China 09/17 – Beijing

Day 1 – Great Wall

Suppose it would be rude not to pay this thing a visit. Getting there under your own steam is surprisingly easy, even though all the tour websites would have you believe it’s impossible to do and you should pay £200 a head for a personal driver.

How do we get up the top? By cred of course.

This unusual contraption runs a long chain of alpine coaster cars up to the top, at which you get off and do your thing. The other half comes later.

It’s only about 8am at this stage and I could already feel myself burning alive. Turns out it was going to be 1000 degrees for most of this trip. Views were nice though. Making this is an incomprehensible feat.

For the second half of the ride you get back on the long chain of cars and go racing back down the mountain at intense speeds, with a staff member barely controlling the brakes at the very front.
All that green sheltering really messes with your eyes.

On to more important things.

Beijing Spitingshan Amusement Park

This place has become a graveyard of rides. Most of what I expected wasn’t even there. It was one of the busiest parks of the trip for guest numbers, so not sure what the deal is.

One of those parks you’ll probably see an online news artical about Disney causing a fuss over copyright.
All I know is they play a lot of Roller Coaster Tycoon – maps cost 20p in this park.

Started out with a quality mine train. They should be proud of this one, look at that overgrowth.

Highlight: It actually still exists.
Lowlight: Huge deadly hornet creatures tried to stop me getting on it.

This locally built looping coaster was fine. Everyone else in the train was doing a weird uncomfortable bowing of their head stance, probably thinking ‘I cant handle this ride’ while I’m just thinking ‘good little sit down’.
That baby is blatantly thinking ‘one day’.

Highlight: It actually still exists.
Lowlight: The plague of offensively elaborate seatbelts on rides returns to my life.

The SLC still stands but was broken. Disappointed, the fact that it’s a Chinese prototype makes me want it so much more. That and the sign says it’s world class.

We then found what I had labelled on my paperwork as ‘rabbit with a gun shooting dark ride‘. Same ride system as the Everland one? That probably doesn’t help anyone. I still don’t know the name.
Was actually not too bad for this park, had a bit of length to it and was reasonable fun. I got the highest score in Asia as always.

The theme was space.

That was the park. Everything else was apparently missing in action.
For a laugh we asked someone in the ticket booth directly underneath where a spinning coaster used to stand where said ride had gone. In typical fashion they acted like they knew what they were talking about and said it was the other side of the looper. It wasn’t.
Half the supports still remain above their head.

That was all rather uneventful, so we went to queue with 1000 people sweating profusely to get through security gates and see this thing.

Pretty much this x10. Started out impressive, but got rather repetetive.

Quaint. Fortunately you can’t tell the fact that Taron queueline levels of chainsmoking was going on directly behind me.
Stupid tourist things.

Seriously, bring on the good stuff.

Day 2