Grand Splatch
Parc Asterix

It’s not a complete oddity for a park to have a main focal centrepiece. Alton Towers has the Towers for example, and lest we forget the most famous one of all, Disneyland Paris’ Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. Parc Asterix should also feature on this list of elite. Since opening, sitting proud upon a mountain of sprayed cement, Asterix himself.

Ironically, I hardly notice monsieur Asterix sat high upon this towering peak on visiting the park. As the park has expanded away from him, his position is now hardly central, and when you are in the true heart of the park (Tonnerre De Zeus anyone?) he is often invisible. Also invisible is the ride that is built in and around this mountain. Le Grand Splatch is a giant splash that first climbs and weaves around the mountain, then goes on a not-so-brief stint through some wooded area out back, before emerging again dropping you down the main drop, which is completely independent from the mountain itself.

If you manage to find the entrance, the path will lead you between the mountain and a small pond. There is a right hand bend before you arrive in the main area of the queue. Designed an age ago in the days when queue creativity rarely stretched beyond mindless zig-zagging, the queue takes place underneath the mountain inside a sheltered recess.

Inside this damp, dark and smelly sprayed concrete cave, there is nothing to entertain you as you continually walk past the same people for what seems a time without end. Above you, holes that have been broken into the concrete, often filled with chewing gum and rubbish. If the theme is of a ride that time forgot, a ride that hasn’t had a member of staff do a litter pick for the past two seasons, then the theming here is fantastic. I’m not sure what this first feeble effort should represent, but it really is very depressing, whatever it is.

The queue then widens giving queue jumpers a good opportunity to do what their best at before the pathway leads you into the station. Here, a normal Giant Splash loading station. As riders leave on the opposite side, you board.

The station is immediately followed by a short lift hill. At the top you dip off into the water at the top. Around you, peaks and archways formed by sprayed cement. You cannot see off the side of the short part of mountain you have just climbed, but soon after this single curve, you drop down the first, small drop.

As usual, screams all round but nobody actually gets wet. What follows is tedium defined. The ride takes you weaving though some nothingness, as you slowly saunter along, you have nothing to look at other than a few half-hearted attempts at gardening, a few plants and flowers, lots of bushes and the like.

Every so often, the waterway will widen for no apparent reason, before narrowing back to the width of the boat. Periodically, you pass speakers which are playing the most dire music ever fashioned (bouncy French theme park music) before silence ensues giving the passengers on the boat more than ample chance to continue to mock this most puzzling spree through the back of the ride.

You may kid yourself that after the next turn, that will be it and you will go plunging down the main drop. No, it just goes on, and on. To keep the boats apart, and presumably to keep them moving at snails pace, the boat spends most of the time being bashed from underneath by tyres, the lack of water in the ride as well makes the boat perpetually bounce along the bottom.

After a while, after all insults towards the ride are exhausted, it begins to really go beyond being appalling in the funny sense, and just prompts you to ask questions like why you queued so long for this, when Tonnerre De Zeus is crouching in wait for you over the other side of the park.

And then like sunshine on a rainy day, there it is: the drop. It isn’t the prospect of going down it that is so euphoric; it’s just the re-assurance that it actually exists. After bouncing over some more tyres, as if a judge had walked into a courtroom, almost the entire population of the boat raise to their feet, standing in a moment of foolhardiness as the boat trundles down the abysmally short drop, hitting the bottom as a small wave of dirty green water sprays out the front and sides of the boat.

Wet? Not a drip. Exhilarated? No chance.

And following the final left hand turn, that is it. Probably the most atrocious and inexcusable fifteen minutes of boredom I have ever experienced. The middle leg is just a calamitous demonstration of the park completely brush-off older rides like Gouderix, Le Styx (the Rapids there) and of course Le Grand Splatch meaning although the park has some real gems, it is constantly marred by these rides that time forgot.

Although as far as I’m concerned Le Grand Splatch is a lost cause, the fact it has been completely forsaken is a crime (on my planet at least) and the endless meanders could at least be enhanced by some story line involving the characters from the storybooks of Asterix.

Okay, don’t ride it. Easier said than done I’m afraid. Watching the ‘fun’ is near to impossible. The ride goes on a brief lap around the mountain before disappearing out of view. On reappearance the boat drops down into a small pond full of greenish brown water. Unlike most rides like this, the action happens way back, and there is no bridge over the splash-down area to dodge the waves, and to see the reactions of the riders as they invariably miss the odd splosh of water you would at least need a small pair of binoculars.

Unfortunately, as much as I try, I cannot think of any features that redress this most unbalanced scale. The ride is slow, boring and lacking any highlights, the theming is just non-existent in a park that themes rides and the drop is just the worst I have ever been on.

If my knowledge of French serves me correctly, Le Grand Splatch translates to The Big Splash (impressive, eh?), which is probably the most ironic name they could have given it. Although the drop is only small, the splash is probably best described as a large ripple. It seems though the park had no option but to stretch the truth when it came to naming the ride, it is a living example of how to get everything wrong when creating a ride. The queue is bad, but the ride is worse.

Marcus Sheen