Ride Review – Dragon King’s Tale
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Also known as Rumble Under the Sea, this dark ride often features at either Fantawild Dreamland or Oriental Heritage parks. The system uses huge 30+ seater vehicles that appear to be boats but actually run on wheels. These traverse at a gentler pace, limited to forwards and backwards movement, allowing plenty of time to observe the 3D screen based storyline.
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The story involves Ne Zha, a playful protection God who could quite easily be mistaken for a young girl and his accidental feud with the Dragon King of the East Sea. Riders join him on a quest to confront this dragon, crossing a few character obstacles along the way and righting some supposed wrongs in the process.
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The queue contains a preshow that outlines the current flood issue to be overcome, before inviting guests to pass through a large tunnel around which water jets are rather coolly circulating. Sadly I have only seen this show and effect in action on one occasion among several locations.
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Once aboard, it’s an entertaining sequence of events. Screens span entire walls, there are fire effects (always a plus) in places and there’s usually several things going on at once in the surroundings.
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Ne Zha has a couple of weapons and gimmicks up his sleeve including a big ring, magic shoes and a stick. By the time you reach the boss fight, rotating in a circular room while a couple of dragons tear the place apart, he ends up with 3 heads. That’ll do it.
As you pull back into the station there’s a cool little projection as the riders are thanked for their participation (we didn’t really do anything) and turns into a zen painting.
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Dragon King’s Tale is a solid attraction that compliments any Fantawild lineup nicely. It’s not a gamechanger by any means but I don’t believe the world has anywhere enough of these simpler storytelling dark ride attractions and this example is certainly a refreshing attempt, particularly from a Western perspective.
Here’s a handy list of where you can find Ne Zha in action.