I am a bit long in the tooth to go spend a day at an amusement park, particularly without the company of my grandson Ronnie, but for years I have been curious what an amusement park based on the fabulous characters of the comic book series (nowadays you might call them graphic novels) of Asterix le Galois. Most of you are too young to remember, but in the 60’s and 70’s there were two Belgian comics that became very popular, Tintin by Hergé (actually spanning the 40’s to 70’s) and Asterix by Goscinny and Uderzo (actually spanning the 60’s to 80’s). I was fascinated by both series, probably because in their different ways the main characters traveled all over the world, and in imagination I traveled with them.
The action in the Asterix band
dessinée (BD) takes place in the time of Julius Ceasar, where a small Gaul
town in northern France has managed to keep the Roman legions at bay thanks to the
courage of its inhabitants and a magic potion brewed by their druid. Prime
among the characters are Asterix, a brave a clever warrior, Obelix, a gentle
giant of a man with superhuman strength (as an infant he fell in the marmite
where the magic potion was being brewed), and Obelix’s little dog Idéfix. They
were joined by an amazing number of characters created by the imagination of
the scriptwriter R. Goscinny, and brought to life in the most hilarious form by
the graphic artist A. Uderzo (who imbued his characters with the features of
political and artistic celebrities that were particularly meaningful to
Goscinny’s script). It is this magic universe of place and characters that the
park designers used to create Parc Asterix, not unlike the way Walt Disney used
his own characters to create Disneyland.
The day was overcast and with the
imminent promise of rain, which was a blessing in disguise because when I got
there, after an hour bus ride from Paris, what could have been hordes of people
had been reduced to die hard teenagers, visiting school groups, and a few
families that had likely traveled a long distance to treat themselves to a
visit. I had an umbrella and a rain jacket, so the rain that soon ensued was
little more than a bother.
The artistry of the park was all I could
have expected and more. Characters I had forgotten, both good and evil,
appeared in the framework of clever rides, thematic playgrounds, and shopping
centers reminiscent of the vast Roman empire. Many of the rides were above what
my heart could handle, and some were for little kids, but I got on a few of the
middle-strength ones and had a good time being tossed around. They also had a
few shows that illustrated the eternal struggle between the Gauls and the
Romans, or the inevitable encounters between Asterix and Obelix and the pirates
of the North Sea.
The only thing is that the bus that took
me there, right at opening time at 10 am, didn’t come pick us up until an hour
after closing time at 7 pm. That made for a very long day, so by the time I got
from Paris to Triel it was already 10 pm. Tourisums muss Weh tun!
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