Parc Festyland is a relative small theme park situated within the Caen

Caen

Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....

 ringroad (A13/A84) in Lower Normandy

Basse-Normandie

Lower Normandy is an administrative region of France. It was created in 1956, when the Normandy region was divided into Lower Normandy and Upper Normandy...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Sometimes referred to as residing in Carpiquet in terms of Greater Caen, the theme park receives approximately 110,000 visitors a year.

Background

Parc Festyland, like a true theme park, has a prominent style that all of the park follows - from rides to restaurants to surroundings alike. The park is based around the 1066 era of time, but being a family theme park, it mainly concentrates on the architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 and stereotypes of the time. The Parc Festyland logo is depicted by a friendly, young faced dragon sporting a Viking hat and a large grin. Although there have been some arguments over whether this is a suitable logo, the decision was reached that this represents a family theme park very well.

Visiting Figures

In 2005, the park received 110,000 visitors, compared to Caen's five museums which received 550,000 visitors between them (source: Caen tourist office). Other tourist attractions in Caen include Men's Abbey (or Abbaye aux hommes in French) and the Caen memorial. Parc Festyland is clearly signposted and visible from the nearby motorway.

Advertising

Parc Festyland runs a successful advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 campaign in association with the Caen tourist office. In all language versions of the booklet, the first inner page is a full colour advert for the park. It consists of the Parc Festyland name and logo, the catchphrase ("defiez le!!!"), contact details (website address and phone number), but most importantly two pictures of females enjoying themselves at the park and a large roller coaster in the background.

Catchphrase

Defiez le!. Using the translation from the English Caen tourist office booklet, the phrase can be confirmed to mean 'brave it'. It refers to braving the main attraction (a 59 second long roller coaster). The ez form on the end of a French verb without a subject (I, it, you, he etc.) indicates the imperative

Imperative mood

The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...

 form of the verb. So in this case it can be safely assumed that the park is giving you the challenge to brave the roller coaster (and the park).

Rides in the Park

• The Drakkar Express is an attraction that is suitable for all ages. It is basically a steel roller coaster, with the cars designed in the same way as viking
  Viking
  The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
  
   ships.
• The bumper boats are most easily described as dodgem cars on a lake. The cars seat either one person, or an adult and a small child, however height
  Height
  Height is the measurement of vertical distance, but has two meanings in common use. It can either indicate how "tall" something is, or how "high up" it is. For example "The height of the building is 50 m" or "The height of the airplane is 10,000 m"...
  
   restrictions do apply. Each car consists of a plastic moulded steering platform, riding on an inflated rubber cushion. The bumper boats attraction prides itself on giving "complete freedom to sail, whether large or small"

• The bateaux les pentes vertigineuses du Piratak (seen on the right), are a very clever solution to have a water slide
  Water slide
  A water slide is a type of slide designed for warm-weather or indoor recreational use at water parks. Water slides differ in their riding method and therefore size...
  
   in a park where no one is expecting to get wet. People wishing to go on this ride simply climb up some stairs, then sit in a small dinghy when one becomes available. A member of staff will then start to push them down one of the three slides. As the boat reaches the bottom of the slide, it will decelerate due to the high friction
  Friction
  Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and/or material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction:...
  
   cushion of water that is created underneath the boat. This may result in some wet
  Wet
  Wet may refer to:* The condition of being liquid or being covered in liquid* Adequately wet, environmental term referring to asbestos-containing material that is sufficiently mixed or penetrated with liquid to prevent the release of particulates...
  
  ness, but enough to cope with on a sunny French day. Again this ride is suitable for children of all ages. As seen in the image to the right, the park have gone for a similar tactic to that of their advert. They have obtained pictures of people reaching the bottom of the slides, with arms outstretched and an expression
  Facial expression
  A facial expression one or more motions or positions of the muscles in the skin. These movements convey the emotional state of the individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information among humans, but also occur...
  
   of pleasure and fun on their faces.

Other attractions

Among the other main rides in the park, there is also less full on rides that don't give the pure adrenaline rush as the rest of the park's rides may causes visitors to have. These areas are more relaxing, and visitors often visit these at either the start of the day to warm themselves up for the action to come, or at the end of the day to calm

CALM

CALM may refer to:*Campaign Against Living Miserably, UK charity aimed at bringing down the suicide rate among young men.*Café-Au-Lait Macules as seen in the medical condition neurofibromatosis...

 themselves down.

Prehistyland

A section of the park designed in the prehistoric era, instead of 1066 like the rest of the park. The area includes life size models of dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

s and a rope bridge

Rope bridge

A rope bridge is a bridge constructed chiefly of rope. In its simplest form, it can be one or two ropes that bridge a river, enabling the traveller to be supported in their crossing and not be swept away. One rope above another, for feet and hands, may be referred to as a commando bridge.More...

 traversing a lake. This is generally viewed as the more educational part of the theme park, due to the value that younger children can take away from seeing scale models of prehistoric creatures that may fascinate them.

Floral Decorations

The park advertises the fact that there are special snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

shaped vehicles (on a fixed track), that will take you on a tour of their gardens with "splendid floral decoration"