France holiday day 7 - Futuroscope

With the previous night's advice from a Southampton couple we headed straight over to Futuroscope early arriving after 10am. Futuroscope is an alternative type of theme park based more on cinema experiences.

As soon as we got into the park we made a b-line to the newest attraction, Dances with Robots with French DJ Martin Solveig providing some cheesy endorsement. There was already a long queue but a fun clap along interactive game to keep the teenagers happy. The main ride itself was a robot arm with 2 seats hurling us into different directions for about a minute all with Martin Solvieg visuals of him putting on headphones and taking them off. A very short experience but a good laugh.

We'd been given a translator radio so used it on the next experience for Arthur 4D, a Luc Besson film theme ride - again good but short. By now it was about lunchtime and being a bit thirsty we tried out the Sky bar, a modern balloon raised us whilst sat at a bar drinking champagne and a virgin pina colada. Unfortunately the weather got really windy and wet so it was short lived but sweet.

iMagic was a really entertaining magic show. All in French but very well done with what seemed to be an airport behind stage as the magician revealed a helicopter and small jetplane.

Little Prince was cute but again too short. Wings of Courage was an 80s 3D film which Val Kilmer was in it very briefly but done quite well done. The film was dubbed into French then we used our translators to hear it in original actors' voices.

Couldn't do Journey into the Dark as we didn't speak/understand French good enough so went straight into Dynamic Vienne which used a waterfall technique to create complicated shapes - very cool then a film next door showing off the Vienne area's tourist highlights using a groom late for his wedding taking a sneezing tree elf/trunk's special drink to hot foot it back to his wedding. The sneezing was sprinkles of water - very funny and the film must have been done in the 90s.

8th Continent the game was like a video game whilst seated on a scooter shooting eco-hazards on the big screen in front. About 40 people joined in and high scores presented along the way with a photo of the winner. Good fun but too short. I came 8th overall.

Cosmic Collisions was a planetarium type presentation with the audio commentary by Robert Redford - again the translator redubbed over the French soundtrack. Very interesting and well done.

Cyber Avenue was a glorified arcade with loads of PS3 games and a few quirky extras but not much else.

For dinner we had a molecular 3 course meal - very fancy with the dry ice mango air but the snail and fois grait just too much for me.

The final spectacle by the lake where we dined was preceded by compere asking a few questions to the audience as it was the park's 25th anniversary. We hadn't really expected too many people there but the whole arena was jam packed by hyperactive, screeching teens getting very excited to be picked to answer the questions. It was at times quite hilarious as if it was an X Factor final but confusing with the language difference.

The show titled Lady O was pretty amazing too. Using fountains and water jets with projected images of two dancing sisters in their twee fairy garden. Then it goes all Jeff Wayne's War of The World style with an alien landing and the background building used with a projector. Sounds completely bonkers but it worked.

We avoided the car park scrum and legged it out the park only to return to the campsite with the 10pm barrier curfew in place. This meant sleeping in the car park!