As of this writing, the Six Flags and Cedar Fair chains of amusement parks have merged, which means there are 27 Six Flags branded amusement parks. I’ve been to 26 of them. I even went to Six Flags Belgium and Six Flags Holland when those were still under the Six Flags brand. But the one holdout is La Ronde in Montréal. And here I am in Montréal. So, naturally, here I am at La Ronde.

I should back up a bit. La Ronde has a reputation among coaster people and amusement park fans in general. And that reputation is horrid. In fact, if you’re on Facebook and you want to check in, this is an option that pops up:

But HEY, this is the Six Flags that will complete the set for me AND there are eight coasters here that I can add to my list. So let’s do this, right? My introduction to the kind of day it would be came right at the parking lot entrance. Parking is $48 and you’re parking on a gravel bog under a bridge. I pulled out my phone so the attendant could scan my season pass and he says, “that pass doesn’t include parking.” I said that it did and he repeated himself: “No, I don’t believe it does.”
I said, “can you scan the code and see what it says?” So he did. And parking was included. So I got waved through and parked under the bridge in what would be the “sketchy part of town” anywhere else, except here, it’s the parking lot of a major theme park.

I arrived around 10am. The park opens at 10:30. Scroll back up to that earlier pic and notice that there are several hundred people all waiting to get in. Most parks will allow you to enter the park a half hour before opening so that you can help clear out the entry queue. That way, when the park opens, most people are already inside and can enjoy themselves. But not here. Here, nobody gets in until 10:30, so the first 20 minutes or so is waiting for people to go through bag checks, metal detectors, and getting their tickets scanned. I finally get up to the security check and they tell me that I can’t take my camera into the park. I thought maybe it was a misunderstanding, since I know you can’t take photos on the rides. But he insisted… you cannot take your camera into the park at all.

Now: if this is their policy then so be it. It’s stupid as fuck but whatever. My beef is that there is no signage anywhere saying that cameras are not allowed. I could’ve put it back in the car when I first arrived, but instead I’ve wasted all this time in the queue only to have to make the trek back to sketchy under-the-bridge-world to stow the camera, then come back to the front gate and re-enter the queue at the end. Idiotic. I posted this to Facebook and someone suggested that maybe they didn’t want anyone taking hi-res pictures of their shitty park. Oof.

Shortly after getting in, local friend Marc texts saying he’s just gotten in as well, so now I have a local guide, yay! Since the forecast predicts rain, I want to make sure I get both of the wood coasters in before weather happens. Head straight for Monstre, a huge pair of wood coasters that use a single support structure.

…except that Monstre doesn’t open when the park opens. It opens 90 minutes later for some reason. Le sigh.

So off to Toboggan Nordique, a standard Wild Mouse coaster. Marc knows a lot of people in the industry, so I got to hear a lot of “behind the curtain” stories, several of them related to the execs that oversee this park and why it’s so crappy.

The queues for mouse coasters are notoriously slow, since each car only holds four riders. But when the operators get a group of two and don’t even try to find another group of two to fill the other seats, the queue goes twice as slow. More than half of the cars we saw on the track only had half capacity.

I’ve been on lots and lots of mouse coasters. Now I’ve been on another one. Check it off the list and move on. Coaster #938

Next up is Dragon, a smallish indoor coaster in the dark with a dragon theme. Cute, but harmless. Coaster #939

Then it was Ednör - L’Attaque
This is a Vekoma brand SLC (suspended looping coaster). Whenever I get to a new park, I always hope they don’t have a Vekoma SLC or a Vekoma boomerang. Why? Because I’ve been on dozens of them and they hurt. Your head gets ping-ponged between the shoulder bars quite violently and it’s not fun. La Ronde, of course, has one of each. Le sigh.

I’ve been on lots and lots of Vekoma SLCs. Now I’ve been on another one. Coaster #940
Next up, Goliath.

It’s a pretty good ride. Similar to Behemoth at Canada’s Wonderland, but considerably smaller. Someone on Facebook called it “Judge Roy Mabillard” and that’s a multi-layered inside joke that I won’t explain here, but trust me, that’s hilarious. Coaster #941

So now, it’s just after 12pm and Monstre is open.

Each train holds a maximum of 20 people. There is only one train on the track, and the dispatch is around 1 train every five minutes. So that’s 12 trains x 20 people = a maximum of 240 people per hour. That’s abysmal for a major park. We eventually got up to the front of the queue and we only had one pair in front of us before it was our turn and… “sorry, we’re closed due to the weather.” Granted, it was sprinkling. SPRINKLING. I’ve ridden wood coasters in torrential downpours before, but apparently a few errant raindrops are enough to shut down two wood coasters at this park. We waited. The rain stopped. The sun came out.

Half an hour of bright sunshine later and I finally asked the ride operator, “hey, are you going to open? Because literally every other ride in the park is open. Even the water rides are open.” He said, “those rides aren’t dangerous when they’re wet, this one is. We have to wait for the tracks to dry.” I told him that was absolutely not true. Even if he believed it, which I think he did, that doesn’t make it true.

After an hour, I found the lead operator (the woman sitting down in the pic above) and asked her, “is there any chance that you’re going to open in the next half-hour? Because this will be my only time at this park, and if you aren’t going to open, I’d like to ride other things… but the last thing I want to have happen is for me to leave the queue and then you open the ride soon after. This ride is the main reason I came to the park today.”

She said that even though it’s not raining now, they’re looking at the radar and it doesn’t look promising. So we bailed. We went over to Le Vampire, a Bolliger and Mabillard “Batman” model. I’ve been on a lot of these. Now I’ve been on another one. Coaster #942

Now, the time it took to walk from Monstre to Le Vampire and get on the ride was maybe 12 minutes. Going up the lift hill, I looked over and… Monstre was running. OMFG. That absolute cow. She told me to my face that the radar showed they wouldn’t open any time soon and just a few minutes after we get out of line, boom. Le Vampire was actually one of the speedier “batman” clones I’ve been on, so yay. It’s right up there with Great White at SeaWorld of Texas. But I’ve been on dozens of these. I wanted to get the wood coasters, as they are unique.

So we raced back to Monstre, got in the queue, and 10 minutes later… “closed for weather.”

At least it was actually sprinkling this time. Boomerang was still running, which made me a bit sad, because I really hate these things… but I’m trying to get to 1000 coasters, so if I’m going to do that, I’m going to have to ride some crappy stuff sometimes.

Ten minutes into the queue and [thunder clap]. Well, that’s that. Might as well go home. So I suppose it wasn’t a completely wasted day - I got five out of eight coasters, but I didn’t get either of the wood coasters, which was the reason for coming. Marc said that they’re brutally rough, though, so maybe it’s for the better.

I drove to the rental car place to turn in the car, then walked back to the hotel. Passed a large cathedral.

Directly across the street from the cathedral is the national bank.

I could make a witty statement about why there needs to be a bank right across the street from a cathedral, but you’ve likely already written one in your head that’s better than what I’d write here.

Back at the hotel, we decided on poutine for dinner, plus the two gin on the rocks that came with the room.

The poutine at the hotel was decent. Rob said there were too many cheese curds, but I’m not convinced that’s a thing that can happen. It wasn’t the best poutine I’ve had, but it wasn’t the worst, either.

The bar/restaurant in our hotel is basically crap. It’s noisy, overcrowded, and chock full of kids. We wanted to have an after-dinner espresso martini, but we absolutely didn’t want to stay here. A quick google search showed a place just down the street called Bar Sara B. It’s in the Intercontinental Hotel. So off we went.

Wow, what a nice bar! Classy, quiet, no kids, and… and… AND… they have absinthe!

They have FIVE different absinthes and all of the are local and I’ve tried none of them before. Ooooo, this evening just got interesting. Rob got his espresso martini and I started with Balzac - 70% alcohol by volume, with promises of citrus.

OK, for those not familiar: in order to be called ‘absinthe’, the drink must be made with anise, fennel, and wormwood. Beyond that ‘holy trinity’, the distiller can add literally anything they want. For this reason, if you try absinthe and don’t like it, don’t give up on it, because a different brand will have a totally different flavour. The Balzac was pretty challenging. Definitely NOT an absinthe for beginners. The anise and fennel were pretty pronounced, but the overwhelming flavour was that of grapefruit pith. Extremely bitter. Of course, they provided the iconic slotted spoon and sugar cube to cut the bitterness, but I haven’t used that method in several years. I embrace the bitter and WOW, this one had that in spades.

The second one I tried was another vert (green) absinthe, Artémis. I’ve heard of this one before, so I was excited to try it. It’s got a good reputation. The first whiff reminded me of Mansinthe, a brand in the US that Marilyn Manson helped develop. It has legions of fans, but I have a mixed relationship with it. You have to get the ratio of water to absinthe exactly right. If you do, it sings. If you don’t, it tastes like ass. So this one, having a very similar aroma, I was very careful to watch the “louche line” and get it right at the limit.

In that pic, you can easily see that there’s still a thin line of un-louched absinthe at the top. When you drip ice water into your absinthe, it “louches” - the water breaks the alcohol solution and releases all the botanical flavours. The louched absinthe is cloudy, the non-louched absinthe is clear (or green). You never, ever, ever want to drink absinthe straight without louching it first. You won’t get any of the flavours that absinthe is famous for.

I’ll admit that the Artémis was smooooooooooth, but honestly, I preferred the “punch me in the face” intensity of the Balzac. Last up was “Fleur Bleue”. Counter-intuitively, a “blue” absinthe is actually clear. When absinthe is made, there is a second maceration that adds the extra herbs besides the ‘holy trinity’ and that’s where the green hue comes from. A ‘bleue’ absinthe doesn’t add any of that, relying mostly on the ‘holy trinity’ for the flavour. Two of my all-time favourite brands are both bleue, Butterfly Absinthe from New Orleans and La Clandestine from Switzerland. Both are absolutely exquisite. Would this get close to those?

The louche was nice and thick and the overall feel was silky smooth, but even so, it was my third choice of the three I had tonight. The nice bit is that ALL of them were worthy of seeking out and finding some to ship home. I’m going to be really happy if I can score a couple bottles of Balzac.

If you’re noticing the extreme level of ABV (alcohol by volume- the lowest one I tried was 53%, or 106 proof) and you’ve noticed that I’ve had three of them, you’d be expecting to see nothing but gibberish in these lines… but that’s the weird thing about absinthe. Yeah, you’re absolutely hammered, but you’re also lucid and don’t feel hammered. Creativity flourishes, which is why it was so popular in the bars in France when Toulouse-Lautrec was doing his thing.

I had no idea that Québec was such a hotbed of absinthe production. I’ve tried maybe 40 different absinthes in my life and I’d put all three of these in the top 15%… and Balzac would easily be top five. Good stuff!

The nice thing about finding a treasure like an absinthe bar is that it made me forget all about that crappy park I went to this morning. Yay!

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