Negative-G - La Ronde - Le Monstre Showdown 2014

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The important reason that inspired our huge trip to Montreal and the East Coast this year was the wedding of Paul "Bratman" Schroeder from the Negative-G Forums. The plan was to have and epic weekend dubbed the "SchroederCon" full of fun in Montreal with Paul, his bride Adrianna, their family, folks from the Negative-G Forums and a bunch of fellow coaster enthusiasts before we headed down back into the U.S. to visit parks and a friend in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania before finally heading home..

The SchroederCon weekend weekend began with trips around Montreal, visits to Mount Royal, lunch at Schwartz's for a Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwich (OMG!!! One of the best sandwiches ever!), a party in Paul's "party suite" at the hotel and then the wedding with an epic reception to follow. That wasn't all of it though. Making the weekend even more fun; especially for all of the coaster enthusiasts in attendance for the nuptials, was a coaster enthusiast event a handful of hours after all of the dancing, eating (seven courses plus a poutine/desert buffet) and drinking (well, some of us did this right Alabama Mike?) came to an end. We partied it up from the early afternoon of Saturday May 24th until the early hours of Sunday May 25th and then got up and headed to La Ronde a handful of hours later to continue the celebration. Sleep who needs sleep.

The event's official name was "Le Monstre Showdown" although the "SchroederCon" name stuck enough when talking about it with most of the people in attendance coming from Paul and Adrianna's wedding that ACE and La Ronde called it the "SchroederCon" on flyers and other things.

La Ronde is an interesting park. It is technically a Six Flags park as they own the park but the City of Montreal owns the land. The park feels nothing like a Six Flags as there are no Looney Tunes or DC Comics costumed characters walking around. With Montreal and Quebec's French Canadian heritage I'm sure that a park filled with Looney Tunes and DC Comics characters would annoy the local populace so Six Flags left those things south of the border and has kept La Ronde just that instead of "Six Flags La Ronde".

La Ronde got its start as a part of the Expo '67 Worlds Fair. Just inside La Ronde's gates sits this interesting sculpture. This dates back to the Expo and was created by the sculptor Gerald Gladstone and is called Orbite Optique No2 and is made up of shapes similar to the earths elliptical orbit around the sun. Now I know you didn't come here to learn about modern art so lets move onto some coasters, rides and fun.

Our exclusive ride session for Le Monster Showdown/SchroederCon before La Ronde opened for the day started out at their newest ride The Demon.

The Demon is a "Top Spin" type ride by Mondial that takes you up and flips you upside down again and again until you want to hurl. Doesn't sound fun to me but the Mikes (Illinois and Alabama) on the left and Jeremy along with Beth and Kevin Remhof on the right enjoy it so I sat back and snapped a few photos of them taking it for a ride.

As you can see The Demon provokes a variety of emotions from it's riders. You've got Jordan on the left too exhausted from last night for any expression, Beth is having a nice scream, Kevin is going "oh s***" and Ken on the end is just having a good time.

Oh for long time readers that is Ken "Kidcoaster" Jones on the right side of photos. I hadn't seen him in a while and it was good getting the chance to say "hi" and hang out.