Amusement

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday, 8:30am to be precise, in order to get an early start to La Ronde. At 9:30am, our planned leaving time, Kev noticed that his wallet wasn’t in his pants. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere in sight. We searched the apartment and our bags, but Kev was now convinced that he had left his wallet on his seat at the cinema. His rationale was that the wallet was uncomfortable to sit on when it was in his back pocket, so he put it on his lap and tried to make sure not to stand up without remembering it was on his lap… About as comforting as the Honolulu rationale, eh? Chris looked up the cinema’s phone number but they didn’t open until noon. We decide to go to La Ronde anyway (it’s now 10:30am) and hope for the best.

10:30am in Montreal on a Tuesday – traffic would be pretty quiet, right? Right. No, wait – wrong. It’s pretty much bumper to bumper all the way to La Ronde, especially leading up to the bridge. We get to the park at noon, which of course is when everyone else arrives too. Sadly, our ‘waiting’ experiences on the roads, in the parking lot and in the ticket queue pale in comparison to the crowdedness of the actual park. Which means the queues for the good rides would be ridiculously long. Lucky it wasn’t a stinking hot 38 degree day. Oh wait, it was. Tops.

But really, the average queue time of an hour per ride was tolerable – the rides made up for the boredom and physical pain of standing around in the scorching heat. We started with the spanky new rollercoaster, the Goliath which from my Roller-Coaster Tycoon 2 experience I deduced to be of the giga-coaster variety, but I need to go home and play to make sure. Either way, it was dolled up in the three primary colours, stretched out of the park and over the parking lot, and had some seriously steep drops. It wasn’t that exciting, other than the first two drops – after that it just went up and down a lot. There was a neat moment where the ride tilted to the left and dropped, and there was a pole that seemed likely to take our heads off, but – shock – it was just a scary effect.

If you want a ride where you really do fear for your head, go on our second ride of the day, the Monster. The Monster is of the wooden roller coaster variety, where the whole ride seems so old and rickety that most of the anticipation and excitement is wondering whether the car is going to stay on the tracks. The sun was hitting us full force by then and much of the queue lane was uncovered. Half-way to the top Lou started feeling sick so she left the line to sit in the shade. Apparently she has a genetic digestive aversion to roller-coasters. Chris, Kev and I made it onto the ride; Kev and I in the front of our car, and Chris and a young boy in back. Chris gleefully informed us after the ride that in conversation with the lad the boy had asked of Kev and myself, “Are they your parents?” Charming. The ride was very exciting, possibly my favourite of the day, as it was of considerable length and had twists and turns and frightening dips, though not as severe as the Goliath. Unfortunately, the Monster caused me my first injury of the day – the hard plastic seat had a nasty corner that the lateral G’s constantly threw me against, digging into my underarm area. We went on Part 2 of the ride, which has two separate tracks that take different courses. I was keen to come back for Part 1 at the end of our day but it didn’t happen.

We wanted to do something non-roller-coastery for Lou, so we went to the moving chair cinema, which was showing a 3-D version of “Bob l’Eponge”, otherwise known as the French version of “Sponge Bob Square Pants.” I was dubious, but Chris promised that it at least had a short waiting time because so many people could go on the ride at once. Yeeeahh no. The wait for this ride was by far the worst of the day, completely unprotected from the sun, and due to the nature of the ride the queue was full of excited children. Toddlers, really. I think I may have been touched by sun stroke by the end of our wait and I was feeling very faint and came close to vomiting a number of times. Yum. But finally we were allowed in, and lo and behold we discover that the set-up for this ride was actually supposed to have most of the queue waiting indoors, but the sadistic ride operators had us in the sun instead! Lovely! We make it through to the main doors to the cinema, get our snazzy 3-D glasses, and wait yet some more. Eventually an introduction to the world of "Bob l’Eponge" shows on small TVs, all in French, so Kev and Chris sum up what was said afterwards. After a few more painful minutes of waiting, the cinema doors open and we find seats. Another irony – once we’re all seated, there are a good 20 seats still empty. 20 people who are now standing in the sun could be inside on the ride. Ludicrous. We clamp ourselves to the seats, and the ride shimmies into action. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but this was a really really enjoyable ride, I was giggling the whole time even though it was in French. There’s something about being bounced around in a chair that is very evocative of child’s play. Super fun! And the bonus – air conditioning. Super cool!


Afterwards, we bought some slushie-esque ice-cream drinks, and said farewell to Lou. We then headed over to the Vampire, an inverted roller-coaster which sent you upside-down. This wait was our longest – an hour and twenty minutes. But the ride was very exciting; after being whooshed upside-down (which actually feels more secure than being in the dangling chairs in their upright position) we were whirled around sharp turns and hit with a surprise bed of steam! Chris had purposefully neglected to tell me about that, which I appreciate as it was a kick-ass surprise. I have potentially now ruined it for anyone who reads this and goes on the Vampire in the future, but I’ll take my chances. The bad part of the Vampire was that during one section the cars were rattled, which meant the passengers’ heads were quickly flung from side to side, hitting the not-so-soft “chest seat belt” quite violently. I already had ear problems from wearing a bad earring on the flight over, so these were compounded, plus I quickly developed a splitting headache which remained with me for the next couple of days. I often felt a bit drunk – every cloud…

During the queue for the Vampire, Chris had rung his friend KJ multiple times, and we received word that she was now at the park. We met up with her and then went on the Tornado – a bank of seats that you are securely tucked into, as it is them tipped and spun backwards and forwards as the arm takes you up above the crowd. Rather than screams of terror, this ride was punctuated with groans and moans as we hung upside down, and were later lowered face first towards the ground… painfully… slowly… Apparently the ride used to involved a degree of moisture – the line of squirting fountains could be controlled and they would be randomly activated during the face-first stage, to fire up at individual riders. Neat, but possibly blinding. With the temperature of the day finally starting to creep down, it’s probably best that we didn’t get a soaking.

Our next destination was the Boomerang, but the line was extreme so we back-tracked a little and went on the Manitou, a unique ride with décor inspired by North American tribal art. Mmm, chic. The ride involved a ring of seats facing inwards, hanging from a mechanical arm vertically above. The arm then swung the seats back and forth, until they were higher than parallel to the ground, and also spun the ring around, alternating directions. What looked enjoyable but not scary from the ground was surprisingly intense – to find yourself at the outer edge of the ring, farthest from the ground, you were essentially face-first to the ground which was a loooong way down. The ride was one of my favourites though – I felt totally safe but still got a thrill, and there wasn’t the risk of pain like taking sharp turns on a rollercoaster.


The Boomerang still looked packed so we decided to make it our final destination. That meant we still had one thing to do – eat a Beavertail. A Beavertail is essentially a stretch of crêpe-y pastry which is then covered in dessert-y treats. Kev and I shared an original Beavertail, with sugar, lemon and cinnamon, while Chris devoured one with Nutella, Reece’s Pieces, and other gooey goodies. Mmmm… Next time…

Back to the Boomerang. We lined up, essentially next to the “60 Minutes” sign, stuck behind a bunch of illegal smokers. My patience was already at an all-time low but I managed to restrain my urge to rip the offending death nails from their yellowed grip and press the burning ends into my palm. Instead I sent them hate thoughts and eventually they de-fagged and moved on. Then something wonderful happened. First, let me describe the ride. The ride initially drags the cars backwards up a steep chain lift hill, then without hesitation drops then to go back through the loading area, up and over two opposing half-corkscrews, through a loop-the-loop, and back up another chain lift hill. The chain activates and drags the cars to the top of the hill, which usually isn’t very much further, before dropping them to go through the ride again, but backwards. Now, the wonderful thing could have actually been a devastating thing – while we were in the queue, the cars went through the ride forward, and up the second lift hill, but something went wrong with the chain and rather than being dragged upwards, the cars stopped in place. The wonderful part – people in the queue quickly tired of standing and waiting to see whether the cars would move or whether the ride would be closed down, and they left! So suddenly rather than being 60 minutes from the front, it was more like 30. Awesome. While we waited Kev dug out the very melty Mr Chew Big from his bag, and we slurped it out of the packaging. Chris pooh-poohed our uncouth behaviour, proclaiming that he couldn’t believe we were eating “something like that”. I retorted, “Well what did you just eat?” … “Touché”. The ride was good too – Kev and I sat together, and held hands the whole time. Awwww. It was as romantic as a thrilling roller-coaster can be – sitting together, watching the sun set, albeit while flying upside-down…


We were done by this time so we left the park and took a city bus to the Metro station. My first look at the Metro – it’s smelly and there weren’t enough seats for this headachy and slightly nauseous girl, but there were also mega-sized TV screens displaying news etc for the waiting populace to watch. The afternoon mX pales in comparison…

Kev and I walked down to the hilariously named Au Coq (yes, Oh Cock) for dinner, which was quite good. Then it was quickly to bed for two very drained and over-heated bodies, for another night of non-restful sleep on a thin mattress. We did layer some blankets under the sheet to cut the ouch level, but the narrowness and the general heat of the room weren’t as easy to remedy. Ah well.