China 09/23 – Universal Studios Beijing
I still haven’t got the Universal set, because Hollywood is greedy, but keeping up with this one was a must. It’s in the middle of nowhere, really far out from Beijing proper, never underestimate the sheer scale of some of these cities as I often do, it’s ridiculous. We were staying in the same ‘corner’ and it was still a good hour’s drive past endless tower blocks that beg the question how are there that many people here and where do they all go?
Being in the middle of nowhere gives them a ton of room of course, it’s a pretty hefty resort that has quite a Universal Orlando vibe in terms of setup – entering up an escalator into a big circular security hub, before heading down a travelator into CityWalk.
After CityWalk is another massive walk through open space and no shade, past the classic globe of course and it’s a bit of a slog, I guess with room for expansion, or multiple gates even, in mind.
The entrance itself is a bit different, with the huge building parked over the top of it. Off to the side, just a single ticket desk was open as China really don’t seem to cater to walk-ups much any more. Almost everywhere you go, the person whose literal job it is to sell you a ticket always gets visibly annoyed that they have to lift a finger and leads with the question ‘why didn’t you use WeChat?’, gesturing at a QR code. Like the trains, everything here is ID based for some reason, we had to hand over our passports to be able to enter a theme park and watching them handle an international credit card like an ancient artifact is always a laugh/the most painful thing ever, depending on the mood.
Day 2 – Universal Studios Beijing
Once inside we marched up the street and took a look at their version of the central lake view. It’s missing a Veloci-woci or two, but otherwise rather presentable.
Headed straight into Dino land first, which unfortunately seems to be where everyone gravitates towards early on and ended up in a posted 40 minute queue for Jurassic World Adventure, my primary pull for the visit.
The queue begins in this big atrium, with alternating vertical screens and windows stretching up to the ceiling, it’s all quite the visual spectacle. Video packages vary quite a bit, over longer periods, and there are a number of posters and other details on the lower walls to help pass the time.
In this regard it’s better than the 2 minute loop of a Jurassic World rollercoaster. The queue itself moved the fastest I’ve likely ever seen in China, it’s so rare that you’re constantly on the go – a real people eater combined with some modicum of efficiency for a change.
Soon we were in this lab section with various stuff behind the glass. The science guy from the film says a few things on the subject as you pass by and into another circular room with a model of the high-tech, all-terrain vehicle as a centrepiece, below more screens showing off what type of ‘expedition’ we’re heading off on as tourists of the facility.
In the final room are some safety procedures, a handful of holiday posters and of course the actual vehicles prowling towards you in the station. They look pretty good on the whole, though the omni-wheel thing isn’t quite so sold on the real version.
It’s time to head into Jurassic Park of course. Some digital posters adorn a curved entrance tunnel before a vast screen with a nice ‘you’ve arrived in the land of the dinosaurs’ landscape. Almost immediately things go wrong as you round a corner into some jungle, sirens go off and a warning announcement is played. Some physical signage and fencing is lit and has been visibly mangled by some form of a creature, I wonder what.
After a hesitant pause, the pace is picked up and you head past this and immediately encounter Indominous Rex with his big teeth. You stop in front of him, he roars a bit (looking rather impressive I might add), but the most interesting part for me here is the interaction between animatronic and vehicle. He swings his head round to headbutt the car and the motion base jerks and responds in a convincing fashion. It seems obvious, but that sets this ride apart from all the other rivals for now, that usually race past the physical stuff and only react to things on-screenery.
After a big final roar and getting spit on, we race away into the darkness. One minor downside to this attraction being a lot more physical is that there are just a lot of extended moments of very dark sections where the vehicle is bouncing about and seemingly not quite knowing what to do with itself. This should be a good tension builder but it played out a little awkwardly to me, particularly on rerides. A herbivorous dinosaur is encountered next, swinging his big club tail about and delivering another moment of that same vehicle interaction as we take a blow and reel off into the darkness once more.
The first outright wow moment comes when they’ve got you circling this central pillar, backwards, as the fully fledged Mr. big teeth is actively ‘chasing’ you down for several awe-inspiring seconds. It’s extremely convincing and pretty damn spectacular, if you crane your neck back as you leave the scene you might catch a quick glimpse of how it’s done, but there’s really no need to know. It works.
You escape from that somehow and whirl past a skidding jeep before meeting up with an old mate velociraptor coming out of a truck. A screen past that shows us that Chris Pratt is on the case, jumping on his motorbike and beckoning us to follow to safety.
Pace promptly picked up again, the second ‘wow’ moment comes as you round a corner into civilisation and are met with not one, but two huge Mr. scary dinos. Old mate T-rex is on our side, coming out of a classic looking JP archway and facing off against Mr. big teeth, but you get caught up in the middle of them and have an incredibly close encounter with some mightly spectacular looking animatronics.
You escape from this and head inside some buildings with popcorn, I’m guessing this is like the ‘resort’ part of the tourism, where you eventually bear witness to the culmination of the showdown on the last big screen, set by a wrecked cafe with a bunch of broken chairs all stacked up in front of you. Old mate Rex headbutts Mr. scary dino and as you depart the scene, a big physical head flops down dead beside you. You win, cue theme.
Well God damn, that was all pretty special. As always it helped that I knew nothing about the attraction heading into it and all of those wow moments were genuinely enhanced by shock and surprise and ‘they’re really doing these things with dark rides now?’ I absolutely loved the thing and though it doesn’t have the most perfect of flows, some of the tricks it has up its sleeve are an absolute game changer that, like Mission Ferrari, I can’t wait to see these be put to good use in other ways in the future.
They have rollercoasters here too, you know? Well, kinda. The Universally panned as a complete waste of steel without ever riding it #1 Jurassic Flyers lives across the way. The queueline is pretty neat again, a bit more flat and simplistic, but full of tons of tiny little details. It’s various rooms of a research lab, with incubators and eggs and the like, but also the canteen, people’s desks with notes scrawled all over them. Timetables, whiteboards with childish drawings, leaflets for events, it all feels very real and lived in, which is nice to see.
Yes, yes, on board it’s a shame that a ride in Jurassic Park land called Jurassic Flyers doesn’t fly you around a bunch of dinosaurs. There is one, if you really look hard for it, so that’s a bonus. What it did allow for is more of an opportunity to experience the forces on one of these Mack Inverted Powered things. And it’s not bad. The whole controlled spinning aspect gives it an extra dimension and the ride system here noticeably plays around a lot more with bursts of acceleration through corners to give you a bit of a whip, while having an entertaining on-board soundtrack and above average visuals of rocks and waterfalls as standard anyway. It’s fine, still a crowd pleaser. And a cred.
Something I’d pan as a complete waste of steel in fact is the Hulk clone around the corner. They’ve set this one up like Rip Rockit with the confusing extra pre-queue to get to some lockers before actually joining a queue that could have been accessed a lot easier, should you not need them. Shortly after this is the full metal-detector setup and frisk down, just to get you in the movie mood. In fact, the whole of this kerfuffle was making the actual ride queue a walk-on. The capacity of a B&M far outweighs the ability of the Chinese to understand their own rules and thus I got straight into the train, already sunglasses on, not caring.
Oh it’s bad.
As an off-ride visual piece, that launch on #2 Decepticoaster sure does look spectacular. Inside it looks cheap and nasty with a few sunbleached screens rotating a few cogs in the mouth of that robot bloke. As ever, the pop up into the first inversion is the absolute highlight of the entire experience, the rest is an endurance. It was riding very poorly, much like the 25-year-old piece of engineering that it was.
I amused myself as I zoned it all out and had some time to think that this moment, right now, is exactly what I imagine most people think my hobby and my enjoyment of rollercoasters is like. Rattling around boring corners and pointless inversions, while some obnixous guitar solo plays on the on-board speakers, devil horns and tongue out, adrenaline junkie, yeahhhhhh!
No.
Across the way is the much better Transformers dark ride.
No thanks.
I got a little excited in the early stages of the queue because they’ve ported out the storyline somewhat into making us the ‘Beijing division’ of N.E.S.T. This is sci-fi-explained away by a magic bridge however that takes us from Beijing to ‘murica where we can join Evac on his quest to protect the allspark. So, same ride then.
That’s fine, it’s good, my preferred of the two Universal 4Ds because it’s more violent and feels less dated. All the wording was in Mandarin of course, though I was able to fill in most of the gaps myself. I wonder how well the cheesy one-liners like ‘just dropping in’ translate.
I also wondered how pun-named eateries like this translate and, after investigation, they don’t.
I got more than a little excited as we headed into the next area. I was completely blind on Panda land, to the point of not even knowing what the attractions were.
It’s got a huge, entirely enclosed setting with a lovely vibe much like the Motiongate equivalent, again there’s something magical about these indoor theme parks when they get the mood just right.
The star attraction is a big boat dark ride, Journey of the Dragon Warrior with a ridiculously long but partially very nicely decorated queueline and station.
The walk just kept on going until finding that this was also walk-on and seemingly underappreciated in the park lineup.
On the whole it’s pretty good. Never seen the films, but the ride paints them as less obnoxious than I imagine anything containing both Jack Black and that Kung Fu Fighting song. Some introductory animatronics, a trip through a town, some building of jeopardy, probably too many screens in the middle third for people’s liking, but how else are you going to portray extended sequences of magical and mystical kung fu fight scenes between crocodiles and tigers?
My biggest gripe seems to be becoming a common one on these water rides in that both the lift hill, pre-drop and drop section are vastly under decorated compared to the rest of the ride. The drop maybe I get, if you’re moving fast through it and might not see it all, but you’re still going to see something and it’s meant to be a climactic moment of the ride experience so at least make it look good. Take a leaf out of Valhalla 1.0’s book. Lifts and pre-drops I don’t get at all, if anything they’re slower than usual and that gives you forever to stare at a painfully obvious black wall with some cheap-looking hand prints and question marks on it.
It earned multiple goes anyway for being thoroughly enjoyable and a walk-on. Should have a POV for you at some point.
Hung around in the pleasantness of the area for a while, appreciating some scenery and dodging some character meet and greets. Suddenly things got unpleasant as a huge mass of a crowd came pouring in from the far end. I assume WaterWorld has just ended.
We headed against the flow and past the indeed just finished WaterWorld arena, didn’t care enough to give that one another go having seen it a few times with a soundtrack I can follow.
Beyond that was the familiar stylings of Potter land, though I was intrigued to see the lack of effort they put into disguising the show building on this one. Hogwarts castle with a big blue box sticking out the side of it doesn’t quite seal the deal on the immersion front.
I had imagined #3 Flight of the Hippogriff would be hell on earth to queue for at this point, but only took 10 mins on two trains. Impressive.
I had imagined the lockers for Forbidden Journey would be hell on earth to deal with at this point, and they were, as they always are. Besides that I always forget how fantastic the actual queue is for this thing, with several legit scenes from the actual story that you just sort of get shunted past without any fanfare. Dawn French dubbed in Chinese was particularly striking.
Thankfully they didn’t go 4D on this version and I find myself appreciating it more with each re-ride. I’ve no idea why it felt so fast and frantic the first time, because these things are at their best when they ponder over moments, build a little suspense, keep the atmospherics well peaked. Some of the setpieces look downright fantastic and it was all ship-shape compared to a few bits that were falling apart most recently in the Florida edition.
It’s still the storyline that is most jarring to me, they had a million ideas and key points from the films that needed cramming into such a short space of time, most jarringly that a Quidditch match is taking place concurrently with the dragon event from the Triwizard Tournament, both feat. Harry. It plays like a compilation, a highlight reel, and sadly I know too much to see past that.
Something I know less about is Minions, thankfully. Their land was last up on the clockwise circuit. The heat was getting a little much at this point (a holiday that was hot? never…) and I was overly pleased to learn that the final cred of the park is located indoors.
#4 Loop dee Doop dee was far less annoying as an attraction than you would otherwise imagine. Another 10 minute wait for a functional family coaster. Job done.
Minion Mayhem itself was indicating an unsavoury queue time that I couldn’t be bothered with to, once again, re-experience something quite average in a different tongue.
Moving on from minions and back into the central filmy looking bit, I had forgotten they have Lights, Camera, Action! here. I love the Singapore edition of this special effects show and, with an empty queue, of course had to check it out.
Once again I got more than a little excited that the pre-show was entirely different and vastly, vastly superior. Instead of ‘Hi, I’m Steven Spielberg, roll clips of special effects in Universal films’, you get a much more lovingly constructed sequence of both Spielberg and fellow director Zhang Yimou wandering around a specially constructed sound stage, weaving into, interacting with, and out of bespoke scenes that show off all sorts of clever tricks. They lead the dialogue back and forth in both English and Chinese, with subtitles and it’s just really well done.
And then the exact same special effect scene happens for the actual show. Except it doesn’t, it was weaker, weird things happened like a girder visibly slowing down before it finally hit the water and anything that would have otherwise have encroached on the audience comfort was noticeably toned down. Visually still a masterpiece, but they’re too weak and don’t want their ass kicked too much sadly.
One more thing I wanted to try was their How To Train Your Dragon stage show, set in a decent looking Chinese Theatre style building. There was time to kill until then, so spent ages lapping Jurassic World Adventure and filming it for the database as it was the clear standout of the park and had managed to shake it’s big early queue down to a range from walk-on to 10 mins.
Amongst all the fun, the time soon came to be seated at the back of the theatre and be transported to the land of Berk for the show ‘Untrainable‘. Now this is a franchise I can get excited about.
God damn they’ve got good with these animatronics, as if being chased by dinosaurs wasn’t enough for one day, this was absolutely stunning.
It’s a simple plot, easy to follow without English, and primarily driven by a few musical numbers – they had a lead male and female vocalist up in the balconies to the sides and an ensemble cast doing the dancing, acting etc. ‘Welcome to Berk, we work together with our dragons, HOOGH.’
A female equivalent of Cloudjumper comes to town and is the namesake ‘untrainable’ dragon, as they have trouble calming her down, some fires are set and they have to lock her up for a bit.
Our heroes Hiccup and Toothless appear – they’ve got this actually flying and really detailed animatronic for him to fly on and it’s all magical and wonderful. But he can’t tame the dragon either!
Sadness, despair, I thought I could train them all. Astrid (who is more of the lead role in the whole thing) consoles him and reminds him of a time they tamed a big scary water dragon. A really welldone flash back to this takes place, with a stunt based fight scene of other vikings trying and failing to get a grip of the situation. Hiccup saves the day here and through memory of this is able to save the day again in the present.
Turns out it was just a mother looking for its egg. Aww.
Dragons, flying, happy thoughts. If you’re a fan of the films then more power to you. This was just lovely.
And that’s the park, couldn’t top the last two things with anything really. Obviously there’s a huge hole in the lineup for me in that they’re begging for an ass-kicking coaster (or two) to keep up that staying power. It’s currently by far the weakest of any Universal park in that regard. I’d rather have the wrong Mummy, or even Rip Rockit, than their current shambles of a headline coaster. Veloci, Hagrid, Flying Dino, Dream, Battlestar and the right Mummy also exist, and they’ve got some really tough competition in terms of creds just a few miles away from here. Could have even revived Duelling Dragons here, the Chinese obviously love that concept. Unique attractions are an option too, you know.
The dark ride is up there with their best though, so worth it for that alone.
We headed back into the city for some food we fancied that just so happened to be walking distance from spitey old Sun Park. It was likely too late in the day anyway, but bonus creds?
No, nothing doing, this particular entrance was completely blocked by construction site for what appears to be a rebrand and refresh of the park itself (Pop Land now?), or perhaps a spin-off, and I couldn’t be arsed to walk around another way to get a better measure of what was going on. It’s not like there’s a database I can support on these matters.
The food spited too, nothing works any more, but here’s a ‘Chinese knock-off’ rollercoaster restaurant for you.