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If you had to choose between going to Lakemont and going to La Ronde, which would you choose, and how much alcohol would you need during?

 

Btw great trip report!

 

There. Fixed that for you.

 

No one in their right mind goes to either park sober.

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I usually take for granted that Tim Hortons is as common as McDonalds in the Buffalo area, but everything they make is pretty amazing. I love having one right on the corner of my street. Darien Lake added one a few years ago with regular prices, which is also amazing. Too bad more people couldn't experience the brand.

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Your trip reports made my day, thank you for the laughs while still being very informative! I went to La Ronde many years ago and I'm sad that didn't have time to take in the city and only had time to endure the park. Subscribed to this thread and can't wait to read more. Also excited to hear your thoughts on Darien Lake... (Moose on the loose!)

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  • 4 months later...

A little birdie told me the next chapter to this epic missive is ever-so-slowly coming together so I'm bumping it in hopes you lot can help me encourage Bill to get crackin'.

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A little birdie told me the next chapter to this epic missive is ever-so-slowly coming together

 

The little birdie was correct, as was the emphasis on the phrase "ever so slowly"...

 

For anyone who thought that the long wait time between part 2 and part 3 was because I was compiling an epic trip report to end all trip reports, I’m sorry in advance. The true reason for this is because I’m amazingly lazy. Rest assured that I haven’t been doing sh*t and you should immediately lower all expectations. I wanted to apologize for this though because this is a Canadian trip report and nothing could ever be more Canadian than telling people you’re sorry. Apologizing is Canada’s national pastime.

 

Anyway, after leaving La Ronde we decided to go back to the hotel and take showers to wash off all the suck left over from spending the morning at the park before heading into the city. La Ronde just sort of makes you feel dirty… not sure why.

 

Anyway after a quick pit stop we decided to head into the city with the help of Siri and her sh*tty French accent. This b*tch seriously needs to brush up on her culture. We didn’t really have much of a plan, we knew we wanted to head over to Old Montreal and check out a few things but for the most part we were only interested in eating and drinking our way around the city.

 

Our first stop was the Notre-Dame Basilica.

 

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This is pretty much the Times Square of Montreal (only not terrible) in that every single tourist absolutely HAS to go here. You don’t get a choice in the matter. As soon as you decide that you’re going to be a tourist in Montreal, you’re contractually obligated to go visit the church and loudly gush about everything in it as if you’re all of a sudden an expert on 19th century gothic architecture.

 

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I won’t bore anyone with the backstory on the church. Anyone who’s been to Montreal and did anything other than credit whore La Ronde has already been there (because again… you were contractually obligated to go), and anyone who wants more information can Google it but it was really cool.

 

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This next picture was taken in the back of the church. Apparently they have another church inside the church.

 

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“Yo Dawg, I heard you like church, so I put a church in your church so you can go to church while you’re in church”.

 

Between all the Jesus stuff and the terrible theme park stuff we decided it was finally time to do what we do best and get something to drink. Old Montreal is full of cobblestone streets (many of which are closed to traffic) with French eateries with tons of outdoor dining options. The whole area is oozing with culture and it didn’t take long before we both fell in love with the city.

 

We settled on a little crepe place where we proceeded to eat and drink a few hours away. Montreal has an incredible craft beer selection so I decided to try a little bit of everything while we were there. Since I couldn’t pronounce most of what I was drinking I can’t really give any reviews, but I recommend that anyone who enjoys craft beer go to Montreal and just try a little bit of everything.

 

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For dessert we opted for the “Maple Syrup crepe” because it sounded amazingly cultural and Canadian. We were clearly hammered at this point because as we sat there drinking and thinking about how cultured we were about to become by eating this crepe it never occurred to either of us that a maple syrup crepe is a $12 pancake and we’re officially the dumbest tourists on planet earth.

 

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The highly cultural "Maple Syrup Crepe"

Now that we were sufficiently intoxicated we decided to walk around a bit more and see what the city had to offer. Most of Old Montreal is littered with little shops (some of which are very quaint and cool and others are your typical overpriced touristy crap featuring everything they could possibly fit a huge red maple leaf on), restaurants and bars and the streets are full of musicians and street performers. It’s really a great place to hang out and kill a few hours.

 

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Eventually though we made our way down to the Old Port area. Unlike Old Montreal, the Old Port has no charm at all and is a complete, unapologetic tourist trap. They had a Cirque show, a ropes course, a terrible overpriced zipline and an outdoor market. While not cultural at all, it was a fun area and I can’t resist a good tourist trap. Since Brit was drunk I was hoping I could convince her to do the ropes course, but sadly that wasn’t to be so we decided (for some reason) to rent a paddle boat.

 

When we rented the boat we were told that they had to give us life preservers but they didn’t give a sh*t if you actually wore them, they just directed us to a boat, pushed us off the dock and didn’t tell us how to steer the thing.

 

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WTF are we doing?

To a normal person these instructions probably wouldn’t have been necessary, but since we were pretty drunk and had never actually been on a paddle boat the first half of our excursion was spent doing donuts in the middle of the lake until we finally started heading out into the river which was thankfully barricaded off so we didn’t end up taking our paddle boat back to La Ronde. Once we realized that if we didn’t get back in 30 minutes we’d be charged for another half hour we finally managed to get it back to the dock, just in the nick of time. It was a lot of fun, but we both agreed that we were never doing it again. F*ck paddle boats.

 

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Maple syrup ice cream... because Canada

After our disastrous boat excursion we walked around a little more until we realized we were losing our buzz and decided to grab some dinner. We knew Montréal was known for Crepes, Pizza and Poutine so we decided to cross the second one off of our list and started searching our phones for the best pizza in Montreal (seriously… how did people travel before smartphones). Obviously there was some disagreement, but we settled on a place called “Bevo” which was in old Montréal with outdoor seating and relatively close by.

 

I have to admit that I’m really a pretty huge pizza snob. I live in New York and grew up on NY pizza, so if I’m not in New York, Chicago or Elysburg, PA I rarely ever eat pizza because it’s mostly all sh*t but this stuff was life changing. Huge gobs of mozzarella, awesome brick pizza ovens… holy crap. Everyone who visits Montréal needs to get some Montréal pizza. BELIEVE THE HYPE!!! Also, as with every other restaurant in Montréal they had a great craft beer selection. I basically turned the entire day into a giant “Beers of Montréal Flight” only without the stupid, tiny flight glasses because life is way too short for that.

 

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Cheers!

 

After our late dinner we were pretty exhausted between the morning at La Ronde (which in itself is exhausting), walking around in the sun, drinking a metric f*ck ton of beer and eating an equally impressive f*ck ton of food so we decided to head back over the bridge to our hotel in Le Daphin, Daulphin… Dolphin… whatever. I think it means Dolphin. Holiday inn Dolphin Edition. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was out like a light with visions of Poutine and beer dancing in my head.

 

Part 4 to follow: featuring Poutine, a huge cross for some reason, beer, a log flume and coasters!

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Anyway, after leaving La Ronde we decided to go back to the hotel and take showers to wash off all the suck left over from spending the morning at the park before heading into the city. La Ronde just sort of makes you feel dirty… not sure why.

 

This is gold...the perfect description of La Ronde!

 

Looking forward to the rest!

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I saw a video of La Ronde and thought it looked very good with all the water around. Before that sounds too positive, I don't like waiting for rides and it sounds like every time that would be ideal to get lots of rides the place closes or doesn't run anything.

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Montreal Part 4 is here featuring Poutine, Beer, Bobsleds, Arrows, Jesus and Comets! Murrica! Um… I mean… Canada! Now that it’s the offseason I finally have some motivation (AKA nothing better to do) so yes, this is real. Two reports in two days. New Year, New Me!

 

We woke up on Monday and checked out of the Dolphin hotel or whatever and decided to head back into the city to check out a few more things before we finally headed back to America and braved the insufferably long line to cross the border.

 

We didn’t really have a plan (do we ever?) so I woke up and started googling and eventually stumbled across Mount Royal, a mountain (really more of a hill) on the edge of the city that offers great views of the skyline and some nice walking and biking trails. After we finally parked our car (which wasn’t easy since the automated meters had no English option so we were typing everything it said into Google Translate like a bunch of morons) we headed to the overlook to take in the views.

 

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View from the top

At the overlook there’s a large outdoor area as well as a huge chalet (with a very impressive interior) featuring restrooms and a small gift shop. The chalet is apparently used for weddings and large gatherings for people who are rich as hell. lol

 

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The observation area

If you haven’t been to Mount Royal, it’s worth a trip. It’s a nice walk and a relatively cheap way to spend a few hours. The lookout is only a few tenths of a mile… I mean… kilometer… I mean… whatever it’s like a 2 minute walk from the parking lot so no actual stamina is required for the walk.

 

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I love the view... but I wish there was a way we could make it more "Canadian"

 

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There we go!

The croix du mont-royal requires some walking but it’s also kind of underwhelming. The one nice thing is that the walk from the overlook to the croix du mont-royal is a complete loop so it’s an interesting walk in the woods on wide, well-traveled paths.

 

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The big cross was exactly as advertised... it was big... and it was a cross

We’re Americans, so after our mild exercise we decided it was time to completely ruin all of our hard work and find some Poutine. For those unfamiliar with Poutine, it’s basically Canada’s attempt to “out-America” America. It consists of a bed of French fries topped with gravy and cheese curds and no visit to Montreal is complete without eating it. We’d been seeing poutine places for days but we didn’t want just any poutine. We didn’t want poutine from the tourist traps in the Old Port or Old Montreal and we sure as hell didn’t want to eat it at La Ronde (just thinking about that gives me the sh*ts… and then we’d have to use a La Ronde bathroom and… no… just no). PS: You see that last sentence? That’s why my trip reports never make the front page of TPR and for the record I understand entirely and am completely at peace with that. lol

 

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Before we leave... a moment of silence for the Montreal Expos

Anyway, after extensive research we realized that we had to leave the touristy areas of the city and head over to La Banquise in the middle of the city. It seems to be universally accepted that La Banquise has the best poutine in the city, and they’re open 24/7 because they claim that poutine is a favorite of people who stumble out of bars hammered at closing time or get stoned out of their minds and find themselves with a case of the munchies. After reading this we decided that this was the only poutine place we would accept and we started our trek to La Banquise.

 

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Due to the American political climate during our visit, we figured we'd do some contingency planning. lol

They offer 30 different kinds of poutine, all featuring the fries, cheese curds and gravy but offering additional toppings like sliced up hot dogs, bacon, steak, sour cream, guac or even tomatoes if you like to pretend that your poutine is good for you. Brit went with the standard poutine but being the glutton that I am I had them load it up with hot dog slices because it seemed like the most ridiculous option they had and I was going all in.

 

Ho…ly…sh*t. La Banquise changed my life. This stuff is ridiculous… it was so good I had the urge to go back to Mount Royal and visit the croix du mont-royal because I felt as if I had just found Jesus at the bottom of a pile of fries, hot dogs and gravy. Seriously guys… if you went to Montreal and you only went to La Ronde just smack yourself in the face. Right now… hard. What the hell? Now go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.

 

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Murrica! Only it's not!

Anyway after we finished our Poutine and I felt sufficiently ashamed of myself for eating it we decided to get in the car and give ourselves a few hours to digest. As we approached the border crossing we were greeted with signs warning us of the 60 minute wait to cross but at the last minute we found a small border crossing a few miles away with a 5 minute wait! Score! We immediately veered off at the last exit in Canada and headed over.

 

This is weird, but I always get slightly nervous at border crossings when we head into Canada with this dumb and completely irrational “oh I hope they let us in” mentality but when heading back to America I don’t give a single sh*t. “Oh I can’t come back? Well f*ck you then. I’m going back to Montreal to drink beer and eat Poutine. Poor me”.

 

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The obligatory "We're in 2 Countries at Once" shot because we're insufferable morons

Sadly for us (and many others I’m sure) they let us back into America with ease. While we originally intended to head straight home we realized that with all the time we saved we had time for one more pit stop, and we knew exactly where we were headed... Lake George! That’s right! Being gluttons for punishment we decided that we should visit another bastard child of the Six Flags chain because visiting one terrible park that weekend just wouldn’t have been enough.

 

By the time we got to the exit, we realized we still had a few hours to kill so we planned to spend about an hour at Great Escape and then head into Lake George to have dinner on the lake. I’ll say this for Great Escape, while the park does suck it has nothing on La Ronde. The front of the park is actually really nice and it almost doesn’t feel like a Six Flags park. To be fair, this park as a whole is pretty nice. The main issue I have with this place is the horrendous operations where 1 train operations and 7-10 minute dispatch times are a normal occurrence but crowds were so light that this wasn’t really an issue.

 

Because I’m me, the first stop was Desperado Plunge. I have to say, for Six Flags this is a pretty good flume. Most of the time it just sort of meanders around a dirt field but the theming right before the drop was unexpected and impressive. It was also nice to see that unlike Great Adventure, they didn’t have an asinine grouping policy on their flume.

 

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Flumin' it up. By the way, the Great Escape pictures all have us in them for some reason so you'll be subjected to my ugly mug from here on out. I apologize in advance.

After the flume we decided to head back to Comet which was running 2 trains and had no wait at all. We rode near the back and as usual we had a great ride on it. I always thought this ride was a little overrated, but it’s easily the gem of Great Escape and while it doesn’t have a ton of airtime it’s still a really fun coaster.

 

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Who doesn't love Comet?

When we pulled back into the station and thought of riding again, but on our way to Comet we noticed that for the first time in history, Alpine Bobsled was a walk-on and we couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity to take a ride. Somehow we walked right on to our sled in the front row and were treated to a super fun old school bobsled ride. While I know it may not be long for this world, I always liked this ride and I would easily consider it to be the second best coaster in the park pretty much by default. After our bobsled ride we decided to head out of the park, pretty proud of ourselves for managing to work in a ride on Desperado Plunge, Comet and the Bobsled all within an hour.

 

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The Canadian Bobsled! How fitting!

We weren’t ready to head home quite yet so we made one last stop in Lake George village to watch the sunset over the lake with some drinks in hand and some fresh steamers at a local restaurant with great food but service that would make La Ronde proud. I can’t complain too much with a view like that though…

 

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Cheers to a great weekend!

Up next: The long awaited Jersey-Shore-Credit-Whore-Tour-2016-Ft.-Boldikus,-Alcohol-and-The-World's-Greatest-Log-Flume-Watch-The-F**King-Tram-Car-Please-You-Drunk-A**hole Trip Report ®

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Nice update on Great Escape! I agree with you on their operations being awful with the exception of the Comet. While all their other coasters run one train with a slow staff or have a painfully low capacity (Bobsled), the Comet rarely stacks and runs two trains. I love that coaster a lot and always get airtime from start to finish. I'm amazed at how well the park has maintained it over the years having seen the state of several other woodies in the chain.

 

As for the Bobsled, it's my favorite steel one and it'd be a shame to see it go since it's the only other really good coaster the park has. While it has seemingly been on the chopping block forever, it keeps on surviving another year.

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So good.

 

We didn’t want poutine from the tourist traps in the Old Port or Old Montreal and we sure as hell didn’t want to eat it at La Ronde (just thinking about that gives me the sh*ts… and then we’d have to use a La Ronde bathroom and… no… just no). PS: You see that last sentence? That’s why my trip reports never make the front page of TPR and for the record I understand entirely and am completely at peace with that. lol

 

Best part.

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This is a great report! My brother went to Montreal (and not La Ronde) a few years ago and had similarly great things to say about it. Glad to see you really got to see the city.

 

We went to Canada on our honeymoon, and yeah, poutine is one of those things that can be either awesome or terrible depending on who's making it. The place we found that was the best was an English-style pub in Winnepeg called Toad in the Hole. They also served a large selection of Canadian craft beers, which is a big thing around there.

 

Looking forward to the Jersey Shore Credit Whore report!

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:nina: So good.

 

We didn’t want poutine from the tourist traps in the Old Port or Old Montreal and we sure as hell didn’t want to eat it at La Ronde (just thinking about that gives me the sh*ts… and then we’d have to use a La Ronde bathroom and… no… just no). PS: You see that last sentence? That’s why my trip reports never make the front page of TPR and for the record I understand entirely and am completely at peace with that. lol

 

Best part.

 

I don't know...this one is pretty close:

 

This is weird, but I always get slightly nervous at border crossings when we head into Canada with this dumb and completely irrational “oh I hope they let us in” mentality but when heading back to America I don’t give a single sh*t. “Oh I can’t come back? Well f*ck you then. I’m going back to Montreal to drink beer and eat Poutine. Poor me”.
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thanks guys!

 

As for the Bobsled, it's my favorite steel one and it'd be a shame to see it go since it's the only other really good coaster the park has. While it has seemingly been on the chopping block forever, it keeps on surviving another year.

 

I agree with this completely. I'd hate to see them remove that ride just because of how weak their other offerings are.

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