French theme park Parc Asterix will open its gates on April 7 for the new season and guests will find a whole new land as well as the awaited inverted B&M coaster. The new land is all about ancient Egypt and the new coaster is called OzIris and is supposed to have cost $26M with half of the ride’s budget in the theming. As usual with Parc Asterix the theming is done with plenty of humor and private jokes related to Asterix adventures, but not only. Asterix most famous Egyptian adventure is of course the best-seller and highly popular album "Asterix and Cleopatra" released at the end of the 1960's.
According to Screamscape B&M has designed a great inverted coaster which will be "40 meters tall (131 ft), have 1000 meters of track and feature 3 tunnels and 5 inversions, with no mid-course brake along the way to slow things down" and for sure this coaster looks great. But the theming looks even greater and knowing how Ancient Egypt has always been highly popular in France and Europe i predict a big success to this new Park Asterix ride. The ride was designed by 30 years old designer Julien Bertevas who began his career at Parc Astérix a few years ago by working on the park's decors. Let's have a closer look at OsIris, thanks to official pictures recently released by Parc Astérix, beginning by the outside decor and also two concept-arts.
Some pictures of the Egyptian temple interior and the queue decor theming...
The inverted coaster raedy for lift-off and outside pics of the track.
As you'll see on the Ad video below the coaster goes many times under ground and the plunge promises to be scary! Always according to Screamscape, the existing Zierer family coaster in the park called Periferix will be rethemed to fit the new Egypt area and be renamed “SOS Numerobis”.
Now, do i think that this new Parc Asterix attraction might hurt DLP attendance in its 20th anniversary year? Well, considering that the Parc Asterix is only at 45 minutes from Paris and even closer from others european countries like Belgium than DLP is - and that DLP will have a new show but no new ride this year - yes, i think it might have some effect. That said, when DLP have 14 Million visitors per year the Parc Asterix have 1.7 Millions only. Even if they have an exceptional year - which i wish to them - they won't "take" more than 3 or 500000 guests from DLP. But, with DLP marketing machine in this 20th anniversary year it's not even sure that the Parc Asterix ride will have an effect, although it will certainly have one on Parc Asterix results as it might help them to resist, precisely, to DLP 20th Ann and should succeed to attract visitors at Park Asterix.
Pictures and video: copyright Parc Asterix
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