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A new 51-metre-high coaster, reaching speeds of 107km/hr has launched at Parc Asterix near Paris, joining a host of attractions in the theme park devoted to the invincible warrior. Antonia Windsor and her family test their mettle on Toutatis
“That was the best roller coaster I’ve been on!” “That was the most amazing 4D film I’ve seen!” “That was the most delicious burger of my life!” It’s not often I get resounding positive responses from my three children; two daughters aged 7 and 11 and a son aged 9, and it’s rarely possible to please them all at the same time, but France’s Park Asterix has done just that.
We’ve come to check out the new zone that opened in April: Festival Toutatis. It’s in the Gaulish village and hidden among mature trees with scenography created out of wood and stone to blend with the natural environment. It includes a record-breaking roller coaster, a smaller family-friendly ride, an adventure playground with a seven-metre-high yellow boar and a restaurant serving gourmet French burgers.
“It’s become the new centre of the park,” says Guy Vassel, deputy managing director. “People come first to ride Toutatis and then they explore the rest of the park clockwise. A savvy tip for visitors is to do it the other way round.”
The last time a new zone was created in the park was in 2012, when the Egyptian area opened with the inversion coaster Ozaris. “We like to create a big attraction every 10 years,” Vassel explains. “For Festival Toutatis we thought about what we didn’t already have in the park. The park’s other big coasters are named Ozaris and Zeus, so we thought it’d be nice to have another god to create a trilogy of big coasters: Toutatis is the god protecting the tribe of Asterix. And we wanted the area to be for all the family, so the festival idea was to bring children, adults and teenagers together in one environment.”
The rollercoaster itself has been a resounding success and on our first day in the park the queue is already 70 minutes long at 10.30am. The park didn’t have a launch coaster (one that accelerates at the start) and it didn’t have a coaster that gave a lot of airtime (where your bottom lifts from the seat). Toutatis fills those gaps, accelerating at a speed of 110kmph (a record for France) and 23 separate instances of airtime (a world record). It’s drawing thrill seekers not only from all over France, but from the rest of Europe too.
“The park’s changed from being a day park to a destination park,” explains Guy. “Our hotels are consistently full and 20% of guests are coming from outside of France.”
We’re staying at the magical three-star La Cite Suspendue, made up of 150 rooms in stilted log cabins hidden in the woodland. There’s also another, slightly less characterful three-star called Les Trois Hibeux and a four-star hotel that looks like it’s been lifted straight from the comic book called Les Quais de Lutece, which has a little stream running through the centre. All three hotels hover around the €100 per person per night price point and are about a 10-minute walk from the park entrance.
My youngest arrives at the park wary of rollercoasters, but braves the family-friendly Pegase Express, which has a spooky meeting with Medusa and a fastest speed of just 30mph. It makes her feel included, although it’s a long way off Toutatis, which will take some beating as my eldest’s favourite ride.
The joy of the park is there’s plenty for all the family, from toddlers to teens, including seven rides that involve water, along with a range of excellent shows. The 4D cinema experience is an engaging way to introduce British children to Asterix and Obelix and their motley crew of chums and my children don’t mind that it is in French (they are too excited by the vibrations each time a boulder is hurled, or getting a faceful of sneeze).
The highlight for me is the diving show, Les Plongeons de l’Olympe, in which eight highly skilled divers wow the crowd by jumping from exceptional heights into a small deep pool. There is also a magic show that’s worth catching and a parade of characters at 4pm every afternoon. We never have expected a French theme park that wasn’t doused in Disney magic to be such a hit, but we all found reasons to love it.
Book it: French Leave Holidays offer a self-drive package inclusive of Le Shuttle Eurotunnel crossing for a standard car size, two nights’ B&B at La Cite Suspendue and one-day tickets to Parc Asterix from £699 per family of four (including two children aged 3-11), departing Saturday 15 July.
Email trade@frenchleaveholidays.com
frenchleaveholidays.com/family-holidays/
Situated 35km north of Paris, Parc Asterix is just a 16-minute drive from Charles de Gaulle airport and the park offers a shuttle service every half hour. If clients choose to travel by Eurostar, which we did because the children thought it would be an adventure (it was more of an adventure than we’d bargained for on the way back when our train was cancelled and we instead travelled through the night on MegaBus), then clients can take RER B to Aeroport Charles de Gaulle then the shuttle bus. If clients want to drive themselves the journey takes 2hr 30min from the Calais ferry and Eurotunnel terminals and hotel guests can access free parking in the park.
Queues for the big rides were never less than 50 minutes for most of the time we were there, so it is worth recommending the purchase of one of the Filotomatix fast passes. Clients can purchase a single ride for as little as €6 (although Toutatis is €10), which is ideal if they want to decide on the day which queues to jump. Alternatively, they can decide between unlimited, gold, silver and bronze fast passes depending on whether they want to skip the queue once or multiple times (the cheapest will allocate a time for each ride, which will be sent to a mobile phone). Clients will need to download the park’s app to activate the fast passes and it has other useful features such as a map, live queue times, the option to filter attractions, to order click and collect food and to use a shopping service that can deliver purchases to their hotel.
