is going on. This is Dreamworld, and I wouldn't expect them to have a decent Audio system for this.

Because it came on the tv😅