Puy du Fou park info, rides and attractions

Opened	1978 (Cinéscénie) 1989 (Grand Parc)
Season	April to November
Owner	Association du Puy du Fou
Attendance	2,500,000 (TEA 2023)
Website	www.puydufou.com/france/
Nearby	Parc de la Vallée (28 miles) Futuroscope (63 miles) Family Park (79 miles) Papéa Parc (95 miles) Jacquou Parc (158 miles)

A large audience at the Vikings show

A theme park with no rides?! That's exactly what Puy Du Fou is: a historical theme park near Nantes which tells the stories of remarkable events in French history.

The recipe of immersive experiences and incredible live shows works too: after the Disney Parks and Parc Astérix, Puy Du Fou is the most visited theme park in France with upwards of two million visitors each year.

These people come for a day filled with show and spectacle. Puy Du Fou is famous for its huge shows which combine large casts of actors, astonishing special effects and gigantic sets to take audiences on a journey into the past.

Among the most popular shows at Puy Du Fou are Les Vikings, which features a full size Viking longboat that emerges from under the water; Le Signe du Triomphe, a show featuring gladatorial games set within a replica Roman amphitheatre; Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde, which retells the legend of King Arthur; and Le Mime et l'Étoile, an award winning indoor show set in the early days of cinema.

Many of the shows last around half an hour and attract audiences of thousands of people, with queues forming 30 minutes or more before the start of a performance - it is essential to arrive at each show venue early.

Aside from the main spectaculars, Puy Du Fou also offers smaller shows including dancing fountains, a bell-ringing acrobatic show set around a clock tower, and a group of automaton musicians. Walkthrough immersive experiences are available all day and are equally astounding as the shows, so should not be missed. Highlights include Les Amoureux de Verdun, a recreation of a First World War trench from the winter of 1916; and Le Mystère de La Pérouse, which tells the story of explorer Jean-François de La Pérouse and his ill-fated maritime expedition aboard the Boussole.

With so much to do and a huge and changing daily timetable of shows, a visit to Puy Du Fou requires some planning to get the most out of it. It isn't the kind of theme park you can just turn up at and go from attraction to attraction. It pays to do some research beforehand to decide which shows you want to see because it is impossible to do them all in a single day.

Luckily, Puy Du Fou has an excellent phone app to support visitors. Along with an interative map with GPS guidance to get people between shows and attractions (the park is huge, with a winding network of footpaths so this is pretty much essential), the app has a fantastic day planner feature: answer some questions about the kind of shows you like, tell it the things on your must-see list, and it will create a personalised timetable for your visit, which instantly adapts if you miss a show or decide you want to do something else instead. The app also hosts real-time English translations of the main shows for non-native French speakers, so remember to bring your headphones and a power bank!

Puy Du Fou is a truly incredible theme park, with mind-blowingly enormous productions the quality of which can hardly be bettered at most theme parks around the world - nor at many theatres! The storytelling is first-class albeit at times controversial, with some criticism levelled at the accuracy of certain historical depictions and strongly pro-Catholic narratives. Regardless, it is near impossible not to be awed at the scale of Puy Du Fou, its themed environments and the astonishing entertainment it provides.