China 04/18 – Happy Valley Chongqing
Apparently it had finally stopped raining back in Chongqing, so I guess there’s time for one more excessive day trip to get the major attraction schedule back under control.
Is this the right place?
Oh there it is.
Day 13 – Happy Valley Chongqing
The final park in the chain (achievement unlocked). Didn’t know what to expect from this one, other than it was very new.
For somewhere very new, it had a shocking amount of things closed according to a sign outside. Didn’t bother translating, too late now.
Got told the ferris wheel was closed while entering the turnstyles. That was a lie, it wasn’t.
The park entrance is on a big hill, so spent the first few minutes going down escalators watching the creds intently for any signs of life with the usual anxiety. I’d like to make the hill comparison to Liseberg, but it’ll probably end up with a more unfortunate one like Legoland Windsor. It is different for Happy Valley at least.
Ooh, that looks tasty.
The whole ride sits on top of another hill, with the queue area being at the bottom. At the final batch point, a trains worth of people gets let into a lift which takes you up to the station.
That was all rather fun and from what I could see at the top, this could be a mini Python and the GCI excitement that had faded the previous day was temporarily restored.
It’s really good, but to be honest it should have been fantastic, so I can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed again. They seem to have developed an obsession for large swooping drops which do absolutely nothing. I’m sure the terrain had a lot more to offer than just that.
There’s plenty of good sensations in there, some of the straight hill sections in particular, but again less of their surprise moments than I’ve become accustomed to.
That thing next then, doesn’t look far.
It’s actually miles away. The park layout is 2 huge s-bends around the water, another central hill and the entire length of this beast.
The one with the airtime(?) hill and the loop. Still not entirely sure how I feel about this one. Was it really good? Or was I just wrecked by this stage of the trip.
It felt pretty damn intense for a B&M wing coaster. Is that what I want out of one? Probably.
All hope of any relief from the vest restraint goes out the window from the bottom of the first dip so the following hill ain’t great. I’ve concluded that airtime only works on these out of a straight first drop, so you can’t have any positive force on your shoulders preceding it.
It’s then a very fluid sequence of inversions as it winds its way downhill, passing over the pathways as it goes. Beautifully integrated into the area.
The ride ends with the classic slow inline twist, but instead of just mild discomfort and not being able to breathe for a second, I was seeing stars on the brake run. What just happened?
Operations were pretty dire, with one half of the train being loaded at a time and then the standard practice of having to let previous riders sort their belongings and clear the station before even considering batching any new ones. The park was also filled with a ridiculous amount of school groups of varying ages on this day, and very little else, so I didn’t arrive at the ride at a very good time and though it may have quietened later on, it was such a ridiculous journey to go back again more than once or twice in a day.
Can’t be good for their necks.
There’s a Vekoma junior boomerang overlooking a quarry. Themed to planes and/or rainbows.
These rides are smooth, reasonably forceful and decent enough for a family cred. Good to see HV still trying some different product types for themselves at both ends of the scale.
Game Ride (what a name) was very enjoyable. Mouse of Chocolate style shooter but without getting a sore arm, as you can just press and hold the buttons with your thumbs for maximum firepower.
Also reminded me of Lotte World’s shooting ride, as you have to aim at dragons, just slightly less evil in this case. They’re making meals or interfering with the preparation of said meals by standing around and pelvic thrusting.
The sections between screens were of decent quality as well. I do hope they look after this attraction more than the Santa ones.
One more cred. It’s built into the hill, but it’s the same damn layout as always, so that was a disappointment.
Oh yes, they’re still making mine train clones. This Golden Horse exists alongside Vekoma in the park and they’ve adopted the same look of new style track from somewhere.
The queue was awful, filled with a million schoolkids, half of which were too small to actually ride but were getting as far as the station to find that out and then traipsing back past everyone in groups of at least 100. The ones that were big enough spent an entire half an hour trying to slowly nudge past us. +1.
Back to the impressive looking woodie for a bit then. Rode it with some Koreans. That improved it slightly.
Jumped on the closed Ferris wheel on the way out for some views.
Decent park then overall, one of the stronger Happy Valleys. No major issues and finally a park where everything was running.
It has a good enough lineup, but it’s an arse to get around for rerides, a much more prominent issue due to Chinese operations.
And with that, we’re gone from China. Not sure about the love any more.
Summary of a Chinese Visa
I’d like to think I made the most out of one visa by getting 3 major trips and 1 side trip knocked out over the 2 year period. Looks a little something like this:
01/17 | 09/17 | 01/18 | 04/18
Fun facts and scary statistics:
Total parks: 37
Total creds: 104
Total mine train clones: 11
Total woodies: 10
Total Fantawilds: 9
Total train distance: 11615 km/7259 Miles
Total train time: 64 hours 21 minutes
Spites:
January 2017 – 5/32 (15.6%)
September 2017 – 15/52 (28.8%)
January 2018 – 3/11 (27.3%)
April 2018 – 29/61 (47.5%)
So what have we learnt?
January is the best time to go apparently… and the more you do it, the worse it gets. That April figure is truly abysmal, but there were still some cracking rides on this trip. No regrets.