It’s been bugging me for a while now that the most anticipated coaster of last trip was out of action for no good reason, in typical Chinese fashion. To be honest I’m running pretty thin on the ground these days when it comes to coasters left on the planet that have the potential to be world beaters and it’s no real exaggeration to say that Beyond the Cloud is the ‘operating’ ride I want more than any other, as of right now.
As such we took a train straight back to Suzhou the following morning. Checked in. Phoned the park. Is it running? Of course not. Neither of their major coasters were. On a weekend. On a crisp, dry morning. While they’ve got a seasonal festival running. Again. Why? ‘Maintenance’
I hate this city.
Wanting to achieve at least something for the day, I had to turn my attention to a couple of towns over for some backup plans. Changzhou is less than an hour away and home to Dinoconda park, who have changed their spinner since I last visited and added some sort of dark ride thing that I was intrigued by, so I guess that will have to do.
Jumped on another train and a short Didi ride later found myself in familiar territory.
Day 2 – China Dinosaurs Park
This again. There was nothing in the way of signage to say what was going on inside and hadn’t bothered phoning because they lied to me on the door 7 years ago.
Didn’t take long however to find that both outdoor coasters were closed for ‘weather’, so no +1 for me today. Too cold apparently. It was 9°C. I rode Dinoconda in about 4°C, 7 years ago, so even more wussing out it seems.
Meh.
The other thing I came for was alive and kicking at least. Dino Tour is an immersive tunnel job, but to call it that is a disservice really. It’s huge, elaborate and rather impressive all up until the point that it becomes an immersive tunnel, at which point it becomes pretty trash. Sound familiar?
The queue goes on for some time, it’s a dinosaur resarch base, DNA technology, brought them back to life for people to view. Ok cool.
You board your all-terrain vehicle to discover at least one of the USPs here – it’s an actor led experience of sorts in that you get a live staff member on board as a tour guide.
Lots of mist and animatronics follow before, inevitably, things start to go wrong. Signs of escape, some TVs onboard the vehicles have the scientist and a woman with a gun butting in on the conversation and letting you know that things are about to go down.
The best part of the whole experience is a waterside scene just before you enter the cave, which involves geysers and pyros as an escapee dino moves through the water and damages some hazardous materials of some description.
Once inside the cave, after a few pretty crystals, the momentum comes grinding to a halt. It’s a little odd that the actor just has to stop talking at this point as you crawl onto the motion base in the dark and silence beyond a bit of whirring, and wait for the screens to fire up and the film to start. Completely detaches it from the rest of the experience.
Some big dino gets out, some transformers-style emergency response robot from the base has a tussle with it and saves you from falling off a cliff. Then you drive out of the cave and the actor welcomes you back to base. Hooray.
Elsewhere in the park is the massive dinosaur museum building, I spent a while inside trying to track down an old interactive theatre from before, in which you rode dinosaurs and shot dinosaurs with medicine. Seems its gone, likely because there was a huge construction site sticking out the side of the building and beyond.
So, construction, get excited, I guess.
Rerode the indoor cred, Dinosaur Mountain, through relative despair. Don’t remember this guy.
It’s one of those relatively rare Zamperla motocoasters with a lift hill and not very good.
Ah, China. The bane of my life, but I can’t get enough. It’s been three-and-a-half long months since I could visit and they’ve built and closed a hundred more things I want to try in that time.
‘Fun facts and scary statistics from my previous Chinese tourist visa:
Total parks: 37 Total creds: 104 Total mine train clones: 11 Total woodies: 10 Total Fantawilds: 9
Total train distance: 11615 km/7259 Miles Total train time: 64 hours 21 minutes
Spites: January 2017 – 5/32 (15.6%) September 2017 – 15/52 (28.8%) January 2018 – 3/11 (27.3%) April 2018 – 29/61 (47.5%)
So what have we learnt? January is the best time to go apparently… and the more you do it, the worse it gets.‘
Previous analyses have shown that statistically speaking I’ve had more success in China in January than at any other time of year, so let’s see if the trend can continue. A clue – no.
Nothing fancy, landed in basic old Shanghai to kick proceedings off with some new dark ride newness. Mercifully all the health declarations have gone out the window by now and being such a major airport there was minimal fuss getting in and getting going, for a change.
To kick proceedings off with some faffness however, the hotel didn’t have room to store our bags for the day, instead offering to just put them out in the open, in a busy lobby, unlabelled, where someone would ‘keep an eye on them’. That wasn’t happening, so we argued the point and were eventually given a room early in order to avoid that disaster waiting to happen.
Day 1 – Shanghai Disneyland
As with all Disney visits I’ve done around the world, there was no planning involved beyond pre-booking a ticket online for an ‘offpeak’ visit. The technique has yet to fail us and from previous experience in Shanghai the park was totally manageable. Not today. Arrival on resort resulted in several miles more walking than I recall from before, all for the benefit of easing traffic, batching queues and lining you up for some slow security checks, followed by some even slower ticket checks.
I should have known from the website warnings back at Christmas time stating that ‘guests were not allowed to queue overnight to get into the park‘ that something was amiss. It was naive to think that the initial rush would have died down by now. Alas, on this ‘offpeak’ day it took 2 hours to first lay eyes on the centrepiece castle I didn’t even bother to take another picture of.
Things went from bad to worse as we headed to the new Zootopia area, which had opened about a month prior. A sign outside of a rabble of guests no doubt arguing with staff about how their day was about to be ruined declared that there would be a 2 hour queue to get into the new land, followed by another 2 hour queue should you wish to ride the new ride.
Well, that’s what we came for. Cattlepen for days currently fills out the extensive pathway that leads up to the area in question, of which you get a teasing glimpse into before chucking a hard right through a service gate and into a highly temporary looking marquee.
Thousands and thousands of bodies all lined up and miserable in this queue that’s crudely styled as waiting in line for the Gazelle concert marked the next couple of hours of our lives. It moved with a degree of pace to be fair to it, just the scale of the operation was ridiculous. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, whether they were counting people out of the area before letting more in, or using simple guesswork and pacing the numbers every few minutes. A more worrying thought struck me that perhaps once you had finished the ride, you were booted straight out with no opportunity to explore or reride, but this wasnt the case, fortunately, I guess.
Eventually we were batched in. Whether the wait or the mood affected things in any way I can’t vouch for, but it lacked the ‘wow, I’ve arrived’ moment of the more spectacular Disney locations out there. I’m a fan of the film and it’s cool that this is a thing now, plus the detail is there in spades for sure if you take the time to look hard enough, but I suppose having queued just to exist in this part of the park, there was no real striking visual akin to say Pandora.
The station window had silhouettes and trains to give it some bustle.
This giraffe is gymming it up.
Why is this one icy?
These tubes contain moving hamsters. That I like.
The perfect commentary on Chinese life.
See.
Impatience to just get on the ride at this point, along with the fact that it’s still rather crowded and hard to move around, with nothing else to do but look and take pictures of people getting in the way of other people’s pictures, we dived into the next queue pretty quickly. This starts out pleasant enough, with winding outdoor pathway and the same Gazelle concert posters repeated a few more hundred times. Spoiler averse, I was guessing this was the setup to the plot, but it’s not.
Around halfway through the wait you enter into the lobby of the police department, where things get a lot more fun. The Clawhauser animatronic at the desk has a few different sequences and tales to tell as you zigzag in front of him for a bit, then head into the depths of the police station.
Posters on the wall, bulletin boards, officer’s offices, there’s good detail again here – they pay particular attention to the scale of things a lot, so doors and equipment being different sizes for different species, but it doesn’t quite feel lived in. I get the feeling of this inherent disconnect between the world in which animals are people and this theme park world where you can’t actually see or interact with the animals as people, so it’s not quite all there, somehow. Overthinking? Probably.
The corridors lead further into a tour of the prison cells. All vacant, but full of various artifacts.
The story almost plays out in real time as you continue on to see Bellwether’s cell (villain of the film, with the events of the ride being set after it), with obsessed drawings on the walls, past that to a ventilation shaft through which he has supposedly escaped. Sirens begin to blare and announcements are made and finally you get rushed into a briefing room with the legendary Chief Bogo.
He gives you the lowdown – don’t tell me, we’re new recruits and we’re being put on a high-tech all-terrain vehicle in order to help with this latest mission.
Well yes, of course.
Excitement builds as you move through to the station and finally see vehicles in motion, there is a ride at the end of the tunnel. PPE is available on the walls in all shapes and sizes and repetetive safety announcements are played as you get batched.
And then it ceases operation. Don’t worry, it’s a new ride, it’ll happen a lot, I’m sure it’s only temporary. No, we’re being evacuated.
Well God damn.
Had this been Cedar Point, this would have been game over, but thankfully it’s Disney, so we immediately received a fast track for both the land and the ride, tied to our ticket.
Nevertheless it was now approximately halfway through the operating day and we hadn’t experienced a single attraction. Best check on some queue times.
Well God damn.
The park was gone. Nothing but the stupid Flying Theatre got over an hour when I was here last, at pretty much the same time of year. They’ve also added other areas and attractions since then, in a somewhat poor attempt (the worst of Toy Story Land) to ease the load. Today saw 3 hours for Tron and the Dwarves. 3 hours for the stupid Flying Theatre. Glad I didn’t need or care about those.
I only had 4 things on my hit list for this visit and we’d just failed the first.
RC Racer would be a spurious +1. 2 hours. Not happening.
The rapids which was closed before. Closed again. Guess I’m never seeing that dinosaur up close.
Voyage to the Crystal Grotto – is it a dark ride? Well it’s ‘only’ 30 minutes so I guess we’ll find out.
There’s a few versions of these things around. Paris for example, the boat ride with the various fairytale dioramas. This one is the same concept, with some of them dialled up a bit, a bit larger. You waft around and see a few effects, hear a few songs before heading into a cave. I was hoping it would be a bit more Jungle Cruisey and actor led with some spectacle, but alas no.
The flight schedule had not been kind to us and sitting down for the first time in half a day suddenly got the better of me. I was essentially drifting in and out of consciousness for the indoor portion of the ride and honestly couldn’t tell you what went on in there. We answered the question though. Yes.
By the time that was done and dusted, Zootopia: Hot Pursuit was back in operation. We skipped past two even more vast queues than they had been before and got put straight into the Bogo preshow section. Given the scale of the evacuation and how many people must have been compensated, I’m surprised it was so smooth. Guess they were all stuck in some other ridiculous queue for the time being.
20 years service life on a dark ride too? Maybe it’s not just coasters.
So, the ride then. Is good. Perhaps I had expectations set a little too high, what with the ride system being what it is and what’s been done with it in a galaxy far, far away. I went in knowing nothing for that reason and thought maybe there’d be another new trick up their sleeve, but at best it does the same beats, and less with them.
What it does do very well is the noticeable changes in environments. They make full use of all the different climates and locations from the film to take you from arctic to desert (with good use of temperature differences), from city to rainforest.
The sequence in the middle with the nudist llama guy and his fellow animals is great fun with the lighting setup and ‘scares’. There’s quite a significant emphasis on screen based action, high speed chases and the like, unusually for Disney, but the styling feels rather fresh. I’m not so sold on the cable car bit because the range of movement inside doesn’t go full simulator enough to do it justice.
Flash, Flash, 100 yard dash. Delivers some pun-based comedy in the local tongue.
This screen looks great.
The animatronics when used are amazing of course and it all ends with an uplifting rendition of Try Everything, straight into the gift shop. Four and a half thumbs up or thereabouts.
The queue situation remained just as dire, if not worse, as darkness descended on the park. The single one we could bear to stomach was a posted 50 mins for Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure, which moved very well and went even quicker because it’s a beast. It remains my favourite dark ride on park, this thing is next level with the scaling on some of the sets. It just floats from wow moment to wow moment and I love a dark and brooding atmosphere, a lack of preshow, a lack of needing to be recruited, a lack of high tech all terrain vehicles. Gorgeous.
And with that being the best queue on park for the best attraction, it was decided to call it a day. 3 attractions experienced. 13 hours of operation. A new low for Disney. It’s a good thing I’m pretty immune to bad park visits these days. Yay.
Time to end on a low then. With one short day left there was nothing major on the cards, just a trip to a nearby city with something of minor intrigue. A morning train took us out to Shaoxing, rather close to where we had flown into that really nice airport. The neighbouring city was also all about the fact that they had hosted the Asian Games and thus looked rather fresh and clean. Let’s hope the park is too.
Driver dropped us off at this entrance, which turned out to be the wrong one and a right pain in the ass.
Day 15 – Oriental Neverland
Oriental Neverland consists of 3 parks – a water park we don’t care about, the Mountain Kingdom park which is an indoor affair with a cred, and Coldplay Kingdom the more major outdoor park with several creds, including the one(s) I was most interested to try. The entrance we had ended up at was this massive building which contained both the water park and Mountain Kingdom. At the ticket desk it was confirmed that things wouldn’t be simple. They had no information regarding the big outdoor park here, nor could they sell tickets for it, nor could you access it through the indoor park (I had no idea about the geography at the time). Walk, 10 minutes, that way.
10 minutes later little progress had been made. A painfully long walk around the outside of the building had led to a wrong turn at a hotel and then a monorail station. The station was elevated, with a woman sweeping leaves from it and glaring, but could not be accessed.
We continued on foot for a further 10 minutes, entering this strange assortment of buildings and the ‘second entrance to coolplay kingdom’.
The Oriental Garnd Hotel
There might even be a 4th park, full of this stuff.
Also a dog.
There was a ticket desk out here. Question 1 – is Twin Dragon open? Yes, but it might rain later, and then it will close. Question 2 – can we buy a ticket for both parks? Yes. Simple enough, and exactly what I needed.
Powered in over a rickety bridge and past some swans towards the both ugly but also quite good looking track of Twin Dragon.
It’s a weird mismatch of track styles, and the framing of the synchronised loops is pretty poor with all of the mess around it, but this end sequence looks great in comparison.
I entered the queueline only to be accosted by a man. It was closed. But the ticket desk said it was open. Don’t make me tap the sign. (A maintenance sign outside, of course) Well someone’s lying then, fine, but do you know when it will open? A shrug, can’t say.
What else have they got here then?
Some rubbish. #1 Mine Adventure.
This green on green mine train with an elephant on the front was a thing.
A bit like a jet coaster is probably the nicest thing I can say about it. Some interaction too.
And so is #2 Magic Speed Ring Racing the only threaded Sky Loop in the world? I always dread these things, the Chinese ones even more so because the last suspended me upside down for what felt like forever until something in my head exploded. This wasn’t helped by being forced into the front row, but at least on this occasion I could take my row of choice – 5. Near the back for a faster pull through, non-wheel seat. They can ride pretty jank too.
Surprisingly this was tolerable. Smoother than, say, the genuine article in Finland. No more excessively upside down than normal. Grin and bear it, +1.
No signs of life over at the star attraction, jumped on the Ferris Wheel. Dirty, dirty windows but some cool amenities like USB charging on it. That’s new.
There’s the scale of the stupid walk.
Is it a cred? I asked myself, looking down at the closed water ride. If you look closely it definitely has one of those questionable up and down coaster looking pieces of track in there.
On closer inspection, what do you think?
They have a flying theatre here, but it only runs like twice a day and we had missed the slot of course. Very helpful.
And so there was nothing for it but to camp outside the main attraction and see if anything happened. Made them feel as uncomfortable as possible by sitting on a bench directly outside the entrance, munching away on some snacks and staring.
All that transpired in this time was the staff member sneaking off to smoke in the guest toilets, and a Chinese couple coming up to the ride to ask the exact same question we had – when? There was no helpful answer, so they declared themselves: ‘we’ve done everything in this **** park, let’s get the **** out of here’. Even the locals know.
Soon after we said the same. Jumped on the monorail and back over to the other park just as it began to rain, so that was that for the day anyway. The staff at the monorail corroborated that ‘it always seems to be under maintenance’ and I bet the staff on the coaster were rubbing their hands together and going home thinking that’s a job well done.
There’s the entrance we actually wanted.
Mountain Kingdom
Over at Mountain Kingdom it was desperately quiet. They’ve got this massively elaborate entrance hall which bears no resemblance to what’s going on inside.
The face on this tree sums up my feelings about the place.
All the stuff on the left side has this vibe to it.
And here’s the cred. #3 Dragon Valley, Dragon Through the Valley, Through the Dragon Valley, Dragon Going Through Valley etc.
I always wanted to be in Gryffondor.
This was annoyingly hard to find, arrows were pointing up and into the rockwork, where we got lost, and I just wanted to ride the cred and get out of this damn place.
Eventually we found it in a basement, it was running on stupid timeslots but somehow we had managed to luck out.
In the station we weren’t so much greeted as forewarned with a terrible list of ways in which this was an experience not to be trifled with. As with the first coaster of the trip, on the very last we were asked to verify our age by means of a passport. For a family coaster. I still don’t know whether to feel insulted or not by this, but was leaning towards yes in the current mood.
Don’t do this, don’t do that, put your stuff over here, glasses off, hold on tight, very intense, you’re not ready for this, it spins very fast, the full works.
The car did three quarters of one rotation throughout the entire lap and was the most boring Mack Spinner in the world. What a joke.
For a laugh, or I don’t even know why, maybe the stupid time, effort and money it had taken to get to the ride and the fact no one else was around, maybe some goon points? I asked if we could have another lap. Maybe the spin was very luck based.
No. We were not allowed to reride this attraction today. The reason? One time, one person had a nosebleed. And you’re saying this to a man in a Kärnan shirt.
This was definitely the most frustrated I’ve ever felt in this hobby, even though I got the damn cred. Just every little thing about these parks was wrong, in the most stupid of ways. I’m not a confrontational person at all but very nearly kicked off, instead reminding myself that there’s just no point.
You could explain that every other park in the world would just clean up should a paying guest ride something and then happen to leak some fluids over your ride. It’s extremely unlikely, but it comes with the territory.
You could tell tales about a man who came halfway around the world to visit parks like this, who had ridden over a thousand different rollercoasters and how a plethora of them were infinitely more intense than this ride, and never had any of them come close to causing a nosebleed.
You could say that the stupid Sky Loop didn’t have this policy, in the same resort, but when did logic ever count for anything?
You could equally go to their guest services centre and say the same. You could say that you were lied to by staff about the opening of their star attraction before having your money stolen and experiencing one of the worst days at a theme park ever.
All you would get is a smile and a nod and them’s the rules. There’s nothing I can do about it.
Anyway, the right hand side of this park is also full of rubbish.
A dome theater with about two time slots a day that we had of course missed.
A 4D cinema with about two time slots a day that we had of course missed.
And then we left. This was an expensive day out by Chinese standards. Everything about the place is perfectly set up to not have you experience everything, to deny completionism, perhaps in an attempt to make you visit multiple times and get more money out of you, or more likely in a desperate attempt to save themselves some running costs. But the customer experience is so awful as a result that why would anyone want to visit, let alone return? And clearly they don’t. Just another poxy place that’s doomed to fail out here.
But, sadly, you know I’ll be back.
Taxi, train, metro, bags, metro, airport. Scooted on out of Ningbo and that was that.
Summary
New creds – 44 New dark rides – 33 New parks – 15 New Jinmas – 8 Best new coaster – Wooden Dragons Roller Coaster Best coaster – Flying Aces Best new dark ride – Forest Drifting Best dark ride – Jinshan Temple Showdown Best new park – FT Wild Land Best park – FT Wild Land Planes – 8 Trains – 14 Automobiles – 36 Spites – 11/55 (20%)
Interesting, more than half of the spites happened in a single day, though that’s a pretty bad percentage and par for the course out there. It felt like it was worse, but likely only on the magnitude of what they were…
Anyway…
God damn Flying Aces set the bar too high, clearly, though there were some cracking rides along the way, both coasters and dark rides. Was particularly gratifying to knock off every woodie in the country, China has such an insane lineup of those, and loved getting back to some Fantawilds, they’ll definitely be turning into the focus/highlights of future visits with the number of ‘big draw’ coasters dwindling.
More Fantawilds. There’s always more Fantawilds. Next up we took a train south to the city of Taizhou, then got a drive over to one of the newest parks in the chain,
Day 14 – FT Wild Land
Contrary to the previous visit, I hadn’t been obsessing over this place at all. I didn’t know a whole lot about it, and even kept having to remind myself what Vekoma they had. I remember looking up the rest of the ride lineup when it was announced and opened and being of the usual mindset – oh well, just more of the same, even though it was good to see that they’re changing up the names and overarching themes of each park a lot more regularly for the past few projects. Oh was I in for a surprise.
Slightly odd start, we had bowled up in time for opening but as of 5 mins until park open, the friendly security weren’t allowed to even let us in as far as the ticket window. From an outsider perspective, that’s strange, why can’t I buy my ticket now, so that I’m ready at the turnstyle when it does open? For them, we’re strange, there’s literally no other guest here, what’s your hurry? This park seems very underappreciated, but that’s perfect for me.
By the time we were ticket in hand, the place had already won me over. They were playing instrumental versions of a few of my favourite kpop tracks in and around the main street area. For me? Aww.
Being so new there’s a very fresh vibe going down this part, and it looks like no other Fantawild does, so that’s always a bonus. First attraction appeared off the main square before the park becomes the usual circular loop. This looks familiar.
Finding Merlion is a simple simulator in front of a screen setup. It first debuted at Fantawild Asian Legend, one of the other unique parks in the chain that themed all of their rides to countries in the ASEAN region. The titular Merlion is one of the national symbols and landmarks of Singapore, and Xiong’er (Bramble) the bear from the Boonie Bear franchise takes you on a fun frolick through the city in order to try and spot the famous statue.
It was actually improved upon over its counterpart by having a fun little preshow video in the queue that set up a bit more of a ‘why’, along with not having an arduous safety instruction video prior to commencement. Other than that it’s alright, nothing to write home about.
Just a haunted walkthrough.
Moving around the park in a counter-clockwise direction, there’s a fair bit of deadspace in terms of exciting attractions. A big pink swinging ship and an equally garish splash battle plus some other minor kiddy stuff.
The highlight being that they’ve got the actual jumping fountains from Rollercoaster Tycoon.
Then things get a little more exciting as you pass these ominous looking statues into a much more pleasantly decorated land.
This quickly became one of my favourite themed areas ever, helped by the fact that it’s not just another facade, you can just get up in and around it.
Fantawild were already great at the Chinese vibe but never before did they chuck in an animatronic dragon or this lovely little scene. The rides here don’t hurt either.
Confession, I never knew this ride in particular existed. In forever researching the latest and greatest from Fantawild, a lot of speculation can only be based around that which has already been seen before. Oh they’ve got another one of those, that one looks familiar, etc. I don’t remember ‘Realm of Warriors‘ ever catching my attention from the website, but it’s another newest gen 4D motion based car ride, so a new Nuwa. Exciting.
It has a preshow that was being used straight out of the gate. The gist of the story is that big old demon king is out causing havoc and we need to help the bloke with the wings get the magic scroll to Gandalf so that we can kick the bad guys ass. Familiar concept, sure, but at least it plays out rather differently.
The opening sequence is rather interesting, immediately bumping into the face of the bad guy, who creates a bit of a tornado and has you twirling around in the darkness for a good while. There’s the briefest of glimpses towards the use of more big scary physical sets on this ride type as you get a flash of a giant ravenous plant, though sadly this is never delivered upon again in this particular attraction.
Soon after you get attacked by fiery dragons, both red and blue, in a similar sequence to what they’ve done before. The winged bloke saves you. Then you get attacked by radioactive skeletons in a rather more scary manner. The winged bloke saves you. Then you get attacked by a big bloke. The winged bloke saves you. All in different manners at the very least.
One of the greatest strengths of the ride for me was the sense of scale in the media from this point onwards. You’re suddenly thrust out into this massive battle scene where it’s clear this is all part of some much greater cause, rather than being isolated in your own little ride sequence. Death, destruction everywhere, it all looks pretty epic before you lose the scroll to sexy ninetales lady. Oh no.
Magic happens and it’s Gandalf who saves you this time. She’s quickly dispatched of and he now has the scroll, turning him from grey to white. He summons a chariot of horses and rushes off to join the battle, with us following in tow. Again here you’re flying through this massive scene of a city in ruins, all dark and stormy, broken buildings being chucked everywhere as the boss level version of the big bad is now out and causing chaos.
In a good show of teamwork between us and the wizard, he is eventually defeated and we’re thanked for our bravery, we saved the planet once again. The template seems hard to avoid, but I thought it was pretty great overall. I need to do some further digging as to whether this exists elsewhere now, but in my head canon at least I like to think that this, and the land it’s located in, are a Taizhou exclusive. After the masterplan of phases Fantawild once had, they are starting to give each location more of a unique identity now it seems and I’d love to see that continue through the attractions too.
The star coaster #1 Invincible Warriors has that too, for now at least. Also located in this same area is the only operating Vekoma ‘Renegade’, or ‘the one with the stall’, through a seemlessly themed entrance you wouldn’t know led to a coaster at first glance. I was still nervous up to this point about whether the thing would be running or not, but fear not, Fantawild have got my back.
It had a simpler queue than the Fighter Jet, one that holds you in the first themed building, waiting for an arbitrary amount of time, before the batcher gets the call to smile, bow and let you through.
The walk winds you amongst the layout rather nicely on route to the station, which is soon framed above your head with not one, but two fly-throughs of track. They love doing that now.
Vests!
An eerily silent lift hill glides you up to the top of a sharply twisted left turn of a drop. It’s ok, not the most hard hitting of starts as it swiftly delivers you into ‘the stall’.
The twist in and out of it has a good bit of throw, before you sharply bank the other way and get thrust out of the station roof over that first airtime hill. It’s good, not great.
Curves and rolls and hills define most of the rest of the experience. It’s very much channeling a milder Lech, though for me at least I wouldn’t say thats a bad thing.
Happy, twisty, bouncy, smooth, I guess it’s most comparable to the Oriental Heritage Vekoma Celestial Gauntlet, or ‘lift hill Polish Formula’. I like it, quite a lot, but it’s not the knock your socks off headliner I need it to be. Just very rerideable and enjoyable and I believe I’m now back up to date with every modern thrill layout from Vekoma, so that’s something.
Yes, I was having very amorous North West feelings about the place.
Just a restaurant.
After much walking we stumbled across the next significant attraction. I recognise the name Forest Drifting, but that’s about it.
Queue was nice.
Well this was just lovely. They’ve come a long way from orientally-themed small world style attractions and gone full-on with this boat based adventure.
It begins with a very peaceful and atmospheric journey through the dense, misty undergrowth before meeting up with our pal Bramble the bear again. Not sure why this park is so biased against the other guy, Briar, but that’s the way it is. After introducing the story it goes full Pooh’s Hunny Hunt with special effects and the whole scene disappears in rather spectacular fashion. Magic, wonder, dark ride.
The whole thing is filled with other fantastic moments and details. The narrative was a little confusing, but I didn’t care. There’s a panda that gives the were-rabbit a run for his money, some scene through a seedy film district and the conclusion of the story appears to be meeting up with Neova, a strange white deer thing with purple antlers that I’ve seen around many parks over the years. Fun detail to spot here as they unite and fly about the place, projected on the wall, is that they swoop both in front of and behind physical tree mouldings that form part of that wall. That takes precision and effort and I bet nobody picks up on it.
Loved it. Got me emotional this one, this is exactly why I do this.
Should have a POV for you at some point.
Butterflies.
Oh no, it’s Let’s Fly again. The annoying tune from that last Flying Theatre is already haunting my head once more.
Already looking different on the inside at the very least. The whole queueline was Boonie Bear to the max, setting up what appeared to be a much more fun experience. Don’t let me down.
It was bliss, utter bliss, having the entire ride system to ourselves. We strolled up the ramps, got in our seats with a staff-guest ratio of 1:1 and the film was initiated within mere seconds.
And it was a great film. Don’t hold me to it, but it’s most likely this film was first created for the Fantawild Dinosaur Kingdom park in Zigong as it was, well, dinosaur based. You follow some friendly fellow on the back of a pterosaur around some rather spectacular sights and smells and it was all round just a pleasant and wondrous experience. Exactly what these should be like.
The dinosaur theme makes more sense in the opposite direction apparently. This seemingly hosts a dinosaur version of one of their big epic ‘bubble ballet’ shows, though sadly it was too quiet on this day for them to put it on.
The next cred, #2 Pine Tree Rocket is themed like a much more colourful version of a high speed railway station, which was pretty neat.
Yes that makes 3 days, 3 of these.
This one was the best though, because that.
Didn’t do the water ride as they’re usually a bit dull and often times unnecessarily wet here, though it looked rather lush.
Final cred is the good old #3 Puppy Coaster, with a puppy of an operator to suit. She was super shy and had no clue what she was doing, but that only added to the experience.
Bullseye is another of their Buzz Lightyear-style shooting dark rides, that we only just learnt existed, this time without the war and bombs. I believe you’re freeing animals from the circus and biological testing facitilies and the like and it’s good fun.
I liked in particular that they spice it up a bit by setting a score to beat at the entrance, and then if you do, you win a badge. I did. Only real downside to gameplay is that there’s no variation in scoring, every target yields the same rewards so there’s no secrets or special techniques to be discovered.
Should have a POV for you at some point.
The final ‘land’ contains this 3D cinema, which I’m thinking is the same idea as the rather old now ‘Conch Bay‘, from some of their earliest parks.
I’ve never been bothered to try one of those before, but I assume they’ve amped it up since back in the day.
It certainly doesn’t look like much from a Fantawild Adventure park.
This guy pops out when things get a little rowdy. Good stuff.
Did the Ferris Wheel for some views, quite rare for a Fantawild to have one of these and it was appreciated.
There’s too many attractions called ‘Myth‘ in China, this turned out to be one of their magic projection shows and was put on once for the day.
It told the tale of many different Chinese legends and characters in some more and less convincing manners. It had dancers and performers (enough to outnumber the guests present) and they use that pit and mirror technique to essentially have a screen both in front of and behind the stage for different media and the occasional illusion of things disappearing and reappearing. I’d say it was more engaging than the Oriental Heritage equivalent, though less visually stunning.
Spent the remainder of the evening reliving my most favourite moments from around the park, namely ‘the area’ and the boat ride, as well as an extended photo session with the Vekoma, though it never moved without me on it.
Until the minute we walked away.
There it goes.
This was by far and away my favourite park visit of the trip, just the perfect day spent discovering a new and completely empty Fantawild. It’s only been as of my very last visit to one that I properly fell in love with them, but now I’ve been kept away for 3 long years and it was so good to get that kind of experience once again. The purest essence of why I theme park in China. While stocks last.
After leaving Nanjing we passed through Suzhou once more to collect bags and stuff before taking another train down to Ningbo, the final basecamp of the trip.
I was here back in 2017, on my very first proper trek through China and wasn’t a fan of the place or the parks. Didn’t make life easy for myself back then, using public transport for everything and it took some ridiculous amount of time to get out to the Fantawild resort that calls itself Ningbo. But it’s so stupidly far away, in a no mans land between a bunch of other lesser cities.
Taking a direct car this time, from the right end of the city, was still well in excess of an hour, and by far the most expensive fare to date. Why, though?
Day 13 – Glorious Orient Ningbo
New park, that’s why.
There’s just something about Ningbo. You can’t see here because we’re riding the bow wave, but this park, like it’s neighbour in 2017 appears to ONLY attract a TON of tour groups of the worst theme park guests you’ll encounter in China.
They’re obviously on some package deal, there might even be some government cultural scheme to get the village elders out and experiencing the wider world, Fantawild love to win awards about that sort of thing. But they generally appear have very little interest in being there, spending the entire day shouting at each other about whatever, whether on rides or otherwise, and making the queues an unnecessary ordeal.
This is what you want to see though, power on ahead and find an empty ride with the staff smiling and waving. Their day is about to get a whole lot worse.
Sharp Shooter is a bit of an odd one, setting the tone for most of the park really. The playful looking exterior leads to a more sinister undertone. Basically we’re going to war with the Japanese, but it’s kiddified.
So you’ve got this small world vibe from the characters and figures, and it’s pretty cartoony, but it’s all guns and bombs and happy tunes.
The ride system itself is like a Buzz Lightyear, but with trains rather than an Omnimover. You get your own little two seater pod and a swivel stick to turn where you like. The first of that style I’ve seen from Fantawild and it’s pretty good overall, if you can look past the theme.
Like that.
No more distractions though, I’ve got to get to this Vekoma before it becomes a living hell.
Yes, #1 Fighter Jet is the name of the game. The Vekoma Top Gun launch coaster exclusive to Glorious Orient properties for now. There’s three currently operating and two more on the way, this was the 2nd to open by a couple of months.
This is what we want to see, the final section of queue heads indoors where you get a classic Fantawild ‘have a seat while we’re slow and arbitrarily don’t run the ride for a while’. Every attraction is treated like a show in that regard, something to be initiated rather than continuously operated. Empty though.
Which, on a single 8-seater train can get pretty bad, I imagine. Still keeping pace I jumped in the front row to find out what it’s all about.
The launch sequence is rather nifty. You pull out onto the deck of the aircraft carrier and pause for a moment before being wrenched down and off the end of it. It appears Vekoma have finally fixed my little launch bugbear – it doesn’t do that ugly little tap on the back of the head as it initiates, it’s smooth all the way, lovely.
That first element is pretty glorious, a rolling inversion directly into an airtime filled top hat, a pretty rare and special sensation for now that I very much appreciated. Keep on innovating.
From there the layout focuses a lot on tight turns which are pretty positive-heavy, though not overly so for me on this occasion. This is still in keeping with the Fighter Jet theme of course. There’s a couple of pleasant moments that break those forces, much like I found on Wrath of Zeus earlier in the year, in which a heavy head is suddenly relieved by a graceful inversion.
The mid course breaks up the flow too much for my liking, and it’s likely entirely unncessary in it’s current state. I’m guessing this part of the design was significantly influenced by the tiny trains and wanting to keep capacity up as high as possible but, contrary to everything else that’s been going on, why would a plane slow to a crawl in mid air before resuming?
Other than that it’s highly competent, if a bit short on airtime for my own liking even when it does try. Opening with such a highlight of an element does lead to the rest of it never quite living up to that. It didn’t leave me begging for more, but I respect the hell out of it, kinda like a lot of these Vekomas that aren’t Fønix.
Backtracking to #2 Sky Track now, with crowds beginning to arrive, a slightly less tasteful +1. The Beijing Shibolai Junior Coaster Rev B is a pepped up Wacky Worm layout. Same figure 8, but with more profiling and less Wacky. I’m sure it’ll take the world by storm.
These things already have taken the world by storm, and it’s to our detriment. Could you fit in that?
And to finish off the coaster collection in quick succession, not too far around the corner was #3 Frontline Charge, our second of these Junior Boomerangs on the bounce. Can we make it a third?
Custom.
Creds complete I was more excited to experience other new dark rides, Railroad Warriors in particular seemed to have a lot of potential.
Keeping up that wartime theme in the queue.
It’s a 4D motion based car ride extravaganza, one of the latest from Fantawild. Even Nuwa is getting old now. The most striking initial feature is that it has machine guns mounted to the front.
I had this ride translated as Railway Guerilla originally, the gist of the story is that you’re in this assault vehicle and you need to blow up a train before it deliveres supplies and/or people in a manner that would support the Japanese war effort rather than your own. Cheery stuff once more.
So there’s a lot of positives here. It looks pretty great in a lot of places, there’s a lot more physical sets, animatronic led scenes, which have been less of a thing for Fantawild for now. They’re branching out and continually attempting to up their game. I like that. The use of the ride system itself, coupled with the guns and the theme, leading to moments of basically strafing and cutting down bunches of Japanese soldiers through gaps in the broken rubble of a railway station, is clever. Some of the media based action is pretty spectacular as well.
I can appreciate all that, but it’s not my cup of tea, having this re-enactment of real world scenes of war in a theme park, and then literally ending with photos, videos and banners of veterans in a ‘thank you for serving our country’ type affair. It’s likely perfect for the Chinese setup of ride something once and never again. But you’re not gonna do a rollercoaster tycoon punch the air and run back round to experience it all again.
Next on the rotary was a flying theatre, unimaginatively named Let’s Fly, the same as all their others. What does this one have in store for us?
The queue is overwhelmingly filled with the history of transporation, so perhaps that’s a clue.
In true Fantawild fashion, you skip past all that at speed and stand and wait in a mostly unthemed spot, a few of the tour groups were seeping into every corner of the park by now and this had a bit of a painful wait as a result.
You can see why once you get to the ride area. They batch you onto multiple floors where you get a little speech about what to do with loose items, how to buckle a seatbelt etc. before they open the doors. Once unleashed, utter chaos. Because they’re always loudly talking at each other no matter the situation and of course paying no attention to the guy with the megaphone giving intstructions, there’s no semblance of understanding as to what they’re doing.
None of this was helped in this case by the weird fact that purpose made cubby holes between each ride vehicle were not allowed to be used. Instead they had a small plastic bucket between each, about the size of an A4 piece of paper, which quickly became an absolute mountain of stuff, spilling out into the ride area. Plastic bags of tomatoes for lunch. Cauldrons of soup. Every weather related item of clothing known to man. All piled on top of my bag at this point because I was the only one to do it properly.
One of my biggest issues with Flying Theatres has always been this. No matter what part of the world you’re in there’s a huge disconnect between narrative and commencement of the ride. The faff, never ending faff of having to load one of these and get it going just leaves me feeling so exhausted with life that I just want the damn thing to be over with by the time it’s begun.
None of this was helped in this case by the weird fact that it’s just another sightseeing extravaganza. Given the queue and theme of the park I had thought we might get something a little custom. Look at some old trains and stuff. Nope, just a poorer quality version of that which we had been experiencing at the Sunac properties, with this really annoyingly repetitive loop of music every 6 seconds or so that’s trying so hard to emulate a sense of wonder.
It was ass. Donkey?
I’m conflicted with the park at this point, it all looks so good. Why am I not enjoying it?
Look at the integration of the play areas. There’s so much thought put into certain things.
Ok, another dark ride, Hangar Breakout. Longest wait yet, again in an unthemed cattlepen, before literally urging you to race past some theming, an elaborately decorated dinner table, and an entire preshow room which they basically never use, to get to the ride.
Things were all a little familiar here. It’s another motion based car ride, though not with 3D glasses and with smaller vehicles.
The gist of the story is that you’re in this assault vehicle and you need to blow up a plane before it deliveres supplies and/or people in a manner that would support the Japanese war effort rather than your own. Cheery stuff once more.
So there’s a lot of positives here. It looks pretty great in a lot of places, there’s a lot more physical sets, which have been less of a thing for Fantawild for now. They’re branching out and continually attempting to up their game. I like that. The use of the ride system itself, coupled with being crashed into by planes, leading to moments of quite violent responsive motions, is clever. I was really picking up on the fact that every moment is impeccably timed with the on screen action vs what the vehicle is doing. Some of the media based action is pretty spectacular as well.
If there’s anything to rival the Dollywood rocking chair I think it might be these things.
Now we’re talking. Zhiyuan Zhiyuan ended up being my favourite of the big dark rides.
Learning. Some show was going on by the time we reached it and finally had the place to ourselves again.
The Zhiyuan was a protected cruiser built for the Imperial Chinese Navy and the ride is more of a history lession than a re-enactment.
It’s a magic boat ride system, I guess most like Shanghai Pirates of the Caribbean, you’re moving through water but the vehicle still seems like it can do whatever the hell it wants.
One of the first scenes involves a British shipyard, which is where the ship in question was built, complete with Rule Britannia soundtrack, which was an unusual surprise.
We later find out that this bloke spent all his money on partying instead of the defense budget.
As such, when the ship goes to war, in rather spectacular fashion I might add, geysers and everything, it loses and sinks.
You then get this amazing scene passing under the detailed wreckage on the seabed and it’s all emotional like ‘she was such a fine vessel, gone before her time, she now lies at the bottom of the ocean, waiting, for a better future.’ Not sure why but that bit got me in the feels. Well, moreso than shooting people at the very least.
It ends a little weird in that it decides to show you that better future. In what I expected more of the park to be like, with it originally being panned as China’s industrial revolution, rise to civilisation, that sort of thing, not just fighting people, there’s a video montage celebrating all these different scientific and technical developments.
Loved it overall though, plus that’s a pretty spectacular looking entrance.
And with that, all the major attractions in the park were complete and it was decided that that experience couldn’t be topped. I also had this niggling in the back of my mind the whole day. There’s another park next door. A park that spited me. There’s a woodie next door. A woodie that spited me.
Boooo.
Oriental Heritage Ningbo
I HATED this place so much in 2017, like one of my worst theme park experiences ever. My first time in a Fantawild and they were dead to me, what is this stupid Chinese company that can’t operate a theme park (I’m now their biggest fan). The crowd issues I’ve already described were coupled with all outdoor attractions being closed for ‘weather’, in the most lamest of excuses. It felt like I put in such monumental effort, and it was super stressful, and didn’t pay off.
Now that’s literally every holiday in China. Gotta make the best of it.
#4 Stress Express, it’s like they know it themselves. The place was absolutely dead, new park is now king, so I had to just stand at the foot of the stairs for this waiting for them to realise people might actually want to ride the rides today.
Well I didn’t want to, but I did. +1.
This was what I wanted. Should have been my first #5 Jungle Trailblazer, instead it became my last. In fact I’ve now ridden every woodie in China, which feels pretty special.
This wasn’t pretty special. It’s a clone of the one in Oriental Heritage Jinan, so I had no anticipation of surprises at the very least. It’s a middle of the road Jungle Trailblazer, not my favourite and not the worst, so really, really good. But oh dear, They have not looked after it.
It was riding like Thundercoaster. So rough that vision was blurred and it sucked most of the fun out of it. The layout really hauls, through what should be some epic airtime and firing you into the inversion before you know what hits you. It has the really good signature bumpy bouncy straight section of multiple pops as well, before losing a little juice at the end. I still had a good time, mostly laughing at the state of affairs and knowing what it should have been like. But perhaps those days are already behind it. Is this why they buy Vekomas now?
Oh well, not wanting to marathon that led to courtesy laps on some old friends. I checked out the timings on Jinshan Temple Showdown first, because that was a must, and then calculated what else I could squeeze in before the next ‘showing’.
How does old Devil’s Peak stack up to the other robo-coasters of the trip?
I actually got a working pre-show! I feel so honoured.
Anyway, I think it’s my favourite. It’s a little less refined than Harry Potter as a product, but I just like the atmosphere and flow of it more. You get some real creepy moments just sort of lurking and hanging there in the dark caves, ambient sounds and spooky music, not knowing how it’s all gonna kick off. The screen based antics are ok, our boy Sun Wukong kicking some fantasy monster ass. Though I argue Forbidden Journey is just a highlight reel that doesn’t make chronological sense, I suppose this one is a highlight reel of moments from Journey to the West, but at least there’s a sensible timeline.
Outside of that, it goes real ghost train in the physical sections, again just really atmospheric and to me feels a little more considered than AHH, DEMENTORS. Great stuff.
Did I say Legend of Nuwa was getting old already? This one is. It’s gone.
I actually got a working pre-show! I feel so honoured.
But no, it’s gone. It’s dead. The ride system was limping along like an old dog and barely, barely moving, for all of the action. Having just bore witness to technological marvels and precision on the new ones over the way, this was so tired and lifeless that I don’t understand it.
I questioned myself in 2020 when riding the most recent version of Nuwa whether the range of motions in the vehicle had the ability to kick more or less ass. Because that one was kicking so much ass. Turns out I’m right, there can be a huge difference in how it behaves. But why?
I keep trying The Plummet and it keeps disappointing, so let’s just stop now. An Indoor Drop Tower should be very me, but it’s weak, the story doesn’t make sense and now this one in particular at least is completely cooked. It spent at least 5 minutes after the cycle had ended moving at 0.01Mph back towards the floor, while the staff look embarassed and awkward and this stupid sound loop keeps playing over and over.
So much so that it nearly made me miss the star of the show. I sprinted back to Jinshan Temple Showdown and they ushered me in through a shortcut to catch up with the rest of the crowds making their way through the ridiculously good-looking queueline, jump-scaring another guest as I appeared through a gap along the way.
Ahh, I love this thing. You haven’t heard anyone gush about this attraction for far too long, so here it is again. You board this massive boat in an ancient water town and are treated to a very leisurely but beautifully presented trip through the surroundings, while being spun the tale of Lady White Snake.
Details are woven into every aspect. Rather than just the screen, action, screen, action you get on all these other rides, there’s separate goings on, projections of people just going about their daily business and other quirks. It just feels so alive.
The ride culminates with everyone departing the boat and standing to watch this epic showdown with live actors, water projections, fire, and a catastrophic flood to close out.
I think, think, they have different length/budget sequences of this depending on how dead the park is. And by the same principle, this affects whether or not they have actors in the ride section too, that varies for sure.
And with that, all the major attractions in the park were complete and it was decided that that experience couldn’t be topped.
I dunno what to say about Glorious Orient. It’s wonderfully presented and technically competent, but I didn’t gel with it. It’s like if the London Resort became Britannia Land and half the rides were themed to interactively gunning down Nazis. Can’t knock the execution of the ‘theme’ park, but is that a theme you want? I’ve been slightly obsessed with the place for a couple of years now, and it just wasn’t at all what I expected. I suppose I’m just far too used to, and enthralled by, the fantasy aspects of the other parks. Fighter Jet and Zhiyuan are awesome though, and we’d never get those, so knock yourselves out.
Oriental Heritage is already a shell of its former shelf, so it seems you really need to hit these parks in their first two or three years of operation. They’re such a candle in the wind, and I think that’s part of why all of this stupid nonsense excites me so much. Help.
We opted for the budget route back to the city, namely a slightly shorter Didi journey to the geographically nearest train station, then a train. Takes a bit longer, significantly cheaper. I said there was something about Ningbo, as the route passes through the most third world looking part of China I’ve ever seen. The station itself had one half completely closed off, meaning a stupid walk round to the other side and then the ticket counters were the only ones in the country on this trip that had a queue. No one uses them any more, the staff get physically upset at having to do their job when you go to them, because everyone else uses the app or that thing called the internet. But no, here there was a faffy queue, like the good old days and it ended up being a massive waste of time on top of the extended journey. Oh well, culture.
Still based in Suzhou for now, a lot of this was backtracking to the ‘highlights’ of what would have been picked up in the other direction. The final day out of here involved a train to Nanjing, followed by a Didi man, so nothing new there.
Day 12 – Happy Valley Nanjing
This is still as of writing the newest Happy Valley in the chain, though OCT have been branching out into other park concepts since 2017 to stay in line with the competition. I had just about completed the Happy Valley set before the opening here spited me, no doubt the next one in Xi’an will do that soon enough. On paper it looks competent, if a little unremarkable, with the two star coasters being clones found elsewhere, though both with a twist.
As with Beijing, they had a solid website full of all the information actually required – which rides were open (all the ones I cared about) and over what time period.
Staggered openings made it a little awkward to navigate, but it’s a common stall tactic for somewhere like this that lacks a bit of staying power. Hopefully you might buy some food in between. I didn’t.
So the first order of the day was the SFC, #1 Ocean Adventure. I had it in my head that it was another little B&M one, because that was becoming the done thing for Happy Valley.
It is in fact an Orkanen, by Vekoma, thereby much better, though still a one and done because I’m now up to a solid ten and done of them.
This mine train has had a name update on RCDB thanks to me, don’t say I never do anything for you.
#2 Wilderness Escape is a standard clone layout with the double lift, Jinma style with the new look Vekoma track.
I like that it shared the rockwork with the water ride. Rode well, looked good, is what it is.
Having powered through those two with barely another soul in the park, there was a bit of a lull while waiting for one of the big two to open up. It’s a pretty huge walk between major attractions from this point, unshaded and already a little too hot for my liking. Similar issue I remember from Chongqing in that it’s simply to exhausting to bounce about between your ‘favourites’ here, which no other visitor does of course, so it doesn’t matter.
Walked all the way past the wing and round, path annoyingly doubling back on itself. It was testing at the very least.
And into the space themed area where Cheetah Hunt 2.0 was. I guess most of the guests had gone round the park in the other direction as this had now formed a bit of a queue. A bit of a queue for a single 16 seater train, on a clone of a model that was designed to have dual despatch and run at least 4, meant a half hour wait on some unpleasant and unshaded stairs, not moving.
#3 Light of Revenge still has the separate offload and onload too, so you get that same genius quirk of extra waiting time simply watching it move between the two.
I ended up in the front of the Taron-style train, the one thing that was bound to make this version an improvement over the other. It’s mirrored, with a banked turn to the right following the first little launch, heading round and back under itself into the first big launch. The tunnel action and roar here was as satisfying as it should be, with quite a strong pop of air up and into the crow’s nest.
It meanders about for the views before plummeting back out in what felt like a significantly steep exit also with some good kick, extra appreciated in those roomy restraints. Soon after, I swear there was a bonus speed hill, though don’t hold me to it. It is supposed to be reprofiled from the original after all.
After this however I’m not sure the new work did it any favours. The remaining three quarters of the ride just didn’t have as much bite to it as I recall from the Cheetah. Comfort can be too much of a good thing on transitions that play things a little safe. The final launch did that short and silly ‘have a little boost, but not too much’ that’s simply less satisfying as a late game entry and then the two big return airtime hills that I specifically remember having decent airtime into bad restraints, had no airtime into good restraints.
Hmm, I’m probably a fan of the original more than most seem to be, but this was pretty meh overall. Looks good though.
I was actually more excited for #4 Forest Predator, though a clone of the wing coaster at Happy Valley Chongqing (which I very much enjoyed for it’s intensity), it has a backwards row at the back (which I very much enjoyed on the Swarm).
The time taken to get on the other thing meant that I was no longer ahead of the curve here either, though it was mercifully still a walk-on. I wanted to go straight to the backwards row but was spited in the most ridiculous of manners.
The Chinese get very confused by being split across two sides of the train on these things, it often happens mid-group and they’re not quick enough to catch on to what’s happening and head that issue off at the batch point. As I’ve also mentioned it’s quite common for them to not comprehend the purpose of air gates to line people up against specific rows (and who can blame them, when half their rides don’t even use them anyway). The air gates had already been opened by the time I reached the station, and as I headed towards the rear of the train, some guy just climbed over the bloody station track of a wing coaster from the other side and stole the seat. For all their other petty and petulant rules, the staff didn’t care one bit about this. Safe.
Oh well, forwards at the back it is. Oh dear, this ain’t riding well. It was nothing like I remembered the dinosaur edition to be, sluggish and rattly from start to finish, with none of the grace of the past couple of days. The huge terrainy game leading into a continous sequence of acceleration and intense inversions just wasn’t playing out the way it should. Why so hit and miss?
Still, backwards, I had been slightly obsessing over this for years now. Never meet your heroes. The second round in the station was more amusing still, as something else they can’t comprehend is the appearance of this train. Seeing a ‘front’ on both ends and not knowing the difference between a brake run and a lift hill led to audible confusion and literal slapstick triple takes from several guests while I just slithered behind and ended up exactly where I needed to be.
The result was the same, but backwards. Lack of anticipation is usually such an enhancement in these situations. I can’t remember if Swarm backwards was my first in a long time, but it kicked my ass for not knowing what was coming and I loved it. Maybe having just done it already here didn’t help, but bounce, rattle and roll with the way it was riding, it all happened with little to no effect on me. Pretty meh overall.
Never mind, it’s dark ride time. I was sure there was a dark ride here. Big space building with a turret outside. Shooter right? The website said something about interactive.
Well it didn’t appear to exist, I searched high and low on maps and buildings and the closest thing it came to was some dumb bumper cars with lasers on them. Did they oversell that? I’m still not sure.
With neither of the headliners appealing to me much and no dark ride to be seen, the lineup of Nanjing was swiftly falling apart. There was one more cred to be had, in the form of #5 Family Boomerang Roller Coaster, the joy.
They’ve taken a leaf out of Ferrari World’s book here and offer big ugly plastic goggles to go over your glasses if you so wish, but I didn’t feel the need to be able to see here. So begins a little game of how many days in a row can we ride one of these?
Some 5D extravaganza maybe had the chance to still put them on the map, but it was just a 3D/4D/5D cinema with no motion in the seats, so no.
It was playing a special theme park cut of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, many moments from throughout the entire feature length film all poorly stitched together in an attempt to give off action, excitement, dimensions.
Highlight for me was the introductory frames in which the camera zooms in on a book which tells you the title of what you’re about to watch. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – 3D The Chinese subtitles translated ‘3D’ to ‘4D’ literally pixels below on the same screen. Outside it says 5D. It’s just the perfect summation of all the D nonsense that goes on in this world. The rest of it was dubbed, pretty poorly. Meh.
Ferris Wheel time, windows were a little foggy for my liking. It’s a decent enough looking park with that backdrop of river, bridge and hills. Shame I didn’t gel with it.
I’m thinking it’s the least remarkable of all Happy Valleys in terms of lineup at this point, they usually have at least something killer.
As such I was already looking to the horizon. It was time to jump in another car.
Wanda Theme Park (Nanjing)
These indoor only Wanda parks aren’t usually all that, situated within one of their big malls, and this one was no exception.
The place was absolutely dead, deader than normal dead, and the person selling tickets could barely comprehend that they had attractions on offer, let alone how or why we could exchange money for them. There were two creds to be had, but even with a lot of pointing at maps and explanations they kept thinking the second was a mirror maze and said to just go and find out for ourselves.
We paid for the first one though, which was #6 Drydock Express. One of those Zamperla motocoaster clones that’s very un-motocoaster in layout.
Except it was on horseback. One of our tickets didn’t work immediately and the operator got very confused, clearly they don’t get much interaction in this job. People actually want to ride this thing? Had I somehow managed to forge an obscure and detailed ticket with QR code for this attraction? After much thought I was let on anyway. The launch is clunky and then it meanders around until the brakes, where it almost stalled.
This.
Here’s the rest of the park, they usually have a similar vibe.
This was the other cred, but it was completely dark and abandoned. We went back to the desk to confirm anyway so that the ticket seller could put a name to an attraction. The operator from the other cred had come over for a chat and said it was under maintenance, of course.
I returned the following morning, bright and early, to have one more stab at the apple. Enquiries had of course been inconclusive, ‘the rides change every day’ they said. Sure enough upon arrival the sign had changed. Tilt Coaster yes, Beyond the Clouds no. Such dilemma, do I pay full price for the extra cred, knowing full well that I’m destined to return again one day?
Yes. It will probably be closed then too. Gotta take what you can get.
Day 11 – Suzhou Amusement Land
Powered straight to #1 Broken Rail Coaster before it could garner any form of queue and was treated to a single train of wait. The train itself is a definite improvement on the old model, was hoping the rest of it was too, as the duelling Hefei one had dealt some vicious punches in the latter half of the layout. Surely something this vesty, open and spacious can’t do the same.
It’s a very slow and suspenseful climb to the top, followed by an even slower and slightly less suspensful tilt sequence. The lack of fanfare or vigour kinda ruins the moment a bit, even the locals don’t seem to get as phased by it as they should be, you’re just sort of stuck there, hanging, likely wondering if it’s broken. One thing Battle of Jungle King did do better there was have an MC doing trick countdowns.
Once the drop is initiated, you plummet below ground level for extra effect before being thrust into a mostly continuous set of inversions and tightly banked turns, some of which are rather dizzying and intense. Crucially it rides well, full respect there.
The low roll at the end that looks suspiciously like the older model, and still not quite right somehow, delivers a very strange set of forces, none of which were bad. It’s nothing special, other than being very different from what’s out there (read: cloned). I wouldn’t go out of my way for it, but would happily ride it again.
Turns out the flying theatre did exist, right next door to the robot arm dark ride. It was already hideously overpopular by this point, shoulda done it the night before. My attention had also already faded by this point, always looking to the horizon, so couldn’t be bothered.
Did the dark ride again instead because it was walk on.
Rawr.
It was time to jump in another car.
Wuxi Sunac Land
Once again the Sunac property was free to enter, pay per ride if you wish, but all inclusive is the way to go. Interestingly here it all changed at 4pm, from which point you couldn’t just bowl up and stroll in. Not sure on the logic, maybe a cheaper deal? Still seems the better model in these kinda locations.
Main Street USA was very un-USA, to its credit.
You can’t help but notice the main event from pretty much anywhere inside or outside the park. #2 Falcon is huge. The situation was nervous as always, having not seen it actually run at any point since being dropped off. Thankfully this was just thanks to not having enough riders to fill a train, and of course being run at a snails pace.
Loved it though, size makes all the difference here. It’s not often you get face-ripping intensity on this model yet it happens through sheer speed alone in the opening section.
In constrast to the HB one the day before, I also loved that they mix up the elements a lot more here. It’s far less inversion heavy, beginning most notably with this giant twisted hill into the more ‘interactive’ section.
As you pass over the signature rockwork, a second speed type hill thrusts you out and over the water with an excellent moment of new found momentum. It compliments the whole wing thing rather well.
After the large and graceful overbank, there’s a surprise piece of dynamicism as well, with a little S-bend twist as you head into the rock itself. A snappy little transition you wouldn’t otherwise expect from such a big boy.
All of this is excellent, though it runs foul of falling a little flat at the mid course. It’s rather late game and leads to the type of slow, hangtime filled roll, again through the rock once more, that most people seem to hate.
I’m on the fence, to me it’s not the forces themselves that bother me, though they are undoubtedly uncomfortable, it’s whether the ride has earned it. Has the 200ft monster been trying to kick your ass up until this point? Then go right ahead. Have you been sunglasses on and not caring up until this point? Then it’s too late, don’t bother.
The former, this one’s the former.
Flying Theatres? Did someone say China has flying theatres? In true form, while the world class, unique rollercoaster attraction couldn’t even fill a train with guests, the flying theatre held an hour of queue for almost the entire day. As such, we’ll come back later.
I was curious to see how trains could pull off stunts, but sadly the timing never lined up.
This was a surprise, I walked into #3 Dream Factory rather blind. I think it’s a cred. Maybe a dark ride? No, cred.
Well kinda both. Turns out Zamperla make Multi-Dimension coasters now, who knew?
Queue was pretty nifty.
The coaster portions were clunky as anything, at about 2Mph, and so there was very little dynamic going on with either that or the story. The thunderbolt rode better.
You stop several times in scenes of some steel mill, with various mishaps taking place, causing you to change direction of course.
I actually found the drop track itself rather brilliantly executed. It was the smoothest part of the ride and it hit me with a great deal of surprise and force. A diamond in the rough.
Blue Fire, but red, under the name #4 Steam Racers. I like these models, but there’s far too many at this point. Walk-on and a lighting package though.
Their monstrosity of a water cred was far too popular, because water. Who wants to ride an actually decent ride when you can have water? It too was skipped, for now.
Because I really wanted to ride this. Since the whole lockdown, joining the database, researching dark rides thing, Final Sea Battle has been a bit of a bucket list attraction for me. Was never sure why, because I’m also spoiler averse, but it sounds cool, right?
Right. Better disguising of the show building than Universal at the very least.
This was also busy, deservedly at least. More likely because it was hot outside and aircon is almost as good and as hard to come by as water, rather than as any testament to the quality of of the ride.
Thankfully not 120 minutes busy.
I actually read the plate this time, that’s a genuine Jinma, their DGC-12A model no less.
What does that mean? 4D dark ride. Spiderman/Transformers on a boat.
It delivered. They can make a damn good product when they put their minds to it. For once it didn’t feel like one of these Chinese ride systems where there should be more in the tank, it should have more to give. The range of motions were perfectly suited to the action and the action was pretty great, if a little over the top.
As seafaring citizens you end up in this massive sea battle, obviously, but being the minions that you are just kinda get flung around from pillar to post witnessing, and not helping. It’s got a bit of everything, pirate style cannon battles, big impressive physical setpieces, big fantasy blokes punching things, a giant sea monster.
It’s not gamechanging as an attraction itself, with a lot of the same old beats that become a bit cliche in this style of attraction by now, but I always enjoy seeing them under a new skin at the very least. I’m more just pleased that other manufacturers and companies are able to pull off something this damn good. Need a bit of healthy competition and Wanda/Sunac is poised to be that, they’re just so sporadic in their choice of investment.
The day was turning out pretty relaxing all things considered, yeah there was still stuff to do but it was all open until late so we left the park and went to the big mall outside for a bite to eat and a break to soak up the vibe.
After another treat on Falcon, it was time to suck up the wait for the water coaster, because some stupid people with a stupid hobby decided it was worth counting. Tactics hadn’t worked here as even though the sun was going down, it remained as long of a wait.
They gave away free ponchos for the one in Guangzhou, so I was kinda holding out for the same, only to eventually end up as the only person aboard without one. Oh dear.
It’s very sparsely themed to the whole #5 Surf’s Up! Duck Duck Goose idea, and the ‘coaster’ section comes underneath the big lift hill, after rounding a corner. It does the whole Supersplash turntable, backwards drop and up, turntable faff, but in an straight line, very low to the ground and even more slow and pointless. I did inwardly chuckle at the visible confusion of others trying to work out what and why it was doing this.
After more barren drifting, tons of insects were swarming the big lift, making it even more tense and unpleasant. Then the drop. Then the wet. Then the wet again. It did the horrible two stage soaking like Tidal Wave. Would never have put up with that otherwise, but cred.
You know what’s a good way to dry off though? Big wing coaster. It was starting to get dark now and this was due to close an hour earlier than the one thing left so I just lapped it a few times until they shut shop.
The lightning package kicked in and I got some night rides on it, so that was pretty magical again, looking out over the city before the chaos and reminding me what the hobby is all about. Sunac is doing me well on that front.
Tactics worked, Fly Jiangsu was down to a single load of waiting for the night and the reward was another above average, but still sightseeing experience (Jiangsu being this region). It had a pleasant preshow and I will say again the quality of these ones Sunac are getting are pretty good for what they are. The market is just so saturated with them now.
They had a night time show running to cap things off, so decided to check that out.
It told an old Chinese legend through the mediums of dance, puppetry, water projection, fountains and lights. A little more subdued than your average ‘spectacular’ but rather tasteful for it. As always it’s nice to have something a bit different.
They had one big water jet in the middle that was absoutely massive, I’ve never seen one quite like it. Must have been pushing past the height of the coaster at max blast and had this really satisfying effect of the water slowly cascading down for several seconds afterwards, each time it switched off.
Very nice place overall, really enjoyed the time here – you can usually tell that when I actually stick around.
They’ve got a great top two in the star coaster and dark ride, and Blue Fire, the theatre and the indoor cred are rather good support if you’re not jaded like I am. One of the most well rounded Sunacs for sure. I’m really glad they seemed to have stopped the separate movie park in a mall thing now, just needs some wood.
Not only did the health declaration spite us on the way in, it also caught us at Jinan airport when trying to leave. Obviously there were other more important things on our mind and it escaped our attention that you even needed one, to leave. Even worse in the outbound direction was that the WeChat link led to a Chinese only version of the form, making it somewhat more difficult to fill in, though there was a modicum of assistance from the airport staff this time around.
It’s a very nosy form and once again slightly different to the previous two versions, and also like the immigration staff had a mandatory ‘you must know someone in China to be able to declare whether you’ve got a cough or not’ question. All this bureaucracy was circumvented by the staff themselves just putting Mr. Wang and a phone number of 1234567890, so the system works, I guess.
We flew back into the city of Hangzhou the following week, a beautifully run airport that was leagues ahead of the previous two experiences in every way. The region hosted a major sporting event in the form of the Asian Games last year and as such had been streamlined to suit the wayward traveller a little more.
Something that seems to happen far too often is stumbling on an amazing hotel room, when in fact you only have a ridiculously short amount of time to get in, sleep, and get out again. This was the case here once more, as the airport hotel must have silently upgraded us as I don’t recall booking an entire floor. You know you’ve hit luxury when there’s multiple bathrooms in your hotel room.
I didn’t really want to be in Hangzhou, I wanted to be in Suzhou, so we whisked away early the next morning and began a convoluted journey to get there. A Didi to the train station, followed by another first class high speed train (no chicken this time) to Shanghai, followed by a Didi to the first park of the day.
Day 10 – HB World
HB stands for Huayi Brothers, they make films, thus it’s a movie studio theme park with a Chinese twist and one I was rather excited for all things considered.
Bit of a Universal vibe once inside I must say, though they were here first, right?
Things started strong on the #1 Big Fish Roller Coaster, I enjoyed the face on it.
They had misters in the station and were doing an alright job of it really, a reasonable start. Looks the same as that imposter Jungle Trailblazer to me.
The real excitement came not from creds, but from potential dark ride discoveries as not a lot was known about this place. Kiln Dynamic Shooter certainly sounded like something I’d be interested in.
Certainly wasn’t what I expected. An early queue of stained glass windows turned to dug out tunnels and a single screen looping some first person shooter footage. An excruciatingly long wait ensued while potentially no one in the room was sure exactly what they were waiting for.
With still no idea what the hardware was, our turn finally came and we were handed military helmets to wear. But don’t worry, you needn’t tighten them.
Ok.
The mystery was revealed as this bizarre setup, a 4-armed tower type thing with guns mounted to the restraints, with which you shoot at stuff on the screens that surround the room.
It was very realism based, yet unresponsive in the gameplay. The guns had a fixed swivel and you couldn’t exactly aim anywhere you wanted, not that much sense could be made of what you were achieving anyway. Instead it just played out like a very long feeling 10 minutes of first person war footage.
This looked like it could contain something I’d be interested in. It did not.
Enough faffing around for now then, the major coaster here is #2 Heaven’s Wing / Wings of Glory, depending on which sign you believe, a B&M wing of course.
Not an original layout, but the original version never opened, up next to that first park of the trip, so this one remains unique for now.
It’s quite an intense one as these things go, gets straight to business with all 5 inversions pretty much on the bounce and some hefty positives in between the contrasting floatier moments. Kinda what these things are made to do I guess.
I really liked the flow of it, everything just felt well pieced together as it roared from element to element. B&M quality is back.
From there, things got a little huge.
Let us keep approaching this monumental statue.
Yup, it’s big.
How tasteful, and this, inside a theme park.
Oh… cred though.
#3 Inflaming Beatles is a cultured Beijing Jiuhua spinner with immelman and everything, seeing lots of new layouts from them at least, and them having inwards facing seats like a Gerstlauer were a first for me too.
Back to excitement, what I believed to be a dark boat ride themed to Amazing Detective Di Renjie, whoever he may be.
Queue starts nice and then gets very indoor and cave-like. Is this going to be Chinese Valhalla?
Well no, it had none of the spectacle. Bit of a weird one, huge sections of darkness and nothing much going on. The odd scene I couldn’t understand, though it was quite horror oriented. Other guests just spend the entire ride chatting about other things. Some screens on a lift hill with people fighting. Lots of time to get nervous for the drop at some point. It was manageable.
A hugely unshaded walk took us back away from all that, where I had another go on the B&M, spending about 15 minutes for a single train to be dispatched, during which I had to fight a man for the back row, as he couldn’t comprehend that the air gates he had been positioned in for a significant portion of his lifetime were intended to line him up with the empty seats he had been staring at for a significant portion of his lifetime.
Round the corner from there was this interactive martial arts thing in front of a big theater screen. Seats in the room were divided into four coloured teams and you had to either mash buttons or spam spinning the giant track ball in front of you to perform some animated kung fu. It was certainly different and I was pleased to at least take a victory from it.
And then this Flying Theatre that was closed. Would it have been good? Who knows.
I had just one more dark ride on my mind, which was in theory located within this other particularly well themed section of the park.
Something war related, huge and extravagent looking. Popular too, with over an hour of queue. I had expected things in this park to be a little more high budget than they had turned out to be so far, assuming the Brothers made money off of this film stuff. Would this one save the day?
Such disappointment (but not the biggest of the day). A highly elaborately themed queueline with holographic preshows led to the Indiana Jones dark ride vehicles but. It’s VR.
An empty warehouse, with VR headsets. On these vehicles.
Bad VR.
The sound didn’t work properly, the graphics were poor, the movements were weak and didn’t match very well. I had more fun whipping the screen off my face every so often and looking around the dark warehouse at how it all was done.
The cleverest part really was things like heat lamps or fans placed at certain track points to give you that extra ‘dimension’, but all in all a bit naff.
Unlike rival Warner Bros. they were deeply apologetic about the sound not working properly and offered to let us ride again immediately.
We declined.
Oh well, they supposedly had film sets and stuff to nose around too, let’s try that.
Rock Dog, everyone knows Rock Dog.
That one with the tanks from the bad dark ride.
The film with the barrels.
Young Detective Dee, Rise of the Sea Dragon. Looks better than anything about the boat ride.
That one in space.
Meh, best thing about the place was the wing coaster, and that’s not usually a massive accolade. Was fun trying though. Onwards.
The next driver took us to Suzhou itself, where we dumped the bags and found Suzhou cat.
I was getting mixed messages on the internet about the park here and whether it was open or not, eventually having it confirmed as open until suitably late for a mid afternoon arrival.
No time like the present then.
Suzhou Amusement Land
That’s one hell of an entrance, and one hell of a spite.
I had hoped that visiting on a summer weekend would give me the best chance of finding the major attractions open here but alas, no, China being China, less than half of their ride lineup was available. No Mack.
They had a sign up outside displaying the attractions that were open, rather than the ones that were closed, in fact. On a very pleasantly weathered Saturday, with operating hours from 9am to 9pm, with a special promotional event and festival going on, neither of their two major coasters were operating.
Well, whatever, it was cheap to get in and we’d come this far, let’s salvage the rest.
Feel the scale of my disappointment, again.
Then multiply it by 325, because I really, really wanted to ride this thing.
Whose idea was it to take vertical photos? Anyway, this isn’t some Chinese knock off stealing things from Europa Park, they have a big Mack Media 4D theatre here playing the admittedly very good Chaos in Wonderland film.
Though they do a very good job of trying to convince you otherwise. Who commissioned this?
These do look cool, but a better day out for guests would have included both this, and rollercoasters.
Oh, they had A coaster open.
Some trash spinner called #4 Twist Coaster with a horrible kink in it, this time Jinma attempting the Eos Rides model or something – they’ve done them all!
This contained an OCT-made dark ride drop tower thing called Summit of Mount Everest, the first time I’ve managed to catch one open. I love the concept, with a ridiculous floor to ceiling screen across the height of a drop ride, with what should be the ability to bounce up and down like a Tower of Terror. It just doesn’t have the guts to go for it, a very muted set of motions all round. Film was the usual big fantasy blokes beating up other big fantasy blokes in a pagoda type affair.
One more surprise up the park’s sleeve, I had Crazy Journey down as a flying theatre.
This ain’t no flying theatre.
Things in the queue get more biohazard as you go, until
Bonus robocoaster.
Entirely unique as far as I can tell, you’re flying around with a scientist bloke while getting attacked by plants, worms and eventually dragons. Again it had good moments of pause to build some tension, though some of the physical scenes were a little lacking. They made up for this with a couple of jump scares from giant animatronic worms that were pretty cool.
And that rounded off the park for now. Crushing, but had more to offer than stupid Sun Tzu at the very least.
The train took us down to Jinan, which was to be our base for the next few days.
The following morning involved another day trip train out to the east of the city to some obscure new station that had opened up since I was last researching this place. From there it was easy enough to acquire a Didi driver to the park. Looking back I’m not even sure it would have been possible when I was in the area (and the ride I wanted was closed anyway) before.
The place in question took about 30 years to build an S&S launch coaster, there’s a few of those, and reportedly it had opened up at some point during covid era. Let’s go check it out.
Day 4 – Sun Tzu Cultural Park
I had hoped that visiting on a summer weekend would give me the best chance of finding the major attractions open here but alas, no, China being China, less than half of their ride lineup was available. No S&S.
Well, whatever, it was cheap to get in and we’d come this far, let’s salvage the rest.
Being a Cultural Park rather than a theme park meant that they advertise a lot of educational and historical exhibits along the route, most of which were closed too. So instead it meant huge stretches of unsheltered pathways with absolutely nothing going on.
After too much walking we stumbled on this sorry looking #1 Mine Train Roller Coaster.
Well the flowers in the station were a nice touch, but the ride itself was totally cooked.
It was shaking itself to pieces so badly throughout the layout that it so very nearly stalled on several occasions. All momentum was being lost through the lack of maintenance. I think we can tell they don’t know how to look after a ride here, is that why they don’t run the big one?
From there, a supposed dark ride was all boarded up beyond recognition, but don’t worry, you can shoot arrows or guns at a stall nearby.
Pretty much every other building in this area was deserted or unused too.
So we backtracked to the observation pagoda thing on an arm that was running.
Views of a bad mine train,
not much
and a closed cred.
After much more walking through what on the surface appears to be pleasantly decorated desolation, an XD theater exists on the far side. Cheap to run I guess.
It was a Triotech job playing a stock film called Canyon Coaster. A quality product, though nothing to do with culture or old mate Sun Tzu.
And from there we moved into the ‘amusement section’, so nothing to do with culture or old mate Sun Tzu.
Water ride, closed.
Another quality attraction, closed.
A magnificent looking waste of steel, closed.
I don’t usually take photos of spites, but what else is one to do for entertainment in this situation?
The eerily deserted route to the ride entrance.
Feel the scale of my disappointment.
The best joy to be had, sadly, was some classic signage, so we’ll have to stoop to that.
Civilisation begins by opening your rollercoaster.
Couldn’t even manage to ‘operate’ Magical Joumey the mirror maze in this kids area.
Or questionable military bumper cars. Or VR.
And that was the park, what a place. Really drives the point home about how some of these parks are nothing without their star attractions, and when no one comes, they don’t open them, and when they don’t open them, no one comes, so it’s doomed to fail.
Booked another driver to put all that behind us. As he arrived he ditched the car and started walking towards us with a sly grin on his face, this doesn’t bode well.
He wanted us to cancel the Didi order and pay him directly, an arrangement I had become very accustomed to and even supported in Vietnam – better value for the driver, cut out the corporates.
The catch here was that he was being a dick about it, and wanted to charge more than Didi were going to. I wasn’t in the mood for such nonsense and agreed only to match it, so he’d still get his extra 20%. Nope, nothing doing. He played stubborn and just stood at the side of the road mouthing off about the fact that no one else would come out here, he didn’t want to go to the train station because ‘he wouldnt get any business there’, the price of fuel etc. Cancel the booking yourselves was all he would offer.
Catch here is the Didi system is a bit fickle about such things. They can see that the driver has arrived and this if you cancel at this point, you’re charged a small fee. Until you cancel, you’re also unable to book anything else. Some drivers have no doubt cottoned onto this and attempt to use it as leverage.
I wasn’t in the mood for such nonsense and so went onto live support, while he’s now staring at my phone. An operator was put on almost immediately, the situation was explained and they cancelled the booking for free, no further questions asked. I then ordered another driver, with him still grinning stupidly over my shoulder, and two minutes later, we were on our way.
Let us take a moment to appreciate Chinese trains, about the only things to operate properly in this country.
Let us not take a moment to appreciate this chicken breast in a bag, which was part of the free food for first class passengers.
Back in Jinan I had sights set on another park that could yet salvage the day.
Jinan Sunac Land
On top of the usual faff these days around buying a ticket for a theme park, at the ticket desk for a theme park, Sunac introduce an additional complication in that they can be free entry and pay per ride, so the staff always lead with that, even when you specifically lead with I want to buy an all-inclusive ticket. After far too long, we headed in, tickets in hand.
I hadn’t seen any obvious signs of anything running or not running, so it was a stressful walk through an admittedly pleasant entrance area into the heart of the park to eventually discover what was available. Things run so slowly that you barely see a train on track at the best of times to alleviate that cred anxiety. Oh, this wheel will be photobombing several shots here, but it’s not part of the park. It appeared to be on the far side of a football pitch.
Sure enough, the reason I was there, the Gravity woodie of course, hit the chain lift just as we passed by the far corner of its layout. Success.
The catchily named #2 Wooden Dragons Roller Coaster had a bit of a queue. It doesnt seem in their best interest to have such a low turnover when some guests are paying per ride, but when has any of this ever made sense. Some kid queue jumped at some point, to join his friends in front, and then when a single rider was called for, skipped past a couple train loads to sneak in his lap early. He then proceeded to queue jump again to get back to his friends. Not ideal.
The ride though, had a bit of a heavy soundtrack rocking out in the station, which was a fun touch. Eventually I was strapped in and ready to feel the Gs. Didn’t know much about this one. It’s the newest. It’s a little on the smaller side. It goes through a big skeleton.
It kicks ass.
A sharp right into the first drop gives all the usual terrors I associate with this hardware, an unrefined wrench down the hill which hits way harder than the size should be able to manage. The first hill is also performed over a right turn and gives a great combo of ejection and being pinned to the side of the train. From that moment until the brakes the thing is just relentless.
Perfectly paced, chock full of airtime and with a satisfying level of agression, the overbanked turns had a noticeable sustain of positives in them and there’s a few of those surprisingly steep bonus drops later in the layout chucked in there to boot. It rides with all of the magic of something like Wood Express, just amped up proportionally to the size. Very, very good and saved the day for sure.
They’ve got some othe stuff milling around, though I wasn’t sure where all of it was. Headed into an indoor section to stumble upon the inappropriately named #3 Jungle Trailblazer of the park. Is this them having a dig at their rivals? I hope so, but doubt it. Jinma family coaster, it happened.
They’ve also got one of these, but with a weight limit of 40kg it ain’t happening any time soon. I’m sure it won’t stop other people from claiming it though.
Back outside is this weird looking thing. The shaping is so uninspired in places and I couldn’t even tell what type of ride it was trying to be. One of those lift hill Motocoasters? The name #4 Roller Coaster gave away no clues either.
Turns out it’s a spinner, a train full of spinners, by Nanfang this time, not seen one of these before. Believe it or not, in their infinite wisdom, the Chinese have concocted yet another method by which to slow down throughput.
This coaster has a separate onload and offload platform, something no doubt observed on some of the more high capacity attractions around the world. The ride also only has one train, and can only ever have one train. Thus, the additional time taken for the train to be transferred safely from offload to onload platforms can be included in the total througput calculation, from a design that was originally intended to reduce said time. Isn’t it wonderful?
The ride though, smooooooooth. I have no other words for it. It does absolutely nothing else of note at all, with its strange layout of straight lines, flat curves and spinning cars that don’t really spin. But smooth.
#5 Treasure Minecar across the way didn’t quite have the same attributes, so maybe it’s pot luck. Custom layout for a change, but not a good one.
Lighting package though. Tick.
That was creds complete, and so time for another tasty lap on the woodie.
Leading into dark ride time. Well, show rides, they have a flying theatre in this big fancy building. The queue took forever, on one of those rare occasions where the Chinese themselves were actually complaining about how long they were having to wait, in a theme park. Their fault for being so obsessed with the things.
Was half tempted to sack it off, but persisted for the research purposes and then was eventually rewarded with an above average flying theatre experience. Still sightseeing and stuff, centred around the sights of the Silk Road, but all with a high level of quality.
They also had some form of simulator, couldn’t tell what, under the guise of this vague Fantasy Adventure entrance. Again it took far too long, like 8 people every 5-10 mins.
Was half tempted to sack it off, but persisted for the research purposes and then was eventually punished with a clone of the ones they have at Joypolises and such.
The Jinma ‘Wild Tour’ simulators, so they actually owned two of the three standard models, a jeep one and a boat one, but were of course only operating one of them.
Enough of that nonsense, the day was pressing on and I treated myself to a couple of night time laps on Wooden Dragons. I can’t recall the last time I had some proper night rides in China, if ever, so these felt pretty magical along with it being such an awesome attraction. Loved it.
On the whole they seem to have embraced being a city park here, with the long hours and flexible riding options, and as such it seemed pretty popular. A model more suited to the culture perhaps?
Unfortunately the trip was cut short here as we received the sad news of a close relative passing away and immediately flew back to Singapore for 5 days of funeral proceedings.
As such, a good chunk of the original itinerary here was sacked off. We eventually returned further down the route and picked up the last portion, so…
The following day commenced with a revisit to Happy Valley, one of the more notorious chains in the country. To their credit, they’ve really stepped their game up on the website and transparency of attraction availability – you can check days in advance whether things will be open and even the timings which are usually all over the place.
Something that hasn’t improved is the fact they charge you more money for a ‘peak day’, which just goes hand in hand with you getting a far worse experience because they’re stupidly busy and can’t run a ride to save their lives.
This is what we got anyway.
Day 3 – Happy Valley Beijing
Once again Passports were used as our tickets, while other locals kept trying to cut up the overly faffy transaction. Is this really necessary.
It was hideously busy, clearly Grey Hulk isn’t drawing the masses away yet. Even with arriving before the opening of the first ‘star attraction’, they had already decided to open the queue for Extreme Rusher ahead of schedule, immediately reporting it as an hours wait. Great.
Sensing how this was going to go down, we instead headed for the first new cred, the #1 Family Inverted Coaster, which was due to open next. It’s the perfect coaster type for China as it can only accomodate a single train anyway and it still took around 40 minutes of duress after the queue opened to even get on the thing.
It’s fine, does what it says on the tin, best B&M of the trip so far.
Would the other be any better?
The main draw for me to return was of course the #2 Himalayan Eagle feat. Music. The area of the park in which it lives is rather unrecognisable from before, they’ve done well with that, putting it in a ‘Shangri-La’ style land that a few other Happy Valleys also have.
This was also on a staggered opening and was due to open in a couple of minutes. Again they opened the queue early and all in this one took about half an hour on the single operating train. I opted for the magic Mako seat once more as it seems to be serving me rather well recently.
Soon it was chugging up the lift, on-board music soaring rather nicely, much more tasteful than the Transformers equivalent. It’s far from the biggest of these and it spends the first portion of the layout over other stuff rather than diving to the ground, so the first drop is fairly easy-going.
One of the quirks on this one is that most of the camelbacks came out as banked hills instead. While a welcomingly different sensation is produced out of these, they don’t quite carry the same punch as when the traditional equivalent is done just right, so it may not hit the spot for the B&M hyper enthusiasts.
The turnaround was pretty intense for one of these and it has some other pleasingly whippy and dynamic moments to it, something you definitely wouldn’t get on the stadium seating models.
Somewhere in the middle is the lake section with signature splashdown. They’ve ruined the spectator view a bit with a horrible plexi glass screen in the way, but onboard it looks pretty good. Doesn’t tug as much as I would have expected and with good reason, as the layout actually continues on a fair bit after this as well. It kept on going and going.
Thought it was pretty great overall, interesting use of the space and well paced. Smooth, thrilling, fun, everything you want from a B&M and above average in the world of hypers for me. Would have loved another go, but the queue was ruined from this point onwards.
I feel like this is becoming the signature shot of this park.
I feel like Happy World wasn’t here on my last visit, though it somehow manages to feel rather old. No idea why I would have skipped it.
As an OCT attempt at a Small World type attraction, it’s the only indoor boat ride in the country don’t you know(?).
Rather than having its own score, there’s a couple of Chinese nursery rhymes on loop and it goes on a long time. There’s tons of scenes.
Rather than the traditional approach of just visiting different countries around the world, it tries to weave in different events and festivals that are associated with the locations. Sometimes this comes out well, other times not so much.
S’alright.
Construction, get excited.
Within a big kiddie indoor section lies Flying Over the Aegean Sea, the Flying Theatre of the park, a must for all Chinese parks. Somehow the guests haven’t cottoned on to this one yet, usually they’re stupidly popular but tucked away at the back it had the shortest queue of the day, of one cycle, so still pretty long.
This sign is a waste, there was plenty of hubbub.
Film itself is a bit different, as it suggests. Rather than just sightseeing it was somewhat historical. Trojan horse, Colossus of Rhodes, a few battles. Fits in with the surrounding theming of the park outside, so that’s well thought out at least. S’alright.
With everything new that I wanted ticked off and not really wanting to queue for them again, I couldn’t leave without refreshing my memory on the beast that is Extreme Rusher.
Now down to just 50 mins on the door, which was pretty accurate actually – they’re good at predicting how slow they are, I got to make full use of the quite commonly seen seated queuelines on these types of attractions. At over 6 minutes a despatch, which was one of the best of the trip, you need it.
Eventually parked myself in the back, ready to feel the full force. These launches still get me a little nervous. I often forget how snappy they are and it’s been a good while now. It garners a great reaction every time from the spectators in the queue and I respect that.
Bam, before you know it you’re 200ft up in the air and pointing in the other direction. I love the shaping into the top hat, it’s very unassuming for 80Mph and you a get a good traditional straight first drop out the back of it, slightly marred by trim.
It dives underground out of it, making it even huger before kinda faffing around that big sideways turnaround thing. The primary sensation here is of an S&S coaster being slightly less refined than your other big names. Yes that still includes B&M. But it has a charm to it.
The second half brings back the Gs with some tighter turns, a late game airtime laden steep drop and that signature under-banked double s-bend hill thing, I don’t even know what to call it. Insane airtime and laterals together, like it was built wrong, but great, before powering into the brakes.
Yeah it’s still an Extreme Rush. Like a bad boy of the coaster scene and I love it. A deserved ex-top 25, now floating around somewhere above 50, probably.
And that was the park. 5 attractions in 5 hours I think, but two of them most countries would kill for, so a reasonably fair trade.
It’s one of the troubles with this China malarky, you’re supposedly much more likely to find everything open on a weekend, but at the (inflated) price of barely being able to do anything with it because it’s so busy. As Happy Valley have stepped their game up though, I’d check that website and avoid weekends at all costs, provided any weekday has what you want posted as open.
I had hoped to be in and out in about 2-3, with plans to visit a non-cred park that was once a prototype testing ground for OCT dark rides, on the opposite side of the city. Beijing being stupidly big as it is however, and even the roads were screwed so I couldn’t just Didi my way out of the problem, it was getting on for a 6 hour round trip, who knows if it would have been horribly busy too, and there was a train to catch that night. Sacked it off and took it easy.
