Ended up on what turned out to be the party bus back to the car park after our final ride. Driver was playing DJ and every local was singing their heart out to some S-pop, which was a great way to close the day.
Roads were surprisingly busy even though we didn’t reach the hotel again until about 3am, just in time for UK new year.
Day 3 – Fun Oasis
As such the next morning began nearer the afternoon, in the same mall again just to be sure.
The maintenance sign was no more, and they were much more lenient in pricing than the other brands in negotiating a topup card, after we made it clear we were only there for the coaster.
#1 Animal Coaster was ranked pretty high up the list for intrigue, an old custom SBF with a train of spinning cars that look more Maurer than the design we know today.
It doesn’t actually spin, but interacted with rockwork and the rest of the park rather nicely.
Sparky’s Al Nakheel Mall
From there we went to the nearest Sparky’s to get more value out of their card. This #2 Spinning Coaster is exactly the SBF design we know today.
Magic Planet
From there we went to Magic Planet, who wanted £30 for their wacky worm, so we left.
Driving in Saudi is a bit hairy. A man decided to crash into us on the way back to Six Flags, after being 3 lanes away from his intended exit and rationally resolving that the only way to take it safely was by brute force. Nothing major, couple of small scratches and bounced off the wing mirror, but given the car hire stories again, the incident was enough to put the fear in us for being ripped off over the remaining 48 hours.
It’s definitely still hugely convenient to get around by car, but not for the faint of heart if you aren’t experienced or get nervous about that sort of thing.
Six Flags Qiddiya City
Arrival was much like it had been the previous day, minus the road block and security escort.
Initial plan was to get at least another ‘day’ and night ride on Falcons again, aside from bouncing around the other highlights as usual.
It wasn’t available first thing however, nor was the supposed record breaking S&S tower that I never managed to see operate. Poor S&S, not having the best time of late.
Next best thing to do while the sun was still up was jump on the observation Pagode, Skywatch.
Went back to Falcons Flight again and hung around for it to reopen, correctly assuming it would only get worse again throughout the day. Staff were fairly responsive about it as a queue formed, warning that it could be a long wait, but then also giving a 2 minute warning that it was ready so that everyone could locker up externally if need be.
Once inside it turned into another fairly miserable ordeal of barely moving for constant fastrack and by the time we got where we needed to be it was pretty much dark again. Landed in the front of the back car on this occasion, which mainly sought to confirm that this position enhances the very first drop, isn’t as good over the 500ft hill and most importantly that going back to the protection of the windscreen felt like a significant downgrade.
Nothing much else to report on the rest of the park, every other ride was still pretty much walk on so we had multiple goes of the good stuff. I wonder if this trend will remain long term. Had some surprisingly expensive rice and noodles, should have had the pizza again.
Here’s a POV of the dark ride:
Very nearly called it early after that, having bought some merch and watched a few 3 minute dispatches on a 2 train op of Falcons, with a grossly underestimated 115 min wait. Turns out that on top of the overselling of fastrack, many guests had been complaining about wait times throughout the day and the only solution guests services had been able to present was a free single fastrack. As both versions are unrestricted on ride selection and literally useless anywhere else in the park, this only compounded the problem. The obvious solution moving forward is to limit daily sales and/or make the inclusion of Falcons a one time use only thing, lest they become like Cedar Point, scourge of the earth.
The call began to eat away at me though, in the dying hours of operation. Last chance saloon, but with a risk of further disappointment. We’ve come this far, and I’m still not sure.
Sucked it up, while fully prepared to put in a row request at the station, but lucked out on the very back row, once again at some ungodly hour. The experience was mind- and face-numbingly glorious, and saved the reputation of Falcons Flight. It was inevitably the only fitting ending to our time at the park.
It did the thing to me in the last part. Writing about my feelings for the ride gives me goosebumps, gets my heart going. I have to stand up and pace around between sentences, not knowing if I’m able convey my thought process in the right way. There is no logic for a coaster ranking like that, only how it makes you feel. And I feel broken. Again.
Took me several days of shower thoughts to come to some form of breakthrough. I realised that I had been looking at the coaster in the wrong way. There was seemingly no way to compare a 3-minute long, ridiculous record breaker to, say, 30 seconds of relentless ejector on an RMC. But that was my problem. I had gone into this whole trip thinking ‘silly record breaking ride, probably won’t be my thing, just need the cred’, when I should have been thinking god damn massive Intamin multi-launch, as I usually would.
I love me a good multi-launch, they’ve dominated my top coasters in various forms for pretty much forever at this point. On a stupidly basal level, an element that says to me ‘yes, there’s more rollercoaster to come’, with a flourish, brings an immense amount of satisfaction.
Falcon’s Flight does that, twice.
Back in the Taron days, though I never particularly fell for the rest of the layout, hitting that trench launch and feeling the LSM surge to your very core was one of the greatest moments on any coaster for me, and enough to make it, at the time, a top 3 ride.
Falcons Flight does that, twice as fast.
I’m fairly confident in saying that final launch alone is my new all-time favourite coaster moment and then near terrified to say that it may never be touched again in a lifetime. From there, my best Intamin multi-launch as of right now is Toutatis, and based off of a reasonably recent experience, this hit me harder. So suddenly we’re in top ten territory by default, which scared me more.
With Six Flags not opening until 4pm each day, there was some time to potter around Riyadh and grab a handful of the eye-watering 18 +1s throughout the city each lunchtime.
Many of them also share similar opening hours however, or some will say that they open earlier but then don’t get the rides running straight away, so it’s not ideal. There’s also varying extremities of expense involved so, for the sake of public service, I’ll give you the rundown as we go along.
Fun NOasis
Began here at one of the malls, which are predominantly where the coasters live. Once again arrived after some obvious coaster fans and left before another set, but the ride here had a sign up for maintenance.
Sparky’s, Panorama Mall
This is one of the three chains of FECs within the city that have multiple locations, and also one I was slightly familiar with from a visit in the UAE.
All of these chains use a top up card system, and one that can be shared amongst multiple users, but it generally comes at a high price. You might be able to negotiate a better deal if you’re less British, or particularly forceful about only ever wanting or paying for the coaster, but the staff typically claim you can only have one of the fixed price package deals which are on display on signs at the desk. So check those visually first and always opt for the lowest, as you may verbally be told the lowest is even higher.
For Sparky’s, it came out at ~£50, so if you’re going it solo this can be quite the ask. The card can be used across all 3 locations within Riyadh, making it a bit more digestable.
I’ll break the timeline and cover the other chains here.
Saffori Land also have 3 locations in Riyadh, can use the card across all 3 and their cheapest package was ~£40.
RM Roma Land also have 3 locations in Riyadh, you cannot use the card across all 3 and their cheapest package was ~£30.
It’s all a good test of your commitment to the cause.
Back to our Sparky’s anyway, we decided we would commit to all 3 locations during the trip and sucked up the cost here.
#1 Formula Fun is this big sprawling thing, mildly interesting at least. I had a ranking system for that too, with half of them just being SBF spinners. What’s the best kiddie cred of the kiddie creds? You’ll see.
Six Flags Qiddiya City
Headed out of the city in order to get to the park in a reasonably timely fashion. We had no idea what it was going to be like in terms of popularity and organisation, half expecting multiple hour queues to even get in the park if everyone had the same idea.
This all changed as we pulled off the main highway onto one of the slip roads towards the still under construction city of Qiddiya. There was some form of road block with Qiddiya security cars at the head. Traffic slowly stacked behind for a good while and then the queue was slowly escorted along the next roads towards the park. There are also parked police cars in the hard shoulder of this area, every few hundred metres, day and night, which led to some comedy during the batching process as the 1% of overly impatient drivers would go for immensely stupid undertakes along the hard shoulder, only to get blocked by said police.
Turns out a certain coaster ‘influencer’ and his convoy also tried to cut us up during this process, phone in hand while driving, but as we had no real idea at the time what was going on, this ended up being positive reassurance that we were on the right track both chronologically and geographically as we pulled up to a preliminary ticket check on the road.
From there we were directed into the nicer first bits of the car park, complete with sheltering over each space that will no doubt be an absolute lifesaver during the summer months. Applied copious amounts of sun cream for the remaining hour of sunlight, while watching with bemusement the number of other obviously British arrivals.
Swarms of shuttle buses are available here to take guests to the park entrance, which took about 10 minutes. Swarms of staff were also present during this process, to provide enthusiasm and welcome to the area.
Upon arrival however I was far more distracted by the track of Falcons Flight that passes both over and under the entrance plaza. Having spent the last month assuming I probably wouldn’t even be able to ride it, the sight of an occupied train blasting past was quite the welcome visual.
A quick security check happened and then we were amongst the crowd at the ticket barriers in the final few minutes before official opening. Cameras were rolling and a small ceremony welcomed in the opening hour, before a slow surge through the gates, mainly impeded by the usual digital ticket faff.
The main street up to the central tent was filled with a fleet of entertainers attempting to distract visitors from what lay ahead. Carefully evading these, we pressed on, took a right into the City of Thrills and spills and the arms of the Falcon.
With everyone doing the necessaries at this point, it was amazingly no much more than a station wait. It’s the only coaster on park with small item lockers within the queue itself, which are also the batch and merge point for fastrack. A station wait however, was a good 20 minutes or so, with several minutes a pop between dispatches. They were definitely easing it in.
We were still in shock though, having braced our asses for 6 hours of queues, a single lap at best and probably not finishing the park that day. It all worked out surprisingly well. Moreso when we happened to land our first attempt in the front seats, after performing a swap with a couple of nervous locals who were intimidated by the positioning. Can’t blame them, I was the most nervous I’ve been in a long time about what #2 Falcons Flight might do to me, which is always a welcome feeling if you can manage it.
Rolled out to a smattering of applause and took a right into the Maverick style first lift hill. Bit of a tap on the back of the head as it brings you up to a steady but urgent pace into the first drop. This section was a pleasant surprise, and rides like a half decent Intamin mega coaster, modern elements with the potency of something a bit more vintage. I was particularly pleased to see that they nailed the wave turn thing, even with such wide boy trains, with a solid outwards pop in the middle that doesn’t really land on the Toutatis or Kondaa equivalents. It took me several days to notice that this element is also directly under the main massive hill, which is insane.
The fever dream begins out of the block section and into the second launch. After a fairly standard coaster experience on surface level, the realisation hits of what this thing is truly about. The steady urgent pace is magnified tenfold and roars underneath you like old mate Taron. How the hell is this rollercoaster real, and why are we going up a cliff?
It ends with a floaty level out and then carries an impressive amount of momentum up what seems like another huge curved hill. All sense of speed and scale is lost at this point in time. The clifftop section begins with a wicked outwards flop over the edge, which is a real left seat winner and utterly terrifying to think about. It hairpins into a middling but amusing airtime hill, before hairpinning back and heading straight out towards the park. There’s a surprising chug of momentum on this flat bit before slamming the anchors on and entering what is essentially the holding-brake drop of a dive coaster.
I like a trim with positive impact on the experience and it does just that, giving you another how is this real? moment of suspense before the main event begins. A teasing vertical drop down into casual obscenity. Speed builds, a weird tunnel is traversed, then the launch hits. God damn, Falcons Flight. The roar is back, magnified tenfold again and you can do nothing but embrace the power and scream inaudibly as you hurtle faster and faster through the final I can’t believe this is a thing now moment.
Suddenly you’re up on the world’s biggest trim, being hurled forwards out of your seat in a Stealth’s brake run but insanely huge fashion, with the near infinite freedom of a world-class restraint. It’s a ridiculous moment of airtime and again the visuals are just incomprehensible, I was forever too caught up in the moment to really take a look around and appreciate being over 500ft in the air.
But you are, a 500ft drop follows into the speed demon finale. And I guess it’s time to talk about the trains. The seating feels slightly lower than usual, to the point that staff ask you to stick your legs out in front of you before applying the lap bar. The result of this is a very relaxed position, a bit like a B&M wing for world’s first, feet first. Front row was a great view, with the unspoken protection of the windscreen that exists at the beginning of every car. This safety feature takes the edge off of the fast section though and it is just, at heart, a few fast swooping corners and one quite fun speed hill.
However this is a creature with two personalities. The rear seats of each car are tiered outwards and do not receive the same level of shielding from the windscreen. I love either potential scenario here, that this was perfectly engineered to provide contrasting experiences, or that it wasn’t quite mathed out properly and went unnoticed until someone sat in it. The wind in face, high speed flesh ripple effect is real back here and oh so scarily satisfying.
But that’s a story for later. We ended our first lap with the amusing view of another of those police cars watching from a rooftop. The bird had been bested and I was extremely satisfied. That was a lot better than I had anticipated.
Six Flags have opened up an entire park here though, so let’s go see the rest of it.
Round the corner and looking silly, smaller than the pedestrian section of Falcons, is #3 Colossus, but not as we know it.
Free lockers are outside the ride here, as they are throughout the rest of the park, then a security scan takes you into the queue which, in only this case, had multiple staff just pointing you in the right direction, smiling and waving. It was a walk-on, and remained that way for the duration of our visit.
Which should be immediately capitalised on because god damn it’s good. GCI are back and I’m so happy for them. Did they leave? I don’t actually know, but it feels like they haven’t kicked my ass since 2017. The new trains aren’t the greatest, with shin bars that were less encroaching on me than an RMC, but also a lap bar that’s just a bit uncomfortable and prone to stapling.
This wasn’t quite enough to directly hamper the experience though, the thing absolutely hauls through the layout which plays on a wide range of their best beats, from many, many moments of strong ejector to wild and out of control transitions. The back row has, to memory, the hardest punch of any first drop on a GCI, but over time we grew to love the front more. It amplifies the majority of the strongest elements and as the night went on, you could hear the screams of the sidestops just like our golden memories of Mystic Timbers.
I’ve seen references to it being like an RMC, but if it wasn’t for the signature GCI bump in the middle of a corner transition on one of the turnarounds, I’d liken it more to one of my favourite Gravity Groups. A top 5 in it’s class for sure.
Next in rank order of appeal was the question of is this the wrong #4 Iron Rattler? Even without an Intamin in the background, the cliffs surrounding the park make it hard to figure out this is a 200ft tilt coaster. With one of the more themed indoor queues, Six Flags character Professor Screamore has moved out of his crumbling Maryland home and immeasurably upgraded his hardware. It’s a great looking ride and I love the ambition of the pipework alongside the drop, and the drill on the front of the train of course.
Never actually done a Vekoma tilt before, thanks Cedar Point, only Jinmas ofvarying vintage. So the signature sensation wasn’t that new to me and didn’t put the fear in me, though the vertical hang into the vests for several seconds is quite something.
It begins with some strong positives through a tunnel and up into a stall, which provides enough floatiness to fix your muggy head, a technique I found they perfected on Wrath of Zeus after Lech Coaster being a bit too far in the wrong direction.
The rest of the layout does it’s own thing though and is another Vekoma masterclass really. Inventive inversions interspersed with decent airtime. It’s so smooth and effortless in the way that it whips you around that it almost manages to not kick your ass, a danger with many of the earlier new designs. With B&M contributions getting more embarrassing by the year, it’s crazy to think that the builder of the Boomerang is now the best in the business for refinement. A top 5 in it’s class for sure.
Last of the big boys is #5 Spitfire, looking silly in the shadow of the Falcon. That’s only the world’s tallest inversion up there. But you won’t feel it.
Themed to old planes and stuff, the familiar Intamin rolling stock looks pretty welcoming here. You wiggle out onto the launch track and, unfailingly, the wrong announcement plays saying leave the train and take your bags. A pop on the back of the head and the now old news of triple launch with a hump in it sequence begins.
It’s good, the lurch over the hill on the backwards stint is impressive, as is the transition at the top of the vertical spike. The inversion itself is better than I had expected, there’s a definite pause for thought in it, which is testament to the control of the launch. It doesn’t just blast through and you’re done. Big drop back and half an airtime pop into the brakes, it ends like Red Force without the comedy.
And for me it’s better than all those up, down and done boys, Top Thrill notwithstanding, thanks Cedar Point. The superior restraints and triple launch shenanigans are enough to turn it from boring record breaker to respectable standalone coaster and it would smash a lot of headline attractions out there for it.
Can’t have a new park without a good cred run, it was time to mop up the rest.
#6 Twilight Express is a very cute Vekoma Junior with a cooked Ladybird motif several times over. I spent the whole time trying and failing to figure out which one it was a clone of. Notably the two train operation only gets you one lap however.
#7 Saw Mill Falls is an oddity, Mack’s contribution to this lineup being just another water coaster. No one was ever riding it of course, I guess it’ll do well in the times when it’s too hot, but not deathly so. Even new ones ride pretty poor because it’s a boat I guess, a one and done that thankfully wasn’t overly wet.
#8 Sea Stallion is an abomination, the only other queue on park because of course the capacity was abysmal. I wasn’t sure coming here whether it was a racing one with two sides or not, but alas, or maybe for the best, it isn’t.
Several issues. The throttle is uncomfortable to keep pinned due to the texture of the metal and the force with which it wants to spring back. Trying to up the capacity by having more cars on track leads to the throttle being largely pointless because you’re limited to the speed of the people in front, like a busy Bobkart. Being limited to the speed of the people in front means you spend half of the banked moments slowly falling out of your motorbike style seat, which is uncomfortable to begin with. Worst coaster in the country, even Sky Dragster is better. Looks ok.
Last up was #9 Adrena-line, which we had somehow managed to not lay eyes on all evening, even though it’s right next to Falcons Flight. It’s that same tunnel vision I had, why would I even care about a Vekoma SFC in the moment?
Two trains is a sight to behold on one of these, though it was also our first slightly sour experience with fastrack, as holders took an entire train in front of our eyes. There was however a supervisor on hand who spotted this and came to remind the batch guy to spread the load a bit better. I do fear for how long the sentiment will last, but that’s a story for later.
Theme here is interesting, though it’s probably the most bland and Six Flags queue on park. They’ve got a sexy robot lady talking about thrilling transport -lines, but she ain’t no Ride to Happiness.
I spent the whole time trying to figure out which one it was a clone of. Guess it’s not, starts the same as an Orkanen but does a tiny bit more perhaps. Feels the same.
Creds complete we had some surprisingly cheap and tasty pizza in the same area and then it was dark ride time of course.
Enchanted Greenhouse is a combined effort from the usual Beneluxian bunch of Joravision, ETF and Alterface. The queue is lovely, and you can feel the European vibe for sure, with a scent of Symbolica in the air.
There’s a couple of buttons to push along the way which sprays some cute creatures with a colourful mist and makes them go all warm and fuzzy. A clue for the theme of the ride.
Preshow has Farasha the fairy explain what’s going on, in an appreciated alternating dual language. Cute creatures. Colourful mist. I just love that it’s not a high-tech all-terrain vehicle and we’re not off to shoot some bad guys to save the world. Happy dark rides are right up my alley.
Ride itself is densely packed with detail, there’s some screen based spraying but plenty of physical creatures too that also register amongst the foliage. Other fun effects are at play too but my highlight is, as usual, the actual integration of trackless technology into the experience. One room has a giant bee on it’s own vehicle, chasing you around a pillar. And you can spray it too. Genius.
The other added bonus to the interactivity is that you don’t just score points, but attempt to collect all of the different types of creature in one sitting. The board shows you at the end, with silhouettes of the ones you missed. Loved it.
The other dark ride on park is Into the Deep, the advanced evolution of Triotech’s Hyper Ride system, which I was glad to have tried the prototype of, back in Canada earlier last year.
Again the theme was a pleasant surprise, I expected this one to be a bit darker, and it is visually, but essentially the same setup. The extremely atmospheric and boomy voice of the queueline explains that you aren’t shooting the sea creatures, you’re saving them. Strangely this felt to me most inspired by a very obscure Chinese dark ride that had me removing pollution from ocean dwellers with my gun.
You sit in your comfy gamer chair anyway and can be spun in any direction, tilted this way and that. Predominantly screen based but there’s a respectable amount going on in the other department including a frankly hilarious jump scare from a giant head.
Only issue we had was with some timing at the end, vehicles stacking led to a couple scenes either not going off for us, or going off when we weren’t looking. Fixable early teething problems for sure. Great ride otherwise.
Talking of timing issues, did Treasure Trail for a laugh as Six Flags call it another dark ride but it’s all outside. Feels like there’s a few bits missing here and there, and then the same stacking happened so the onboard audio didn’t tie up with what was going on, but it was an entertaining car ride nonetheless.
Think that’s about it for the park, spent some time bouncing between the big coasters before ending the night on the main event. Oh how we missed that afternoon queue, the wait for Falcons Flight got pretty miserable the second time around.
Several issues. Fastrack come thick and fast, without a supervisor to tell the batchers to simmer down this time. The ride system appeared to be limping along after it’s relative success first thing, with regular suspense of operation and a reduction in trains. Many foolish guests, including obvious goons, were abusing the free lockers within the queue by intentionally not returning their ticket to unlock them and instead going round for multiple laps over multiple hours. This eventually led to moments of no lockers being available, and tanking the subsequent throughput to the point that there weren’t enough guests getting to the station to fill the trains. Can’t predict public stupidity. A fireworks and drone show happened, which to be honest I had no idea was a thing, so Happy New Year for me was spent in a sweaty queue not moving for 40 minutes because the ride wasn’t operating during that.
Wouldn’t have had it any other way though, we got on the ride well after 1am after all was said and done, in the aforementioned tiered seats at the back of car 2. I can’t even attempt to describe the emotions of the situation, but I can talk about our old friend the sensation of speed.
I never got it before. There’s so many fans out there of your Millennium Forces, your Fury 325s, even Formula Rossa didn’t make much of a positive impact on me. Having parts of a ride that are just ‘going fast’ and nothing else has never been my thing. Hitting top speed with the Falcon is devastating however. The launch itself shatters the stone-faced mask of a man who spends many of the supposed highlight moments of his coaster career sunglasses on, not caring. From this point forward it took my breath away, literally, I couldn’t breathe for how thick and fast the wind, maybe sand, maybe miscellaneous was battering me for several extended periods of that final section. It’s assault, and pure joy. I’m scared I’ll only ride rollercoasters in reference to this experience in the future and they’ll feel even worse off for it.
Riding any coaster at that time of night, at that time of year even, is special, not least when it’s the most abominable piece of hardware ever conceived. Moments like this may never come to the hobby again, and that’s why I never stop to think about doing these stupid things.
FOMO, it’s a fickle thing. As ever, I hadn’t paid much attention to a little ride called Falcons Flight for most of its development, after 6 years of crude animations and a seemingly never ending wait for an opening date.
Once that opening date hit however, it hit me particularly hard. My life was consumed once more by this silly hobby as I internalised that this new and frankly ridiculous creation needed to be dealt with as soon as physically possible, mainly for the fear that it might explode forever at any moment.
This logic was fraught with its own dangers of course, particularly off of the back of a very rough 2025 for failed attempts to ride new rides at the times they were supposed to be able to be ridden.
But that’s still where I’m at these days. The quandary was real, and the prices were unseasonably high, but the sense of urgency and temptation prevailed – we threw caution to the wind and booked opening day. The park seemed to know what they were doing.
Prices themselves led me down a rabbit hole of finding the most cost-effective indirect solution that didn’t just turn travel into more of a pain in the ass than it needed to be. As such, Turkiyey kept popping up, and seemed to be the only geographically viable stopover that might also host a significant cred or two in late December, which was planted as a desperate failsafe for if the unthinkable happened. ‘We didn’t get the Intamin but we got an Intamin’. Cope.
Day 0
The travel sequence began with an uneventful flight to Istanbul. Landed for the evening and had some shenanigans with the metro ticketing system. Two different styles of machine exist at the airport station both claiming to sell you a top up card to use on trains, in shops and more. Got the cheaper of the two, to then be surprised that it looked like a credit card, chip and all. Hopped on a train to Gayreteppe.
At the point we had to change, there was a short walk across the street to a different line, where the card decided to no longer function as advertised. Assistance was nowhere to be found, as two men watched from behind a window while a man got wedged in the barriers for several minutes, pleading to no avail. Eventually their focus shifted to us, only to point over at the ticket machines behind, only the other style available here.
Bought a new card from these machines, with a reasonable topup based on vague pricing advertised back at the airport, a tiered system based on number of stops. No signage at all here. Immediately these cards didn’t work either, as there appeared to be a lower limit of value required to even enter the station. A value higher than the machine had willingly sold us, for seemingly no good reason. Went back to the machine one more time only to discover that you could no longer top up the same card by credit card, only cash. Cash is lame, so sacked off both of the poxy cards and used contactless instead. But you pay more that way, so triple threat. Good thing it’s cheap regardless.
After that unnecessary ordeal, arrived at the final station of the journey and walked over to our hotel for the night. For no particular reason that I can think of, this happened to be the onsite hotel for Vialand.
Day 1 – Vialand
Awoke the next morning in our palatial room, with a great view of an Intamin sticking off the side of a hill. Being winter time, and not particularly warm at that, the fear was ever present that our little side quest would be in vain, so whiled away the moments towards opening by watching with trepidation for any signs of life. There were none.
Crunch time came and the other added benefit of staying onsite was that the reception can give out free park tickets. So there was nothing to lose by heading in.
A ridiculously convenient walk later we found ourselves in the entrance plaza, admiring Kaptan Gaga himself, and a cat.
Less pleasing to the eye was a closed ride board we then spotted, which happened to include the main event, Nefesken.
Disheartened as ever, headed in anyway to make the best of a bad situation, immediately walking straight past the headline coaster without much of a second spitey glance.
Came across the kiddie area just behind and decided to soothe our souls on the wacky worm with mine train train. Got to the batch point only to be informed by the operator that we needed to acquire some children in order to ride. They led on with a recommendation of what else we could ride, during which I half jokingly pointed at Nefesken (‘that one?’) and was promptly ignored, with the only actual answer being Macaparest.
2 down already, headed down the bottom of the hill for #1 Maceraperest. It was open, woo…
Looked kinda cool as the lesser Intamin here, a sprawling family layout with a bit of a Mine Train Ulven vibe.
It had far less gusto to it however, mostly pottering around some corners in an overly large and oddly undecorated ride footprint. +1.
Next on the lesser attraction list was a semi indoor drop tower, Adalet Kulesi, which was mainly of interest for being a Fabbri. It appeared to have hosted some form of preshow in the past, or perhaps in times when you aren’t the only people on park. Ended up straight on the ride and laughing at a blank doorway about halfway up the inside of the building. It had so much potential to deliver any form of enhancement to the ride sequence, but sadly remained unoccupied.
Vehicle at the top, there was an unnerving shake with the wind that put me far more in edge than usual for this type of attraction. View was good though.
Drop happened, didnt feel like this one had the punch downwards that can make them so potent, then it braked super early. We have Detonator at home.
Just over the way was the larger dark ride of the park. A crowd of staff were gathered in the entrance and one made a beeline straight for me to announce that it was closed. All day? Mmmaybe.
Going well this.
Back up the top of the hill is the other dark ride, Minik Kaşifler, a quaint small world style boat ride which was clearly the workhorse of the park at this point.
Had a good tune and some amusing spectacles, such as sweet lady liberty eating a burger, and an obscure reference to a violent venue in Brixton.
Not sure what specifically came over us next, in our general despair for how the visit was going, but clocking a team of staff in the station for Nefesken provided a glimmer of hope. Further investigation proved that there was nothing stopping anyone heading up towards the ride entrance, and no physical evidence that the ride was closed as the sign outside had proclaimed.
A worrying sounding announcement played as we made our way towards the queue, but it was soon interjected by the English equivalent which was just a generic safety spiel on loop.
Got through the queue unimpeded and stood at the batch gate for a short while, had the coaster been available the whole time and simply waiting for us to turn up?
Yes.
Suddenly overcome with a combination of shock and elation, we landed in the front row and the day was saved.
#2 Nefeskesen begins with a quick drop left out of the station and into the LSMs. A solid burst of speed punches you out towards the city skyline and up into the top hat.
The drop back out takes you a little lower and faster before a middling airtime hill, decent inversion, stengel-style whippy thing and a slow roll to finish.
Short but sweet, it’s a solid ride that outperforms a number of it’s brethren, hydraulic, magnetic or miscellaneous. Based on a severely outdated memory of a bad Italian park, this most likely includes the other red Intamin in the city.
But we won’t be finding out, because clones.
After managing that net positive, took a break from the park and a wander around the adjacent mall in search of further dark rides that it was rumoured to contain. If they are still here, they don’t want to be found.
Oh well, back on park it was time to see if their other dark ride had been resurrected. It had, an eerily quiet queue led up and over the station of Fatih’in Rüyası, yet another boaty attraction.
The theme here is rather more serious, a Turkish man shouting about battles and such, often out of left field with poor but comedic timing with the boat. The scale of the show building, scenes and overall ambition is rather impressive, but it doesn’t quite deliver its full potential with a simple lack of engagement.
One more lap of Nefesken in the back row was enough to satisfy our positive opinion of it and so, in under 2 hours we called it park complete. S’alright.
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Did the reverse of the metro journey back to the airport, armed with greater experience around how the stupid transport cards worked. Hopped on a plane to new mate Saudi.
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Arrival experience wasn’t so smooth as I once again found myself internet-less in a foreign land, with places to go and people to see. Home mobile network had claimed in the build up to the trip that a simple roaming bolt on would suffice for both Turkey and here, but then the arrival text here said something ain’t right, and instead took us back to the 2010s when calls costed £1.50 a second outside your own home.
Avoiding a slew of offers for taxi rides we didn’t need, headed below ground in the arrivals area to gather our bearings and see if the technical issues could be rectified. For some reason an airport man didn’t like the cut of our jib and moved us along back into taxi land, via a Tim Horton’s. Diagnosis was that it was a no go, so plumped for the nearest eSim desk.
Transaction was swift and effective and thus the first hurdle was cleared. On to the next.
I got paranoid about car hire here, as is easy to do so if you spend any time at all reading google reviews for any car hire establishments. We all know they can be notoriously open scammers, but the stories I was reading were particularly rough. In my best efforts towards damage limitation, I had booked my most trusted company thus far, even though they happened to be in a different terminal.
Thus, getting there needed a bus, which soon highlighted that the airport layout is not the finest of designs. It took about 20 minutes, involving completely leaving the airport and heading down several highways, performing multiple U-turns. Doesn’t seem ideal.
Regardless, we ended up at the desk and did the necessary. Thankfully the tyres weren’t in a dangerous condition and the car hadn’t been crashed into multiple times, so seemingly outperformed the average experience, and New York. Time to hit the dusty trail.
Landed at our hotel on the other side of town, not long later. Ended up checking in between two sets of obvious coaster fans. Small world right? Wonder what they’re here for.
We’re definitely overdue an update on this old classic. Since my original guide in 2020, Fantawild have opened at least another dozen parks and I’ve managed to bring my total up to an almost absurd 25 individual Fantawild park visits. They’ve also diversified in their styles of park a fair amount since the original trilogy of themes, which is exciting, and there are plenty more interesting and unique attractions to spotlight as their dark ride game has gone from strength to strength.
Rather than expanding on the original ranking in the same style which only looked at a handful of attractions each, I figured I’d try take a similar approach to the old Happy Valley/Six Flags ranking posts (both also overdue an update). This means separating each park that I’ve visited into two main categories – the coaster rankings for the coaster fans, and the dark ride rankings for the dark ride fans. Check those posts for a list of all the rides that can be found at each.I’ll aim to flesh out the review section for individual attractions over time as well.
Overall Resort Ranking
Now let’s combine the scores and see how the results turned out. When it comes to multi-gate resorts I figured it makes sense in most cases to base it on the best score of any individual park at that location. Having more next door is at best a bonus, at worst a distraction. This should highlight which locations have the most overall appeal right now, and we’ll look at a bit of location logistics along the way again for good measure.
Well somewhere had to come last and it’s poor old Tai’an today. It just so happens to be the oldest Fantawild park that I’ve visited, and potentially that’s still operating, as something weird is going on in Shantou. I actually really liked this park, it had a very chill atmosphere and a great setting with the Taishan Mountain backdrop that the city is predominantly famous for. I’ve spent more time than not being stressed out in Adventure parks over the years, usually because there’s something better to do that day, so visiting one as a standalone gives an opportunity to take it in a bit more.
There’s nothing special in the lineup, just the standard Dino Rampage, headbashing Suspended Looping Coaster and Mine Train combo, which is why there’s very little appeal against any other parks in this list. However I did manage to combine it with a morning at Sun Tribe, another park with plenty of Chinese dark ride intrigue and more bad coasters, so that’s something to look out for. If that’s sold it to you in any way, Tai’an is best visited from nearby Jinan, which itself is only 90 minutes from Beijing by train and found along the common Beijing – Shanghai route.
The only other solo Adventure park I’ve visited is Shenyang, under much different circumstances. Everything else I wanted to ride in the city was closed, so popped in for a half a day and didn’t really pay it much attention to be honest. Just a tick box exercise, while wishing I was somewhere else, but it does the job it needs to.
Based on images alone, Tai’an wins this by a mile, but Fantawild Adventure Shenyang has a couple more dark rides on offer to try and compensate. As for what else is nearby, the main draw for visiting the city would still be the Hotgo resort, although half of it remains unopened. Shenyang is half a day away from Beijing, in the opposite direction of the rest of the country, so not ideal.
This also feels harsh as it was another great day out and, for being the most city-centred of almost any Fantawild park, managed to hide it rather well. For any coaster fan it’s an easy skip and while home to a couple of very good dark rides, there’s just better options throughout the chain to experience the same, and more. The unique card up Qingdao’s sleeve is the interactive Chicken Fight Back, but it’s not going to change lives.
Qingdao has multiple small Sunac parks within a mall, but not much else of interest on the theme park front. It’s also several hours of detour off of any major Beijing – Shanghai route, so a bit of an ask, unless you’re also into beer or movies. Quite a pretty city for Chinese standards though with a cleaner, coastal feel, as seen from the waterfront Ferris Wheel.
Figures, of all the multi-gate combos this often feels like the least remarkable one. A lot of that is down to the headline wooden coaster being a bit disappointing, but the combo puts you in an awkward spot. There’s slightly too much to do across both parks in one day due to likely awkward time slots on some of the major dark and show rides. While Jungle Trailblazer is still the main draw for Oriental Heritage, you probably don’t want to miss Jinshan Temple Showdown over in Dreamland.
Location-wise this also checks out, as it’s a good few hours in any direction from other major theme park destinations and even more off route from your average Chinese city hotspots. I day-tripped it from Shenzhen, which was far too long, but it’s probably best done from there or Guangzhou.
I was intrigued to find out what the ‘Oriental Legend’ brand specifically brought to the chain, especially as it was the only one at the time of my visiting. Turns out not much, this is essentially an Oriental Heritage park with a near identical lineup to the Changsha park and as such it doesn’t have any specific draws when compared to other locations. Just a great standalone theme park with good, clean Fantawild fun.
Speculation suggests the park name needed to differentiate from another nearby Oriental Heritage in Anyang that never opened, but as of 2025, Fantawild have opened a new park with the Oriental Legend name and it does now carry some differences. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues.
It’s located almost exactly between the cities of Handan and Anyang and can therefore be reached from either. Both of these cities are on the train line from Beijing to Zhengzhou (hosting two more Fantawild parks) and then onto Xi’an, so a reasonable stop off / halfway point from a major tourism route.
This pains me, but we can’t argue with the numbers and my love for Silk Road Dreamland is highly specific to the fact that it’s a uniquely branded Fantawild park with two unique dark rides in Legendary Dunhuang and Silk Road Saga Also a bit of a cheat entry, these two parks don’t form part of the same resort and are found at opposite ends of the city of Jiayuguan. But let’s be realistic, if you’ve come this far, what else are you going to do in Jiayuguan?
The location is only for the most dedicated of souls. It’s about 8 hours by train from the nearest theme park or well established tourist destination in Xi’An. I opted to fly from there instead and it’s a pretty interesting area for other things, while also being very unlike the rest of China. It’ll knock a few days out of your itinerary at least.
I’m not sure what the specific intention around the Wonderland brand is yet, with this being the only one for now. The park has a playful mix of styles from across their portfolio, old and new. The key takeaway from me was that the ‘old’ has all been lovingly updated and brought into their modern era of technology and showmanship, such as on the remake of the Wizard Academy dark ride. The headline coaster is one of the strongest in the chain for me, but it’s also at Six Flags now, so that’s no doubt going to influence some decisions.
Xuzhou is a bit of a stretch from any major city, but is another that falls rather neatly on the Beijing – Shanghai route. In terms of Fantawild parks specifically, it’s also on a line between Huai’an to the east and Zhengzhou to the west, both of which are yet to come on this list, so there’s a good dose of variety to pick up between those three.
Tied with the above on numbers, I’ll give this park a bonus point for personal bias. Changsha seems quite middle of the road on both the coaster and dark ride fronts, within the chain. But let us not mistake middle of the road here for not being an amazing theme park in its own right. It beat out the Handan park by just one spot in both categories, while having the same headline attractions of Magic Gallery and a Vekoma Space Warp, there’s just a little more going on in the supporting lineup.
Changsha is quite centrally located and convenient for a more ‘advanced’ Chinese theme park route. It’s not likely to be on many lists for most people’s first couple of visits but it puts you within striking distance of a number of big names inthe coaster world and a couple of intrigues in thedark ride world. There are also two more Fantawild parks in nearby Zhuzhou which can comfortably be reached by car from Changsha as well.
This placing highlights again just how bad a lot of the coaster lineups are at these parks, as Jingzhou still has absolutely no specific draw other than on pure count inflation. The dark rides are doing all the heavy lifting here, with Battle of Red Cliffs being the real reason to visit, it was for me at the very least. There’s also a good number of other classics here to tick off at the same time though. The main thing to watch at this park, in my experience, is how sparse and inconvenient the timeslots for all the major attractions can be.
If you cut a line straight from West to East, Chengdu to Shanghai, you’ll find this park just left of the centre. Jingzhou itself is best reached from Wuhan, particularly onwards to Chongqing and Chengdu itself, where you can find plenty more theme parks, Fantawild and otherwise.
#10 FT Wild Land (#11 on coasters and #12 on dark rides)
A fascinating anomaly of a park for now, home to both a unique dark ride and very good Vekoma thrill coaster, and the only Fantawild to bear this name so far. All of that could change in the future however. Regardless, FT Wild Land is a very pleasant park with some impressively themed areas and buildings to be explored, with a bit of a twist on the more regular Fantawilds. I like it a lot.
Taizhou (not to be confused with a different Taizhou to the north of Shanghai) is south of Ningbo and can reasonably be done as a day trip if already visiting Ningbo for other Fantawild parks. They’ve also opened a Boonie Bears Bay park within Taizhou if you want to stay over.
Tied on points with the above but I’ll give it the edge for having two parks for the price of one (and a half-ish, for a two park ticket). With Fantawild this often comes with the caveat that you can’t speedrun most of their parks to full completion due to timeslots and big shows, so 2 days is always the recommendation if you want to soak it up, or don’t plan to visit many other parks with the same attractions. Dreamland is all about the dark rides, the best of which usually outshine the Oriental Heritage offering. But over there you’ve got a unique Jungle Trailblazer and one of the better ones at that. Solid all round resort for what is fast becoming a bit ‘old school’ Fantawild.
One of the closest resorts to the Chinese theme park hot spot that is the Shanghai area. I’ve always found the nearby city of Nanjing to be a great stopping off point, from which you can comfortably hit this park, some major Sunacparks, Dinoconda, even a Glorious Orient park. The possibilities are endless.
A more complete Oriental Heritage experience with a slightly worse (in my opinion) Jungle Trailblazer, it was the first Fantawild I truly fell in love with for the aesthetics. Where Wuhu requires you to visit two gates, Jinan packs both a woodie and the best dark ride of the era into one condensed experience. This particular park, also the original of it’s type, appears to be treated well by the chain, receiving a number of additions to the lineup since opening, which isn’t that common overall.
This might be driven by a rare close proximity to local competition in the slightly infamous Quangcheng Euro Park not far up the road. There’s also now a decent Sunac park on the other side of the city with more wooden rollercoaster goodness and Jinan is a good stopping point or crossroads towards the north for a number of parks we’ve already seen, while only being 90 minutes out of Beijing.
Technically another tie with the above, but I’ll give it half a point for being the only Dino Kingdom (for now). This one still falls into the ‘not really worth it for the coasters’ category, but the rest of the park more than makes up for it with at least 3 (for now) unique dark rides. It’s also just a great all round experience, they really went all in on the theme, as the local region is famous for fossil discovery, and there’s dinosaurs antics to look at everywhere.
Zigong is in a seemingly growing hotspot for theme parks, Fantawild ones in particular, all located around the city of Chengdu. It’s now possible to daytrip three different variants that all opened within the last 5 years and though there was a recent major coaster loss, there’s quite a bitof competitionnearby too. And pandas.
#6 Oriental Heritage Mianyang(#16 in coasters and #1 in dark rides)
The last park on the list entirely carried by dark ride lineup, which just so happened to come out on the very top of that list. While not interesting in the slightest, at the very least there’s 4 coasters for the count here, tied most with any Fantawild. As one of the more recent and refined versions of Oriental Heritage parks, there’s plenty else to keep you entertained however.
As with the above, Chengdu is your main base for this park, Dino Kingdom and now Oriental Legend Ziyang.
The current flagship brand of the era has plenty going for it, even if the storytelling is a little hard to digest for a theme park. Anything with a Fighter Jet in it has the best steel coaster Fantawild can offer right now, and potentially best coaster full stop if all the woodies have significantly slipped since opening. Then some of these latest dark ride projects are technically brilliant, they’ve really outdone themselves in many ways.
Huai’an is reachable by train from Nanjing, which itself is served well from Shanghai and a good hub for many other theme parks in the region. It’s also reasonably well positioned on a route up toward Beijing, not a million miles from Fantawild Wonderland and there’s another couple of interestingparks for dark rides closer by.
Thinking about these next two a little more in the context of a top 5, I’m going to go against my own ‘only based on the best score’ rule and mark them down for their neighbour parks as they both came rock bottom of the list on their own. As such the Adventures really don’t add much of anything other than a niggling urge to try and rush both parks in a day for maximum value and coaster count, or settle for what will feel like a comparatively subpar experience that’s nothing more than an intrigue for a second day.
The true breadth of the resort also lives and dies on the performance of the Jungle Trailblazer, which is debatable these days, with a seemingly established pattern of deterioration. And you can ride it elsewhere. But if it hits, it hits hard.
Zhuzhou was mentioned above in the Changsha advice, a fairly central location for a China trip a little more off the beaten path. You can complete the original trilogy of Fantawild brands with relative ease from this city.
When averaged, these tie with Zhuzhou and that seems fair as they are essentially cloned resorts, the only two of their specific combination in the country. Strengths here for me in a slightly better Jungle Trailblazer that’s also a Fantawild exclusive layout (provided it still runs well). Weakness in having the lowest ranked park for both categories next door. It’s almost best left ignored, but go on, you may as well suffer it and do it better than I did.
Zhengzhou is another very central location, just positioned further north. Bit of a trek from Beijing but serves Xi’an quite well as a stopping off point. As with Zhuzhou you can get a third type of park in the area with relative ease, as Oriental Legend Handan is the next nearest Fantawild by train.
Ningbo is one of the superior Glorious Orient parks in terms of lineup, both within and next door. The park also includes Hangar Breakout, the smaller and more nimble of the war-themed 4D motion-based dark rides. And then it has an Oriental Heritage, with all the staples.
It sounds pretty perfect now I’m talking about it and is the main reason I broke my own rules on the two above. Shame I’ve had the worst experiences of any Fantawild here and that I can personally vouch for the wooden coaster being a bit brutal these days. But the strength of Ningbo is that it won’t live or die on your experience with Jungle Trailblazer, as this is the only resort with another top tier coaster to back it up.
It’s also the closest resort to Shanghai, though in a bit of an awkward spot, the wrong side of a massive stretch of water in Hangzhou bay. The namesake city of Ningbo is actually pretty far away too, at around 90 minutes by Didi, or a slightly shorter, cheaper and more complicated combination of train and Didi. It takes a bit of dedication, but is probably worth giving a couple of days for what should be the most comprehensive Fantawild experience right now.
I do love an anti-climax. Five years on I’ve ended up crowning the same winner. If Ningbo is the most comprehensive resort then this park remains the most condensed Fantawild experience going.
Whilst I’ve loved seeking out all their other attractions across the country since, I don’t think anything quite compares to this particular combination of unique dark ride discovery and insane wooden coaster. As a huge fan of both, this still represents the purest essence of Fantawild for me and though I sincerely hope otherwise, we may never see one like this again.
As before, the only problem with this park being different to all the rest is that it’ll make you want to try another one. And that remains a good thing.
Still not really near anything else worthwhile in the theme park world. Though it tops the list, Nanning probably shouldn’t be your first port of call in China. The nearest sensible city is Guangzhou, and there’s plentygoingon in that region, so it works best on a southern trip of some description.
We’re definitely overdue an update on this old classic. Since my original guide in 2020, Fantawild have opened at least another dozen parks and I’ve managed to bring my total up to an almost absurd 25 individual Fantawild park visits. They’ve also diversified in their styles of park a fair amount since the original trilogy of themes, which is exciting, and there are plenty more interesting and unique attractions to spotlight as their dark ride game has gone from strength to strength.
Rather than expanding on the original ranking in the same style which only looked at a handful of attractions each, I figured I’d try take a similar approach to the old Happy Valley/Six Flags ranking posts (both also overdue an update). This means separating each park that I’ve visited into two main categories – the coaster rankings for the coaster fans, and the dark ride rankings for the dark ride fans. Then we’ll combine the scores, figure out some convoluted system for how the multi-park resorts are affected, and highlight which locations have the most overall appeal right now. Plus a bit of location logistics again for good measure.
Start with the basics, the signature dark ride of the Adventure parks was always Dino Rampage. The very first Fantawild had one of these and it kicked off a series of many 4D motion-based dark rides being staples of future parks throughout the country. Crude, but effective, I wasn’t a fan at first. Since becoming such a stan of their later work however, I appreciate this one on new levels. It’s worth experiencing either as a piece of history at this point, or for the pay-off of Dino Rampage 2.0, if you want to really geek out about it.
Same as above, but with two simulator attractions for the price of one. Crazy Idioms is a more modern overlay of Space Journey, which may have also been rolled out to some other places by this point. Not necessarily an upgrade though.
#22 Fantawild Adventure Shenyang – Dino Rampage, Space Expo, Boonie Bears Theatre, Space Journey, Boonie Bear Adventure, Sky Sailor
Same as above, but with a Boonie Bear takeover. Again, the shooter is an overlay which appears to have happened a few times, but they also got the revolving theatre added, which has a few different decent films worth tracking down in your travels.
#21 Fantawild Adventure Jiayuguan – The Silk Road, Wizard Academy, Boonie Bears Theatre, Space Journey, Boonie Bear Adventure, Sky Sailor
As a long time advocate for the unique attraction, much of my later love for Fantawild has come from learning that they do in fact have their fair share of them. The external opinion has always been of this machine-like mass-produced ‘just another Fantawild park full of clones’ situation, but the individuality and creativity has always been in there to at least some extent. Even I was guilty in the early days of thinking once you’ve done one of each brand, you’ve done them all.
The Adventure park in Jiayuguan has a dark ride specifically tailored to its region, in The Silk Road. In terms of timelines it seems like it was developed directly alongside Chinese Opera Express which uses the same huge vehicles and ride system, but I find the theme of this one so much more engaging. Being a later adventure park they also got a Wizard Academy, the successor of Dino Rampage, though there’s plenty more of those to come.
These parks were seen as the gold standard when I first started visiting them, but I’m not sure if it’s true with the early ones. Being built next to existing Dreamland parks that actually did a little better on the dark ride front did them no favours and in terms of coasters there wasn’t much between the two brands of this era. It’s more of the surface level aesthetic that these parks really nailed and I think it resonated with the national audience, a true Chinese feel that went on to see Oriental Heritage become the longest serving brand in the chain.
Legend of Nuwa is considered the headline act in most cases, the third generation of 4D motion-based action. The supporting lineup includes robot arm dark ride Devil’s Peak which probably sneaks in as my personal favourite here for the atmospherics, along with several other long story-telling dark rides and simulators such as Dragon King’s Tale, Chinese Opera Express and Bridge to Love, which make it hard to do the adjacent parks in the same day.
#18 Fantawild Wonderland (Xuzhou) – Wizard Academy 2.0,Boonie Bears Theatre, Boonie Bear Adventure,River of Tales, Adventures in Dragon Palace, Let’s Fly
For the most recently built Fantawild park I’ve visited, this actually falls surprisingly low. The most exciting thing here for me was Wizard Academy, a name we’ve seen many times before but instead here they decided to lovingly remake one of their old classics with new technology, new scenes and even a new wizard, with plenty of throwbacks to the original. Love to see it.
The rest of the lineup is rather common. Though this marked my first experience with Adventures in Dragon Palace, and this one has the best entrance from it with the moving dragon, I’ve since stumbled across it many more times. The rest is of the same modern quality that ties up with other recent parks, from the Boonie Bear shooting dark ride to the River of Tales boat ride.
Interesting how these line up slightly ahead of their neighbour parks. I think the one-two punch of Jinshan / Whitesnake and Qin beats out the best of their other, newer gate in terms of dark rides. This is where it will get muddy for the final results as they both perfectly compliment each other as a resort, filling the gaps. But you need two tickets and, reasonably, two days.
The Qingdao park is a weird outlier because it’s the only Dreamland that doesn’t have a second gate. It’s one of the most inner-city builds of any Fantawild and presumably has no room for expansion, so they threw it one weird extra bone over the above two in Chicken Fight Back, a seemingly unique shooting dark ride based on an earlier franchise from Fantawild Animation, before the bears took over.
Much as I think Magic Gallery is the best thing ever, this park still feels a bit Oriental Heritage-lite. While the park saw many debut versions that substantially improved on their earlier iterations, from the boat rides to the shooting rides and even more elaborate simulators, for me it lacks a second hard hitter. It paved the way for greatness.
It’s also weird that this lineup looks rather shallow to me now, as it was pretty peak at the time I experienced it. This park in particular, my first encounter with Magic Gallery, mere weeks before covid hit and I was kept away from Fantawilds from over 3 years, when I had just properly fallen for them… it holds a special place for leading to such an obsession. But that obsession has led me to seek out all of the other incredible lineups and I think, most importantly, unique attractions. And that’s where I’m going have to draw the distinction in ranking these at some point. Again, much as I love Magic Gallery, we can’t escape that it’s in other places too. Sort of.
#12 FT Wild Land (Taizhou) – Forest Drifting, Realm of Warriors, Let’s Fly, Finding Merlion, Bullseye
This park really hit me out of nowhere with it’s dark rides, as I hadn’t done my research properly and was very pleasantly surprised with what I encounted on the day. I think it really set me down the specific path of making sure I got every unique Fantawild dark ride under my belt because it proved how much I, and probably the world, were sleeping on the assumption that it’s all only a bunch of clones.
Forest Drifting is simply joyous and magical, bringing new special effects to the Fantawild arsenal that I hadn’t seen before. Realm of Warriors is by now a 4th generation 4D motion-base dark ride, following on from Legend of Nuwa and, at least to me at the time, an entirely unique story of one at that. Even the flying theatre here is actually excellent, as it’s full of fantasy and dinosaurs rather than the overplayed wonders of the world nonsense.
The early Oriental Heritage parks that didn’t get built next to a Dreamland managed to get a Jinshan Temple Showdown all to themselves, instantly raising them a level above the others. Beyond that these have a near identical lineup, notably only missing Dragon King’s Tale. They’re pretty iconic within this space.
#9 Oriental Heritage Jingzhou – Battle of Red Cliffs, Magic Gallery, Legend of Nuwa, Boonie Bears Theater, The Tune Tour, Bridge to Love, Let’s Fly
I put Battle of Red Cliffs at the forefront here because it’s another one-of-a-kind. It directly replaces Chinese Opera Express in ride system and theme, and the unique storytelling does it so much more justice. Paired with Magic Gallery we’ve already got a killer combination going on here, though the rest is standard Oriental Heritage fare.
I didn’t know what to think of Glorious Orient at first. It was the first new big brand that came along after my obsession with Fantawild truly began and expectations were perhaps set immeasurably high. Some of the steps up in technology are astounding but the wartime theme of the place takes a little getting your head around, over the whimsical mythology I’ve come to know and love.
Zhiyuan x2 is so visually striking and takes their boat ride systems to a whole new level. The storytelling actually hits really hard in places and provides some excellent moments. Railroad Warriors is I guess the hotly anticipated 5th generation of the 4D motion-based dark ride, their most iterated vehicles in history. It flows and is timed with an insane level of precision and more than any other version before it really plays on a true combination of physical scenery and screens, making it by far the most accomplished of them to date.
Besides that, the shooter and the flying theatre are nothing special, and it’s just not my vibe. And I’m not sure where that leaves it, as it’s a head vs. heart scenario, but I do know that the Huai’an park didn’t receive the full Glorious Orient roster.
These two manage to play out like ultimate compilations of the dark rides of their generation. It seems perhaps in ‘completing’ their resort alongside an existing Adventure park, everything on offer was thrown at them as a last memento, rather than any of the halfway-mismatched lineups above. The only real downgrade is Wizard Academy over Legend of Nuwa, but they didn’t even get any of the filler stuff like the early flying theatres, simulators or boat rides. Sadly I can’t also speak for the quality of upkeep on these rides as of today, they are getting pretty old for Chinese theme park standards and that scares me slightly. In their heyday though, what a lineup.
The Glorious Orient here also has Hangar Breakout, yet another motion-based dark ride based on the disturbing themes of war, but with smaller vehicles. So Fantawild have two, new, excellent versions now, and I’m fairly sure these have been rolling out to the latest Boonie-specific parks I haven’t yet managed to visit. Can’t wait to see how they transition to a happy story again. Still, an incredible top three from a technical perspective, and for being unlike any other park in the world.
#4 Fantawild Dino Kingdom (Zigong) – Deep Down, Dino Rampage 2.0, Mystic River, Jurassic Journey, Let’s Fly, Bug Zapper
Oh no, now we’re in the danger zone. Deep Down did things to me, deep down. It may well have the best scene of dark ride horror in the entire theme park landscape. I thought this ride system was dead for Fantawild and didn’t even know what I was getting into at this park until the moment I clocked a model of the vehicle outside the entrance, and screamed in delight. This is what they do to me these days. It might be my new favourite.
But we’re not done with this park. They also brought Dino Rampage back to life with new technology, new media and a bigger, badder dino. As with the Wizard Academy remake, this just makes me so happy that their ‘older’ properties are looked back on fondly and with respect, as they bring them into their new golden age. That’s not done by a chain that doesn’t care. Mystic River brings more dinosaurs, this time to their boat ride system. It’s a little ropey, but they also have the best (dinosaur) version of their flying theatre here, and a solid shooter. And some Boonie Bears that might make you cry.
#3 Silk Road Dreamland (Jiayuguan) – Legendary Dunhuang, Silk Road Saga, Legend of Nuwa, Tune Tour, Bridge to Love, Chinese Opera Express
So Deep Down happened, the supposed rebirth of the enhanced motion dark ride system that really got my motor running. Nope. I’d been obsessing over this park particularly, among many, for ages, because literally no one has been. It’s the most remote bit of Fantawild theme parking you can possibly think of (until the one in Hami opens) and, as we saw in the previous part, the coasters are absolute trash so no one even takes a second glance here. Except me.
Two things weighed heavy on my mind. 1, it’s the only Silk Road branded park in the chain, that’s exciting and needs to be ‘ticked off’ for my own completion. 2, what is this Legendary Dunhuang? I think it’s a unique dark ride, but it could be anything. It’s a dark ride, it’s an enhanced motion vehicle ride, the only one they made between the original Qin Dynastys and Deep Down. The only one with this theme. So for the second time in four months I was discovering this mid-queue and screaming. And then with all manner of superlatives did I fall in love with the rest of the ride experience. It might be my new favourite.
But we weren’t done with dark ride discoveries for this park. Silk Road Saga? What’s that? I had thought the Fantawild robot arm ride system was also dead, but it’s here, in a different form, with an extra seat on the cars, a circular station and an entirely different style of storytelling. Sure it amounted to a lot more of a ‘flying theatre in front of several screens’ type experience compared to the original, but it appears to be the only one and I still loved it’s own unique charms. I’ve seen at some point that they sold this system to somewhere else in China but never managed to find it again, the rabbit hole is endless. The rest of the park plays out like a basic Oriental Heritage, not that that’s a bad thing.
5 years after winning my original list, Fantawild Asian Legend still stands alone as something pretty special. While the Finding the Merlion simulator, potentially it’s weakest attraction, has found its way into other parks throughout the country, the rest of the South East Asian twists on their popular ride systems have remained unique. There’s just no other park on this list with this many exclusives so it’s always going to tick a lot of boxes towards completion. Even the flying theatre manages to play well to the strengths of the park by being a compilation video of what it represents, rather than arbitrary sights. Then, when you’re all Jinshan Temple Showdowned-out, Hero of Malacca offers the only equivalent it ever received. Meeting in Ha Long Bay is a refreshing delight compared to the operatic counterpart, as is Rama and Sita over the omnipresent Nuwa.
I really want to return here, even though they rarely add much over time, if only just to document it better and re-experience a couple of the favourites with more experienced eyes. It’s been 6 long years and though my main fear is that the place has deteriorated, there were signs back then that they were putting the effort in to look after it. We’ll see.
I’ve struggled so much with the ranking of the top 5, they’re all winners in my eyes. Mianyang threw another curveball at me, casually strolling into what should have been just another Magic Gallery, my supposed favourite dark ride. It turns out there’s an almost entirely different version, as a reader once pointed out to me long ago, and it’s essentially just as outstanding. This one plays on the same basic concept, with a different protagonist, and throws in an actual motion-base for the trackless vehicles to drive onto in the ‘flying theatre over the painting’ section. So, all the tricks of the big players at play.
What I do know is that pairing that with White Snake’s Fury is, probably, the best top two of any park here for me. Plus you’ve got one of the most modern Nuwas, which seem to move a lot more violently, and an insanely facelifted classic in the return of Rumble under the Sea. I feel like it’s the most well rounded example of the most iconic Fantawild park so far.
So quickly, for the dark ride fans, because this has gone on long enough, what’s the logistics?
Chengdu has become a bit of a hub in recent years, though the city doesn’t directly host a Fantawild itself. From here you can comfortably day trip both Oriental Heritage Mianyang and Dino Kingdom in Zigong. Plus they’ve recently opened an Oriental Legend in Ziyang, which is even closer, and looks like it can place well on this list with more new and unique attractions.
Beyond that it’s back to basic old Ningbo, sadly. Having both Glorious Orient and one of the highest ranked Oriental Heritage parks, they’ve just got such a depth of lineup in one spot that’s reachable from Shanghai. It’s the obvious choice.
Lastly, Changsha plays host to a well rounded roster, with Oriental Heritage in the West and then the Zhuzhou resort combination of Adventure and Dreamland very close by. Just an hour out by train is also another park I haven’t yet visited, Boonie Bears Land in Yichun, might be something special there too.
We’re definitely overdue an update on this old classic. Since my original guide in 2020, Fantawild have opened at least another dozen parks and I’ve managed to bring my total up to an almost absurd 25 individual Fantawild park visits. They’ve also diversified in their styles of park a fair amount since the original trilogy of themes, which is exciting, and there are plenty more interesting and unique attractions to spotlight as their dark ride game has gone from strength to strength.
Rather than expanding on the original ranking in the same style which only looked at a handful of attractions each, I figured I’d try take a similar approach to the old Happy Valley/Six Flags ranking posts (both also overdue an update). This means separating each park that I’ve visited into two main categories – the coaster rankings for the coaster fans, and the dark ride rankings for the dark ride fans. Then we’ll combine the scores, figure out some convoluted system for how the multi-park resorts are affected, and highlight which locations have the most overall appeal right now. Plus a bit of location logistics again for good measure.
Wish me luck.
Fantawild Park Ranking by Coasters
#24 Fantawild Adventure Zhengzhou – Stress Express, Terror Twister, Mount Tanggula, Spiteful worm
#24 Fantawild Dreamland Xiamen – Stress Express, Terror Twister, Mount Tanggula, Spiteful worm
Tied in dead last we have these two parks, which demonstrates an interesting overlap in time periods for the Adventure and Dreamland brands. Both opened within a year of each other and both received exactly the same coaster lineup, while their dark rides are a whole different game. The reason these sit in last is that you have to suffer not one, but two large and terrible thrill coasters. Boomerangs are bad enough, but I absolutely despise Sky Loops these days. The best in the park for both is the mine train and even they ride comically poorly. For added insult to injury, they also contain a worm coaster that adults can’t ride. Not a strong start.
The only other park that, like the above, operates two large scale abominations, but I’ll take the SLC (which is also a rare, China exclusive layout) over the Sky Loop any day. Plus no spiteful worm.
#22 Fantawild Dreamland Wuhu – Golden Whirlwind, Puppy Coaster
Not much going on here. Golden Whirlwind is a bit of an anomaly for the chain, the only Sameco looper they ever installed and it’s not good. At the time of my visit, it was just that and a worm that you couldn’t ride. Looks like they’ve since added a Puppy Coaster, so they’ve had a bit of an upgrade.
Classic combo of SLC, mine train and one you can’t ride. It’s a real shame that both of the Jiayuguan parks have the same ride type as their headline coaster.
These aren’t much of an upgrade, but a mine train AND a puppy? At least we’re back into +3 territory. Shame about the worms.
#16 Oriental Heritage Mianyang – Grand Showman, Pine Tree Rocket, Puppy Coaster, Water Coaster, Spiteful pedal
These were the unfortunate Oriental Heritage parks of the chain that were seemingly not deemed worthy of a world class headline coaster, unlike most of the others. Instead they got just another SLC, but it’s the rare layout again. Pine Tree Rocket is the first of many family Vekoma coasters on the list, Puppy is always a plus, although this one is in name only, and a worm is always a spite. Also the first pedal-powered children’s coaster that we can’t ride and are ending up everywhere just to annoy. The other one I’m considering a minus here is the water coaster, which is just a ridiculous ordeal to have to put yourself through for a questionable +1. Too wet.
#15 Oriental Heritage Jingzhou – Grand Showman, Pine Tree Rocket, Puppy Coaster, Spiteful pedal
It has taken us to about halfway through the list to reach ‘respectable’ territory, which is a shame as at least some of the parks above are amazing in almost every other aspect. There’s no rollercoaster here in Zigong that’s going to actively try and hurt you, but the headline is a Vekoma SFC which, while enjoyable, is only a filler attraction at other Fantawild parks and also pretty common worldwide these days. Turbo Dino is another family Vekoma, this time some junior boomerang fun, but we’ve got them at home (Paultons in my case). Dino Dash is cute.
#13 Oriental Legend Handan – Flying Dragon, Sky and Earth, Puppy Coaster, Water coaster
The first of the headline coasters to get excited about, Flying Dragon is a modern Vekoma sit-down thrill coaster, Fantawild’s go-to since 2019. The layout is solid, being a lift-hill version of Formula at Energylandia, one of the pioneers of this design style, but also with an extended finale section. Sky and Earth is a unique family coaster for Fantawild, and Chinese exclusive as a family layout. +1 for the puppy, -1 for the gross water coaster, you know how it goes now.
Celestial Gauntlet is the same Vekoma as above, with a better aesthetic. Big Top is proof that the SFC headling in Zigong is only a secondary coaster elsewhere. That still being a solid ride in its own right, and the lack of a water coaster, edges Handan out by one spot.
#11 FT Wild Land (Taizhou) – Invincible Warriors, Pine Tree Rocket, Puppy Coaster
Invincible Warriors is a so far unique Vekoma thrill coaster, the Renegade model. I’d rate it slightly stronger than the predecessor layout on this list and it also lives in one of my favourite themed areas of any Fantawild, so that’s nice. Outside of that we’ve got another Vekoma Junior and a Puppy. All good here.
The first of the big woodies, and the least impressive. Fantawild had an incredible run of installing Gravity Group creations called Jungle Trailblazer, which changed at least my life for the better. We can fall back on the specific rankings here for more detail, but it’s a shame this one didn’t meet expectations. It still kicked ass, in places. Galaxy Express is another Vekoma SFC, a good second place. There’s no other filler here, for better or worse.
The next of the Jungle Trailblazers was built twice, at the next two parks. I feel I need to mention here that all of the wooden coaster rankings in this list need to be taken with a pinch of salt as I can only base things on when I personally experienced them. Ningbo’s was the last in the set for me (when it should have been the first) and a good number of years after it first opened. It rode extremely aggressively, but in a way that demonstrates it was already past its prime, in dire need of some good maintenance work. I’ve since received reports that this may be the case across the chain (and Chinese woodies in general), with the roughness outweighing the underlying thrill. There was a golden age for these incredible specimens and sadly we may already be past it. Elsewhere in the park we’ve got a Boomerang, which is a shame, and the first of the indoor mine trains for the list, which are interesting for some light (dark) theming.
#8 Oriental Heritage Jinan – Jungle Trailblazer, Stress Express, Night Rescue, Space Vehicle, Spiteful worm, Spiteful pedal
Same woodie, Boomerang and indoor mine train from above but they’ve also added a family coaster from Jinma since I last visited so it’s an extra +1. Along with 2 things you can’t ride instead of 1. So it looks like the highest count of any Fantawild on paper, but only ties it with Handan and Mianyang thanks to their water coasters.
#7 Fantawild Wonderland (Xuzhou) – Cloud Shuttle, Pine Tree Rocket, Puppy Coaster
Back to Vekoma, and this is the most recently built Fantawild I have currently visited. They were somewhat put on the map for western enthusiasts for this particular coaster, as it shares the layout with Six Flags Great Adventure’s new Flash coaster which opened the following year. Of course I rode Cloud Shuttle and then subsequently skipped the chance to go to SFGAdv this year (yay, clones). It’s pretty awesome, with some very special sensations, particularly in the stall element. Round it out with a Vekoma Junior and a Puppy and you’ve got a good day out.
The strongest Fantawild Vekoma for me so far has been installed at every Glorious Orient park to date, it’s the signature for the theme with the aircraft carrier station launch combo and custom train decoration. Round it out with a Vekoma Junior and a Puppy, but with different names and trains, and you’ve got a good day out. Capacity is horrendous though, so make sure you’re the first one on it for the day.
As above, but it doesn’t have the pedal-powered thing to annoy.
#4 Oriental Heritage Wuhu – Jungle Trailblazer, Stress Express, Land of Lost Souls
I think the first of the truly exceptional woodies trumps the most exceptional Vekoma for me, and that begins in Wuhu. This is the only other unique Trailblazer and it packed some serious punches. Grouped with another boomerang and indoor mine train combo, it’s your classic Oriental Heritage coaster lineup and as good as they get.
#3 Fantawild Dreamland Zhuzhou – Jungle Trailblazer, Stress Express Unique to Fantawild, but a clone of Fjord Flying Dragon, one of China’s first big names in the wooden coaster scene. It is (was) incredible as a lengthy layout packed with everything I love about this style of ride, and near perfect. Shame about the boomerang.
As above, but paired with the far superior Vekoma SFC and it looks like they’ve since added a weird kiddy spinner so it beats out Nanning on two counts now. Unless you can’t ride it. Best bang for your buck on Fantawild coasters. Unless the woodie destroys you.
That’s it for the coasters. I guess if they’re all you care about we can take a quick look at logistics here.
Ningbo is the obvious answer, sadly, as I’ve got a bit of a love hate relationship with that particular resort. For having both the best of the Vekomas in Fighter Jet, and a Jungle Trailblazer in two adjacent gates it’s the highest ranked one-two coaster punch in the chain, something which every single individual gate currently lacks. Even if the woodie might kill you these days, you might love it. Ningbo is also one of the closest to Shanghai and the highest density theme park region of the country. Though the Fantawild is nowhere near either city and a bit of a pain to get to, it’s China, logistical pain is to be expected.
Wuhu is similarly positioned not too far from Shanghai, potential day trip material with faff or a solid stop-off point along a route. Next best option for giving a woodie a try. The rest would have to be built into a more bespoke itinerary, but let me know if you ever need advice on that. As for the next best Vekoma, it’s in America…
Beyond that, I think this list just highlights Fantawild aren’t your go-to chain for coasters in the country. Your next best can be ridden in the U.S. under more or less duress and this is why I probably started off on the wrong foot with these parks many years ago. They’re about much, much more. Which leads us nicely into part 2.
Turns out I’ve got one more in me for the year. I’ve been meaning to get back to Ireland for a while now, following Tayto’s continued expansion but, surprising though it may sound coming from me, could never quite convince myself it was worth the effort. Until the off-season started to look too long, so took the plunge.
Quick detour beforehand though:
Day 0 – Not Ireland
Continuing on with a seal obsession after the sanctuary in Japan, decided to try a boat ride to go see some in Norfolk.
Picture this, 100 more times.
Why am I telling you this? Well not far down the road is the glamorous
Rainbow Park
See?
With a magnificent specimen of a coaster, #1 Sea Dragon.
Been wanting to get this one done for years, but Hunstanton is just so far from anything. Except seals now. Tick.
There’s the beach.
The following morning we took a rough and ready Ryanair flight to Dublin without much event. Car hire was more of a faff than it needed to be, standing in a long queue only to then be told I didn’t need to stand in a long queue. Then a shuttle bus to some external car place where they didn’t know where my car was parked, in a sea of cars.
Didn’t really matter, had time to kill, so went to Tesco next for Irish supplies. Was thrilled to discover that even internationally a UK Clubcard saves you from getting ripped off by their greedy pricing structure. I was so ready to borrow one from a friendly passing Irishman.
Day 1 – Emerald Park
But the reason we were here of course was old mate Tayto, RIP.
Last visited here 6 years ago, while their Zierer was being built and they were only a +2. They’re up to 6 coasters now, so have had a pretty decent growth spurt.
Joined a light queue for a wristband at opening – they still use these as their ‘all-access’ day ticket for some reason, but never checked me once at rides the whole day, or even when leaving and re-entering the park.
Made an initial beeline burst for the new land of Tír na nÓg.
#1 Fianna Force was the main draw for putting up with all that travel nonsense, as potentially the most substantial coaster in Europe evading me. Dunno what it is now, but stupid Wiener Looping probably.
Bit of a buzz heading into the queue anyway, nice to know that can still happen, it looks pretty decent.
The last bit of cattlepen is indoors with a psuedo-pre-show in which a blacksmith sets the scene. Some bloke fought a dragon once, now we’re off to do the same. I’ve made some special armour for you – a Vekoma STC train. Noted.
It’s only the second one of these around and I’d consider it a solid step up. Hals-über-Kopf was fun and all, but managed to channel Vekoma’s modern blandness a bit too much for my liking.
Here things are a bit more varied, including the inversions that aren’t just roll, roll, roll. This station interaction is an appreicated touch as well.
It’s quite intense in places that aren’t rolls, with some solid and sustained positives that pay homage to our B&M forefathers, RIP.
Though saying that, I did get a bit of a ‘left turn: the ride’ sensation after a few goes.
Variation picks up nicely at the end, with some right turns and some bouncy, swoopy hill-type moments. It’s another step in the right direction for airtime on inverts, the likes of which we were promised on Drage Kongen but were never given. Hope the upwards trend continues.
Nothing mind-blowing, but very solid package overall. Pretty, interesting, highly rerideable. I was happy.
That station interaction is of course with #2 Quest, one of the linear layouted junior boomerangs also from Vekoma.
It’s decent, I like these ones, though would of course have preferred something new. Or a view of Helix. In that vein, having the STC blast over your head in the station is probably the highlight, along with any subsequent interactive moments.
Nabbed a reride on Cú Chulainn on the way past as progress was going way too quickly. Everything was walk on, even on one train, except this, which was managing to hold a queue through faff and popularity, in that order.
I’m nowhere near as hyped for Gravity Group wooden coasters as I once was, sadly. I had such a personal golden era on the Chinese ones over a relatively short period of time, with nearly all of them kicking my ass in ways it had never been kicked before.
Then all the biggest US ones kinda sucked in comparison. And since then I’ve both experienced, and heard from others, that the Chinese ones have killed themselves. Only Australian Lev remains, but god damn that’s a long way to complete a set. 2026 it is.
Anyway, this one was always decent, but low tier. It has moments, sparks, of what can make the big ones special. But it also has the gaping pacing flaws that just make a good number of them a wet blanket experience.
A decently scary first drop and some fun fast pops lead into a lot of ‘left turn: the ride’, again. There’s a solid, out of control, twisty bouncy section leading up into the non-inversion thing and then it just kinda peters out for another half a layout.
S’alright.
Back on the new cred agenda was big ol’ #3 Dino Dash themselves.
This was the first of this Vekoma Junior layout, but I managed to catch the Boonie Bear one before it, of course.
Very nicely presented anyway, with the exploratory queueline, couple animatronics, watery jump scare at the end. Great family attraction.
Which made #4 Flight School look rather sad in comparison. This building was pretty miserable, with stagnant water, broken TVs and sketchy electrical fittings. It was uncannily like Luton Airport earlier that day though, so I guess it gets the point across.
Looks nice on the outside at least, and it’s a cracking layout for what it is. I’ve never done a Zierer Force 281, the horror, stupid Morey’s Piers, etc., but that laterals section in the middle is legitimately good.
Coasters complete, here’s some animals.
Lovely place overall, great day out if it’s conveniently located enough for you, though probably not quite a big enough draw just yet if the rest of Europe is still your oyster.
The ride lineup still feels a little lacking if you’re looking to squeeze every waking park hour out of it, but they’re fleshing it out nicely over a relatively short space of time and the zoo is a pleasant distraction. Needs a dark ride. A better water ride. A truly kick ass coaster. Don’t we all.
Flying back the same day sucked, but was stupidly cheap and I’ll take the +5 for the weekend, thanks.
All the fun of the fééry on the previous day had meant I could land a milestone on #1800 Wild Buffalo. Not too shabby a pick, when your options are limited.
Never mind me though, let us take a moment to congratulate the park on opening their new for 2025 attraction in April. April. Imagine that.
It also recompletes the European woodie set, again. Have to stay on top of these things.
A pleasant queue with some horses and cowboys leads to a stripped back, but functional station. They were only running one train, but it was just about justifiable given the crowd levels.
Appreciate the terrain game going on, and the fact that it’s basically built on sand. There’s a proverb in there somewhere.
Wild Buffalo marks the second wooden coaster in France to commence with audio of a man shouting, in this case yee-haw (except the French spell that weird), rather than tiimmbeerr! The drop itself is a little stumpy, this one isn’t going for raw thrills, but it’s decent enough towards the back, where the audio is also timed better.
Corners happen, GCI do love themselves a good corner. Airtime is optional.
Overall it’s an interesting, varied and smart layout, that maintains momentum rather well until the end thanks to the use of the terrain. Nothing to write home about though, potentially your weakest ‘as new’ GCI yet. I could throw some shade at Wicker Man here, but even I have to admit that that’s better. So I’ll give a shout out to how awful Lightning Racer runs these days instead. Horrible. It’s a interesting one, in a country blessed with multiple 30ft Gravity Group woodies that kick your ass, this shows off the milder side of what wood can do, I guess. Worth a few laps.
Couldn’t come here and not take a spin on the legendary dancing monkey dark ride. Love a puppeted ride and this one’s pure class.
And that was it for Mer de Sable, have been before and already ridden the other coasters, they’re all cloney +1s. So the buffalo is great for the park, a solid standout unique attraction, a crowdpleaser, good to see they’re going places, better than a Eurofighter etc. etc.
I particularly enjoy the fact that Mer de Sable can contently co-exist just 10 minutes from
Parc Astérix
As a man who doesn’t revisit places, this parc is now in my top 10 most visited of all time. And that includes back home in the UK.
Seems they’re always getting something to draw me back, in this case #2 Cétautomatix, a spinner that took too long to open. What year is it again?
Potatomatix is the latest spinning coaster attempt from Gerstlauer and the parc have, in keeping up with their standards, made it look very nice indeed. The queue and surrounding area are very interactive with the ride, there’s plenty of action going on around you most of the time. Being the new attraction it had a bit of a wait, but it moved well and had some theming to look at, inside and out. They’re obviously trying hard, staff with Ipads were counting dispatch times and the fancy live update queue TV system the park started at Toutatis makes all the guest information nice and accurate. Just needs to be rolled out to the rest of the park at some point.
After a quick indoor scene, something chariot related, you head up the lift hill to the faffing about up high section.
Faff happens, this one didn’t manage to buck the trend of Gerstlauers simply not spinning very much, unfortunately.
There’s a bonus tiny booster wheel boost in this shed (rcdb even acknowledges it, wow), which would usually be a great opportunity to me complain about such things, but I just thought it was funny here.
Then you spin round the queue a bit, experiencing some decent forces in the lower sections. Then you’re done.
S’alright.
To be honest that wasn’t really a draw, beyond the cheeky +1. I was just very excited to ride Toutatis again after it slowly but steadily smashed it’s way into my top 10, what feels like forever ago.
It’s crazy that a full queue for their biggest and best coaster is still only about 30 minutes, as if they actively don’t want it to get disproportionately busy compared to the rest of the park, which I respect.
Can someone please explain what happened to the loose article policy at this parc though? They now pull some of the dumbest shenanigans I have ever witnessed.
Gone are the station cubbies, replaced by several staff members with several trolleys that half-heartedly, or maybe not, ask some people if they want to put their loose articles in said trolley, after they’ve already been batched into the air gates. The air gates are 3 trains deep however, so it’s very much luck of the draw as to whether you even get access to the trolley, plus there’s a huge question mark over whether you actually want to use it because it’s just parked, out in the open, in the middle of a mass of bodies in the station. A great way to get your stuff stolen.
The ride though, god damn Toutatis. Forgot how crazy even the first section is, with silly hangtime in the first sideways flop and then kicking your ass even into the swing launch. Pantheon walked so this could run, swing launch is just so damn good with the backwards lurches and surprise airtime. The trim brake adds to the experience, for once. The designer himself explained it to me once, so I’m a believer now. It’s not poor design, it’s an effect. He says. Then the rest of the layout kicks ass with an over-correcting stall, that tree still sticking out there to kill you and that airtime hill still there to kill you. Classic modern sideways hill, because everyone wants to be RMC but not any more, that doesn’t do anything. Mosasaurus Roll. Mini-Kondaa ending. A thigh-slappingly good time on the brake run. Love it.
Back to these trolleys though, seriously why? After leaving the train and the station, you get viciously blocked on the exit path by several more staff members with several more trolleys, while all the guests are faffing around with their stuff, in your face. And I guess, if you’re very lucky, your stuff might be there too.
There are so many better ways to do this, including one they already had. This ain’t it. Especially in stinky Europe.
tl;dr leave valuables with a non-rider or invest in some goony zipped pockets, it’s a bad system.
Anyway, time to chill for a bit. The Epidemais Croisieres boat ride is always good for chilling.
Rerode Trace du Hourra, the Mack Bobsled, because it’s been a lifetime. A harsh lifetime for the both of us, this has not aged well, with an amusing level of brain rumble throughout the entire course. Maybe the baffes-meter was right all along.
Looks good though, can’t deny that. Also runs many, many trains, with multiple on the lift hill, it’s coaster capacity porn up there. And has since been greatly enhanced by backstage views of Toutatis.
Rerode Oziris, used to hate it, then was indifferent to it.
Still am, except this time the trolley lottery didn’t fall in our favour, so ended up sunglass on, not wanting to care, but caring about sunglasses.
Will these iconic towers survive the new land they’re building, or will they only live on through their likeness in an obscure Chinese park?
Went to ride Pégase Express, but it had somehow ended up with an insane queue, so bailed again.
Instead here’s the obligatory upskirt of Zeus.
Tonnerre 2 Zeus was running pretty poorly, thus the golden age of the retrack lasted about 3 years. As did the offering of the backwards facing seats on the train. The funniest part for me this time is that the ambient noise of the track and audible sounds of guest discomfort was actually louder than the deafening tunnel with themed thunder audio within the layout. I don’t know what to think any more, the violence of Gravity Group coasters seem to be both their blessing and eventual undoing and I’m scared to ever reride my all-time favourites at this point.
Rode Vol D’Icare because it’s the last in the world, didn’t you know? RIP the UK’s most beloved theme park, apparently, according to that one tabloid, even though no one’s ever heard of it and it was stupidly expensive. It’s fun, Zierer were on something for this technology back in the day.
In that time, Pégase Express had gone from 90+minutes to walk-on, somehow, so off we go. For some other strange reason the station staff here came at me at a million miles an hour, like a horror film, then full body-weighted my restraint. While attempting to relieve my sudden and immense discomfort, it launched, so that sucked.
The ride has picked up a bit of a rattle these days, dare I say the word, but still like how the layout just goes and goes out there, in an unually linear fashion. You get a nice long ride time out of this one. Or at least you would if you weren’t stapled by the restraint.
Medusa now spits on you as you leave the show scene in the shed, or at least I don’t remember her doing that before, so that’s something.
The entire queue must have evacuated to Toutatis at this point as we headed for our final laps. Guests were now doing their very best to break my earlier theorem by queueing well outside the entrance sign and around the corner.
Thus we only got to see it off one more time, but it was glorious. And take one final laugh at the new trolleys.
It’s 2025, so about time to go pick up some new for Spring/Summer rides, in September.
Timing and location of the first park of the day meant that we actually didn’t require a disgustingly early Chunnel for once, so that was refreshing and civilised. What park?
Day 1 – Fééryland
Have previously driven past this place, formerly known as Bal Parc, many, many times. Regularly saw the sign, or it pop up on coaster count as ‘nearest’, but it only contained a couple of dirty kiddie coasters, for too much money and some potential weird looks.
Not that the latter has ever been a consideration.
As of 2024 they rebranded, and in 2025 they’re up to a +4. We needed something to do, so took the plunge.
Arrived at opening with a soft spring rain in the air, bought some tickets, gates were opened, time for business.
Tried to start strong on the Dragon but, establishing a theme for the morning, it was having drive tyre troubles in the wet conditions.
Newest cred is the SBF spinner, #1 Magic Twist, which was also slipping on it’s tyres rather nicely, but cycling nonetheless. The operator gave a concerned look to a man that shall from henceforth be known as Mr. Fééry, who gave a nod of approval to let us on.
On we went, round it went, I’d like to say that SBF are actually improving over time, haven’t noticed the horrible transition on the final corner into the station on these in a good while. Hope I’m right.
To further test that theory, went over to the other SBF coaster, #2 Grand Prix. The operator gave a concerned look to Mr. Fééry, who was continuing to power around the park in front of us with an immense sense of authority. He gave a nod of approval to let us on.
On we went, round it went, once again the horrible corner transition at the base of this model was not present on this particular installation, even though it was travelling at a million miles per hour in the wet. It was brutally fast and forceful for what it is, but not rough.
After three laps it then overshot the station because of the speed, then couldn’t park itself because wet tyres. Oops.
Mr. Fééry powered into the ride area, almost dying himself on the slippery wet track to get to us, before an engineer also joined him. Tried once more to park it, no good, then voluntarily valleyed us, reset the ride and manually pushed us onto the lift tyres.
It took the smell of burning rubber to make it happen, but we commenced another amazing three lap cycle and then barely, barely managed to park it again at the end. Legendary.
Old mate wacky worm #3 Pomme doesn’t care about the rain, ran like a dream, parked like a dream. I like his stumpier than usual antenna, which are harder for children to brutalise.
Final mission was to get on #4 Balade du Dragon. The operator was continuously trying to make it happen, in manual mode, backing it out of the station for maximum run up and flooring the slippy tyres in order to make it clear the hump. Legendary.
Eventually it made it, to much celebration, and then 30 children descended on the ride in front of us. This led to a nervous moment, would it make it while now full of riders, or would we be spited? It made it, squeaked by and then only got stronger from then on as everyone’s confidence was built.
By the time it was our turn, we couldn’t fail. Go dragon go. Park complete. Great park for our specific needs, got the job done effectively. Next.
Jardin d’Acclimatation
Round of applause for this park too, who managed to open their new for 2025 attraction in March. March. Imagine that.
Parked up on a street next to the back entrance of the park, to beat the reasonably substantial looking queues at the main entrance and for maximum geographical efficiency in reaching the two new coasters.
First up is the temporary #5 Fils du Dragon, the placeholder between the sad demise of their old Dragon Chinois and the construction of their new Dragon-themed coaster.
This one is the rare wacky worm with diagonal lift hill layout, scary clearances and a scarier face. It’s leaving at the end of this season so perfect time to get it.
The real deal is the new #6 Défi du Dragon, another fine looking creation from Gerstlauer.
Love the theming here, for some reason my immediate first thought was that it makes Crapterra look like crap. Wonder why.
There’s some beautiful details in the station, from intricate carvings to the hosing tap for ‘essential cleaning’ having a dragon on it.
Knew this model had shenanigans, but didn’t know what they were. Took me watching it once and then riding it once, to figure out what happens.
Launches out of the station into a standard first half of the layout which is some swoopy fun.
Then you stop on a turntable, and the train can randomly turn 90° in either direction.
From there it does a random swing launch – either forwards, backwards, forwards or backwards, forwards backwards, resulting in four total possible combinations.
The second half is just a closed circuit with a wiggly bit at the highest point of the ride, over the station, then you hit the turntable again and turn back into the station.
I think.
Great ride anyway, bit faffy on one train but it didn’t matter in the slightest. Would be fun to see it run two. Gerstlauer have done it again, and what a year they’ve had. Paultons, 2026.
Headed into the rest of the park to see what was up. Sadly the violent Soquet was out of action, though probably wouldn’t have paid for it again and risk ruining it’s reputation. We know how these things can go.
Speed Rockets should always be good fun though, walked straight onto it and was treated to more Gerstlauer goodness that isn’t a Eurofighter.
Love the unconventional layout on this thing, very different from all the standard and cloney ones, it does plenty of funky stuff.
Had a bit more time to kill on the car parking, so took a mooch around some Korean festival that was going on. Arm wrestling was happening on a stage. Not sure what the connection was.
Saw whatever this is.
Whatever this is.
And some donkeys with no hats.
Great park, given we didn’t let them rip us off this time. Love the way they’ve tidied up the new area, the quality of their recent investments and the tranquil vibe of the place. Wish all capital cities had a green space this pleasant and full of creds.
By our final day in Tokyo I had put this place off for as long as possible.
Day 13 – Tokyo Dome City
Because it’s 2025, and they’ve put new trains on Thunder Dolphin, but then it had been closed for the entire duration of the trip. So I gave it every chance to return.
Don’t particularly care, got the cred, but would have liked to give it a fresh go.
As such we snuck in the back entrance, straight into the indoor part of the other half of the park.
Which is where their latest coaster lives, having replaced an old dark ride that had not long closed down forever just before our previous visit.
#1 Panic Coaster Back!? Daaaan!! currently has an overlay for these animated characters. There was some sweaty queue for their merch as well, one that I would totally been a part of had it been for something I cared about.
Which changes what happens on the station screens before each ‘launch’ sequence. This is the clever Gerstlauer family coaster that comes into the station both forwards and backwards in each sequence, utilising the same layout twice, in both directions.
And that’s probably the most interesting part about it, gooning about the technology and trickery, as there’s not a whole lot going on force wise. There’s a weird stunted double moment to the despatch as you hit a sharp corner pretty early and then it kinda flops around in a fun way in warehouse for a bit. Much like many other Gersts in this country. +1.
Park successfully back to completion, mooched around the city until the evening for
Tokyo Disneyland
After the relative success of the Disneysea cheap evening ticket, decided to do the exact same thing for the other park as well.
They have got one new major dark ride since my last outing here.
That being Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast.
Queue is rather impressive, feel like Disney don’t use fog enough.
Then there’s a lot of indoor shenanigans, though perhaps with a disappointing amount of movement.
This leads to a pre-show, which was exceptional. The stained glass screen sets the scene before full-scale animatronics of Beast and Belle have an interaction across the two balconies. Beast in particular is absolutely incredible with his movements, real top tier Disney stuff and perhaps the highlight of the whole attraction for me.
Bit more queue before the station. Bit more life in it.
Don’t remember this guy, nor do I remember the film from so long ago to be honest, which may have been a problem.
Because I wasn’t bowled over by the ride itself. It ticks a lot of my boxes with trackless technology and ride vehicles dancing around each other, but it almost takes this trick too far, in a way that detracts from the magic.
The opening scene is no doubt spectacular, with the signature Be Our Guest bonanza, but another issue lies here with the story having to open with what is essentially it’s hardest hitter for a general audience. The one that always represents the film, the one you’ll always hear in every park, in everything from Philharmagic to the nighttime shows.
Most of the following scenes, and there aren’t that many at all, are songs with less general appeal and gusto, with the movements of the vehicles limited to just aimlessly wafting around with no purpose. There’s always 6 of them so you just end up with a bit of a mess that feels like it has no visual intent, simply creating an endless flow of watching everyone else with their phones out, while listening to some light music.
There is one very magical ‘wow’ moment later on, using Shanghai Jack Sparrow-style trickery and doing a lot of the heavy lifting before the climax, but I’d kinda checked out of the story at this point.
And then it’s another dancing scene. Eh, it’s a vibe, but not my vibe. Impressive and underwhelming at the same time.
Went straight back over to Pooh’s Hunny Hunt to prove a point.
This is more my vibe. The intent is stronger, there’s more fun moments like the bounce, the chaotic thrust into vehicles dancing around each other for one scene lands a lot harder. It’s the OG and it’s so well done.
Still best on park for me, the destination attracion, with a lot of Tokyo’s counterparts being weaker than their global equivalent.
With darkness truly falling and some reasonably hefty queuetimes for those weaker counterparts, decided to go for a basically walk-on night-time Jungle Cruise.
Couldn’t actually remember whether I’d done this version before. As with all, it lives and dies a bit on the performance and enthusiasm of the driver and on this day they were just ok. If anything there were a couple of seemingly local super fans on board providing some extra energy.
Then it goes inside and does exciting cave scenes like I thought only the Hong Kong one has over it’s rivals. Hmm, maybe I haven’t done this before.
S’alright.
Definitely done this before, but can never say no to Pirates of the Caribbean. Scale and substance, truly one of the greats.
Also bagged a cheeky Star Tours for a final ride of the night and trip. It has so many different potential story sequences at this point as they keep updating it, so always fun to see what happens.
This occasion covered a full breadth of Star Wars history, from old mate Hoth to the space whales in the Ahsoka streaming series. Appreciate how up to date they keep it.
Headed out before the masses did from the show, straight into an unbearably long travel sequence of late night flight, layover and Heathrow sucking ass. The things we do for entertainment.
Summary
Total prefectures – 12 + China New creds – 38 New dark rides – 12 New parks – 13 New Togos – 5 Best new coaster – Ultra Twister Best coaster – Fujiyama Best new dark ride – Frozen Best new park – Rusutsu Spites – 3/41 (7.32%) plus SLC self-spite.
Successful trip overall, made me happy and want to return as soon as possible. Nothing spectacular on the coaster front, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about that at this point, sadly. Apologies.
Personally it was great to tick off some personal coaster legends, catch up with some Disney dark rides and generally just take things a bit more chill than usual. Relatively. For me.
