One more Jungle Trailblazer, just one more, then I swear I’m done (for now). The star attraction of Oriental Heritage Jinan was copy pasted from the original in Ningbo – a ride which I had collapsed in despair at the foot of because apparently 15°C wasn’t warm enough to open it for me. The only JT to elude me to this day (grumble grumble). The important thing is that at least I’ve tried all the layouts.
My first experience with the ride was arriving at the station to see the train coming in and that a Chinese man had been sick all over his restraint. That’s a solid sign that this will be intense then. Once that mess was cleared up I sat at the opposite end of the lovely Timberliner trains (back row is king again) and smiled to myself. Amateurs.
The start of the ride is reminiscent of the earlier build Fjord Flying Dragon (also now a JT) with a powerful straight drop, speed hill and bigger hill leading into a turnaround.
Where this one begins to lose out is in the inversion that follows – I don’t really get the appeal of these other than a good visual/selling point. Corkscrews just aren’t very good in general (Helix holding the only exception that springs to mind) and rattling around one on an aggressive woodie ended up giving me a bit of a headache. Great, now I’m the amateur.
It’s a shame that moment took me out of it a bit because other parts of the ride are as incredible as these should be. 4 quick, successive out of the seat moments hit hard before an overbank, forming the clear highlight of the ride. There’s an outbound leg of larger hills that are still satisfying and it loses purpose and direction at the end with another drawn out turn into an anticlimax of a final hill. After the morning headache had cleared and we had done the rest of the park I came back to find it riding a lot better, it had clearly ‘warmed up’ as they say and I did really enjoy it overall.
It might have one of the nicest vibes surrounding any of these, with the leafy lake (what the Wuhu one should have had, as Wuhu = leafy lake). The park was particularly gorgeous for a Fantawild and getting on the ride itself was probably the least faffy of any – no waiting areas or lazy staff, just a vanilla queueline.
This layout sits squarely in 4th for the optimistic, 2nd last for the pessimists. With competition that strong, that’s just how it had to be. Fantastic woodie as a standalone – you could do better though. Here’s a handy guide of where you can try it yourself, or better.
Oh no, not another Jungle Trailblazer. This one located at Oriental Heritage Wuhu was the final one in the collection for me (of unique layouts at least – damn Ningbo) and it was also a pain to make that happen (damn Wuhu). The first time I arrived in the city it was chucking it down and everything was closed – no surprises there. This meant that on the return visit anxiety was king and I did it all wrong.
Well not so much wrong as less than ideal. There’s a habit for most guests in these parks to follow a specific order of attractions as per the ‘recommended route’ on the park map, moving in a clockwise/anti-clockwise direction, experiencing everything once, tick, move on. Like sheep, or me on a cred run. In my desperation to not be let down again (I never trust the weather, or Fantawild, to not try and ruin my day at some point) I ended up following the sheep into the queue, making this the only Jungle Trailblazer I’ve ever actually queued for. How novel.
You don’t ever want to queue for one of these. A train that seats 24 can take upwards of an hour to serve 100 guests. The queueline areas are specifically designed like a waiting room, with benches stretching along the pathways. There’s never any hustle in proceedings, a train’s worth of people are batched in an area well outside the station and are not sent off on the ~2 minute walk to the station stairs until it has been cleared of the previous guests. I try to just zone it out these days and accept it as a part of the culture but when you’re so on edge about being able to actually ride these things, as the sky darkens above your head and everything moves at a snails pace, having tried so hard and come so far, it’s nothing short of agonising. I ended up in that for nearing 90 minutes, which would have been a new record by far in China for me had it not been for Happy Valley Shanghai the previous day.
It was worth it though. Love this ride. Middle of the road as a Jungle Trailblazer but as a woodie in it’s own right, pure world class, as I’ve come to expect (demand) from my boys at Gravity Group these days. First drops are always bliss in the back, they’ve perfected the punch. It’s an unconventional start for one of these in that you hit a big drawn out hill first. This is good, but not quite as impactful as their signature.
Before there’s been much time to process that, you’re turning into a vicious double down into the inversion. I love the out of control aspect of this section, though the corkscrew itself on a woodie never really does much for me.
Twisty, bouncy, overbanky. Pure Gravity bliss comes next and reminds me exactly why I rate these things so highly. Sadly it then enters a high up turn that saps the pace somewhat and is the sole reason this one came 3rd, the competition is that tight. Once that part is out of the way, normal service resumes again. 1, 2, 3, 4! pops into the brakes. Fantastic. I think I even had a Chinese man turn and say that to me with a thumbs up on the brakes. Yes mate.
Why was I ranting about queue times? Well we went off to finish the rest of the park and then of course I needed a lot more time with this bad boy. Every other lap was walk on from about midday onwards because everyone else in the place had one and doned it (how rude). From rammed to empty in a single sitting, it was literally just the worst timing, but I couldn’t have allowed myself to do it any other way.
This layout remains unique for now and I hope it stays that way – the world (I) needs as many new versions of these as physically possible. Here’s a handy guide as to where you can track it down.
Name = 행복한 순간 (Happy Moment) Location = China(?) – My original plan was for this park to be more Chinese based, including a bit of C-Pop, but there wasn’t enough for me to work with in the end. The band with the biggest section of rides also has (had) a lot of Chinese influence with several members and a secondary agency, though that all went wrong for them in the year I was building this. Still, it would be good for me to break into that market. Got a better chance than Mr Lotte now. Theme = K-Pop All attractions are based on a music video or song with theming ranging from slight to intense.
Check out the videos below to see some of the rides in action, or download the map to explore.
I honestly struggle to replicate modern wooden coasters in the game without resorting to landscaping. Something about the pacing of a woodie on a piece of flat ground is very hard to emulate when you’re restricted to just reducing the height of the same shaped hills every few seconds. Terrain GCIs are the perfect way to maintain that relentless speed from start to finish, there’s always more momentum to find as you work your way down that hill.
I-Box tracked RMC coaster from my park ‘행복한 순간 (Happy Moment)’ More rollercoaster and theme park content (real and otherwise): https://www.heartlinecoaster.com Height: 130ft Length: 3,609ft Max. Speed: 59Mph Inversions: 4 Excitement: 10.05 Intensity: 8.93 Nausea: 6.11
With stalls and wonky hills, RMCs are very fun to build in game (and ride). I believe by this stage I had still only ridden Wildfire of any in the real world and this is more of an artist’s impression of what I’d like my next one to be like, without taking on many spoilers. This one can’t be converted to the new Hybrid track available in game yet as the corkscrew pieces would be missing, so it’s a good demonstration how I was achieving the track look before, with painted rails and wooden supports.
Mack Rides triple launch coaster from my park ‘행복한 순간 (Happy Moment)’ More rollercoaster content (real and otherwise): https://www.heartlinecoaster.com Height: 120ft Length: 3,550ft Max. Speed: 67Mph Inversions: 5 Excitement: 9.66 Intensity: 7.44 Nausea: 4.33 Inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRPrpLSo4To
Several new features and techniques for me all came into play for this triple launch Mack coaster. The booster pieces were finally punchy enough to use instead of an overexcited chain lift and they also allow trains to pass backwards across the fins without instantly getting halted again. The merging and splitting track technique then lets the train join halfway through a launch section in order to not have enough momentum on the first pass, but gain enough on the third to make it in to the rest of the layout. Finally I was mixing and matching track styles within a single build, something I had always held back on before due to lack of skill and/or I thought they didn’t blend well and were a bit visually jarring. The alternative compromise was always use track that didn’t look anything like Mack at all (LIM launch for me in the past) and so here the combination of Giga, Impulse and Multi-dimension seemed acceptable enough for me to move forward with these sorts of ideas.
Gravity Group wooden shuttle coaster from my park ‘행복한 순간 (Happy Moment)’ More rollercoaster and theme park content (real and otherwise): https://www.heartlinecoaster.com Height: 180ft Length: 4,298ft Max. Speed: 65Mph Excitement: 6.98 Intensity: 10.79 Nausea: 6.84 Inspired by: https://youtu.be/Lxfl8LRab_I
As much as I adore the unique feature of Kärnan’s lift hill, there’s a lot of faff involved and I always imagined a better version in which the reverse vertical freefall just continued onwards into a backwards portion of the layout (see also Disney mine trains). It would also be great for thematic reasons in this case. Track splitting and merging techniques didn’t allow for this in the vertical plane and so the alternative solution was to use a ride operation I never usually touch – reverse incline circuit mode. The catch here was obviously that the cars would be facing the wrong way. Enter the backwards facing wooden coaster train, but now the ride has to be a woodie. That’s fine by me I said, it’ll just make it even more ridiculous and intense as a concept. The Gravity Group have already dabbled in the shuttle world, I bet I could get them to build something like this if I had the cash.
B&M hyper coaster from my park ‘행복한 순간 (Happy Moment)’ More rollercoaster and theme park content (real and otherwise): https://www.heartlinecoaster.com Height: 250ft Length: 7,021ft Max. Speed: 84Mph Excitement: 9.55 Intensity: 8.39 Nausea: 4.94
I have to start by saying that my B&M hypers in the game aren’t built to emulate the ones that exist in real life, as I largely find the layouts a little underwhelming. It’s also just very hard to do a convincing out and back with ever decreasing hill sizes (and some dodgy turnaround no doubt)based on these game mechanics. Instead I build these how I wish they would be, much more twisty and full of stronger airtime. I dream of the day when grace and intensity can go hand in hand. One built around a massive canyon would be nice too.
As with the RMC in this park, this is an artist’s impression of how I wanted something like Lech Coaster to be, before I had even ridden it. The flow and blend of elements, along with the visual interaction feel right up my street. After finally experiencing it this year there’s a certain spark missing from these real Vekomas and I don’t know if I’ll be exploring the ride type in game again for a while yet. There’s one too many things based on B&M track already.
Hafema rapids ride from my park ‘행복한 순간 (Happy Moment)’ More rollercoaster and theme park content (real and otherwise): https://www.heartlinecoaster.com Height: 85ft Length: 1,900ft Excitement: 7.21 Intensity: 2.52 Nausea: 1.96 Inspired by: https://youtu.be/1zRzl1d5vNU
Real life Hafemas are ridiculous in their own right, often pulling crazy stunts you wouldn’t believe possible on a rapids ride. So with some handy hacking I attempted to do the same on my most elaborate water attraction to date. The journey begins by crossing the sea (a world’s first if ever there was one) before weaving in and out of storyline setpieces that lead to the terrifying elevator lift hill and downwards tubey spiral à la River Quest. Just to crank things up another notch (always have to take that intensity one step further) I chucked in a climactic drop on the scale of Singapore’s Jurassic Park shortly after. No time to catch your breath in this end sequence.
Meisho Amusement Machines jet coaster from my park ‘행복한 순간 (Happy Moment)’ More rollercoaster and theme park content (real and otherwise): https://www.heartlinecoaster.com Height: 130ft Length: 4,196ft Max. Speed: 50Mph Excitement: 6.61 Intensity: 5.72 Nausea: 2.73
The game makes quite light work of building one of these and as un unashamed fan of the Japanese ‘Jet Coaster’ I just had to get one in a park somehow. Narratively speaking it works rather well near the entrance as if it was a somewhat historic relic of the park’s growth. It was also refreshing to create something away from the edge of extreme for once, I imagine one of the main criticisms of guests in these resorts is that the ratio of family rides is too low. I call it tough love.
Don’t you just love it when you’re blown away by something completely unexpected? I know I do. Magic Gallery is a dark ride found at Oriental Heritage Changsha and one of the newest creations straight out of the Fantawild factory. There’s only a single entry for this attraction in my handy guide to their various resorts, though I imagine it’ll start popping up at some of the other parks that are being opened around this time and I certainly hope I get to stumble across it again myself.
After overdosing on many other Fantawilds prior to this visit I had gotten used to browsing the relevant park websites just to confirm that I had already experienced everything they had in some form or another – just another coaster today I guess. When it came to the Changsha park, this particular attraction caught my eye because I didn’t recognise it at all, so I wrote down the unassuming words ‘entrance with rocks and vines, dark ride?’ in my notes for the trip and left it at that – I had no idea what it really was or whether it was even a ride at all.
The queueline is an adventure in itself and gave little away as to the true nature of the attraction, winding back and forth through more rocks and vines with the odd teaser screen of some boy with magical powers.
The same character starts to appear more as we enter this secondary entrance to a more indoor section of the queue, the house of the magic pen.
I’m always taken aback by just how intense the queues are at these parks and it seems a shame that they’re likely underappreciated. The excitement of what’s around the next corner never lends itself to lingering, particularly when you’ve got a clear run ahead and I often find myself pondering how or when it could ever get busy enough for guests to actually occupy this space.
We’re not even halfway now and it’s time for some preshow antics. Can’t get over how good this looks.
The momentum of the queue area is seemingly broken by this large exhibit. Hang on a minute, you’re not telling me all of that was the build up to viewing an old scroll in a museum, are you?
Desperate at this stage for that not to be the case, the final section passed in a blur for me. An ornate bridge was crossed and behold, a trackless dark ride vehicle awaits us. I couldn’t be more excited now.
The ride takes us on a journey with the aforementioned character, who works as an apprentice for some ancient art gallery master. He has the ability to transform into a brush and by interacting with the various artworks can bring the contents to life. The primary goal in the narrative appears to be to find that massive scroll from earlier on in the queue and add it to the collection, but there’s a ton of other things going on along the way and the runtime of this attraction is simply astounding.
A blow by blow of events is beyond me at this stage and I’ve been doing enough spoilers in these reviews already, but I can safely say the whole thing is stunning from start to finish. It makes excellent use of the trackless technology with some rotating room trickery and by curtaining off of cars into their own little simulator shows at times. There’s countless gorgeous open areas of galleries coming to life and you even get to play hide and seek with a dragon inside an old, rotting ship complete with some of the most amazing smells in the business and a surprise water effect.
It has a fantastic aura of fun about the whole thing, being led by such a friendly and mischevious character who essentially befriends everyone and everything let loose from the artwork along the way and accidentally brings them back to the gallery at the end, causing chaos in the post story scenes. I found it very refreshing to not have any sort of good vs evil encounter, just a jolly romp of wonderment.
My jaw was pretty much on the floor throughout the entire first lap and by the time we reached the offload area I was physically shaking with glee. My mind was reeling with the same sort of effect as hitting the brake run on a new top 5 rollercoaster.
As if to say that’s not a strong enough reaction, the ride host handed us two cups of tea at the point of stepping out of the car. Does this simple act improve a theme park attraction beyond words? Yes, yes it does.
I haven’t yet formally created any form of ranking list for dark rides (an upcoming project for the site no doubt) but Magic Gallery is a powerful contender for #1. For me it beat out anything else Fantawild has ever done, mainly from being a much more pure ride experience as opposed to the half and half (cheating?) of Jinshan Temple Showdown or Hero of Malacca. Better than anything Disney? I’ll have to get back to you. It’s certainly got the cogs in my head turning now.
I think the tea has a good chance of tipping it. Cheers to that.
Fjord Flying Dragon made its debut at Happy Valley Tianjin and 3 years later a second ride with the same layout (sadly) was constructed as one of the numerous and infamous Jungle Trailblazers, at the Fantawild Resort in Zhuzhou. This is the ride that began my love affair with wooden coasters designed by the Gravity Group and the first of theirs I had ridden outside of baby Twister at Gröna Lund.
It was a memorable day not least for being the hottest I have ever experienced in China, peaking at around 40°C. Hot enough for the bus to break down on the way in. Hot enough for me to not want to stay in the sun for more than a few seconds. Hot enough for the ride to be on top form, in theory.
The ride of course is situated in the outdoor section of the park, in a Viking area with a nice vibe, tying in with the fjord in the name. It’s probably the coolest named woodie in the country. I remember sheltering in the station for significant periods of time and the front row of the train while parked was always bathed in intense sunlight, forcing me to only ever sit in the back while the ~10 minute loading procedures synonymous with Happy Valley took place. There was one minor incident in which the ride was e-stopped at the bottom of the lift for a short while (empty restraint not down? oops) and it felt like I was going to catch fire. Good thing it had no queue.
The back was the best place to be anyway. The first drop doesn’t look much on paper at 90ft, 60°, the world has done far crazier things. This didn’t matter at all as it was still one of the most pronounced and powerful straight drops I have ever encountered. The rolling stock on this ride predates the dawn of the signature Gravity Group Timberliners in China, instead using classic PTC trains. The bars on these are very minimal and exposing, I find there’s a lot of cushy freedom in the seating, both lateral and vertical. Being dragged over the top of this hill at full pelt never failed to produce noises of sheer terror from me and for someone who does this sort of thing a lot, it still felt downright dangerous. I like that.
By the time the very first little hill came along I had definitely realised that this is no ride to be toyed with. The track is negotiated with the perfect amount of violence for my personal tastes. The wood roars beneath you, the whole structure and everything on it rattles with enough noise and energy to keep things interesting from start to finish, even if the layout had decided not to do a whole lot.
But it does do a lot. Alot a lot. Big straight hills, intertwined twisty hills, speed hills, tiny little bouncy hills – the ones in between the supports of the ride are absolutely amazing. All glorious moments. The corners are wild and full of laterals and it took me until my very last lap to summon the courage to even put my hands up. I just love the variety and unpredictability this type of ride has to offer, particularly over certain other woodies like the Intamins.
It always amazes me how much potential energy this manufacturer can generate out of such comparatively little height. Fjord is 4000ft long, which is huge, but perhaps in this case it’s slightly too much. My only tiny criticism of the ride is that it feels like it runs out of steam a little towards the end, on the home stretch. It doesn’t quite maintain that consistently relentless edge from start to finish, something I found had been perfected a couple of days later in the trip. Still, to get so much out of so little here is an amazing feat of design.
I said that heat was only a theory because the conditions in which I rode the Jungle Trailblazer version of this ride couldn’t have been more different (other than the lack of guests again). There was a drizzle in the air and it couldn’t have been more than 5°C, so cold in fact that I was hugely surprised and relieved to find they even opened it for me at all.
Luckily the experience was largely the same, perhaps a bit less characterful, confirming that this is easily one of the best wooden coasters in the world for me. The word Fantawild came up in this post so we can consider this one a slightly dirtier spin off from the guide, here’s a handy list of where you can find their version of this ride, even if it’s the wrong version in my head canon.
I generally try to avoid spoilers as much as possible for rides that I haven’t experienced, even as far as simple layout features in order to ensure the greatest element of surprise on a first ride. However, the nature of these Jungle Trailblazers all sharing the same name (and sometimes a lot more than that) required me to at least look at the layout to determine whether it was unique or a copy of another in the country.
What I saw in this one at a glance really excited me. It shared the same starting sequence as my current favourite Gravity Group woodie (drop, tiny hill, sideways banked hill) and then appeared to stay nice and low to the ground for the entirety of the remaining layout. Airtime galore I said to myself, if there’s one to beat Zhengzhou, it’ll be this one. Dangerous thoughts.
Of course this excitement spurred me into taking the necessary steps to experience it for myself and it’s not exactly the most conveniently located park within China. Xiamen sits on the coast of China about a third of the way up from Hong Kong to Shanghai. This is a particularly sparse region of the country, at least for a theme park enthusiast – I can’t speak for the rest of what might be on offer, and there’s no particularly sensible way to make it en route to anywhere for a trip of this nature.
We daytripped it from Shenzhen in the end (the nearest city with other significant rides), ending up with at least a 4 hour journey, each way, which as I had already experienced every other Fantawild attraction on resort, I consider to be dedication of the highest order. For this reason it was also one of the most nerve wracking journeys I have ever made for the hobby. The weather was hit and miss and the chain have a habit of being unreliable with ride availability – what if the one thing I need out of all this is closed? Even more dangerous thoughts.
Whilst I’ll always happily maintain that it was worth the effort just to try out a unique layout and to aid me in eventually completing the full set of Jungle Trailblazers, the ride itself didn’t quite hit the mark. But why?
To this day I don’t really know, all I can say is a certain spark was missing. The shaping of the entrance to the first drop is subtly different to my original comparison and gave nowhere near the same result. The following two hills were just as I would have expected them to be and were easily the highlight of the ride.
From there the train just ran out of steam unnaturally quickly. It’s like all the hills were put up right, but in the wrong order. What looked on paper to be the usual amazing sequence of unexpected airtime bouncing riders all over the place just didn’t deliver with the same magnitude. The overbanked corner came too late in the layout to have any effect, the taller hill over the station came too late in the layout to do anything and it was almost struggling to reach the brake run by the end. Nothing added up and it never gave the relentless performance it deserved.
Eventually, due to the mostly useless and unusually unfriendly staff it became a bit of a chore to keep trying and we left it alone far earlier than we had hoped. It remains to this day the weakest of the Jungle Trailblazers, but, a Gravity woodie is still a top notch creation and I don’t wish to belittle it too much. I’d still rate this ride as entertaining and significant in the grand scheme of things, the competition within its own field is just too amazingly fierce.
Hero of Malacca is both a dark ride and show found at Fantawild Asian Legend that follows the same format as Jinshan Temple Showdown. Just when I thought the original could never be matched, the chain decided to make a new park themed to the countries of South East Asia. They already had the technology in place but at last they had an excuse to develop a new set of storylines and it couldn’t be more welcome.
As representative of Malaysia within the park, the narrative revolves around two pirate factions based in the port of Malacca who are at odds with each other. Luckily they wear either red or blue so it’s easy to tell them apart.
As an added bonus, the queue contains a preshow in which we are introduced to one of the groups. I guess we’ll be teaming up with these lads for now. The queueline itself is stunningly well themed and it feels almost a shame to stumble through it at the pace driven by the staff.
While boarding and waiting for the massive boat vehicle to move off, some further preshow antics take place – a bit of a pirate chase scene and some general slapstick. Again the atmosphere in the main show building is something else, cool wind blowing through the air, you could easily have been transported to a sea port at night. I can’t emphasise enough how good these places look.
The ride portion of the attraction also contains a bit more spectacle and action than JTS including some storm simulation, a battle ship scene reminiscent of Disney’s own pirate franchise and getting attacked by a massive Kraken. It’s a gripping experience that takes you out to the rival group’s base in the middle of the ocean at which point guests must leave the boat and stand in the final show area.
As if to balance things out and make my decisions tougher, this final showdown doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor, but it’s still spectacular. The live actors firing guns and cannons don’t deliver the same impact as magical monks and snakes and the water projection is replaced by a big screen demonstrating the man-made atoll under siege.
We end in another stalemate as while all the fighting carries on, the Kraken returns for a bit of revenge and wipes out absolutely everyone. Nature 1 – Humans 0. The signature flood effect ensues, covering the entire show area and firing a dense wall of water jets up over the heads of the audience, to their delight.
I was beyond excited to learn that another of this ride type existed and it delivered on pretty much every level. The storyline didn’t quite hit me as much but the other improvements here and there more than made up for that fact. Easily one of the best attractions of this nature in the world.
This is usually the part where I say here’s a handy guide on where you can find the many different locations in which to check this one out. Spoiler – there’s only 1 as far as I know.
Ugh, that title. This is why I hate clones. Can we just, stop it here?
No, let’s press on. It is my third favourite ride in the world ride right now so it obviously needs a bit of love. If the topic ever arises people are often perplexed as to why I think this unassuming wooden coaster in China is better than so many well known greats. Put simply, I’d call it the most intense woodie I’ve done and it holds a really strong memory in my hobby, sitting in the back row for the first time. Let me take you back to that day.
I was recovering from a bad mood. The admissions staff to the resort were frustratingly useless and unhelpful and I had been lugging around luggage all day. We had just visited the Fantawild Adventure park next door, done some terrible rides and, for cred anxiety reasons skipped a few more terrible rides.
Not being able to stand the wait any longer (for let’s be honest, the one reason why I was out here) I powered straight to the back seat of Jungle Trailblazer where I sat for ages. There were some old Chinese people in the middle of the train who didn’t understand what the ride even was and had just wandered on (cos they’re silly folks like that). The staff were chatting with them and basically recommending not to ride it cos it was ‘that intense’.
They got off after much faff, leaving me completely alone on the ride, looking out at this perfectly framed and rather intimidating first drop from the station. A really timid staff girl comes up to me, bowing and blushing, and mimes that I specifically have to hold on to the restraint at all times. It’s a common Chinese thing to enforce weird rules like this but I smile back and oblige, somewhat bemused, thinking in my head ‘don’t be silly, I know what I’m doing.’ There isn’t really much to hold onto on a Timberliner train, it’s just sort of resting your hands on top of the hooped restraint, but I maintained the charade up until the drop thinking I can put them up now, show them how it’s done.
The drop came up on me much faster than expected and tried to eject me both upwards and sideways in equal measure – in a way that I hadn’t really experienced before (no Intamin wings to my name). There’s not many rides in the world that instinctively force me to hold on (to whatever I could), but this was one of those moments.
With nothing else to do, the staff are all watching me from the station at this point, smiling and waving at me as it flies past them at full speed over what is essentially a 5ft hill. My mind says I want to wave back, but my body says no, I will die. The whole ride is super aggressive and exactly how I like these to be.
From there it’s just the best paced and most vicious ride from the Gravity Group that I’ve done, and they are my favourite manufacturer. The anti-social high five elements as I call them are taken at ridiculous speed and feel rather dangerous, whipping you like you’re gonna hit your head off the wood to the side of the track. There’s the signature bouncing you around through the structure, completely out of control section that you can never anticipate and it hits the brakes hot. I feel like I want to say it should go on a little longer, but it would come at the cost of any subsequent moment being less intense than the rest of the ride, so I guess it must be perfect.
Of course they’ve built another one the same now, but hey, yellow trains! I was so nervous about the potential impact of me riding this version, even slightly tempted to skip past one of the best parks in the world because of it. Clones always leave doubt in my mind and expectations are set far too high. It has to immediately ride as well as the previous installation or both are ruined forever, you were wrong – that one wasn’t as good as you remember.
Mercifully the experience was soooo close, so close, that I could let sleeping dogs lie. It didn’t have the personal setup that I’ll always prefer the Zhengzhou version for, but I can still comfortably say that this hardware gives me a consistently better experience than anything below it in my top ten.
I was then left with the conundrum I spoke about in my trip report for this day. How do I rank the second one in a list? I think it’s a fascinating subject but so far it looks like I’m entirely alone in the experience and haven’t spoken to anyone with a similar outlook. I eventually settled on B. It’s exactly the same and option 2. Pick one that has the slightest circumstantial edge to represent and relegate the other one to just outside the numbered list – so even though I love it to pieces, you won’t see the Nanning version come up anywhere else in lists. Feels harsh, but it’s the cleaner option and it’s the industry’s fault. Bah.
Dino Rampage is found at Fantawild Adventure parks and is the first generation of the Spiderman at Universal Studios technology that the chain attempted. It paved the way for Wizard Academy and later Legend of Nüwa and it shows, this one wasn’t all there for me.
While the exterior looks fascinating, there isn’t really a story going on. Dinosaurs are angry and loose in some soulless slightly futuristic looking city and we witness the army? police? fighting them off. It’s just grim, to be honest. Plant eating dinosaurs eat people whole before getting their heads blown clean off by grenades. Pterosaurs get tangled up with helicopters and crash through skyscrapers. Hoards of military with their machine guns stand and take aim at anything and everything.
It actually sounds quite funny in a way, and it may well be, but I was in a mood with the park when I rode it and picking up on all the negatives (what, even more so than usual?). The technology was poor – some of the screens didn’t work properly, the movements weren’t synced and the 3D hurt my eyes. Maybe I just caught it on a bad day for both of us and this is, sadly, what people come to expect from ‘Chinese knock-offs.’
So there we go. That was fun. I’m definitely not saying don’t ride it, everything needs to be experienced at least once and you may well find it charming. What I will say is don’t let this one encroach on your time on a better ride in a better park, say, next door. Here’s a handy list of those next doors.
This attraction is alternatively named Whitesnake Maiden’s Fury and can be found at either Fantawild Dreamland or Oriental Heritage parks and where do I begin? It’s off the dark ride scale. The ride portion uses humungous boats that could easily seat 100 on its many rows of flat benches with no backs.
Because of the scale, there’s no rush to this attraction. You get to board and take in the surroundings at a leisurely pace, finally absorbing all that wonderful theming that these parks have to offer. There’s an atmosphere here that’s hard to describe, it just feels so wondrous and genuine. You’re in a Chinese water town and before you even begin the place is alive. Everywhere you look there’s little scenes on screens of ordinary people getting on with ordinary lives. It’s time for the adventure to begin.
The storyline concerns the Legend of the White Snake, one of China’s ‘four great folktales’ (all of which are represented at these parks in one form or another). The basic premise is an altercation between a jealous terrapin spirit/Buddhist monk named Fa Hai and a white snake spirit/lady called Bai Suzhen. There’s a lady green snake too. Complicated right? I can’t really do the thing justice so I’d recommend a bit of further reading if it interests you.
As you head off around the waters, the story follows, using a combination of real life actors appearing in and around the sets and major screens that draw your eye from all the hundreds of other little details going on. The monk tricks the lady into revealing the fact that she is a snake to her now husband who obviously is rather taken aback when he witnesses the transformation. Not satisfied with the revenge so far, the monk then captures him and imprisons him at the Jinshan Temple. Now there’s a setup.
Guests are encouraged to leave the boat as it comes to a stop and congregate in a standing area in front of this final scene. Why is the floor wet? The ensuing experience is a fantastic display of the magical showdown between the main characters. The actors come back and deliver their dialogue from either side of the set, while water rains from the sky with the battle projected onto it, interacting with the whole environment – geysers, fire, the lot. Things get intense, but end with a stalemate between the two. The temple is flooded and a tsunami of water comes out from the back of the set, tipping trees and gushing over the front wall. A shielded roof comes down just in time as huge water jets spray up directly in front of the audience’s faces. A proper ‘wow’ (or locally ‘waaaaa’) moment.
And that’s it, cliffhanger ending. Always leaves me standing in shock. Did I just witness the greatest dark ride ever? It’s definitely up there, debatable as to whether it’s cheating or not with the show aspect, but one of the things I love about the experience is that it’s so unassuming. Who knew what lay beneath one of these entrance facades that all start to look the same. The locals often don’t appreciate it, they just talk over the top. Were they trying to create something this world class or was to just another folk tale to tell? Personally I’m hoping for a sequel (Jinshan Temple Showdown 2: Vengeance of Xiaoqing/Greensnake Maiden’s Fury) to conclude the story. The narrative already exists, so why not. Regardless of whether that comes to fruition, everyone needs this attraction in their life. Here’s a handy list of where you can make that happen.
