China 09/23 – Happy Valley Beijing
The following day commenced with a revisit to Happy Valley, one of the more notorious chains in the country. To their credit, they’ve really stepped their game up on the website and transparency of attraction availability – you can check days in advance whether things will be open and even the timings which are usually all over the place.
Something that hasn’t improved is the fact they charge you more money for a ‘peak day’, which just goes hand in hand with you getting a far worse experience because they’re stupidly busy and can’t run a ride to save their lives.
This is what we got anyway.
Day 3 – Happy Valley Beijing
Once again Passports were used as our tickets, while other locals kept trying to cut up the overly faffy transaction. Is this really necessary.
It was hideously busy, clearly Grey Hulk isn’t drawing the masses away yet. Even with arriving before the opening of the first ‘star attraction’, they had already decided to open the queue for Extreme Rusher ahead of schedule, immediately reporting it as an hours wait. Great.
Sensing how this was going to go down, we instead headed for the first new cred, the #1 Family Inverted Coaster, which was due to open next. It’s the perfect coaster type for China as it can only accomodate a single train anyway and it still took around 40 minutes of duress after the queue opened to even get on the thing.
It’s fine, does what it says on the tin, best B&M of the trip so far.
Would the other be any better?
The main draw for me to return was of course the #2 Himalayan Eagle feat. Music. The area of the park in which it lives is rather unrecognisable from before, they’ve done well with that, putting it in a ‘Shangri-La’ style land that a few other Happy Valleys also have.
This was also on a staggered opening and was due to open in a couple of minutes. Again they opened the queue early and all in this one took about half an hour on the single operating train. I opted for the magic Mako seat once more as it seems to be serving me rather well recently.
Soon it was chugging up the lift, on-board music soaring rather nicely, much more tasteful than the Transformers equivalent. It’s far from the biggest of these and it spends the first portion of the layout over other stuff rather than diving to the ground, so the first drop is fairly easy-going.
One of the quirks on this one is that most of the camelbacks came out as banked hills instead. While a welcomingly different sensation is produced out of these, they don’t quite carry the same punch as when the traditional equivalent is done just right, so it may not hit the spot for the B&M hyper enthusiasts.
The turnaround was pretty intense for one of these and it has some other pleasingly whippy and dynamic moments to it, something you definitely wouldn’t get on the stadium seating models.
Somewhere in the middle is the lake section with signature splashdown. They’ve ruined the spectator view a bit with a horrible plexi glass screen in the way, but onboard it looks pretty good. Doesn’t tug as much as I would have expected and with good reason, as the layout actually continues on a fair bit after this as well. It kept on going and going.
Thought it was pretty great overall, interesting use of the space and well paced. Smooth, thrilling, fun, everything you want from a B&M and above average in the world of hypers for me. Would have loved another go, but the queue was ruined from this point onwards.
I feel like this is becoming the signature shot of this park.
I feel like Happy World wasn’t here on my last visit, though it somehow manages to feel rather old. No idea why I would have skipped it.
As an OCT attempt at a Small World type attraction, it’s the only indoor boat ride in the country don’t you know(?).
Rather than having its own score, there’s a couple of Chinese nursery rhymes on loop and it goes on a long time. There’s tons of scenes.
Rather than the traditional approach of just visiting different countries around the world, it tries to weave in different events and festivals that are associated with the locations. Sometimes this comes out well, other times not so much.
S’alright.
Construction, get excited.
Within a big kiddie indoor section lies Flying Over the Aegean Sea, the Flying Theatre of the park, a must for all Chinese parks. Somehow the guests haven’t cottoned on to this one yet, usually they’re stupidly popular but tucked away at the back it had the shortest queue of the day, of one cycle, so still pretty long.
This sign is a waste, there was plenty of hubbub.
Film itself is a bit different, as it suggests. Rather than just sightseeing it was somewhat historical. Trojan horse, Colossus of Rhodes, a few battles. Fits in with the surrounding theming of the park outside, so that’s well thought out at least. S’alright.
With everything new that I wanted ticked off and not really wanting to queue for them again, I couldn’t leave without refreshing my memory on the beast that is Extreme Rusher.
Now down to just 50 mins on the door, which was pretty accurate actually – they’re good at predicting how slow they are, I got to make full use of the quite commonly seen seated queuelines on these types of attractions. At over 6 minutes a despatch, which was one of the best of the trip, you need it.
Eventually parked myself in the back, ready to feel the full force. These launches still get me a little nervous. I often forget how snappy they are and it’s been a good while now. It garners a great reaction every time from the spectators in the queue and I respect that.
Bam, before you know it you’re 200ft up in the air and pointing in the other direction. I love the shaping into the top hat, it’s very unassuming for 80Mph and you a get a good traditional straight first drop out the back of it, slightly marred by trim.
It dives underground out of it, making it even huger before kinda faffing around that big sideways turnaround thing. The primary sensation here is of an S&S coaster being slightly less refined than your other big names. Yes that still includes B&M. But it has a charm to it.
The second half brings back the Gs with some tighter turns, a late game airtime laden steep drop and that signature under-banked double s-bend hill thing, I don’t even know what to call it. Insane airtime and laterals together, like it was built wrong, but great, before powering into the brakes.
Yeah it’s still an Extreme Rush. Like a bad boy of the coaster scene and I love it. A deserved ex-top 25, now floating around somewhere above 50, probably.
And that was the park. 5 attractions in 5 hours I think, but two of them most countries would kill for, so a reasonably fair trade.
It’s one of the troubles with this China malarky, you’re supposedly much more likely to find everything open on a weekend, but at the (inflated) price of barely being able to do anything with it because it’s so busy. As Happy Valley have stepped their game up though, I’d check that website and avoid weekends at all costs, provided any weekday has what you want posted as open.
I had hoped to be in and out in about 2-3, with plans to visit a non-cred park that was once a prototype testing ground for OCT dark rides, on the opposite side of the city. Beijing being stupidly big as it is however, and even the roads were screwed so I couldn’t just Didi my way out of the problem, it was getting on for a 6 hour round trip, who knows if it would have been horribly busy too, and there was a train to catch that night. Sacked it off and took it easy.