Big-screen theme park Futuroscope lies in the Poitou-Charentes region of western France and attracts 37 million visitors every yearBig-screen theme park Futuroscope lies in the Poitou-Charentes region of western France and attracts 37 million visitors every year
Saccharine, hair-raising, stomach-flipping, exhausting...there are many words that can be grabbed at when thinking of ways to describe theme parks but 'stylish', in my experience at least, has never been one of them.
Yet, here I am, on a crisp winter's day watching an orange sun melt behind a skyline of gleaming geometric shapes. But then this particular theme park, Futuroscope, is French, which may go some way to explaining the sleek aesthetics.
Through anyone's eyes, it is a fascinating ensemble of architecture. There's a glass wedge of exhibition space topped with what looks like a giant cue ball; a mirrored jet-black theatre that rises from the earth like reflective Kryptonite and a cinema edged with thin black cylinders that look like giant liquorice sticks.
Futuroscope, near the small city of Poitiers in western France, is the country's second most popular theme park behind Disneyland Paris, yet is barely known on this side of the Channel.
Some 37 million visitors, most of them French, push through the turnstiles every year to immerse themselves in a park that manages to breathe life into science and nature with energetic, often interactive, attractions and a series of IMAX cinema screens.
A new crowd-puller is unveiled every two years and since 2007, almost half of the park has been rejuvenated. The hurdle of language can be easily jumped via a translation headset, available in English and Spanish.
The building currently with the sharpest glint is a 115-ft high 'hypercube' set in a north-eastern corner of the park. This new addition is Arthur, The 4D adventure, the fruit of a collaboration between Futuroscope and Luc Besson, one of France's most celebrated film directors and the man behind such blockbusters as The Fifth Element, The Big Blue and Léon.
