Where's La Ronde?

Out of all the Six Flags parks, where in your book is La Ronde based on attendance? Is it number 4? If it's doing so good, why don't we know a lot about this park?

They estimate 2.5 million people in 2006. I see only Six Flags Great Adventure, Six Flags Magic Mountain, and Six Flags Great America as the only ones doing better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ronde_%28amusement_park%29

Because it's in Canada? That would be my guess. The only two Canadian parks you ever really hear about are PCW and LaRonde, but not that much. Most of the info on this site is US based.

Tom

La Ronde is a great park, one of my favourites.

La Ronde usually gets around 1.3-1.4 million visitors. Pretty good... but it could be even better, if operations and maintenance would get their act together.

I bet you I can change that to say that Six Flags New Orleans had the most attendence last year and Cedar Fair is owned by Six Flags. That site is the greatest.

Don't rely on Wikipedia.

Agreed about Wikipedia. On top of that, SF does not release official attendence numbers. Most figures you hear are speculations by Amusement Business.

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Absimilliard said:
La Ronde usually gets around 1.3-1.4 million visitors. Pretty good... but it could be even better, if operations and maintenance would get their act together.

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From what I saw operations were horrible. I didn't go to the park when I was in Montreal this summer but on a bus tour of the city, they drove right up to La Ronde and it took a few minutes to drive past the entire park. I didn't see 1 train go through the circuit on Vampire during this time (which meant 3+ minutes for a dispatch) and the line looked very long. I also saw Le Mosntre running and noticed they were only running 1 side and I'm sure that ride had a long line as well.

La Ronde is a good park, with a history of poor operations. Believe it or not, bringing in Six Flags management was an improvement. Operations need improvement, more than most other Six Flags parks.

Attendance would likely be much lower than most parks, but since it is an inner city park (accessible by subway), it becomes a babysitting park in the summertime. That definitely boosts attendance. But I don't have the stats.

Hmmm,

I am thinking of doing a canada trip now. La Ronde and PCA sounds like a good trip.

I was about to write a note of my impressions in the park when I realised it'd be an altogether better plan to just link to my trip report. Here it is:

http://www.bannister.org/coasters/trips/2006/0803.htm

To summarise, I'd love to go back there and hope to in the future, though I would aim for a quiet time of year.

I don't feel the same way about Canada's Wonderland. Of all the rides there the only ones I'd happily ride again would be the Sledgehammer, Italian Job, and Vortex. To be fair, I was there in awful weather, which dampened my enthusiasm a bit (pun intended) but it's still not a park I'd make the effort to go back to.

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Richard Bannister said:
I don't feel the same way about Canada's Wonderland. To be fair, I was there in awful weather, which dampened my enthusiasm a bit (pun intended) but it's still not a park I'd make the effort to go back to.

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I feel the same way about PCW. Never been to La Ronde for comparison, but did find Canada's Wonderland very underwhelming.

And the same disclaimer applies: To be fair, the weather wasn't the best and the park was stupid-packed.

I made it out to La Ronde this year and had a great time. I hadn't been since Six Flags took over, and I noticed an improvement.

When I was there I saw pieces of a waterpark ready to be assembled. You could see the parts from the entrance to Dragon or on the monorail. I took some pictures, I'll see if I can find them. When I asked a ride op about them, she didn't know what they were for. There was a tipping bucket, other play structure parts, and waterslide pieces. They were quite obviosuly used and likely brought in from another SF park. Where, I don't know.

I went on a Saturday in September and the crowds were very light. There was single train ops on everything, which was fine given the crowds. One nice touch was that at the entrance to each coaster, there was a sign posted informing you that the ride was running only one train.

The park itself is very nice, but didn't seem to be very cohesive. It's hard to explain what I mean, but it didn't flow and was kinda bland looking. I did enjoy Goliath, but after the second time, I was kinda bored by it. The air is great, but that's all it's got.

As to the comments above about Wonderland, all I can say is 3 million visitors a year can't be wrong, and thier Halloween event (FearFest) is by far the best I've ever seen.

I went to La Ronde twice last year. It's a great park but some serious operational issues as already stated. Totally disinterested staff, some actually didn't know or wouldn't speak English. (I've actually never had a problem with my super limited French in Montreal with the exception of La Ronde). Ride ops were actually reading books and magazines on the platform between super slow dispatch at Le Monstre.

Besides operations issues. there's a great selection of coasters, the park is easily accessable by public transit, and it's relatively inexpensive compared to other Six Flags parks.

If in Montreal to check out La Ronde, make a trip 30 min south east of the city to Ski Bromont. There's a unique deep troff Alpine Slide and a very fun water park there. Alpine Slide seems to have some homemade parts on the sleds which make them a bit unstable at high speed but still fun!

There's a good selection of coasters, but nothing really show stopping there. It's got really a great flat ride selection, with a pretty good water park. It gets very packed in the summer but really think that attendance reflects the booming population around Toronto that needs to stay put in Canada until paperwork clears.

If CF would install a really great coaster and a flat we could "snap" on it would be bliss.

I found the pictures of La Ronde's waterpark stuff.

This is a fenced in area between the Giant Wheel and Dragon at the back of the park. I'd heard rumor that the waterpark would be further out towards the back of the park near the city gate, under Goliath.

A waterpark would certainly cement this as a signature park. Great to see this looks like it's going to happen.

The slides and pieces are used. Anyone able to tell or have any guesses on where these parts came from?

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p205/pcwcoasterboy/LaRonderWaterparkParts2Large.jpg

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p205/pcwcoasterboy/LaRondeWaterparkPartsLarge.jpg

I think I remember hearing they were from Astroworld

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PCWCoasterBoy said:
As to the comments above about Wonderland, all I can say is 3 million visitors a year can't be wrong.

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I don't necessarily agree with that. If a park is the only one in a market they're bound to attract the theme park crowd even if their product is substandard relative to other parks a few hundred miles away.

I have never been to La Ronde, but have only heard very bad things about park operations. From what I understand, that is the main reason why SF never "branded" the park with the SF name in front of it. It would not shock me that if next year at this time SF is still hurting for cash, La Ronde could be one of the parks that meets the same fate as SFEG, SFDL and the others this year.

On the subject of PCW, I have been to that park....It is a very good park and is always crowded. I will say that for the coaster count that they do have, they really don't have any major "great" coasters. If you look at other parks with similar coaster counts like CP, SFGAd, SFGAm, SFMM, PKI they all have at least one super major coaster. All the SF parks mentioned have great B&M coasters and great hyper-coasters. So does CP. PKI has the two major woodies along with a few really good steel coasters. PCW has a boat load of coasters, but they don't have a hyper or anything that does more than 5 loops and that is an SLC that is extremely rough!! Just one major coaster either hyper or mega-looper would make that park much better.