China 05/24 – Huachang Dragon Valley
Next stop Nanjing. Been here a few times, gradually chipping away at its offerings. I didn’t know what to do with myself this time though, what with the public holiday situation. Had one park in mind, no backup, would just have to suck it up and see I guess.
Day 14 – Huachang Dragon Valley
Bit of a trek into the park from the Didi drop off point. It’s a resort as much as any other theme park is a resort at least, out in the lush green hills beyond the city. Got a water park and stuff.
Main entrance to the amusement park is contained within this building, with a big fancy graphics display, turnstiles, a shop, not much else.
Heading outside again you’re greeted first with this type of view. The big star water ride looks rather awesome offride, but it wasn’t on my radar.
Bypassed all that in an anti-clockwise direction and straight to the star coaster #1 Jungle Dragon. Not to be confused with the Happy Valley GCI that used to be called Jungle Dragon and is now named after an animated plane for kids.
Also known as Abyssus without the multi launch. Also known as a Vekoma Shockwave.
Even though this was the Saturday directly following 3 days of public holiday chaos, miraculously the Chinese theme park scene had returned completely to normal. I walked straight onto a half empty train.
It’s a great ride. I liked Abyssus a fair bit, though it’s hard for it to stand out amongst its lineup. Amongst the lineup on this trip however, Jungle Dragon was a pretty hard hitter. I’m not sure if the faff/start/multi-launch helps Abyssus in any way, all the meat of the layout comes from the main launch onwards before it starts to die a bit at the end. Maybe 3 acts are better than 2, will reconfirm at some point.
What I did know was that it packed a lot more punch than the Hyper Space Warp which didn’t do much for me a few days prior. I actually wanted to reride this, though it was a struggle to ride multiple times on the bounce, 2 weeks into a China trip anyway.
The trimmed top hat is silly, and not in a fun Wrath of Zeus, Toutatis or Batman GCE kinda way, but once you get that out of the way it’s packed with strong positives, solid pops of air time and plenty of twisty. Locals loved it. I did too.
Now that it had been confirmed that timing wasn’t going to be an issue, it was time to mop up the rest. Starting with the duelling family coaster cred(s).
There’s a reasonable chance that visiting one day prior would have bagged both sides of #2 Dragon Race, but under extreme duress. Alas, though it still had maybe a 10-15 minute queue that steadily grew due to a mostly family oriented demographic on park, they were only opting to run a single side because China.
Haven’t come across this layout before anyway, another slight glimmer of hope that Jinma are getting more interesting and creative, but it’s a little short and does nothing. Two more out there apparently, woo.
The park is split into multiple indoor lands aside from the coasters. This was the one with the tree.
It had a 4D cinema about a bee, called 4D Mine Adventure for some reason.
It wasn’t very good.
And a flying theatre by the name of Mystical Tour.
It was a flying theatre.
The indoor area that contains the big boat ride is a lot more impressive, all decked out like this.
Loads of just cavey sections to explore.
Some museum about stuff.
One path lets you see the elevator lift of the boat ride in action. No cred here.
Pretty though.
Haunted walkthrough I assume.
Theme of the next indoor area was space. This meant that they were playing How to Train your Dragon 2 on a big screen…
Dragon Valley I suppose.
Also guns.
Some 4D ball.
But the most interesting attraction was Star Tours the dark ride, not to be confused with Star Tours the simulator.
It’s another 4D motion based car ride from our new friends Playfun. Pretty hefty and extravagant.
Name aside, the other influences are quite clear. We get our spaceship thing repaired by some robots and head out into a huge space battle which looked rather cool. Reminded me of the epic intro to Revenge of the Sith and then had me wishing we had a Star Wars dark ride that did something around that. This is where the fun begins.
We also had Pandora.
And Transformers, lots of Transformers.
It had lots of other different things in it too though, was great fun. Movements don’t kick enough ass again, but it’s to be expected for now.
Sadly there was still one more coaster to obtain, I’d been putting off #3 Through the Ring.
There’s no way I would have queued this.
For this. I absolutely hated this. The new revelation that I don’t even care about the upside down any more. Just the horrible, horrible tracking that rattles your brain and gives you a headache.
And then it rained and then I left.
Success I guess, nice enough place. Got some good visuals and a decent headline coaster and dark ride, rest is meh. The quintessential Chinese theme park lineup.