Montréal’s Six Flags park tries a daring new ride strategy.
MONTRÉAL, QUEBEC — La Ronde, Six Flags’ one Canadian theme park, will open a new ride this season with a unique feature. It will deposit its riders outside of the park, forcing them to either pay to come back in or go home for the day.
La Grande Sortie (in English, “The Big Sortie”) is a simple ride. Riders seated four across, in a car with seven rows, exit the loading area directly onto a 120-foot lift hill. There is very little track on the other side of the hill. Instead, as the car crests the hill, the car comes to a stop, the riders’ restraints release, and the guests plummet to the pavement below.
A daring new feature
Of course, none of that is particularly new or interesting. Theme park rides have been ejecting guests onto the pavement for decades. What makes La Grande Sortie unique is that (1) it’s done intentionally, and (2) the riders will be deposited outside of the park fence.
“It’s an exciting new concept,” said La Ronde spokesperson Gilles Joubert*. “Guests who are not overly injured from the fall can continue enjoying the park, but they will need to pay to get back in. They won’t have gotten their hand stamped as they exit, you see.”
Ignorance = (Canadian) Dollars
Joubert predicts guests will catch on soon enough.
“Oh, I’m sure once they figure it out, they’ll either save it for the last ride of the day, or at least until after they’ve already exited the park once and had their hand stamped. But we’ll still make plenty of extra off of the ignorant.
“Who knows, if this works, you may see Six Flags rides all over dumping people outside the gates!”
*We think this is what he said. We don’t speak French.
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Cover photo: Take the plunge on La Grande Sortie, new for 2019! Photo CC0 via PxHere.
