Volume 3, No. 9. May 9, 2003
New Arrivals
It’s
a ghost train!
Parc Asterix in Plailly, France, announces the arrival of Transdemonium,
April 5, 2003. Measurements: 270 meters long (886 feet), 12 meters high (39
feet), 2,000 square-meter footprint (21,528 square feet), 13 trains with two,
four-seat cars traveling from 11 km/h to 18 km/h (7 mph to 11 mph). Delivered
by Farmer Studios and WGH.
The park’s fact sheet lists construction time on this project at seven
months. Hah! Parc Asterix had a ghost train when the park opened in 1989, but
the ride never opened. Further attempts to get the ghost train concept off the
ground faltered. In 1995 Michel Linet-Frion became director of Grévin
Productions, a division of the park’s parent company, Grévin &
Cie, and two years later he turned his attention toward resurrecting the ride.
Six years of various design scenarios and changing plot lines later, Parc Asterix
finally has the ghost train it always was meant to have.
“It’s always been one of the major ingredients of the park, and now
that we have it, we’ve confirmed that,” Linet-Frion said. “It’s
going to become an icon, like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It’s
like it’s always been there. And in a way, it has.”
The new ride sits in the same location as the original in the park’s medieval
town section. Transdemonium is themed on the notion that a pre-first
millennium baroness, afraid that spirits would provoke an apocalypse in the
year 1000, hired a sorcerer to somehow fend off the spirits. Linet-Frion picks
up the tale: “What he said is, ‘What they like is frightening people,
they have fun doing that. If we give them a place to have a ball at that, they
will forget to trigger the end of the world.’ It happened, and it worked.”
Using darkness and special effects, including air blasts, water sprays and dangling
cloth, Transdemonium gives guests a train ride through gentle frights
and typically Asterix humor, including a false ending in what looks like the
original station. “When we trigger a fright effect, we do something to
detraumatize,” Linet-Frion said. This is, after all, a family ride in keeping
with the park’s continuing move toward balancing its established thrill
rides with more mid-level attractions.
The park ran plenty of advertisements for Transdemonium, which debuted
with the park’s season opening day, but the ride itself opened with little
fanfare. “We stopped doing (opening events); I don’t know why,”
Linet-Frion said. “You get some press, but it doesn’t get to the masses.”
Instead, the press were given preview rides and lights-on tours of the attraction.
“That’s how we got a lot of press coverage,” Linet-Frion said.
The masses came anyway, especially on an opening day with “great, great
weather” in now drought-stricken France, Linet-Frion said, and the response
confirms for his team that Transdemonium is heading for icon status.
“We stand at the exit and see when the people come out, and we got the
right recipe. The little ones come out and say, ‘I wasn’t frightened,’
but they wouldn’t say that if nothing happened. The parents come out relieved.”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
©2003, Minton Enterprises
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