Puy du Fou — Attraction in La Roche-sur-Yon

On the surface, this theme park is impressive. It has beautiful architecture, dedicated actors, amazing special effects, and many of the shows really do immerse you in their respective time periods.

With that said, here are the negatives of Puy Du Fou:

Many of the shows (in my opinion as a spectator) push highly religious values and seem to paint a biased picture of French history. For someone who is globally aware and educated historically this isn’t a massive problem, but the idea that young kids and the more impressionable people who visit this park may be getting indoctrinated with questionable values is a little iffy. The park is owned by a far right politician, so by going to this park you are, even if in a small way, supporting him and his agendas. The food is low quality and overpriced, as is everything else for sale. The (5) different bathrooms I used throughout my visit smelled horrendous.

Here is my guide (of the shows I saw, 7/16) in terms of what shows are worth it and which are better off skipped (slight spoilers!) - P.S. I am a bilingual French and English anglophone who isn’t religious, so take this into account when reading my guide :)

La Signe du Triomphe (8/10): Worth seeing, although getting in and out is a bit of a sh*tshow if it’s busy, pardon my French. The horserace, fighting, and parade are all amazing, but they’ve removed the galley, which was the star of the show. Les Vikings (2/10): Not worth seeing. My personal least favourite, namely because I know what it used to be like. They’ve removed a mind blowing moment where a ship emerges from underwater, as well as many of the fire effects and explosions. At our specific event too, two of the planned effects (the tower falling over and a hut setting on fire) malfunctioned. The ending of this one is also hyper religious, and just a majorly lazy ending that makes no sense and is very cheesy. This was the only event I considered walking out of. Le Dernier Panache (5/10): Not worth it. This is a hard one to appreciate deeper than the 360 stage and set pieces, choreography and special effects. The story is, in my opinion, confusing and a little dragged out, and it once again revolves heavily around religion to the point that it becomes almost cartoonish. The French revolutionaries are also villainized to the point of being caricatures, whereas the Vendées (who apparently were very pro-aristocrat) are painted as martyrs who can do no wrong. I don’t know a whole lot about French history, but the way the show painted these two groups at such extremes seemed in poor taste. Le Mime et L’étoile (10/10): Must see. No criticisms for this, genuinely one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen in my life, and one of the few that didn’t revolve around religion. The set, choreography, emotion, story, everything was phenomenal. Le Premier Royaume (7/10): Worth seeing. This walk through event was cool because of its set design, and the atmosphere it created. I liked the contrast between the chaos of the battle scenes and the more peaceful and ghostly ones. I give it a 7 because the story was a bit hard to follow and once again was predictably religion-centred to a bit of an extreme. Le Mystère de La Perouse (9/10): Must see. This walk through was extremely well done and creates an amazing feeling of immersion. The effects that were used to recreate a ship that starts in a harbour and ends at the bottom of the ocean were mind-blowingly accurate. Plus, the fact that it’s based on a true story and that the plate with a coat of arms that the whole story is based off (which was found on a real shipwreck) is included in the walk through was a great addition. My one criticism is that the final room is right beside the open exit which ruins the climax that the whole walk through so expertly built up. Les Amoureux de Verdun (100/10): Life changing. I love War history, so maybe I’m a bit biased, but this walkthrough is otherworldly and earth shaking. Nuff said!

All in all, worth visiting once, but be selective of what...

We visited yesterday in August and it was just such an amazing and awe inspiring day. Well done to all the organisers and actors, both human and animal! 😊

The shows are all very well organised and just stunning.

Below is what we managed to see in a day, bringing our own lunch. Always bear in mind that you have to queue a lot, it gets hot, and you need to get to shows early to secure a seat if visiting in high season (which august definitely is VERY BUSY but totally doable):

1. 10:30am Le Bal des oiseaux fantomes - this show with birds of prey just leaves you absolutely gobsmacked, it’s just beautiful. Birds fly down from a big blimp in the sky, they swoop around you, and at the end they all fly together - it moved me to tears. This is a MUST SEE show. The acting in it is meh and even superfluous, but the birds are worth the whole thing.

2. 12:15 Les Vikings - this show is cool but I wouldn’t put it among my favourites, however there is good set design, and some impressive stunts. We were expecting a few more “explosive” moments, I guess we thought this one would be more “action” and less theatrics, but overall it was a good show. Bear in mind there is a lot of talking in this one too (use the App for translation if you need it).

3. 14:30 Le Signe de Triomphe - this is about Ancient Rome at a time when it converted to Christianity. Again, here we would have liked to see more action and less talking. Bear in mind that there’s fake blood during the battles so if you have young kids maybe explain to them it’s just a show. The set design is really amazing, I guess it’s a must see just because it’s a big show, but not one of my favs.

16:30 - Mousquetaire de Richelieu - the set design at the end is amazing, but this is mostly a spoken word show, so bear that in mind.

17:30 - Le Mime et l’etoile - this is a MUST SEE show and the ticket to the park is worth it just to see this one. It’s absolutely incredible. The set design, the actors (in this show they are actually speaking by live and not lip-synching like in the other shows), the choreography, the story, everything is just beautiful. There is talking but it’s pretty understandable even without a translation I think. There’s a reason it’s an award winning show, so go see it. Loved it.

After that we went to see the Mystere de la perouse which is open all day - a bit disappointing and was absolutely packed with people so not so enjoyable.

19:45 - Le grand carillon - this is just 10 minutes but a very cute little entertainment moment.

22:00 - Les Noces de Feu - if you’re debating whether to stay and watch this, do. just sit in the designated tribune and not on the opposite side of the lake like we did, as visibility is limited on that side. it’s beautiful and a lovely way to end the day.

Just a couple of pointers about the day:

FOOD - you can order on the App and do click and collect - I would advise on doing this especially at peak times. We had dinner there, at 18:30, and it was pretty empty at that time.

Pass emotion - if you can, get these. You skip the massive queues and get the best seats. They were sold out when we bought our tickets, which we purchased about a month in advance.

Things that could be improved:

THE WEBSITE - not very user friendly nor efficient, and doesn’t always work so well, also it automatically selects two days when you go to buy tickets so beware, you can select just one day.

The APP - useful, but could be improved in two ways: 1) make your own plan- at the moment it asks you for your favs and then makes a plan which didn’t work for us for the shows we wanted to see, so we ended up making our plan while waiting in the queues,using both the App and the paper guide (printed new for each day and very useful). 2) seeing as it has a “guided” Mapping when you’re walking around the park (a bit like directions for Google Maps) it could be useful to be able to select entrance/exits as well.

Definitely a must if you’re in the area. Well done PUY DU FOU!...

We found that there was much to like, however we won’t be returning.

The shows themselves are, visually, indeed quite something. Very well choreographed, and we were always able to get a seat to the ones we wanted to see. The mime movie show was absolutely delightful.

So why won’t we be going back?

Ok, to start with my partner is disabled, and they do cater for this, but for some reason you can’t book this on-line, you have to call them. We tried this but gave up after 10 minutes and just booked two adult tickets. Not the end of the world but it niggled us a little and made the day much harder.

The weather was abysmal, which wasn’t of course their fault at all, but several of the big shows are outdoors with no covering from the rain. Again, ok we chose to go see these ones, but I would argue the birds, vikings, medieval shows are the stars of the park. To give them their due, the Roman show has some covering, although it doesn’t protect you fully from the rain. What we were not expecting was the lack of shelter around the park - so we had to queue up mostly in the rain, watch a show in the rain, then walk around in the rain to queue for the next show.

The eating areas didn’t seem to have much covering at all, and certainly not enough for everyone trying to shelter from the elements.

It was certainly a good day for the people selling rain ponchos….

This brings me to the food. We decided, after being pretty drenched and cold, to treat ourselves to something akin to churros. We paid about £5.50 for 12. We tried the first one and we just looked at each other - they were stone cold, hard, you could barely bite in to them. We were so disappointed. I understand that someone else had, allegedly, had a similar issue with their food and been told that these food vendors were concessions, so nothing to do with PDF. I can’t verify this but if true I feel this is unacceptable. If it was my company I’d be talking to the people running the food stalls and investigating the matter, as it reflects poorly on the company.

We bought two hot drinks - over 11 euros. The server tried to tell us that we had to trade the small plastic cups in somewhere and we get 4 euros back? What??? I applaud trying to reduce plastic, but use recyclable cardboard like everywhere else we’ve been.

As mentioned the shows were visually excellent, however in most there was also quite a lot of talking - setting the story. Some, like the Roman show, it didn’t really matter too much if you didn’t speak French, but a couple we had no clue what was going on. Of course you’re in France, and I’m certainly not expecting them to repeat what they’ve said in different languages, but the app should have the ability for you to listen to a translation (Btw, if you want a laugh, try using Google translate….. ). At another attraction we had this - as you went round you pressed the corresponding number on a phone and it played the information in the language you selected. Failing this a paper copy as you go in with an outline of what’s going on would be at least something. It just took the gloss off a little.

Overall for the 110 euros for the two of us, we ended up queuing and waiting in the rain for about 30+ minutes for each show, eating terrible food, trying to find somewhere, anywhere, to get out the wind and warm up.

And lastly. The bird display, I thought it was ok, but we had seen the one at beauval zoo and felt it was far, far superior.

So to sum up - we felt that whilst some of it was excellent, it was lacking in some areas. The breathtaking part - the...