FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Award-winning theatrical theme park Le Puy du Fou in Pays de la Loire opened to the public on 1st April for its 2017 season, with four new attractions to mark its 40th anniversary.

London, UK – 5 April 2017. Le Puy du Fou has launched one new show, one new hotel and two new restaurants to celebrate 40 years since the park's opening in 1977. The new show, Le Grand Carillon, is a unique musical performance set in the 18th century, during which bell-ringers flit between 70 giant bells suspended 16 metres off the ground. The new hotel, named La Citadelle, has been installed within the 'Cité Nocturne' area of the park – guests enter through a portcullis and stay in rooms within mock medieval ramparts – and completing 2017's additions are restaurants La Mijoterie du Roy Henri and L'Écuyer Tranchant.

Le Puy du Fou, located in Les Epesses at the heart of the Vendée department, is a theme park with a difference: no rides, but instead a feast of 30-minute theatrical spectacles re-enacting periods of history from the Vikings to the Belle Époque. Its history retrospective Cinéscénie – the largest night-time show in the world, packed with special effects – is performed by 2,000 actors and has been seen by 12 million spectators since its launch.

La Citadelle is the fifth themed hotel to open on site: other hotels at the park include a Gallo-Roman villa, a Renaissance royal campsite and Merovingian-style thatched huts perched on stilts over water. Surrounding the show venues are 50 hectares of forest and gardens containing reconstructed historic villages, including a medieval settlement and an 18th-century farm where you can watch artisans at work.

Le Puy du Fou is the second most-visited amusement park in France after Disneyland Paris, it was named 'Best Park in the World' at the Thea Awards in Los Angeles in 2012 and won the Applause Award in Orlando in 2014, considered by many to be the Academy Award of the amusement park industry.

Tickets to the Grand Parc start at €33 per adult by advance booking. A one-night stay, including Grand Parc access, starts from €54 per person. Translation headsets are available for all shows.

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For further information please contact
Rachel Johnston, PR Officer for Pays de la Loire, Atout France
rachel.johnston@atout-france.fr
Tel. 020 7061 6604