China 04/24 – Sun Tribe

The next night was spent in Jinan, a city I’ve frequented on numerous occasions. They’ve got some good parks to be fair, but as is the nature of the beast I had to head out and find something new.

A brief hop away by train is the city of Tai’an, most famous for being next to Taishan, one of the sacred mountains of China. Less famous for being home to this place.

Day 7 – Sun Tribe

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This was another example of me being slightly obsessed with finding out about dark rides in what could be a very hit or miss park. All part of the adventure.

A slight crowd had gathered around the entrance for opening, perhaps concerningly – I had optimistic plans for how the day would pan out. Ticket office was nice, got the usual spiel about use this QR code and put me out of a job – it’s cheaper than I can sell it to you too! QR code didn’t work, but they offered to just do the discounted rate on their own phone and take the cash, so it was a win. Why can’t more places/people offer this.

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What the park lacks in coaster lineup is made up for by impressive visuals at the very least. You cross some water leading up to this entrance before heading into a tunnel straddled by some scary dudes, then down an escalator into the centre of the earth or back in time or something.

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Bringing you out into the land of the tribe.

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Some cultural ceremony was going on here, but as is the modern culture, everyone was looking at their phones instead.

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The main reason I had come here was this swinging ship, or snail, or perhaps something else.

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Walked past some more cultural stuff on the way to the more significant rides.

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It was quite the walk. Gotta beat those crowds though.

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There was no beating the crowds however, arrival at the first attraction, the wrong Legend of Nuwa, demonstrated that the entire park was timeslotted to some degree. This meant queuing with the masses, being inconvenienced at every turn because times overlapped with other times and darting around to get everything done blah etc. Plus it wasn’t until like an hour after park opening that this first thing on the to do list was going to open anyway. So I took a wander to get the lay of the land at least.

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Big boy.

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Water ride, closed, what a pity, never mind.

After all that we still parked ourselves at the very front of the queue that gradually built up in front of the wrong Legend of Nuwa. With a couple of minutes to go we were let into the actual queue. Then a couple more minutes out of the queue, through an archway and into the ride building.

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Where we were greeted with this. What is this?

No one was at the door with the height checker and it was closed and so I assumed another batch point, taking the train station seat closest to it. The masses were pouring in behind us however and, completely obliviously, barged past, opened the door and started walking up towards the ride.
Fine…

Joined the masses up the obligatory ramps that indicate this was going to be another flying theatre, yay. It was, and not a very good one. The sound was poor, the visuals were blurry enough to make most people dizzy. The tale of Nuwa was sort of told, heavily featuring old mate blue bloke punching old mate red bloke as we all know and love. Except they were flying and shooting magic at each other rather than punching and it went on far too long. It ended as weirdly as it started, I don’t quite have the words for the experience other than ‘different’.

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Talking of different, The Fright was the clear standout of the park, for all the wrong reasons. No idea what was going on, headed through some scary tunnels with rocks and skeletons before being greeted with 3D cinema seating. Oh.

Oh! It wasn’t a cinema though, we’ve found another revolving theatre experience and it was, an experience.

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Several scenes had this physical set up, someone would come out and waffle on about something, or the narrator would do it for them. If i recall we went digging and found a thing and were now cursed. Each scene was meant to be scary.

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The DEMO media was back in full force for a screen based scene, which was faded and barely visible without the desecrated 3D glasses we had been given, let alone with them on. Scary voices and storms and I don’t know what, before an animatronic dragon head above the scene lit up and jiggled in hilarious fashion.

Another scene had wolves shaking the bars like the one that was too scary on tomb blaster so they turned it off. All comedy gold, it ended in confusion and despair, with no one seemingly phased in the slightest.

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House lights on and everyone leaves to Gangnam Style.

Apologies for the structure of the review, but the attractions here didn’t have much of one either.

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Lizards! Tigers. Excitement?

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Ancient Wars is an immersive tunnel I guess. Not usually the strongest of dark rides, but has potential.

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This was the extent of the theming, a darkened corridor with two illuminated creature things. Both of which you could see from the station anyway, if you wanted to.

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Then tunnel happened. The usual blurry rubbish of animals fighting each other on either side of you. This time komodo dragons but also the usual helpful King Kong kinda guy.

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Then it goes outside. Daylight!

And then it ends.

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This was closed, and considered one of their highlight attractions.

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Cred though. Wait…

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Cred though. Ah, the old Zamperla motocoaster thing that’s nothing like riding a motorbike, but built by the Chinese. With bulls on the front. #1 Bull Fight in the Sky. It’s not much like one of those either.

I scoffed at the usual heads down hold on tight spiel and then received a surprising amount of whiplash from the launch for having my head too high. It’s got some punch. And then it rattles its way uneventfully back down to the brake run. +1

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Teacups? A 2 hour queue? Both were possibilities for Light of Civilisation.

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He’s gone.

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No, in the teacups was a big boat ship dark ride. It had about half an hour of queue, not sure why, just slow I guess. And one of the most significant attractions, for those who might actually know what was what.

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Dated, long, but fun. It covered the history of civilisation in great detail. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

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These days we have women and robots.

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This may be the greatest attraction of all time.

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Haunted walkthrough, skip!

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The more I look at this, the more I laugh.

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Drop towers! Dark rides. Excitement?

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Well we got weighed on the way in to Geocentric Adventure and then were greeted with this glorious hardware. Double decker though!

In terms of tower ride it went up one level, to where the 360 screen was, faded of course. Rotated around a while, while covering the history of civilisation again, or was it journey to the centre of the earth? A dragon fighting a hydra? That’s it. Then it ended and went down one level.

A shame, the building looked so tall.

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One thing I didn’t mention about the park is that it’s all kinda one way, you have to go to a separate exit at the end of a big loop and can’t get back to the entrance without backtracking the entire circumference, adding further to the awkward time slot shenanigans. As such, we had reached the end of the loop, with these parade things chilling under a shelter, a ton of shops to walk through, a staff car park to walk through and then a tunnel through some rocks to walk through to wind up back next to the big impressive entrance again.

Rather ambivalent about the whole park experience. It happened. It was cheap. We now know what’s what, sort of.
Onwards!

Day 7 (part 2)

China 04/24 – Fuwah Amusement Park
China 04/24 – Fantawild Adventure Tai’an

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