China 01/18 – Fantawild Resort Xiamen
The next stop of course is China.
Xiamen isn’t really on route to anything to have been part of one of my bigger trips here, but it was a necessary step in my quest to knock out everything ‘decent’ in 2 years worth of visa.
Started with another dirt cheap Scoot to Shenzhen (via Singapore again). They weren’t so hot this time, losing their gate by getting in the way of other airlines, being very late to take off and then somehow losing another hour on approach to the city in a straight line. Well I did say ‘you get what you pay for.’
First day was very familiar territory. It was raining. Phoned the relevant parks. All closed.
This isn’t my first time in Shenzhen so I just laughed and went Kpop shopping in Hong Kong instead.
Day 7 – Oriental Heritage Xiamen
It was a nervous 4 hour train ride due to the possibility of more weather spite, but we had committed. It turned out to be a beautiful day.
Fantawild adversity begins (though not quite at Zhengzhou levels) with a massive spiteful walk over a big rainbow bridge to get to another typically huge entrance plaza. I swear I took a picture, but can’t find any.
Exhausting.
The shape of this resort gives the parks a long, thin layout, so it felt like another half hour walk, greatly exaggerated by cred anxiety, to Jungle Trailblazer.
Very glad to have done it, but it was a bit of a let down. It certainly doesn’t keep up its pace like other Gravitys.
On paper it looked fantastic, but after a strong start it loses all momentum and was crawling by the end.
The weather might play a bigger part than how much it gets run in the day. I’ve never done any of these that weren’t total ghost town parks and walk on rides that hardly ever get dispatched, but it was about 20°C colder here, which might count for something.
That or they just plain messed up the maths on this one.
It’s done at least, only 1 more layout to complete the set.
Another Vekoma SFC clone. Also not running very well.
Oriental Heritage being its usual glamourous self.
Water park is getting an upgrade. If the entrance plaza is anything to go by, it’s actually the centrepiece of this resort.
Skip.
They’ve got a strong lineup of the usual Fantawild dark rides here, but hiding under different names. I know this one as Dragon King’s Tale rather than Rumble Under the Sea. The pre-show and spinning water tunnel were off here, but it’s a very good ride.
They love to copy paste and so I shall do the same.
‘Actual ride is a big boat taking you around various scenes.
Oh no, the city is flooded and the (supposedly meant to be a boy, but i’ll maintain it’s a girl) has to ask the Dragon King to fix things. Dragon King is a bit of a dick and refuses for a while, but after a bit of persuasion through few action sequences, including real FIRE, he sorts it in the end.‘
The Flaming Mountains also goes by Devil’s Peak/Better than Forbidden Journey.
‘It’s the Harry Potter arm system, but all slowed down a good 10x so there’s no ridiculous rushing through an incoherent amount of scenes, but it feels a lot more awkward in the movements.
It has more of an actual story, being about the Monkey King scaling a big mountain, fighting that golden dragon and a big ass lava bloke (part of Journey to the West).‘
Legend of Nuwa. Same name, still good.
‘Spiderman technology with another Chinese tale.
There’s a hole in the sky and you’re helping out some magic woman with the key to fix it, but big red bloke, big blue bloke and a couple of dragons are out to stop you.’
The staff in the park weren’t particularly nice compared to some other locations, particularly on the woodie. They clearly weren’t happy to have to deal with guests as there was literally no one else in the park (a standard day for them must just be sitting around on the phone for 7 hours) and they actively made it a bit of a hassle to do many rerides.
Due to some lazy resarch on my part (only knowing the coaster lineup), I had assumed that next door to this was an Adventure park, which I despise.
As we weren’t as enthralled as we might have hoped with this place, decided we might as well suffer the creds.
Yes, I was fully prepared to skip them. How unlike me.
On closer inspection…
It’s a Dreamland with the same coaster lineup as my last Adventure.
My last Dreamland had the same coaster lineup as this Oriental Heritage. Did you get that?
Fantawild Dreamland Xiamen
The front and back halves of the park felt very Adventure but they’ve padded out the middle with some good dark rides. It was another ghost town thankfully, as a 2 hour queue for a Skyloop would have ended the day, and operations were surprisingly decent.
Mount Tanggula was nothing more than hilarious. Very weird vibrations going on that brought new experience to such a well traversed mine train layout.
Ugh.
‘Fantawild so big, I’d like to hire a car.’ Yes, but outside the park.
Also ‘Quick, that Boomerang is about to do the inversion from the outside, call an engineer!’
Double Ugh.
I seem to be missing half my pictures from this day, or I’m just getting lazy.
Did another 3 dark rides in this park, all ones I’ve done previously and really enjoyed a lot:
Wizard Academy
‘We use the term academy loosely here. Yet another spiderman ride.
The wizard is evil and says you shouldn’t have come. He then proceeds to send many large mythical creatures to attack you, chucking in a few of his own spells as well.
Those are the lessons. You survive. You get a certificate from the academy. Well done.‘
Qin Dynasty Adventure
‘In my best film trailer voice: “Things take an unexpected turn when an archaelogical dig at the Terracotta army uncovers something more sinister.”
I started off liking the vehicles for this as they have quite a punchy acceleration between scenes and they bank the wrong way on corners to exaggerate things. Then it goes up hills and does fake juddery drops and I wish they just called Premier and made it a cred.’
Jinshan Temple Showdown
‘With the big ass boats and hugely impressive effect scene at the end.
The showdown in question is between a woman who can become a snake and a demon hunter who is rather irrational. Has a bit of a cliff hanger ending, which makes a change.‘
Then the park closed. Could have got a bit more in if I had considered doing this half in the first place, but I’m sure these rides will crop up again.
S’alright.
Day 2