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Funworld February 2012
Canada is not an easy place to run an amusement park. The summer season lasts only from mid-May to September at best—even though park owners have to pay taxes and facility expenses year-round. Meanwhile, winter-focused attractions have their own challenges. Sometimes the season can be as short as December to March—especially if snow fails to fall. But again, park owners have to cover expenses 12 months of the year. Valcartier Vacation Village, located about 20 minutes’ drive from Quebec City, found a way to beat Canada’s fickle climate—or at least to make it more hospitable to the park’s bottom line. Every summer Valcartier Vacation Village operates as a waterpark, rafting center, and campground. Every winter it becomes a Winter Wonderland with snowslides, skating, and “ice karting.” “We get as much mileage as we can from the two seasons that we’re open,” says Ginette Robert, Valcartier Vacation Village’s vice president of sales and marketing. “But we also have to make the most of the offseason, because it takes a tremendous amount of work to convert from one park to the other.”
Park Snapshots: Valcartier Vacation Village in Summer and Winter
In the summertime Valcartier Vacation Village offers more than 35 waterslides (including the towering “Everest” open slides and numerous tubes), two themed rivers, and a huge wave pool. The park has a 600-site campground that also has tepees and cabins for rent, eight restaurants, stores, reception rooms, and even a shuttle bus between the park and its main market of Quebec City. In tandem with the park, Valcartier operates a rafting adventure on the nearby Jacques-Cartier River. Known as Rafting Valcartier, this company offers everything from sedate paddling to whitewater rafting and “Hydrospeed”—shooting the rapids wearing a wet suit, helmet, and flippers while clinging to a waterboard. In the winter Valcartier Vacation Village’s character changes. The waterslides are replaced by more than 35 snowslides using various sizes of inflated rafts. “On the ‘Tornado,’ for instance, we use circular eight-person rafts that spin round and round as you descend the mountain,” says Robert. “The ‘Everest’ slides use single-person tubes on this fast, tall run, while the ‘Himalaya’ high-speed slides take groups of two to eight people at speeds up to 50 mph!” (Note: Even though this region of Quebec gets lots of snow, the park has a full complement of artificial snowmaking machines to keep everything white and wintery.) Valcartier’s winter park also has numerous skating paths—with twinkling lights for nighttime skating—a children’s playground, and ice karting, which features go-karts on a very slippery track. Not surprising, each cart has an impact-reducing bumper wrapped around its chassis and a high-backed padded driver’s seat. The campground and tepees are closed for the winter, but the park’s cabins are open for people who want to stay overnight. Valcartier’s repurposing of its waterslides is done with care. “For instance, we protect ‘Everest’s’ summer waterslide tracks by overlaying them with protective fiberglass shells for the winter sliders,” Robert says. “In those cases where we use water rafts in winter, these items are covered in protective casings. We know that you cannot put a summer feature into winter use without safeguarding it so that it doesn’t get damaged.”
Offseasons Matter The answer is park management and staff—500 during peak season; 50 at other times—need the offseason to transform this site from winter to summer, and then back again. “In the spring we have to remove the protective covers and take down the chair lifts that move guests up the mountain,” Robert says. “We also have to move up to 40 feet of lingering snow to areas of the park not open to the public. When the summer season comes, the snow has to be gone and the land restored to warm weather use!” Add painting, repairs, and the addition of new attractions to keep Valcartier Vacation Village fresh, and the offseasons go by all too soon. “We need those shutdown months to transform ourselves for the next season,” says Robert. “At Valcartier Vacation Village, every day counts.”
The success of this concept is proven by Valcartier’s growth from a farmer’s hobby to a full-fledged amusement park with a large staff, millions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure, and a balance sheet healthy enough to underwrite building the Calypso Theme Waterpark in 2010. “Being open in both summer and winter has been a boon for us at Valcartier Vacation Village,” concludes Robert. “Granted, it requires a lot of work in the offseasons, but this is vastly preferable and more profitable than operating a few months each year, and then shutting down for the rest.” James Careless is an experienced freelance writer with credits at Business Week, NBC News, and NPR. |
In 1971 the growing facility was taken over by the farmer’s son and current owner, Guy Drouin. He kept adding attractions to Valcartier until it had grown to become North America’s largest winter park and Canada’s largest waterpark. The waterpark that took this second title in 2010—Calypso Theme Waterpark near Ottawa, Canada’s capital city—also belongs to Guy Drouin. (Editor’s note: See the October 2010 
30 Years On and Stronger Than Ever