Trip Report: La Ronde

[Gazza]

La Ronde is the main park in Montreal, located on an island in the middle of the river on the Old Expo grounds.

https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/CA/Montreal/La_Ronde

A full carousel of photos with captions can be viewed if you start here

https://www.parkz.com.au/photo/20197-La_Ronde/gallery/sort/newest/location/park-287-La_Ronde/offset/0

 

A highly accessible location via a bus or metro, but I decided to set off from a metro station on a different line so I could walk across the bridge and look over the park.

 

A bit of a crowd at opening which looked worse than it is, but the park did fill up as the afternoon drew on.

Yeah this is Canada now

 

I think the park certainly does deserve its reputation for being run down, it’s worse than Six Flags St Louis. See these pics to get a sense of how the grounds as a whole looked. Many damaged buildings, faded paintjobs, weedy pavements, unkempt gardens, closed rides. A lot of the buildings are carryovers from the Expo days when the park first opened, making parts feel dated. The ride line up isn’t bad at all, with a good selection of flat rides, a couple of good coasters, and a few okay ones. The park seems to have a large number of show venues.

 

Super Manege

 This ride will be retired at the end of this season. F.

It is an off the shelf portable Vekoma corkscrew, like the one at Alton or Playland Vancouver. I was expecting to get belted but it was fine.

Goliath

This seemed to handle the crowds well, so I got heaps of rides. It’s the purest B&M “Hyper”, a bunch of airtime hills, turnaround, then some more airtime hills. The turnaround was a bit lame, it’s like they were trying to include something resembling a helix, but instead its just like a slow elevated turn like you get on a wooden coaster. Would have been better as a hammerhead turn or a treble clef. The hills deliver good floater, and I really enjoyed this one.

 

Ednor, L’Attaque

 Ednor is Ronde spelled backwards. It's an SLC, not great, not terrible against the others. They had a bit of a themed queue themed around a sea monster seeminly surfacing at La ronde.

It's an odd choice for the park. They had a pre-exsiting B&M invert, and then got this 2nd hand despite being a worse ride.

 

Toboggan Nordique

Single Rider queue, score!

Was ok, a Zamperla mouse rather than a Mack one. The drops at the end are much smaller than what you get on the Mack ones.

Monstre

A dumpster fire, a rough ride and a very shaky structure, very slow operations and no racing. It opened late and was the last thing I did so it turned out to be a wait of over an hour.

Basically it does a halfsized first drop, turnaround, some big drop, a helix, some more big drops, then the ride is over.

I ended up popping into the park for an hour before closing on another day to ride the 2nd track.

Phoenix

Ended up on this one without really planning it because it had no queue and I like flying scooters.

Dragon

An indoor family coaster with a surprisingly lengthy layout. Normally these indoor coasters can have crappy papier mache looking theming, but this one felt somewhat arty, with these metal scupture dragons with lights all over them that would progressively illuminate (Imagine a coaster weaving around the sorts of things you see in parade floats) ...It was fine, but it wouldnt take much to jazz it up with a bit more colour and music, because it felt a bit muted.

Le Boomerang

A regular boomerang, and bearable. The queue had all the charm of a vandalised public park.

 

Grande Roue

The observation tower was closed, so this was a good spot for getting unobstructed photos of the park.

Vampire

A batman B&M coaster that is totally not based on the batman theming at all 

The ride was good, but again the area around the ride looked shocking and I don't know how management could walk past.

Easily the most intense coaster at la ronde, and a walk on to boot!

Minirail

A small monorail that does a lap of the park. Half the track was closed due to set up of the fireworks, so you'd get on at the front station and get kicked off at the back one.

Overall, i think the park is worth a look if you are in Montreal already (The city itself is much more engaging). I've heard the place can have huge waits, but I managed to avoid that, but can def see how it could get bad if you went in the afternoon or evening.

 

 

Canadas Wonderland is lightyears ahead of this  place though.

[MickeyD]

Thanks for the great report as always Gazza! Seeing pictures like this one makes me feel grateful for what we have here in Australia.

At least we have to maintain our older gems such as the one's at the Luna Parks if our Parks wish to keep them operational. This err 'Monorail' looks like an accident waiting to happen.

[Mc coaster]

If I didn’t know any better and looked at that photo I would have thought it was taken at an abandoned amusement park.

[westical]

I hope all their cash goes on ride maintenance instead. 

[MacPark]

On 17/10/2019 at 2:47 PM, MickeyD said:

Thanks for the great report as always Gazza! Seeing pictures like this one makes me feel grateful for what we have here in Australia.

At least we have to maintain our older gems such as the one's at the Luna Parks if our Parks wish to keep them operational. This err 'Monorail' looks like an accident waiting to happen.

The place is rundown but its still better than any park we have here in Australia. The park closes for a good chunk of the year due to the heavy snowfall Montreal gets. If they spent a bit more on cleaning it up it would be fine. Its a good size park with 40 odd attractions. Gardens and those little things just arent something they worry so much about for a park that sits closed under snow so many months of the year

[Baconjack]

41 minutes ago, MacPark said:

The place is rundown but its still better than any park we have here in Australia. The park closes for a good chunk of the year due to the heavy snowfall Montreal gets. If they spent a bit more on cleaning it up it would be fine. Its a good size park with 40 odd attractions. Gardens and those little things just arent something they worry so much about for a park that sits closed under snow so many months of the year

If this was a year ago I'd agree with you, but MW and even DW surpass the quality of parks like La Ronde. Now I havent been to La Ronde but judging from the photos the presentation of MW and DW these days is much better than this park that has the trademark Six Flags tacky feel.

[Coaster Hipster]

Great report and nice photos! Visited this place in 08' back when I was an inexperienced enthusiast. Never bothered to return as the park did not add anything noteworthy.

Le Monstre has terrific RMC potential but sadly this is so unlikely to happen..

[DJKostya]

Yea I visited La Ronde a few years ago. It was just as bad back then, looks like they've done nothing to it in the 2 years since I went.

That being said I was lucky at the time because Vampire was running backwards which was an interesting experience.