Ride Review – Celestial Gauntlet

Celestial Gauntlet is a Vekoma looping coaster situated at Oriental Heritage Changsha. This new generation of rides from Vekoma has been exciting enthusiasts for a few years now, showing off a new age in their manufacturing skills after being stuck in the rut of their much lamented legacy of Suspended Looping Coasters and Boomerangs.
While obviously a massive improvement by comparison, I’m yet to be truly convinced by their journey into the big leagues.

This particular layout has been titled the Hyper Space Warp, named after the original inspiration of Formuła at Energylandia, with the key difference here being the use of a conventional lift hill rather than an LSM launch. Guess what? There’s already another one of these at another Fantawild park, I’ll add it to the to do list.

Having now ridden both this one and it’s Polish Uncle, they are more dissimilar than I originally anticipated. Being a sucker for a lack of spoilers I hadn’t really studied them past the first inversion. While they do follow an identical layout for the most part, where Formuła hits the brakes, Celestial Gauntlet keeps the momentum going for several more hills at the end. Good.

The other significant enhancement you may have already noticed is the theming. The entrance plaza for this ride was stunning and being beckoned by a staff member in a fur cape to slip between the cracks of some magical looking rocks was a great beginning to the experience.

As is often the case in China I was greeted with an entirely empty train once in the station, with more staff members eager to actually run the ride and keep themselves entertained. Vekoma’s latest sit-down trains follow the modern trends of comfy seating with a lap bar that comes over from behind the head.
There’s an unfortunate addition to this system in the form of vests however, something I was always sceptical about. Freedom of movement is very important to me on a ride and previous experiences with a similar setup on certain B&M creations had shown me that certain coasters can be inhibited by restraints of this nature.

I’m not sure what the theme to Celestial Gauntlet actually is, but as you crest the lift hill there’s an unusual sound bite that plays from some speakers that involves a lot of people screaming. Are we fighting with the Gods or is it just a cue for what to do on the ride? Who knows.
The first drop has a certain punch to it, trying to kick you out of your seat briefly and then being marred by the restraint somewhat.

The following inversion is particularly glorious, giving a satisfyingly sustained moment of hanging riders upside down. I’ve developed a real appreciation for elements like this that actually try to create interesting sensations as opposed to the traditional loops and corkscrews of old, which were just for show really, something to grin and bear with.

This opening sequence is actually the strongest part of the layout and to keep the contrast of forces going, there’s some good positives into a tight banked turn before the most signficant moment of airtime in the layout. Again this hill is good, but could have been better if the human body was able to respond more naturally to it.
From this point onwards the ride started to feel a little safe and clinical rather than the out of control nature I was hoping for.

The train bounces between both twisted and banked airtime hills, a couple more inversions and some sharp turns with an impressive flow and pace. It seems well designed and even while on ride, visually, it looks like everything should really deliver. The results were varied though. There seemed to be a bit more style than substance and I found many of the forces just weren’t quite hard hitting enough for my liking. This remains my general impression for all the new generation Vekomas I have experienced. Don’t go expecting game changers just yet.

The end result is a very fun and rerideable attraction, particularly with the interaction in the last part, diving in and out of caves with some very modern and unorthodox transitions. I’d struggle to take it anywhere beyond that word however, good clean fun.
It’s not amazing and I didn’t quite think it fits the bill as a star attraction for a park of this magnitude. It would make a lovely complimentary coaster to something bigger and badder. Hmm… what else do Fantawild do…

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Ride Review – Jungle Trailblazer (Jinan)

One more Jungle Trailblazer, just one more, then I swear I’m done (for now). The star attraction of Oriental Heritage Jinan was copy pasted from the original in Ningbo – a ride which I had collapsed in despair at the foot of because apparently 15°C wasn’t warm enough to open it for me. The only JT to elude me to this day (grumble grumble). The important thing is that at least I’ve tried all the layouts.

My first experience with the ride was arriving at the station to see the train coming in and that a Chinese man had been sick all over his restraint. That’s a solid sign that this will be intense then. Once that mess was cleared up I sat at the opposite end of the lovely Timberliner trains (back row is king again) and smiled to myself. Amateurs.

The start of the ride is reminiscent of the earlier build Fjord Flying Dragon (also now a JT) with a powerful straight drop, speed hill and bigger hill leading into a turnaround.

Where this one begins to lose out is in the inversion that follows – I don’t really get the appeal of these other than a good visual/selling point. Corkscrews just aren’t very good in general (Helix holding the only exception that springs to mind) and rattling around one on an aggressive woodie ended up giving me a bit of a headache. Great, now I’m the amateur.

It’s a shame that moment took me out of it a bit because other parts of the ride are as incredible as these should be. 4 quick, successive out of the seat moments hit hard before an overbank, forming the clear highlight of the ride. There’s an outbound leg of larger hills that are still satisfying and it loses purpose and direction at the end with another drawn out turn into an anticlimax of a final hill.
After the morning headache had cleared and we had done the rest of the park I came back to find it riding a lot better, it had clearly ‘warmed up’ as they say and I did really enjoy it overall.

It might have one of the nicest vibes surrounding any of these, with the leafy lake (what the Wuhu one should have had, as Wuhu = leafy lake). The park was particularly gorgeous for a Fantawild and getting on the ride itself was probably the least faffy of any – no waiting areas or lazy staff, just a vanilla queueline.

This layout sits squarely in 4th for the optimistic, 2nd last for the pessimists. With competition that strong, that’s just how it had to be. Fantastic woodie as a standalone – you could do better though.
Here’s a handy guide of where you can try it yourself, or better.

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Ride Review – Jungle Trailblazer (Wuhu)

Oh no, not another Jungle Trailblazer. This one located at Oriental Heritage Wuhu was the final one in the collection for me (of unique layouts at least – damn Ningbo) and it was also a pain to make that happen (damn Wuhu).
The first time I arrived in the city it was chucking it down and everything was closed – no surprises there. This meant that on the return visit anxiety was king and I did it all wrong.

Well not so much wrong as less than ideal. There’s a habit for most guests in these parks to follow a specific order of attractions as per the ‘recommended route’ on the park map, moving in a clockwise/anti-clockwise direction, experiencing everything once, tick, move on. Like sheep, or me on a cred run.
In my desperation to not be let down again (I never trust the weather, or Fantawild, to not try and ruin my day at some point) I ended up following the sheep into the queue, making this the only Jungle Trailblazer I’ve ever actually queued for. How novel.

You don’t ever want to queue for one of these. A train that seats 24 can take upwards of an hour to serve 100 guests. The queueline areas are specifically designed like a waiting room, with benches stretching along the pathways. There’s never any hustle in proceedings, a train’s worth of people are batched in an area well outside the station and are not sent off on the ~2 minute walk to the station stairs until it has been cleared of the previous guests. I try to just zone it out these days and accept it as a part of the culture but when you’re so on edge about being able to actually ride these things, as the sky darkens above your head and everything moves at a snails pace, having tried so hard and come so far, it’s nothing short of agonising.
I ended up in that for nearing 90 minutes, which would have been a new record by far in China for me had it not been for Happy Valley Shanghai the previous day.

It was worth it though. Love this ride. Middle of the road as a Jungle Trailblazer but as a woodie in it’s own right, pure world class, as I’ve come to expect (demand) from my boys at Gravity Group these days. First drops are always bliss in the back, they’ve perfected the punch. It’s an unconventional start for one of these in that you hit a big drawn out hill first. This is good, but not quite as impactful as their signature.

Before there’s been much time to process that, you’re turning into a vicious double down into the inversion. I love the out of control aspect of this section, though the corkscrew itself on a woodie never really does much for me.

Twisty, bouncy, overbanky. Pure Gravity bliss comes next and reminds me exactly why I rate these things so highly. Sadly it then enters a high up turn that saps the pace somewhat and is the sole reason this one came 3rd, the competition is that tight. Once that part is out of the way, normal service resumes again. 1, 2, 3, 4! pops into the brakes. Fantastic. I think I even had a Chinese man turn and say that to me with a thumbs up on the brakes.
Yes mate.

Why was I ranting about queue times? Well we went off to finish the rest of the park and then of course I needed a lot more time with this bad boy. Every other lap was walk on from about midday onwards because everyone else in the place had one and doned it (how rude). From rammed to empty in a single sitting, it was literally just the worst timing, but I couldn’t have allowed myself to do it any other way.

This layout remains unique for now and I hope it stays that way – the world (I) needs as many new versions of these as physically possible.
Here’s a handy guide as to where you can track it down.

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Ride Review – Fjord Flying Dragon

Fjord Flying Dragon made its debut at Happy Valley Tianjin and 3 years later a second ride with the same layout (sadly) was constructed as one of the numerous and infamous Jungle Trailblazers, at the Fantawild Resort in Zhuzhou.
This is the ride that began my love affair with wooden coasters designed by the Gravity Group and the first of theirs I had ridden outside of baby Twister at Gröna Lund.

It was a memorable day not least for being the hottest I have ever experienced in China, peaking at around 40°C. Hot enough for the bus to break down on the way in. Hot enough for me to not want to stay in the sun for more than a few seconds. Hot enough for the ride to be on top form, in theory.

The ride of course is situated in the outdoor section of the park, in a Viking area with a nice vibe, tying in with the fjord in the name. It’s probably the coolest named woodie in the country. I remember sheltering in the station for significant periods of time and the front row of the train while parked was always bathed in intense sunlight, forcing me to only ever sit in the back while the ~10 minute loading procedures synonymous with Happy Valley took place. There was one minor incident in which the ride was e-stopped at the bottom of the lift for a short while (empty restraint not down? oops) and it felt like I was going to catch fire. Good thing it had no queue.

The back was the best place to be anyway. The first drop doesn’t look much on paper at 90ft, 60°, the world has done far crazier things. This didn’t matter at all as it was still one of the most pronounced and powerful straight drops I have ever encountered. The rolling stock on this ride predates the dawn of the signature Gravity Group Timberliners in China, instead using classic PTC trains. The bars on these are very minimal and exposing, I find there’s a lot of cushy freedom in the seating, both lateral and vertical. Being dragged over the top of this hill at full pelt never failed to produce noises of sheer terror from me and for someone who does this sort of thing a lot, it still felt downright dangerous. I like that.

By the time the very first little hill came along I had definitely realised that this is no ride to be toyed with. The track is negotiated with the perfect amount of violence for my personal tastes. The wood roars beneath you, the whole structure and everything on it rattles with enough noise and energy to keep things interesting from start to finish, even if the layout had decided not to do a whole lot.

But it does do a lot. Alot a lot. Big straight hills, intertwined twisty hills, speed hills, tiny little bouncy hills – the ones in between the supports of the ride are absolutely amazing. All glorious moments. The corners are wild and full of laterals and it took me until my very last lap to summon the courage to even put my hands up. I just love the variety and unpredictability this type of ride has to offer, particularly over certain other woodies like the Intamins.

It always amazes me how much potential energy this manufacturer can generate out of such comparatively little height. Fjord is 4000ft long, which is huge, but perhaps in this case it’s slightly too much. My only tiny criticism of the ride is that it feels like it runs out of steam a little towards the end, on the home stretch. It doesn’t quite maintain that consistently relentless edge from start to finish, something I found had been perfected a couple of days later in the trip. Still, to get so much out of so little here is an amazing feat of design.

I said that heat was only a theory because the conditions in which I rode the Jungle Trailblazer version of this ride couldn’t have been more different (other than the lack of guests again). There was a drizzle in the air and it couldn’t have been more than 5°C, so cold in fact that I was hugely surprised and relieved to find they even opened it for me at all.

Luckily the experience was largely the same, perhaps a bit less characterful, confirming that this is easily one of the best wooden coasters in the world for me.
The word Fantawild came up in this post so we can consider this one a slightly dirtier spin off from the guide, here’s a handy list of where you can find their version of this ride, even if it’s the wrong version in my head canon.

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Ride Review – Jungle Trailblazer (Xiamen)

I generally try to avoid spoilers as much as possible for rides that I haven’t experienced, even as far as simple layout features in order to ensure the greatest element of surprise on a first ride. However, the nature of these Jungle Trailblazers all sharing the same name (and sometimes a lot more than that) required me to at least look at the layout to determine whether it was unique or a copy of another in the country.

What I saw in this one at a glance really excited me. It shared the same starting sequence as my current favourite Gravity Group woodie (drop, tiny hill, sideways banked hill) and then appeared to stay nice and low to the ground for the entirety of the remaining layout. Airtime galore I said to myself, if there’s one to beat Zhengzhou, it’ll be this one. Dangerous thoughts.

Of course this excitement spurred me into taking the necessary steps to experience it for myself and it’s not exactly the most conveniently located park within China. Xiamen sits on the coast of China about a third of the way up from Hong Kong to Shanghai. This is a particularly sparse region of the country, at least for a theme park enthusiast – I can’t speak for the rest of what might be on offer, and there’s no particularly sensible way to make it en route to anywhere for a trip of this nature.

We daytripped it from Shenzhen in the end (the nearest city with other significant rides), ending up with at least a 4 hour journey, each way, which as I had already experienced every other Fantawild attraction on resort, I consider to be dedication of the highest order. For this reason it was also one of the most nerve wracking journeys I have ever made for the hobby. The weather was hit and miss and the chain have a habit of being unreliable with ride availability – what if the one thing I need out of all this is closed? Even more dangerous thoughts.

Whilst I’ll always happily maintain that it was worth the effort just to try out a unique layout and to aid me in eventually completing the full set of Jungle Trailblazers, the ride itself didn’t quite hit the mark. But why?

To this day I don’t really know, all I can say is a certain spark was missing. The shaping of the entrance to the first drop is subtly different to my original comparison and gave nowhere near the same result. The following two hills were just as I would have expected them to be and were easily the highlight of the ride.

From there the train just ran out of steam unnaturally quickly. It’s like all the hills were put up right, but in the wrong order. What looked on paper to be the usual amazing sequence of unexpected airtime bouncing riders all over the place just didn’t deliver with the same magnitude.
The overbanked corner came too late in the layout to have any effect, the taller hill over the station came too late in the layout to do anything and it was almost struggling to reach the brake run by the end. Nothing added up and it never gave the relentless performance it deserved.

Eventually, due to the mostly useless and unusually unfriendly staff it became a bit of a chore to keep trying and we left it alone far earlier than we had hoped. It remains to this day the weakest of the Jungle Trailblazers, but, a Gravity woodie is still a top notch creation and I don’t wish to belittle it too much. I’d still rate this ride as entertaining and significant in the grand scheme of things, the competition within its own field is just too amazingly fierce.

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