China 05/24 – Fantawild Adventure Jiayuguan
After escaping Dunhuang again in a far less themed manner it was back to Jiayuguan to tick off the other Fantawild park.
Day 11 – Fantawild Adventure Jiayuguan
Though only branded Adventure, it also has some unique styling, which is nice.
Wouldn’t be one without a castle though.
Next thing I noticed was less expected. The place had queues. Queues? On a Wednesday? At a Fantawild? In the middle of nowhere?
Well today was labour day for China, on which they take a few days off and hit up some theme parks, so good for them.
I’d say that this was all part of some grand scheme on my behalf to ensure I got on Beyond the Clouds at some point this trip, suffer at all costs if necessary, but I remained ignorant to what was really going on this day. Luckily, being the middle of nowhere, it didn’t manage to affect things too much. It soon would.
Anyway, skipped past the SLC because it looked a bit sweaty and joined a 20 minute queue for the Boonie Bears Adventure interactive shooter.
This was from an era where they still had the original ride system, but already had Boonies to play with so went straight in with that, rather than overlaying poor old Fantawild dinosaur.
Speaking of whom, this was the closest I’ve come to acquiring another one, except that it was either £1100, or they wouldn’t sell it. Or both.
He even had his own shop again.
But it was closed.
Woo, service gates.
They also have a Boonie theatre, but I’d seen this film (the original) not too long ago, so had other priorities.
Musi… Skip!
One such priority was The Silk Road, the last of the unique dark rides in the region.
In an Adventure park? How unprecedented.
Poor camel.
Queue had some stuff.
And I was worried about the sheer volume of people in here, but then clocked the ride system.
We’ve got ourselves a people eater.
Once a thousand people are aboard, the curtains close and you get an introductory video on the left. Silk Road is a thing, lets travel along it. Then you move off.
Given the vehicles, the direct comparison is Chinese Opera Express, and this one successfully highlights the problems with that one. Range of scenes.
You’ve got cold bits.
Animals.
Hot bits.
It also had its own Dunhuang/Mogao Cave section.
And in the usual revolving platform spot, this guy. Still had the screens too, more stuff happened, but though I was perhaps unexpectedly expecting to spin around with this guy and some huge sets, it didn’t happen.
Was decent enough.
Main priority out of the way, it was cred time on #1 Mount Tanggula.
It also had a stewing queue, but hold on a minute.
They
added
a
second
train
!
This marks the second park in the whole country at which I’ve borne witness to the phenomenon, outside of Disney (and Universal – do powered Mack inverts really count though?)
Admittedly they were sending them out with multiple empty rows for no other reason than a couple of air gates were broken, but still. Progress.
Yeah, the other cred was teasing me from afar. Decided to leave it a little while longer though.
The other, other cred teased me up close, by being unobtainable.
Space Journey had a queue outside the building, which is never a good sign. But I was still yet to ride one after the magic door bloke stole the last one, so we sucked it up. Wasn’t terrible.
The insides hold some momorabilia, and not much of a queueing area thankfully.
Preshow. It’s the 50th anniversary of space and we’re having a celebration. Then Chinese Joker comes over the comms (you never get a visual, I just pictured it in my head)and says he’s gonna do terrorism. I believe Picard season 3 stole their plot from this ride.
Of course we’ve got to board our high tech, all terrain, space cruiser and help the city stop the terrorist. Provided we’re the appropriate heigmt for such an undertaking.
Simulated excitement.
It was ok. Plot wasn’t all there, we catch up to the guy a number of times and then he drops a cubular time bomb in a building. We catch it and Iron Man it out to space before it explodes. I guess the Avengers stole a bit from here too.
There’s no resolution to that though, we stopped the bomb but as far as I can tell the guy is still out there causing chaos, we didn’t catch him. Oh and we don’t actually go to space.
Space.
Didn’t manage to obtain a vantage point for this parade, though it happened outside the exact same ride building, so that was trippy. I’m confused by the concept of this one, it was just a bunch of Chinese in cosplay, and some clowns, but I’d seen half of them on park already, in ride queues. Do they work for the park? Are they volunteers? Can you rock up and get free entry if you do the parade? Would I? Probably.
Sadly it was SLC time, though #2 Flare Meteor had faded to a mere two train wait because most people had done it once, never again.
It was fiiine. Or was it. No, I think it was pretty bad. Doesn’t matter, it was a thing.
Wizard Academy is also a thing here, another sign that this is the newest Adventure park. No dinos rampaging here.
Endorsed by Duludubi.
And this is where we keep learning new things. Unlike any other iteration I’ve done, this one has a preshow with an animatronic and everything. It weren’t running though. I really needed that back story.
The cars had more effort put into them.
And on board there were a couple more surprises, the same screen sequence was interluded with a number physical effects that aren’t often there either.
Rawr
Wizard chucks some logs at you cos he’s evil.
And arrows.
OG Old mate octopus.
Your bravery saved yourselves. From me. You can visit the Wizard Academy any time.
Satisfied, we headed out and then things started to go wrong. Didi couldn’t find us a driver. Gave it like half an hour of saying it was searching and that we were in a queue. And there were a couple other parties out by the road in the same situation as us, also in that queue.
There weren’t even any dodgy drivers hanging about either, strangely. I guess they get the day off too.
Time ticked on towards the train and things got desperate. A taxi rocked up, but had been prebooked for someone else on park and didn’t want to take the emergency fare. I was ready and willing to pay top dollar to not be stranded in a city with like 2 trains a day, but they were an honest soul and it wasn’t necessary. Instead another of the friendly groups that were waiting, also fair play to them, helped to reason that we just pay for both the outbound and return leg, the taxi can hotfoot it to the station and back and still meet their commitment. So they did.
Yay for China.
– – –
I should learn to trust my instincts when trains sell out unexpectedly. Like that time it snowed. It would have been possible, and was the original plan, to take a train directly back to Xi’an that night, but they all sold out the moment they were released.
Not to worry, I just booked one that went half the distance, a hotel for the night, and then one for the following morning.
UGH, this was such an unecessary added faff. Upon arrival at Lanzhou station, henceforth known as a hellhole, the same Didi failure was happening again. There’s a designated pickup point at most stations set up to cope with online booking shenanigans and not ruin the taxi ranks and or/car parks and, though while standing at this point watching a million cars go by, none of them could be assigned to us apparently. We waited a good half an hour for the ‘virtual queue’, eventually got to the front, a car came up on screen, then instantly cancelled on us. It then says sorry mate, you’re our priority now, but nothing came of that either.
Should have just gone to the normal taxi rank. Went to the taxi rank, where there were millions, got a car instantly… dumb. Problem was it took over an hour to do a couple miles to the hotel, because traffic, during which the driver told us all the delights of the public holiday that was news to me. I swear I looked that up…
Anyway, many wasted hours just to unnecessarily transit through a city. All in a days work.