As the park located near Poitiers prepares to open its new aquatic area, what remains of the educational promises from the beginning?
37 years ago, Futuroscope opened its doors in Vienne with the aim of offering a vision of the future before the big boom of the 2000s, all with an assumed educational aim. An ambitious bet, also attempted by Disney and its Epcot in the United States, which has nevertheless taken a hit over time.
When it opened on May 31, 1987, it was described as “the European image park”, initially by broadcasting documentary content, before initiating a renewal of its audience by welcoming, from the 1990s, its first attractions and sensational shows.
But by 2025, Futuroscope will renew 60% of its attractions to get a makeover, with its sights set, from summer 2024, on an aquatic zone, Aquascope, which stands out from other aquatic centers open throughout the city. France by the technologies it uses. Cost of the operation: 57 million euros for six years of work.
Experiences rather than the “future”
“Futuroscope is a plurality of experiences, a diversity that means there is something for all tastes and all ages, but also for all budgets,” explains Rodolphe Bouin, general director of Futuroscope, to Tech&Co.
He nevertheless confides that the name of the park is “a complicated heritage”, in particular because the films and programs which evoked the future in the mid-90s are less present today, and therefore less inspiring. In fact, no flying cars or teleportation, and even fewer spaceships traveling across the galaxy. However, this does not prevent Futuroscope from still being useful in its time: “A project will arrive at the end of 2025 in partnership with National Education, which will show new technologies, the school of tomorrow, new professions.”
“Ultimately, we think we’re moving away from the future, but never quite completely,” he says.
The place of education in Futuroscope is important: more than 200,000 students come to visit it each year with workshops that allow them to discover the technologies that will enter classrooms in the future.
However, new technologies are sometimes a source of difficulties. For the attraction Sébastien Loeb Racing Xperience, inaugurated in 2018 and closed in 2023, the choice was made to offer an activity with 108 virtual reality headsets. But the challenges encountered, particularly in terms of maintenance, did not allow the test to be transformed.
Rodolphe Bouin nevertheless specifies that a research and development unit goes to meet new technologies with the aim of adapting them to the constraints of an amusement park: “Nine times out of ten, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t match. And then one time out of ten, it works well and we manage to adapt a technology with a theme.”
“Maintaining curiosity”
Futuroscope had thus established a partnership with Ubisoft and its Rabbids, the video game thus took a prominent place in the park’s offer of attractions. “We want to build attractions for twenty years,” confides its General Director. Dancing with robots is, according to him, one of the good examples: “We proposed a technology that absolutely did not come from tourism.”
The park does not buy its attractions “from the catalog”, like several other of its competitors: “It’s quite pioneering from that point of view.” Tornado chasers, which simulates extreme winds, has thus obtained numerous awards around the world.
But while the biggest attractions are often the ones that are highlighted, that doesn’t necessarily make them the visitors’ favorites. Sparkswhich has a budget of around 2 million euros – compared to 21 million euros for Tornado Chasers – shows it, by being number 1 in opinion polls: “It’s amazing, it’s even extraordinary, we’ve reinvented the genre. We’ve shown the French that heroes were created in France, well before Marvel arrived.”
So that’s what Futuroscope is. Under its old-fashioned and sometimes French-looking appearance, the future that can be seen in Poitiers may not be at the cutting edge of new technologies – like AI, which is not present in the park – but the park innovates in another way: “Every time we create an attraction, we try to do it in a slightly different way, to maintain curiosity.”
Confident in the future, the general director of Futuroscope therefore expects new visitors, but also an influx of former visitors who will come to extend their stay. Aquascope is indeed much more than a new area, it is a park in its own right, with a second ticket office in its sights. In 2023, there were nearly 2 million visitors to discover a park that clearly has not said its last word.
