Heaven for kids, hell for adults

GO FEEDBACK:The kids will have a blast at Aqualand but the queues and quick thrills may leave the grown-ups with wet blanket syndrome, writes PAUL O'CONNOR

WITH A combination of luck and avoidance tactics, we managed to get around the EuroDisney thing despite the three offspring, between the ages of six and 10, almost equating a holiday in France with the attraction. But we were down south, in Languedoc-Rousillon, in the vicinity of another big French attraction, namely Aqualand, and considering their indulgent aunt had given them money in an envelope marked “for Aqualand” there was no getting out of this one.

Having stuffed our gear, and maybe our dignity, into a locker we gamely stepped out in our togs prepared for that most unIrish of experiences: a whole day wandering around a park, and queuing for rides, in nothing but our swimsuits. Needless to say, the French carry it off with their usual panache, semi-naked or not.

Gutters, holes and pipes of all shapes and sizes of moulded multi-coloured plastic, reaching up into the blue sky at every conceivable angle; running, filled or overflowing with chlorinated water, and accessed via steel stairwells leading up to tree-height platforms. To the kids this was a shrine to the fun gods; to us it was a health and safety quandary.

Most of the rides are given English names reflecting the French weakness for English terms when they want to sound hip. Crazy Race, our first stop, is a racetrack of side-by-side water slides, gently waved to give that essential stomach-lurch thrill half way through. Most of the adults sit upright and concentrate on retaining some semblance of dignity as they splash through the water down the slope in their togs being watched by hundreds of queuing strangers. Some descend on their tummies, looking remarkably like penguins from Happy Feetslipping gleefully down slopes. Some even manage to get a little bit of a lift-off on the hump and are momentarily flying. We kept it simple and enjoyed it.

From there we came to Anaconda. Upon witnessing the flailing about in water of those already descended, our youngest opted out and took off with her mother to find the kiddies section – a sedate training ground for the future Aqualand customers. The older children and I took our places in the queue.

As we watched people spill off the end of the gutter and splash, limbs every which way, into the pool beneath, an image from Dante's Infernotroubled me. Once we had taken possession of our mats from them, we had to join another queue winding slowly up to the platform. Realising at the top that pulling out would have been too embarrassing for my kids, I found myself adopting the required position, face down on the mat at the mouth of the twisting gutter, ready to take the fast route down. It was not a pleasant experience.

The next queue was off-putting enough but when I beheld the scale of the ride, I decided to opt out. The Wave is a massive U-shape of folded plastic lifted high in the sky on a steel frame. Holding onto the handles for dear life, willing participants are pushed in two-man, figure-of-eight plastic floats from the top of one side of the U to be let fall almost straight down into the water trough below and slide up high on the opposite face.

The children immediately joined the procession. I spent the best part of the next hour sitting on a scrubby bit of ground, with other Dante types, watching my children slowly wend their weary way along the stanchions of the crowd control system. My sense of foreboding about their safety grew with every scream from the descending souls, and the piped Beach Boys music couldn’t prevent my imaging errors in the design or exceptions in the trajectories.

They survived and claimed, despite panic-stricken facial expressions that suggested otherwise, to have enjoyed it. We re-formed as a family and took a welcome relaxing trip down the Congo River in individual doughnut floats. Our youngest especially loved this one, and the absence of thrills and spills meant no queues and a very willing father.

The queuing for Big Bob would be a better explanation of its name than the fun payload, and Twister has fewer twists than its line-up had turns, but at least Black Hole was enough to scare off our kids and save us from that wait.

Finally, Surf Beach presented us with what my wife called a “soup of people” floating around in a chlorine sea, chanting over and over for La vague reminiscent of the aliens in Toy Story worshipping “the claw”.

Combining a good few of my bêtes noir, including heights, crowds, queues and quick thrills (which leave only a hunger for more), Aqualand was never going to be my kind of outing, but when I saw my youngest leaping joyfully over the man-made waves, and the next one jumping and diving in every conceivable arrangement of limbs, and the eldest partaking, I realised it was far more a heaven than a hell.

Aqualand (aqualand.fr) has seven parks in France, five in Spain and one in Portugal, operated by Spanish tourism group Aspro Ocio SA. Paul O’Connor and his family were at the one in Saint Cyprien in Languedoc-Rousillon. Tickets costs €25 for adults and €18.50 for children. Aer Lingus (aer lingus.com) fly to nearby Perpignan, and Ryanair (ryanair.com) to Carcassonne.