Hero of Malacca is both a dark ride and show found at Fantawild Asian Legend that follows the same format as Jinshan Temple Showdown. Just when I thought the original could never be matched, the chain decided to make a new park themed to the countries of South East Asia. They already had the technology in place but at last they had an excuse to develop a new set of storylines and it couldn’t be more welcome.
As representative of Malaysia within the park, the narrative revolves around two pirate factions based in the port of Malacca who are at odds with each other. Luckily they wear either red or blue so it’s easy to tell them apart.
As an added bonus, the queue contains a preshow in which we are introduced to one of the groups. I guess we’ll be teaming up with these lads for now. The queueline itself is stunningly well themed and it feels almost a shame to stumble through it at the pace driven by the staff.
While boarding and waiting for the massive boat vehicle to move off, some further preshow antics take place – a bit of a pirate chase scene and some general slapstick. Again the atmosphere in the main show building is something else, cool wind blowing through the air, you could easily have been transported to a sea port at night. I can’t emphasise enough how good these places look.
The ride portion of the attraction also contains a bit more spectacle and action than JTS including some storm simulation, a battle ship scene reminiscent of Disney’s own pirate franchise and getting attacked by a massive Kraken. It’s a gripping experience that takes you out to the rival group’s base in the middle of the ocean at which point guests must leave the boat and stand in the final show area.
As if to balance things out and make my decisions tougher, this final showdown doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor, but it’s still spectacular. The live actors firing guns and cannons don’t deliver the same impact as magical monks and snakes and the water projection is replaced by a big screen demonstrating the man-made atoll under siege.
We end in another stalemate as while all the fighting carries on, the Kraken returns for a bit of revenge and wipes out absolutely everyone. Nature 1 – Humans 0. The signature flood effect ensues, covering the entire show area and firing a dense wall of water jets up over the heads of the audience, to their delight.
I was beyond excited to learn that another of this ride type existed and it delivered on pretty much every level. The storyline didn’t quite hit me as much but the other improvements here and there more than made up for that fact. Easily one of the best attractions of this nature in the world.
This is usually the part where I say here’s a handy guide on where you can find the many different locations in which to check this one out. Spoiler – there’s only 1 as far as I know.
Ugh, that title. This is why I hate clones. Can we just, stop it here?
No, let’s press on. It is my third favourite ride in the world ride right now so it obviously needs a bit of love. If the topic ever arises people are often perplexed as to why I think this unassuming wooden coaster in China is better than so many well known greats. Put simply, I’d call it the most intense woodie I’ve done and it holds a really strong memory in my hobby, sitting in the back row for the first time. Let me take you back to that day.
I was recovering from a bad mood. The admissions staff to the resort were frustratingly useless and unhelpful and I had been lugging around luggage all day. We had just visited the Fantawild Adventure park next door, done some terrible rides and, for cred anxiety reasons skipped a few more terrible rides.
Not being able to stand the wait any longer (for let’s be honest, the one reason why I was out here) I powered straight to the back seat of Jungle Trailblazer where I sat for ages. There were some old Chinese people in the middle of the train who didn’t understand what the ride even was and had just wandered on (cos they’re silly folks like that). The staff were chatting with them and basically recommending not to ride it cos it was ‘that intense’.
They got off after much faff, leaving me completely alone on the ride, looking out at this perfectly framed and rather intimidating first drop from the station. A really timid staff girl comes up to me, bowing and blushing, and mimes that I specifically have to hold on to the restraint at all times. It’s a common Chinese thing to enforce weird rules like this but I smile back and oblige, somewhat bemused, thinking in my head ‘don’t be silly, I know what I’m doing.’ There isn’t really much to hold onto on a Timberliner train, it’s just sort of resting your hands on top of the hooped restraint, but I maintained the charade up until the drop thinking I can put them up now, show them how it’s done.
The drop came up on me much faster than expected and tried to eject me both upwards and sideways in equal measure – in a way that I hadn’t really experienced before (no Intamin wings to my name). There’s not many rides in the world that instinctively force me to hold on (to whatever I could), but this was one of those moments.
With nothing else to do, the staff are all watching me from the station at this point, smiling and waving at me as it flies past them at full speed over what is essentially a 5ft hill. My mind says I want to wave back, but my body says no, I will die. The whole ride is super aggressive and exactly how I like these to be.
From there it’s just the best paced and most vicious ride from the Gravity Group that I’ve done, and they are my favourite manufacturer. The anti-social high five elements as I call them are taken at ridiculous speed and feel rather dangerous, whipping you like you’re gonna hit your head off the wood to the side of the track. There’s the signature bouncing you around through the structure, completely out of control section that you can never anticipate and it hits the brakes hot. I feel like I want to say it should go on a little longer, but it would come at the cost of any subsequent moment being less intense than the rest of the ride, so I guess it must be perfect.
Of course they’ve built another one the same now, but hey, yellow trains! I was so nervous about the potential impact of me riding this version, even slightly tempted to skip past one of the best parks in the world because of it. Clones always leave doubt in my mind and expectations are set far too high. It has to immediately ride as well as the previous installation or both are ruined forever, you were wrong – that one wasn’t as good as you remember.
Mercifully the experience was soooo close, so close, that I could let sleeping dogs lie. It didn’t have the personal setup that I’ll always prefer the Zhengzhou version for, but I can still comfortably say that this hardware gives me a consistently better experience than anything below it in my top ten.
I was then left with the conundrum I spoke about in my trip report for this day. How do I rank the second one in a list? I think it’s a fascinating subject but so far it looks like I’m entirely alone in the experience and haven’t spoken to anyone with a similar outlook. I eventually settled on B. It’s exactly the same and option 2. Pick one that has the slightest circumstantial edge to represent and relegate the other one to just outside the numbered list – so even though I love it to pieces, you won’t see the Nanning version come up anywhere else in lists. Feels harsh, but it’s the cleaner option and it’s the industry’s fault. Bah.
Dino Rampage is found at Fantawild Adventure parks and is the first generation of the Spiderman at Universal Studios technology that the chain attempted. It paved the way for Wizard Academy and later Legend of Nüwa and it shows, this one wasn’t all there for me.
While the exterior looks fascinating, there isn’t really a story going on. Dinosaurs are angry and loose in some soulless slightly futuristic looking city and we witness the army? police? fighting them off. It’s just grim, to be honest. Plant eating dinosaurs eat people whole before getting their heads blown clean off by grenades. Pterosaurs get tangled up with helicopters and crash through skyscrapers. Hoards of military with their machine guns stand and take aim at anything and everything.
It actually sounds quite funny in a way, and it may well be, but I was in a mood with the park when I rode it and picking up on all the negatives (what, even more so than usual?). The technology was poor – some of the screens didn’t work properly, the movements weren’t synced and the 3D hurt my eyes. Maybe I just caught it on a bad day for both of us and this is, sadly, what people come to expect from ‘Chinese knock-offs.’
So there we go. That was fun. I’m definitely not saying don’t ride it, everything needs to be experienced at least once and you may well find it charming. What I will say is don’t let this one encroach on your time on a better ride in a better park, say, next door. Here’s a handy list of those next doors.
This attraction is alternatively named Whitesnake Maiden’s Fury and can be found at either Fantawild Dreamland or Oriental Heritage parks and where do I begin? It’s off the dark ride scale. The ride portion uses humungous boats that could easily seat 100 on its many rows of flat benches with no backs.
Because of the scale, there’s no rush to this attraction. You get to board and take in the surroundings at a leisurely pace, finally absorbing all that wonderful theming that these parks have to offer. There’s an atmosphere here that’s hard to describe, it just feels so wondrous and genuine. You’re in a Chinese water town and before you even begin the place is alive. Everywhere you look there’s little scenes on screens of ordinary people getting on with ordinary lives. It’s time for the adventure to begin.
The storyline concerns the Legend of the White Snake, one of China’s ‘four great folktales’ (all of which are represented at these parks in one form or another). The basic premise is an altercation between a jealous terrapin spirit/Buddhist monk named Fa Hai and a white snake spirit/lady called Bai Suzhen. There’s a lady green snake too. Complicated right? I can’t really do the thing justice so I’d recommend a bit of further reading if it interests you.
As you head off around the waters, the story follows, using a combination of real life actors appearing in and around the sets and major screens that draw your eye from all the hundreds of other little details going on. The monk tricks the lady into revealing the fact that she is a snake to her now husband who obviously is rather taken aback when he witnesses the transformation. Not satisfied with the revenge so far, the monk then captures him and imprisons him at the Jinshan Temple. Now there’s a setup.
Guests are encouraged to leave the boat as it comes to a stop and congregate in a standing area in front of this final scene. Why is the floor wet? The ensuing experience is a fantastic display of the magical showdown between the main characters. The actors come back and deliver their dialogue from either side of the set, while water rains from the sky with the battle projected onto it, interacting with the whole environment – geysers, fire, the lot. Things get intense, but end with a stalemate between the two. The temple is flooded and a tsunami of water comes out from the back of the set, tipping trees and gushing over the front wall. A shielded roof comes down just in time as huge water jets spray up directly in front of the audience’s faces. A proper ‘wow’ (or locally ‘waaaaa’) moment.
And that’s it, cliffhanger ending. Always leaves me standing in shock. Did I just witness the greatest dark ride ever? It’s definitely up there, debatable as to whether it’s cheating or not with the show aspect, but one of the things I love about the experience is that it’s so unassuming. Who knew what lay beneath one of these entrance facades that all start to look the same. The locals often don’t appreciate it, they just talk over the top. Were they trying to create something this world class or was to just another folk tale to tell? Personally I’m hoping for a sequel (Jinshan Temple Showdown 2: Vengeance of Xiaoqing/Greensnake Maiden’s Fury) to conclude the story. The narrative already exists, so why not. Regardless of whether that comes to fruition, everyone needs this attraction in their life. Here’s a handy list of where you can make that happen.
Space Warrior is a shooting dark ride found at Fantawild Adventure parks, with a ride system inspired by Disney’s Toy Story Mania attractions. Cars of 4 guests paired back to back travel between 3D screens, stopping in front of each for a quick game of manic shooting and scoring points before moving to the next screen, and the next, and the next…
One of the more unusual features of Fantawild parks is that they can often be so quiet, a high capacity attraction like this ends up shutting down for 50% of the time and only running on a time slot basis when there are enough guests to justify it. To deal with this, rides of this nature often have a pre-queue ‘waiting area’ with seating, colouring books and a play area to while away the time.
The ride heavily features Duludubi, the blue dragon mascot of the Adventure parks (he even has his own video games). While the on screen visuals are colourful, hectic and a lot of fun, the way each set just forms one of many walls in a clearly obvious warehouse with nothing else in between takes away a degree of immersion from the experience. It’s all about the shooting.
Having ridden Space Warrior before the aforementioned Disney version, I was surprised to learn that Toy Story Mania doesn’t attempt to do this a whole lot better either, so this one probably shouldn’t be penalised too much for that. What doesn’t help matters for me is the existence of Maus au Chocolat at Phantasialand, which takes this whole system to another level in terms of theming.
In it’s own right, this is an fun and entertaining attraction and a bit of a change of pace from any other ride in the park with the interactive features. Everyone loves a good shooting dark ride really. Here’s a handy list of where you can give it a go.
Found mainly in Fantawild Dreamland parks, Wizard Academy is the 2nd generation of the chain’s Spiderman technology dark ride and predecessor to Legend of Nüwa. The vehicles are the same, energetically twirling and weaving small groups of riders around 3D screens with a story to tell.
The story in this case is a little woolly. It appears that you’ve been invited to join this school of magic by an angry old wizard. As you traverse the layout he proceeds to throw all sorts of danger and misfortune at you, from giant creatures trying to smash you with clubs to fireballs that visibly incinerate other vehicles of fictional riders. The issue I raised in my Nüwa review in that they tend to use a lot of slow motion shots to exaggerate 3D effects and try to get a reaction out of people is even more prevalent in this version, almost to the point of comedy. Somehow as a total rookie you survive all this and are presented with a diploma for magic by the now slightly less angry wizard. So, are we friends now?
Wizard’s Academy is by no means a bad ride but I find the experience a little jarring, particularly having done clearly better versions of the technology (you can tell I’m not enthused by the lack of photos). I’m a million times more invested in Fantawild’s authentic mythology based attractions than, for want of a better description, ‘Harry Potter gone wrong’ narratives. Here’s a handy list of where you can try to make more sense of it.
Located only at Fantawild Dreamland parks, Qin Dynasty Adventure uses ride technology inspired by Disney’s Indiana Jones attractions, emulating all terrain vehicles that pitch and tilt riders in an exaggerated fashion as they follow a linear track.
The basis of the ride is that guests are invited to take a look around the excavation of the Terracotta Army, in the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. While down there, mystical forces come into play, everything begins to come to life and the adventure turns into a perilous mission of escape from everything trying to kill you.
The end result is a very highly themed and impressive ride. It’s so densely packed and chaotic that even after riding several versions I couldn’t actually say for sure whether they are identical copies of each other or not. The movements from the vehicles can be very vicious at times, banking the wrong way into corners as they accelerate and, when bad things are happening, often trying to bounce you out of your position.
On at least one edition we experienced a very liberal seatbelt policy from the ride staff, in that they specifically said ‘oh don’t bother wearing that’ and with no one else on board, while sliding in and out of my seat, the subsequent experience was exceedingly thrilling, if not downright dangerous.
The atmosphere they’ve created is what really sells Qin Dynasty Adventure for me though, there’s just something about the adventure and exploration of the tombs they capture so wonderfully in the theming. This attraction actually set me up for disappointment when visiting the actual heritage site outside Xi’an – I expected to be stumbling through dark and narrow tombs, not standing in an aircraft hangar.
Overall this is a proper quality dark ride that, like Devil’s Peak, seems to be the only attempt Fantawild have had at this specific technology so far. I really hope they try another because they can clearly do some fantastic things with it. Here’s a handy list of where to go instead of the real Terracotta Army.
Found at both Fantawild Dreamland and Oriental Heritage parks, this dark ride can also be known as The Flaming Mountains (the setting for the story). The ride technology is heavily inspired by the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey attraction at Universal Studios, using a 4-seater robot arm on a moving track that can bounce, flip and tip riders into any orientation that might be required throughout the ride screens and scenery.
The narrative plays out as a small portion of the famous novel, Journey to the West. Riders follow Sun Wukong a.k.a. Monkey through a perilous adventure of mountains and fire with what can only be described as a couple of boss fights, including with the Bull Demon King, along the way.
Despite the ride existing in at least 6 locations already, I have only managed to experience this one a couple of times and my memory is lacking on the finer details. The major difference between this attraction and the Harry Potter inspiration is found in the pacing. Where Universal Studios choose to have you flying through every scene without time for pause or effect, the Fantawild edition feels unnaturally sluggish in comparison, taking time over every detail.
This isn’t a bad thing by any means, it’s less of a blurry screen based mess than the original and a much more coherent story for it. The sensations can be odd in their own way, pitching right onto your back for extended and sometimes uncomfortable periods of time to look at things on the ceiling for example. I wouldn’t go as far as describing it as thrilling, but it certainly is a rather unique way to experience a dark ride.
On the whole it’s a very fun experience and a welcome addition to any of the parks. From what I’ve seen Devil’s Peak seems to be their only version of this technology for now, currently standing still where other ride types have grown and developed over time. I’d definitely be interested to see what else they can do with it. Here’s a handy list of all those 6 locations.
Also known as Rumble Under the Sea, this dark ride often features at either Fantawild Dreamland or Oriental Heritage parks. The system uses huge 30+ seater vehicles that appear to be boats but actually run on wheels. These traverse at a gentler pace, limited to forwards and backwards movement, allowing plenty of time to observe the 3D screen based storyline.
The story involves Ne Zha, a playful protection God who could quite easily be mistaken for a young girl and his accidental feud with the Dragon King of the East Sea. Riders join him on a quest to confront this dragon, crossing a few character obstacles along the way and righting some supposed wrongs in the process.
The queue contains a preshow that outlines the current flood issue to be overcome, before inviting guests to pass through a large tunnel around which water jets are rather coolly circulating. Sadly I have only seen this show and effect in action on one occasion among several locations.
Once aboard, it’s an entertaining sequence of events. Screens span entire walls, there are fire effects (always a plus) in places and there’s usually several things going on at once in the surroundings.
Ne Zha has a couple of weapons and gimmicks up his sleeve including a big ring, magic shoes and a stick. By the time you reach the boss fight, rotating in a circular room while a couple of dragons tear the place apart, he ends up with 3 heads. That’ll do it. As you pull back into the station there’s a cool little projection as the riders are thanked for their participation (we didn’t really do anything) and turns into a zen painting.
Dragon King’s Tale is a solid attraction that compliments any Fantawild lineup nicely. It’s not a gamechanger by any means but I don’t believe the world has anywhere enough of these simpler storytelling dark ride attractions and this example is certainly a refreshing attempt, particularly from a Western perspective. Here’s a handy list of where you can find Ne Zha in action.
Legend of Nüwa is one of the staple dark rides of Oriental Heritage parks and the inspiration for the ride system came from the Spiderman attraction(s) at Universal Studios. Essentially a 6 seater motion simulator that runs on a track, the experience is heavily emphasised by movement – big 3D screens situated around the layout drive the narrative and guests interact with the action by being shaken about, accelerated, tipped and spun according to what’s happening.
As with many of the attractions at these parks, the storyline is rooted in Chinese mythology. Nüwa is the mother goddess who created humanity and this specific tale relates to a story about fixing a hole in the sky. Riders are invited to join on this quest and are dragged around forcefully, mainly by use of some magic whip to witness (and not help with) many action sequences. There’s several characters both human and non-human out to stop this repair job happening and the visual landscape is in tatters, with a lot of strange gravity and floating rocks, so the ride sensations mainly revolve around fighting and falling.
The queueline is entirely located indoors and extensively themed, usually opening out into several rooms with screens and preshow details. I’ve never experienced any sort of wait time for this ride myself, so it’s quite easy to take for granted all of this extra effort that went into the look and feel of the attraction.
On board I’ve had various differing opinions of the ride. It has always been very good, at a minumum. At least one version suffered from timing issues where the screens got stuck or failed to sync up with the position of the vehicles and this was a bit of a downer, but it is a highly technical ride. The standout version for me was in Changsha, probably the most freshly built at the time of riding and all the vehicle movements seemed extra vicious. I’m not sure whether they’ve cranked it up on newer versions or if the older ones get weaker over time but I do know that I like it, a lot. It gave a real sense of the ride throwing you about and that you were at the complete mercy of the surrounding action, which fits very nicely into the narrative.
It can get a little repetetive in parts with all the punchy, smashy things going on. There’s onboard audio that contains an ever present pair of buffoons (emulating fellow guests/riders I assume) that are constantly babbling and exclaiming in surprise and panic at literally everything that goes on. Best to tune that bit out if you can. The other thing that bugs me slightly is the amount of times they do slow-mo shots that attempt to emphasise the 3D-ness coming at your goggled face. It’s certainly overdone for how effective this actually is, but the moments are sometimes accompanied by a pyro or two so I end up forgiving it for that.
Overall though, Legend of Nüwa is a high class attraction well worth plenty of attention. I’m happy to help her save the world any time. Here’s a handy list of where you can do your bit too.
