It's like a fairytale or something... In Bruges - Day 3 - Bagatelle
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Day 3 – Parc Bagatelle
A very early morning led to the 2 hour drive across half of two separate countries towards the seaside of France towards Bagatelle. This is rather a small park, but recently nabbed a Vekoma Invertigo last year, and was once infamous for having a scary as hell Lion show which is now gone.
We arrived at the park to be greeted by a long queue, as out of the 4 cashier desks they had 1 open. And the queue barely moved due to large groups and numerous vouchers. This annoyed me greatly, and resulted in a 30 minute wait to even enter the park, with 20 of those on 1 cashier. Not the greatest start to the day.
This was then compounded by Bag Express, known for its dive into a water channel, which was empty. With the gimmick gone, this Soquet coaster was utter crap, with a helix of WHY being a small highlight in an otherwise death coaster.
Could things get better? Le Triops stood proudly in its orange paint, waiting for the moment to become my 300th coaster (yay). Having ridden at least 1 of these before and many other Boomerangs, I was of course thinking how crap it was going to be, regardless of Bellewaerde’s decent one the day before. Fortunately, it was similar to Bellewaerde’s in regards to smoothness, with small jolts that didn’t affect the ride too badly. We later did it again backwards first (cos Vekoma) and found that just as good. Worthy of being a landmark coaster? Best I could do at the time 
Onwards we went into the park before passing Aqua Bag, which was basically Bumper Boats with water pistols attached. It was amaze <3 They’re expanding it to hold more than 5/6 boats as well, which will mean in the future it will be especially mental. Les Rapids were next, another wedge boat style one with one of the most mental things I’ve ever experienced on a rapids. It has a whirlpool section akin to River Quest at Phantasialand, only faster, spinnier and the drop itself results in 5 seconds of pure confusion, fear and amazingness in one fell swoop. Aside from that the layout was pretty non-descript, but having anything more would really take the overall impact of the whirlpool section away.
Further meandering led us back to the front of the park and the Zamperla Spinning Mouse, which had barely any queue, so it was ridden and was exactly the same as the one at Farup. To finish off the coaster list was Spirals des Dunes a baby Soquet coaster which was weird as hell to be quite honest. Lunch followed before we had a quick go on the Porn Ponies.
The Sea-Lion/Penguin show that replaced the Lions was about to start so we watched it. Was ok, if very basic, but yay Penguins! And gigantic Sea-Lions which struggle to move! A quick go on the Vintage Cars as they were opposite the show revealed nothing special beyond lots of trees and a bridge or two. The 4D show of random Mad Racers came next, with similarities to the Simpsons ride abound due to the giant screen in front of two pods. It made absolutely no sense at all.
Nicky had a go on the Eccentric Bikes before we had another go on Triops. At this point we wondered what to do next, and concluded that we’d get a snack before heading back to Calais for the journey home. So we had a waffle, got the park train back to the entrance, before having a quick go on the Pedal Karts which went past the lions before we left.
That’s it really. Not much else to say for the park, it wasn’t very good overall, with two good rides out of the generic crap of it all. It even has TWO log flumes! I would say the start of the day didn’t help my mood about the park, but even so, it’s not a very good park, and they have a lot of work to do even with the recent rebrand of everything. More quality, less Soquet crap please!
We made it back to CitiEurope in one piece to find it completely shut bar the restaurants. This is silly of you France, as that place attracts so many Brits on their way back from a weekend away. At least open Carrefour up! Then we discovered a train delay which made the Calais terminal HIDEOUS. Although only delayed an hour, so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
With that, this report closes. I would recommend Bellewaerde but Bagatelle is bad, bad, so very bad.
I’ll be back to bore you all after New York!
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