China 05/24 – Silk Road Paradise
We escaped the horrors of Lanzhou the following morning and caught the next train back down to Xi’an. Once here I had one particular park in mind.
In the absence of almost any actually decent rollercoasters to do in China now, my attention has turned to the latest and greatest from good old Jinma. They’ve been trying their hand at a few more ride types and track styles as of late, so let’s go sample their (Aurora) Flying Coaster or FXC-28A.
Day 12 – Silk Road Paradise
I don’t know the brand behind this place. but in terms of scale and presentation it seems fairly top tier for China. It also seems possible they did the Silk Road park down on Hainan, are they doing more? Maybe they can hang with the other big players. We’ll see.
As for today though, the driver dropped me off at the East entrance to the park, as it was geographically convenient to do so. Turned out it wasn’t logistically convenient to do so, as there wasn’t a ticket office on this side, just a confused rabble of guests seemingly unable to get into the park because of various QR code and app faff. I also tried the QR code on the park map here, but it didn’t work. Ugh.
The map indicated however that there was a far more significant entrance on the North side, so I hotfooted it around the perimeter to that point and sure enough there was a big ticket office to one side of the plaza.
If you’ve ever wondered how (some) Chinese parks make any money and can be so quiet for most of the year, I present to you a public holiday visit. The ticket office was set up like a train station, with 12 or so windows and it was packed. They were absolutely raking it in.
I’d been too busy focused on getting in and not quite noticed the sheer scale of the place just yet. Is huge.
Particularly this thing, I was rather fascinated by it. Such a striking centrepiece and seemed to be a good 1000ft tall, looming over the park in every direction.
I battled my way through the crowds and towards the main coaster. A small queue was present outside of the entrance, no biggy, and then I clocked the sign. A temporary sandwich board sign. That’s a 4 hour queue lads.
Well, I’ve come this far.
It seems an injustice to dismiss what turned out to be a four and a half hour wait for a coaster in a single sentence, so some observations:
Time passed relatively quickly for me, all things considered. I think a combination of getting older and having past experience with bad theme park situations helps with this and maybe also that I cared less about the end result.
Two combined stints at Maverick totalling the same amount of time was far more stressful and included breakdowns.
Two hours not moving in the Taron single rider queue for ‘midnight Taron’ at 8pm with a thousand train despatches vibrating your feet while people around you have panic attacks was far less pleasant.
In general, the Chinese didn’t seem to care, it was par for the course to be spending their precious day off in a barely moving queue.
They had roaming staff in the room allowing people to leave for bathroom, food etc. provided they took a photo with their group and then showed it upon return.
One family tried to cut about 15% of the queue by sending their children forward and trying to join them after. Both the surrounding guests and staff gave them a good shouting at and they were removed in shame. Shame that doesn’t happen in other parts of the world.
Some of the community spirit was rather heartwarming, some prospective riders had family members just pop in every hour or so with some food or a power bank for their phone, pat them on the head and check they were ok.
One guy left the queue area to sit down and cry on a box for a bit, though it could have been unrelated.
They also did a Taron and closed the queue 4 hours before park close so that it would be empty by the end of the day. This confused people so many times because of course they had to keep opening it to let returning queuers through, then stop normal guests who would come and ask is it open?
But, through all that, it was running one train when it has two. None of this was necessary.
Made it to the station anyway and ended up back row, outside, woo.
So, how was the ride? I enjoyed it.
#1 Aurora Flying Coaster doesn’t have the refined qualities of an old B&M (let’s not talk about new B&M), but it doesn’t ride poorly by any means.
It feels a bit prototype in that they’ve gone all in with their own pretzel loop element, but then not much else happens layout-wise around that. The same could be said for Superman clones.
And, for now, I’d take it over one of those purely because its different. Once they build 10 of them that will likely change.
For those who don’t like pretzel loops/intense moments on flyers, you’d probably like this more. It manages to make the pretzel a little more pedestrian and less lung-crushing somehow, though it has some strong positives in the later turns.
Best bit about the whole thing for me was the seating position though. Yes, it’s old school Vekoma loading, but those tip you slightly on your head in the horizontal position and it’s deeply uncomfortable waiting in the station and on the brake run which, at Carowinds, takes forever.
This one has you perfectly flat on your back. Comfortable, just chillin, yourself and your thoughts on a rollercoaster, looking straight up at a high wooden ceiling and then some ominous sky as it was threatening to rain. In that sense it was unlike anything else I’d ever experienced, and a good thing for it.
It also retains the more effective anticipation of backwards lift hill, which I always appreciate.
I hope they can take this stuff further in the future now – the technology is definitely getting there, now they need a good creative streak from a designer and to do something much more exciting with it.
With more than half the operating day gone on a single attraction, decisions had to be made of course on what else I wanted (and was willing) to do.
The back of this theatre tells us that the park has six themed lands. I saw two and a half at most.
From the queue I had clocked on a TV that they had a major dark ride, so that became priority number two. This is it, the Mysterious Adventure of Marco Polo. Queued about an hour, all in.
You know that adventure, where Marco Polo is in the desert, meets a wizard lady and helps her stop Godzilla rising from the earth. It’s a well known tale.
Well this was that, on a 3D, motion based dark ride.
See?
Oh and she gets a dragon friend at the end, because merch.
It was alright, not the best of quality, not the worst. Again mostly enjoyed for being something new.
This park actually has quite a selection of branded merch, a shocker for China. I didn’t have the time nor the inclination for any of it given the circumstances though.
From there I learned a few more things. Every time I see Jinma spinner with the inversion listed in a park I assume the clone, which I’ve still not yet managed to do.
This one isn’t a clone. But on a day with 4 hour queues, the 4 seater spinner had, naturally, already closed its queue for the day.
And they’ve got a Flying Theatre, but my willingness to put effort in had been drained for the day. More multiple hour queues for lesser indoor attractions, already closed rollercoasters, and it started to rain, so I left.
Such a tease of a visit. It’s almost worse for me having been to half a park and simply not being able to see or experience most of it, than not knowing at all.
Inevitably I’ll have to return for the rest of the rides (and a Zacspin! they’re building a Zacspin! eww), and probably not queue 4 and a half hours for the flyer.
Which, on an obsessive level, renders this visit moot.
Oh well, rode the new Jinma and liked it. Got some dark rides for the database. Beats doin’ stuff.