China 01/24 – China Dinosaurs Park
It’s been bugging me for a while now that the most anticipated coaster of last trip was out of action for no good reason, in typical Chinese fashion. To be honest I’m running pretty thin on the ground these days when it comes to coasters left on the planet that have the potential to be world beaters and it’s no real exaggeration to say that Beyond the Cloud is the ‘operating’ ride I want more than any other, as of right now.
As such we took a train straight back to Suzhou the following morning. Checked in. Phoned the park. Is it running?
Of course not.
Neither of their major coasters were. On a weekend. On a crisp, dry morning. While they’ve got a seasonal festival running. Again.
Why? ‘Maintenance’
I hate this city.
Wanting to achieve at least something for the day, I had to turn my attention to a couple of towns over for some backup plans. Changzhou is less than an hour away and home to Dinoconda park, who have changed their spinner since I last visited and added some sort of dark ride thing that I was intrigued by, so I guess that will have to do.
Jumped on another train and a short Didi ride later found myself in familiar territory.
Day 2 – China Dinosaurs Park
This again. There was nothing in the way of signage to say what was going on inside and hadn’t bothered phoning because they lied to me on the door 7 years ago.
Didn’t take long however to find that both outdoor coasters were closed for ‘weather’, so no +1 for me today.
Too cold apparently. It was 9°C. I rode Dinoconda in about 4°C, 7 years ago, so even more wussing out it seems.
Meh.
The other thing I came for was alive and kicking at least. Dino Tour is an immersive tunnel job, but to call it that is a disservice really. It’s huge, elaborate and rather impressive all up until the point that it becomes an immersive tunnel, at which point it becomes pretty trash. Sound familiar?
The queue goes on for some time, it’s a dinosaur resarch base, DNA technology, brought them back to life for people to view. Ok cool.
You board your all-terrain vehicle to discover at least one of the USPs here – it’s an actor led experience of sorts in that you get a live staff member on board as a tour guide.
Lots of mist and animatronics follow before, inevitably, things start to go wrong. Signs of escape, some TVs onboard the vehicles have the scientist and a woman with a gun butting in on the conversation and letting you know that things are about to go down.
The best part of the whole experience is a waterside scene just before you enter the cave, which involves geysers and pyros as an escapee dino moves through the water and damages some hazardous materials of some description.
Once inside the cave, after a few pretty crystals, the momentum comes grinding to a halt. It’s a little odd that the actor just has to stop talking at this point as you crawl onto the motion base in the dark and silence beyond a bit of whirring, and wait for the screens to fire up and the film to start. Completely detaches it from the rest of the experience.
Some big dino gets out, some transformers-style emergency response robot from the base has a tussle with it and saves you from falling off a cliff. Then you drive out of the cave and the actor welcomes you back to base. Hooray.
Elsewhere in the park is the massive dinosaur museum building, I spent a while inside trying to track down an old interactive theatre from before, in which you rode dinosaurs and shot dinosaurs with medicine. Seems its gone, likely because there was a huge construction site sticking out the side of the building and beyond.
So, construction, get excited, I guess.
Rerode the indoor cred, Dinosaur Mountain, through relative despair. Don’t remember this guy.
It’s one of those relatively rare Zamperla motocoasters with a lift hill and not very good.
And that was that.