TaylorMade

This year during my holiday to France I was fortunate to visit Parc Asterix, or as we English speaking people like to call it, Asterix Park.

As a child I used to love reading Asterix books and used to pester my local librarian for any book which I’d never read, often reading the usual stock over and over. So when a few years back I discovered there was a theme park based on Asterix, it quickly became one of my wishes to visit.

After spending two days in Disneyland Paris, my second visit in the last four years, Parc Asterix was not only a refreshing change but an exciting one! The park is of course based on the adventures of the little Gaul with themed shows and rides, focusing more on log flumes and big rollercoasters.

On what was an extremely hot day, it was a real thrill to finally meet Asterix and Obelix and have my photo taken with them in the Gaul village. Despite the large queues we managed quite a few rides our favourites being the Périférix, a medium sized rollercoaster and ideal for all the family (and a big scaredy cat like me), the La galère which was your typical viking boat type ride only boarded by very enthusiastic tourists and last but not least L’oxygenarium where you climb on board a large round dinghy and go down a great big water slide.

Maybe it was the novelty factor or the collection of Asterix goodies I got (t-shirts, mug, towel, figures, pens, pencils…) but I enjoyed Parc Asterix so much more than Disney. It’s got more of a French feel to it (obviously!) but that makes it all the more special, Disney is big and commericalised and on some levels very false whereas Asterix seems more authentic and focused on fun.