Ride Review – Qin Dynasty Adventure
Located only at Fantawild Dreamland parks, Qin Dynasty Adventure uses ride technology inspired by Disney’s Indiana Jones attractions, emulating all terrain vehicles that pitch and tilt riders in an exaggerated fashion as they follow a linear track.
The basis of the ride is that guests are invited to take a look around the excavation of the Terracotta Army, in the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. While down there, mystical forces come into play, everything begins to come to life and the adventure turns into a perilous mission of escape from everything trying to kill you.
The end result is a very highly themed and impressive ride. It’s so densely packed and chaotic that even after riding several versions I couldn’t actually say for sure whether they are identical copies of each other or not. The movements from the vehicles can be very vicious at times, banking the wrong way into corners as they accelerate and, when bad things are happening, often trying to bounce you out of your position.
On at least one edition we experienced a very liberal seatbelt policy from the ride staff, in that they specifically said ‘oh don’t bother wearing that’ and with no one else on board, while sliding in and out of my seat, the subsequent experience was exceedingly thrilling, if not downright dangerous.
The atmosphere they’ve created is what really sells Qin Dynasty Adventure for me though, there’s just something about the adventure and exploration of the tombs they capture so wonderfully in the theming. This attraction actually set me up for disappointment when visiting the actual heritage site outside Xi’an – I expected to be stumbling through dark and narrow tombs, not standing in an aircraft hangar.
Overall this is a proper quality dark ride that, like Devil’s Peak, seems to be the only attempt Fantawild have had at this specific technology so far. I really hope they try another because they can clearly do some fantastic things with it.
Here’s a handy list of where to go instead of the real Terracotta Army.