Champi'Folies interactive dark ride opens in French park Le PAL

Brussels, Belgium/Montreal, Canada - May 9 2023. BoldMove Nation and Triotech's innovative new attraction, Champi'Folies, has opened at Le PAL theme park in France. The interactive dark ride features the cutting-edge Smash & Reload media dark ride with TooMush theming, which surpasses park and visitor expectations. A selection of international bloggers and journalists attended the VIP opening on May 8-9 to share the experience with the market and their fans.

With more than 1000 animals and 31 attractions, Le Pal is already recognized as one of the leading theme parks and zoos in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France. The addition of Champi'Folies further cements its reputation as a must-visit destination for families. This new exciting attraction combines an immersive storyline with thrilling action and impressive theming. Guests are taken on an unforgettable journey through a world filled with the hilarious TooMush characters.

Arnaud Bennet, President of Le PAL, comments: "Champi’Folies introduces a new ‘species’ that speaks to the heart of our visitors, who are warmly embracing these cute TooMush characters. It is a pleasure to see that young and old enjoy this immersive experience side by side in a friendly competition. ​ The attraction offers a seamless transition between the theme and animal park, re-energizing this park area with a weatherproof attraction. We are really pleased with the cooperation, which results in a high-quality and fun attraction with rich theming.”

Fruitful collaboration
​The launch of Champi'Folies marks a significant milestone for BoldMove Nation and Triotech, a collaboration between that resulted in a cutting-edge ride. BoldMove worked closely with its partner Polymorph for all IP, media and gameplay development.

BoldMove's CEO Benoit Cornet has been the driving force behind Smash & Reload, making sure his creative concept shapes up just the way it is intended: "We're thrilled with the result of Champi'Folies. Our creative concept has been fully realized, and our teams created an amazing ride. We've blended physical and digital worlds to create a memorable experience, and we're proud to have worked closely with our partners to create an attraction that's truly world-class. We bring the characters alive on screen, and even added Artificial Intelligence to personalise guest experiences. Cherry on the cake is the extensive theming we created with 3D decoration up to a real car, all of these reflecting their digital counterparts."

Ernest Yale, Triotech CEO, adds: "Our teams worked closely together to deliver a ride that is unique to the market with a high thrill level on a very small footprint. We had to be smart with our technology approach so we could make optimum use of the space for the ride. We leveraged Triotech’s technical and design know-how and worked diligently to synchronize media, hardware, software, and theming, in close cooperation with the team at Le PAL."

Guests can now experience Champi'Folies at Le Pal and discover the thrilling world of the TooMush characters for themselves. The group-play combined with the friendly competition to get the highest score encourages replayability of this new family-oriented attraction.

Some Questions & Answers:

How did you create a 360° environment that blends digital and phygital worlds?
​Based on the characters that were imagined years ago, we developed multiple 360° environments: two immersive “worlds” around which the action revolves. We started by designing a complete world around the Mushies: we chose to create a hill surrounded by four adjacent 'places': a forest, a garbage dump, an industrial zone, and a city. This environment is fluid and all parts are tying up nicely with the previous and the next one. Therefore, the little Mushies are frantically running along the slopes of the hill and ultimately will find themselves back where they started. For our little “funghy” friends, everyday life feels like “groundhog day”: starting again fresh with a slightly changing ending. ​ The reason why we have decided to shape the scenes as a “world” rather than a series of separate scenes is to make the story easy to understand for a broad audience. Moreover, not only the scenes are circling alongside the hill, but also the “targets" and vehicles. This gives the ride a very profound coherence and moreover increases repeat playability.

How does the story go and why 'freeze' the Mushies?
​The arrival of a bulldozer in the Mushies’ forest, usually so calm and peaceful, is the trigger for this invasion. The Mushies are forced to leave their forest, however, they only find hostile territories, which results in a rapidly growing population and the invasion becomes inevitable. Unless... ​
​The players' mission is to stop them and cool them down by shooting ice cubes. To do this, they will follow them into a forest, a junkyard, an industrial zone and finally the city, inbetween reloading their stock of cubes. To complicate the fate of the "funghy" friends even more, the passage through the junkyard is accompanied by an exposure to strange and toxic substances, mutating some into green creatures… less attractive and even more stupid. ​ 

How do you apply Smart Artificial Intelligence (AI) for 'dumb' characters ?
​It is said that the simplest things are the most difficult ones to do: to provide certain Mushies with a bottomless stupidity, we had to rely on sophisticated algorithms to make the reaction as varied as well as unexpected. We have therefore applied Artificial Intelligence technology: the reaction of a Mushie can change based on certain instances (presence of the Mushies, intensity of the action and so on), so the Mushie can act differently and surprise even the most accustomed player. This is a clear example of the next generation gaming capabilities where the ride itself becomes what we could qualify as being “alive”: nothing happens exactly the way it was expected to: another clever way to boost repeatability ! 

What is Smash & Reload?
​Smash & Reload is a family of media-based interactive dark rides, combining a fun and easy gameplay with smart ride system on a compact footprint. It can stand alone or be integrated in a themed park area, and perfectly combines with other attractions. This next-generation high-energy dark ride is future-proof due to its advanced and proven technology with upgradeable media content. The easy gameplay ensures an interactive all-family experience with a choice of different IPs and theming, up to a fully customizable format. With its amazing visitor capacity Smash & Reload offers the best price to throughput ratio across the industry with high repeatability, and weather-proof for all-year round operations. The centralized projection system keeps the entire attraction compact and maintenancy savvy, without compromising on fun. 

Who is Le PAL? ​
​This family business created 50 years ago is located in the heart of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It is a place for discovery as well as entertainment. Certified Sustainable Tourism, it is also committed to public education and biodiversity conservation with its numerous educational programs and the Le PAL NATURE FOUNDATION. Its immersive accommodations in the heart of the African savannah, Les Lodges du PAL and Le Savana RESERVE, make the park a tourist destination and allow it to attract an ever-growing clientele, including foreigners looking for an authentic change of scenery.

Who is Triotech?
​Triotech is the creator of award winning immersive and interactive media-based attractions for the entertainment market. With more than 425 installations in over 65 countries across all continents, over 135 million guests have lived a Triotech experience over the last decade. Triotech creates attractions such as Interactive Dark Rides and theaters, 4D Theaters, VR attractions, Flying Theaters, Walkthroughs and Dark Coasters. Triotech offers integrated turnkey solutions for digital attractions including content developed in its own studios in Montreal, Canada and in Rennes, France. Founded in 1999, Triotech is a privately held company with over 200 employees deployed in Canada, Europe, the USA, and Asia.

Who is BoldMove Nation?
​Together with a strong network of expert partners, BoldMove Nation creates Happy Worlds for leisure, tourist and retail venues. Media-based attractions are based on proven technologies and fun gameplay around compelling stories for immersive visitor experiences. With the customer interest at heart, the BoldMove Nation team offers turnkey creative and experience design services from master planning to implementation, with a broad choice of IPs and theming. Products include Smash & Reload media dark rides with TooMush or custom theming, WaterSlider VR and AR Walkthroughs like Raptor Expedition. Established in 2021, the team is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium and headed by interactive dark ride veteran Benoit Cornet as CEO, and Managing Partner Anja D’Hondt.

For further questions, don't hesitate to contact us: [email protected]