China 01/24 – Wushang Dream Park
Another day, another city. The train next morning took us over to Wuhan where I had some unfinished business.
When I said I had ridden every woodie in China, I later realised that that’s not technically true. I’m still missing one side of the duelling one at the Happy Valley here.
But, alas, though I’d been following their website religiously for about a month, upon arrival at the hotel for the day, one quick phonecall was enough to confirm that no rollercoasters would be running in the cold weather. So the park was a write off.
Chinese Formule X had mysteriously changed from operating to ‘temporarily unavailable’ overnight, OCT Thrust has remained closed since the Bullet Coaster incident (and is now painted exactly like Bullet Coaster, which was rather trippy to see out the window of a car, when I rode it in red).
No wood.
Oh well, backup plan. RCDB had a listing elsewhere in the city with no pictures. All the information we had to go on was a mall, and a suspended, spinning Jinma with multiple launches and dark ride sections. I’m in.
Day 4 – Wushang Dream Park
So here we are, in uncharted territory. The park is called Wushang Dream Park and occupies 3 floors in the corner of the Wushang Dream Mall. It’s a brand, there’s a few of these malls now in what they call ‘second tier’ cities in China. More on that later.
The park looks quite good, in places, and was rather more significant than I had perhaps expected from ‘rollercoaster in a mall’. Some corners were a little hollow, as they often are with these indoor spaces. It’s hard to fill every nook without a bit of landscaping, beyond painting some walls.
I see cred. The entrance to #1 Reversed City was a pain to find though. In the usual ‘build it and they will come’ fashion it had a large queueline that was entirely unused and instead you headed straight up some nondescript stairs and into the station.
Exercises! They’re back! Though in video form only, didn’t get the joys of having it live.
I thought this was a family coaster though, is it gonna get intense?
Maybe. It has an interesting ride system. The original inspiration was surely the Mack inverted powered things. It pulls forward out of the station and you rotate towards some projections on a wall. The park mascot witch lady says she can see into your soul or something and then invites you to be whisked away into a world which she created.
Key difference – this ain’t powered. You pull forward onto the first launch track within a tunnel and the cars lock back into a forwards position for the coaster portion. A countdown begins. A decent burst of acceleration. An awful upwards transition into the layout.
These on the left. Some swooping follows and it gets moderately intense in places as the speed builds and the banking becomes wilder. The rest of it rides pretty well, with a slightly off edge to it that makes it a little more out of control.
It winds up screaming into some brakes below the station, seemingly unplanned as this is the most significant of the ‘dark ride sections’ and you basically miss the first third at least. This world she created is rather pretty, with trees and whales and such. You rotate once more on the corner to watch some screens. Ok, seen enough? Time for you to go home.
Another loud clunk, another launch. Another rough exit. It’s a shame it’s hard to notice the sideways (reversed?) city from onboard and you do some lesser swooping this time back to the station where some final projections greet your return.
S’alright. You know me, I like a bit of quirk.
Elsewhere in the park there were more discoveries to be made. They appeared to be claiming that they had a flying theatre. Everyone has a flying theatre.
They don’t, it was another Wild Jinma simulator. Yay.
I couldn’t figure out what Decisive Bottle Centre was either, but it looked intriguing.
This. Rising and rotating on a small tower and shooting some screens. No helmets required – I couldn’t help but remember that stupid thing at HB World. This was much more engaging at least.
This may well be the worst 3D cinema I’ve done. It was decked out pretty nice but the film was so poor.
It had 3 ‘screens’ with pillars in between, but the action was clearly just made for a single screen, so characters would sit obscured half the time.
The sound was barely audible in many sections, to the point that I laughed out loud.
The media itself was just knock-off central. I spent the time counting out how many franchises I could see as inspiration, most memorably the fat dragons from How to Train your Dragon and the crabs from Fantawild’s Conch Bay.
Rerode the coaster cos it was kinda cool, and with that it was time to go to the next stop with a dream.
The original dream for the next day was to day trip another OCT property from Wuhan, but the weather hadn’t changed and I assumed the operating policies of the park chain hadn’t either.
Who will satiate my needs in such a climate I wondered… It’s got to be Fantawild hasn’t it.
A mere 3 hours away by high speed train was the newest of the Oriental Heritage parks, never originally on the game plan but I like a cheeky bonus. A train was booked, or rather two trains. It involved a change, and I’d never done that before. Slightly worryingly, while going through the booking process, other trains were mysteriously vanishing from the app. I thought nothing of it.
Day 5 – Oh
Wuhan station looks pretty cool. You usually never see the trains from the building until you’re batched onto the platform a couple minutes before they arrive.
The first couple of hours on board passed as uneventfully as any other, but there was a smattering of snow-covered landscapes to see in the more mountainous regions. Pretty.
On approach to the next stop, a member of train staff approached and had on their tablet that we were changing trains. Just to let us know, we’ll be arriving about 20 minutes late. This never happens. Well once, it’s happened to me once.
Not to worry though, our connecting train is delayed too! Thanks for the heads up.
It was now a nervous wait as we pulled in. Perfectly aligned with the stairs to run up, through the barriers, and over to the check in for the other train.
Missed it by seconds. I saw the screen go from green boarding to red closed as we approached and at that point they just won’t let you through the ticket barriers, even though the train is still down there, and everything was delayed anyway so they’re not protecting their precious timetable.
Damn.
I’ve always been such a fan of the system, but nothing is sacred any more. I guess like the usually unanimously praised Japan when it goes wrong, it goes wrong. They wouldn’t refund the second leg of the journey even though it’s the fault of the delay that we missed the train. The next alternative was a good 3 hours away and would result in a poor and rushed park visit at best, plus the risk of not even making it back through further mishaps.
Well, guess we’re in Nanchang for the day then. At least I know what they have.
Booked a Didi to the Sunac mall because I knew at least we could have some dark rides for the day. You can still see the extent of snow on the ground. Hardly life-altering.
7 years ago I visited the Sunac, then Wanda, park here and commented that it was dumb for them to have a separate ‘movie park’ next door, with dark rides in. Just put them in the main park to flesh out the day there.
Well this place is gone. You wanna ride some go-karts? Teenagers kept asking us that while I’m trying and failing to have a little abandoned theme park moment of my own. They didn’t understand the concept of what was here before and why someone would show interest in that because, well, go-karts.
Further inside it’s still decked out the same. This is the entrance to the flying theatre. The original ticket desks were in complete darkness, covered with dust and with leaflets strewn everywhere. They had a shooting dark ride called Wedding Rescue too. Not any more.
Outside I managed to lay eyes on a glimpse of my favourite wooden coaster on the planet.
The park was closed for the weather. Looks nice though.
I’m not getting on anything today am I.
Despair set in as we settled on a strawberry tart from KFC and I began some research. Wushang dream mall eh? Turns out there’s one in Nanchang too. Much like Sunac himself, websites are useless or non-existent but some news article also contained the words ‘dream park’ along with another false claim of ‘world’s biggest’. Maybe we’ll discover something special.
Took a Didi to another mall then. Excitement built as the literal words ‘amusement park’ were on a sign next to an escalator, saying go to floor 3. It weren’t no amusement park. Just some elaborately themed ball pit for kids.
Damn.
Had a pizza and watched this roundabout being negotiated poorly, then called it a day.