China 09/23 – Suzhou Amusement Land + Wuxi Sunac Land

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.

Day 12

China 09/23 – HB World + Suzhou Amusement Land

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 Gerst 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.

Day 11

China 09/23 – Sun Tzu Cultural Park + Jinan Sunac Land

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…

Day 10

China 09/23 – Happy Valley Beijing

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.

Day 4

China 09/23 – Universal Studios Beijing

I still haven’t got the Universal set, because Hollywood is greedy, but keeping up with this one was a must. It’s in the middle of nowhere, really far out from Beijing proper, never underestimate the sheer scale of some of these cities as I often do, it’s ridiculous. We were staying in the same ‘corner’ and it was still a good hour’s drive past endless tower blocks that beg the question how are there that many people here and where do they all go?

Being in the middle of nowhere gives them a ton of room of course, it’s a pretty hefty resort that has quite a Universal Orlando vibe in terms of setup – entering up an escalator into a big circular security hub, before heading down a travelator into CityWalk.

After CityWalk is another massive walk through open space and no shade, past the classic globe of course and it’s a bit of a slog, I guess with room for expansion, or multiple gates even, in mind.

The entrance itself is a bit different, with the huge building parked over the top of it. Off to the side, just a single ticket desk was open as China really don’t seem to cater to walk-ups much any more. Almost everywhere you go, the person whose literal job it is to sell you a ticket always gets visibly annoyed that they have to lift a finger and leads with the question ‘why didn’t you use WeChat?’, gesturing at a QR code. Like the trains, everything here is ID based for some reason, we had to hand over our passports to be able to enter a theme park and watching them handle an international credit card like an ancient artifact is always a laugh/the most painful thing ever, depending on the mood.

Day 2 – Universal Studios Beijing

Once inside we marched up the street and took a look at their version of the central lake view. It’s missing a Veloci-woci or two, but otherwise rather presentable.

Headed straight into Dino land first, which unfortunately seems to be where everyone gravitates towards early on and ended up in a posted 40 minute queue for Jurassic World Adventure, my primary pull for the visit.

The queue begins in this big atrium, with alternating vertical screens and windows stretching up to the ceiling, it’s all quite the visual spectacle. Video packages vary quite a bit, over longer periods, and there are a number of posters and other details on the lower walls to help pass the time.

In this regard it’s better than the 2 minute loop of a Jurassic World rollercoaster. The queue itself moved the fastest I’ve likely ever seen in China, it’s so rare that you’re constantly on the go – a real people eater combined with some modicum of efficiency for a change.

Soon we were in this lab section with various stuff behind the glass. The science guy from the film says a few things on the subject as you pass by and into another circular room with a model of the high-tech, all-terrain vehicle as a centrepiece, below more screens showing off what type of ‘expedition’ we’re heading off on as tourists of the facility.

In the final room are some safety procedures, a handful of holiday posters and of course the actual vehicles prowling towards you in the station. They look pretty good on the whole, though the omni-wheel thing isn’t quite so sold on the real version.

It’s time to head into Jurassic Park of course. Some digital posters adorn a curved entrance tunnel before a vast screen with a nice ‘you’ve arrived in the land of the dinosaurs’ landscape. Almost immediately things go wrong as you round a corner into some jungle, sirens go off and a warning announcement is played. Some physical signage and fencing is lit and has been visibly mangled by some form of a creature, I wonder what.

After a hesitant pause, the pace is picked up and you head past this and immediately encounter Indominous Rex with his big teeth. You stop in front of him, he roars a bit (looking rather impressive I might add), but the most interesting part for me here is the interaction between animatronic and vehicle. He swings his head round to headbutt the car and the motion base jerks and responds in a convincing fashion. It seems obvious, but that sets this ride apart from all the other rivals for now, that usually race past the physical stuff and only react to things on-screenery.

After a big final roar and getting spit on, we race away into the darkness. One minor downside to this attraction being a lot more physical is that there are just a lot of extended moments of very dark sections where the vehicle is bouncing about and seemingly not quite knowing what to do with itself. This should be a good tension builder but it played out a little awkwardly to me, particularly on rerides. A herbivorous dinosaur is encountered next, swinging his big club tail about and delivering another moment of that same vehicle interaction as we take a blow and reel off into the darkness once more.

The first outright wow moment comes when they’ve got you circling this central pillar, backwards, as the fully fledged Mr. big teeth is actively ‘chasing’ you down for several awe-inspiring seconds. It’s extremely convincing and pretty damn spectacular, if you crane your neck back as you leave the scene you might catch a quick glimpse of how it’s done, but there’s really no need to know. It works.

You escape from that somehow and whirl past a skidding jeep before meeting up with an old mate velociraptor coming out of a truck. A screen past that shows us that Chris Pratt is on the case, jumping on his motorbike and beckoning us to follow to safety.

Pace promptly picked up again, the second ‘wow’ moment comes as you round a corner into civilisation and are met with not one, but two huge Mr. scary dinos. Old mate T-rex is on our side, coming out of a classic looking JP archway and facing off against Mr. big teeth, but you get caught up in the middle of them and have an incredibly close encounter with some mightly spectacular looking animatronics.

You escape from this and head inside some buildings with popcorn, I’m guessing this is like the ‘resort’ part of the tourism, where you eventually bear witness to the culmination of the showdown on the last big screen, set by a wrecked cafe with a bunch of broken chairs all stacked up in front of you. Old mate Rex headbutts Mr. scary dino and as you depart the scene, a big physical head flops down dead beside you. You win, cue theme.

Well God damn, that was all pretty special. As always it helped that I knew nothing about the attraction heading into it and all of those wow moments were genuinely enhanced by shock and surprise and ‘they’re really doing these things with dark rides now?’ I absolutely loved the thing and though it doesn’t have the most perfect of flows, some of the tricks it has up its sleeve are an absolute game changer that, like Mission Ferrari, I can’t wait to see these be put to good use in other ways in the future.


They have rollercoasters here too, you know? Well, kinda. The Universally panned as a complete waste of steel without ever riding it #1 Jurassic Flyers lives across the way. The queueline is pretty neat again, a bit more flat and simplistic, but full of tons of tiny little details. It’s various rooms of a research lab, with incubators and eggs and the like, but also the canteen, people’s desks with notes scrawled all over them. Timetables, whiteboards with childish drawings, leaflets for events, it all feels very real and lived in, which is nice to see.

Yes, yes, on board it’s a shame that a ride in Jurassic Park land called Jurassic Flyers doesn’t fly you around a bunch of dinosaurs. There is one, if you really look hard for it, so that’s a bonus. What it did allow for is more of an opportunity to experience the forces on one of these Mack Inverted Powered things. And it’s not bad. The whole controlled spinning aspect gives it an extra dimension and the ride system here noticeably plays around a lot more with bursts of acceleration through corners to give you a bit of a whip, while having an entertaining on-board soundtrack and above average visuals of rocks and waterfalls as standard anyway. It’s fine, still a crowd pleaser. And a cred.

Something I’d pan as a complete waste of steel in fact is the Hulk clone around the corner. They’ve set this one up like Rip Rockit with the confusing extra pre-queue to get to some lockers before actually joining a queue that could have been accessed a lot easier, should you not need them. Shortly after this is the full metal-detector setup and frisk down, just to get you in the movie mood. In fact, the whole of this kerfuffle was making the actual ride queue a walk-on. The capacity of a B&M far outweighs the ability of the Chinese to understand their own rules and thus I got straight into the train, already sunglasses on, not caring.

Oh it’s bad.
As an off-ride visual piece, that launch on #2 Decepticoaster sure does look spectacular. Inside it looks cheap and nasty with a few sunbleached screens rotating a few cogs in the mouth of that robot bloke. As ever, the pop up into the first inversion is the absolute highlight of the entire experience, the rest is an endurance. It was riding very poorly, much like the 25-year-old piece of engineering that it was.

I amused myself as I zoned it all out and had some time to think that this moment, right now, is exactly what I imagine most people think my hobby and my enjoyment of rollercoasters is like. Rattling around boring corners and pointless inversions, while some obnixous guitar solo plays on the on-board speakers, devil horns and tongue out, adrenaline junkie, yeahhhhhh!

No.

Across the way is the much better Transformers dark ride.

No thanks.

I got a little excited in the early stages of the queue because they’ve ported out the storyline somewhat into making us the ‘Beijing division’ of N.E.S.T. This is sci-fi-explained away by a magic bridge however that takes us from Beijing to ‘murica where we can join Evac on his quest to protect the allspark. So, same ride then.

That’s fine, it’s good, my preferred of the two Universal 4Ds because it’s more violent and feels less dated. All the wording was in Mandarin of course, though I was able to fill in most of the gaps myself. I wonder how well the cheesy one-liners like ‘just dropping in’ translate.

I also wondered how pun-named eateries like this translate and, after investigation, they don’t.

I got more than a little excited as we headed into the next area. I was completely blind on Panda land, to the point of not even knowing what the attractions were.

It’s got a huge, entirely enclosed setting with a lovely vibe much like the Motiongate equivalent, again there’s something magical about these indoor theme parks when they get the mood just right.

The star attraction is a big boat dark ride, Journey of the Dragon Warrior with a ridiculously long but partially very nicely decorated queueline and station.

The walk just kept on going until finding that this was also walk-on and seemingly underappreciated in the park lineup.

On the whole it’s pretty good. Never seen the films, but the ride paints them as less obnoxious than I imagine anything containing both Jack Black and that Kung Fu Fighting song. Some introductory animatronics, a trip through a town, some building of jeopardy, probably too many screens in the middle third for people’s liking, but how else are you going to portray extended sequences of magical and mystical kung fu fight scenes between crocodiles and tigers?

My biggest gripe seems to be becoming a common one on these water rides in that both the lift hill, pre-drop and drop section are vastly under decorated compared to the rest of the ride. The drop maybe I get, if you’re moving fast through it and might not see it all, but you’re still going to see something and it’s meant to be a climactic moment of the ride experience so at least make it look good. Take a leaf out of Valhalla 1.0’s book. Lifts and pre-drops I don’t get at all, if anything they’re slower than usual and that gives you forever to stare at a painfully obvious black wall with some cheap-looking hand prints and question marks on it.

It earned multiple goes anyway for being thoroughly enjoyable and a walk-on. Should have a POV for you at some point.

Hung around in the pleasantness of the area for a while, appreciating some scenery and dodging some character meet and greets. Suddenly things got unpleasant as a huge mass of a crowd came pouring in from the far end. I assume WaterWorld has just ended.

We headed against the flow and past the indeed just finished WaterWorld arena, didn’t care enough to give that one another go having seen it a few times with a soundtrack I can follow.

Beyond that was the familiar stylings of Potter land, though I was intrigued to see the lack of effort they put into disguising the show building on this one. Hogwarts castle with a big blue box sticking out the side of it doesn’t quite seal the deal on the immersion front.

I had imagined #3 Flight of the Hippogriff would be hell on earth to queue for at this point, but only took 10 mins on two trains. Impressive.

I had imagined the lockers for Forbidden Journey would be hell on earth to deal with at this point, and they were, as they always are. Besides that I always forget how fantastic the actual queue is for this thing, with several legit scenes from the actual story that you just sort of get shunted past without any fanfare. Dawn French dubbed in Chinese was particularly striking.

Thankfully they didn’t go 4D on this version and I find myself appreciating it more with each re-ride. I’ve no idea why it felt so fast and frantic the first time, because these things are at their best when they ponder over moments, build a little suspense, keep the atmospherics well peaked. Some of the setpieces look downright fantastic and it was all ship-shape compared to a few bits that were falling apart most recently in the Florida edition.

It’s still the storyline that is most jarring to me, they had a million ideas and key points from the films that needed cramming into such a short space of time, most jarringly that a Quidditch match is taking place concurrently with the dragon event from the Triwizard Tournament, both feat. Harry. It plays like a compilation, a highlight reel, and sadly I know too much to see past that.

Something I know less about is Minions, thankfully. Their land was last up on the clockwise circuit. The heat was getting a little much at this point (a holiday that was hot? never…) and I was overly pleased to learn that the final cred of the park is located indoors.

#4 Loop dee Doop dee was far less annoying as an attraction than you would otherwise imagine. Another 10 minute wait for a functional family coaster. Job done.

Minion Mayhem itself was indicating an unsavoury queue time that I couldn’t be bothered with to, once again, re-experience something quite average in a different tongue.

Moving on from minions and back into the central filmy looking bit, I had forgotten they have Lights, Camera, Action! here. I love the Singapore edition of this special effects show and, with an empty queue, of course had to check it out.

Once again I got more than a little excited that the pre-show was entirely different and vastly, vastly superior. Instead of ‘Hi, I’m Steven Spielberg, roll clips of special effects in Universal films’, you get a much more lovingly constructed sequence of both Spielberg and fellow director Zhang Yimou wandering around a specially constructed sound stage, weaving into, interacting with, and out of bespoke scenes that show off all sorts of clever tricks. They lead the dialogue back and forth in both English and Chinese, with subtitles and it’s just really well done.

And then the exact same special effect scene happens for the actual show. Except it doesn’t, it was weaker, weird things happened like a girder visibly slowing down before it finally hit the water and anything that would have otherwise have encroached on the audience comfort was noticeably toned down. Visually still a masterpiece, but they’re too weak and don’t want their ass kicked too much sadly.

One more thing I wanted to try was their How To Train Your Dragon stage show, set in a decent looking Chinese Theatre style building. There was time to kill until then, so spent ages lapping Jurassic World Adventure and filming it for the database as it was the clear standout of the park and had managed to shake it’s big early queue down to a range from walk-on to 10 mins.

Amongst all the fun, the time soon came to be seated at the back of the theatre and be transported to the land of Berk for the show ‘Untrainable‘. Now this is a franchise I can get excited about.

God damn they’ve got good with these animatronics, as if being chased by dinosaurs wasn’t enough for one day, this was absolutely stunning.

It’s a simple plot, easy to follow without English, and primarily driven by a few musical numbers – they had a lead male and female vocalist up in the balconies to the sides and an ensemble cast doing the dancing, acting etc. ‘Welcome to Berk, we work together with our dragons, HOOGH.’

A female equivalent of Cloudjumper comes to town and is the namesake ‘untrainable’ dragon, as they have trouble calming her down, some fires are set and they have to lock her up for a bit.

Our heroes Hiccup and Toothless appear – they’ve got this actually flying and really detailed animatronic for him to fly on and it’s all magical and wonderful. But he can’t tame the dragon either!

Sadness, despair, I thought I could train them all. Astrid (who is more of the lead role in the whole thing) consoles him and reminds him of a time they tamed a big scary water dragon. A really welldone flash back to this takes place, with a stunt based fight scene of other vikings trying and failing to get a grip of the situation. Hiccup saves the day here and through memory of this is able to save the day again in the present.

Turns out it was just a mother looking for its egg. Aww.

Dragons, flying, happy thoughts. If you’re a fan of the films then more power to you. This was just lovely.

And that’s the park, couldn’t top the last two things with anything really. Obviously there’s a huge hole in the lineup for me in that they’re begging for an ass-kicking coaster (or two) to keep up that staying power. It’s currently by far the weakest of any Universal park in that regard. I’d rather have the wrong Mummy, or even Rip Rockit, than their current shambles of a headline coaster. Veloci, Hagrid, Flying Dino, Dream, Battlestar and the right Mummy also exist, and they’ve got some really tough competition in terms of creds just a few miles away from here. Could have even revived Duelling Dragons here, the Chinese obviously love that concept. Unique attractions are an option too, you know.

The dark ride is up there with their best though, so worth it for that alone.

We headed back into the city for some food we fancied that just so happened to be walking distance from spitey old Sun Park. It was likely too late in the day anyway, but bonus creds?

No, nothing doing, this particular entrance was completely blocked by construction site for what appears to be a rebrand and refresh of the park itself (Pop Land now?), or perhaps a spin-off, and I couldn’t be arsed to walk around another way to get a better measure of what was going on. It’s not like there’s a database I can support on these matters.

The food spited too, nothing works any more, but here’s a ‘Chinese knock-off’ rollercoaster restaurant for you.

Day 3

China 08/23 – Hot Go Jungle World

A few days later an overnight flight with no sleep (there were a lot of these) had us scooting over to Shenyang. I’d used this Northern city as a starting point before, with one primary purpose in mind, and it hadn’t gone well at all. But that’s just the China way.

Things got frustrating immediately upon landing. While the requirements for covid testing before flying had literally just been revoked, there’s still a health declaration that has to be filled in prior to travel into (and out of) China. The airline had sent this to me the day before, with the option to click a link or use WeChat to scan a QR code to click a link, to fill it in. Filling the form in gives you your own QR code to be presented at the airport upon arrival. Yet it turns out the non-WeChat one simply doesn’t work. We were gruffly met with the response that the code was no good and shunted to one side where there was a huge kerfuffle of people who hadn’t even bothered to do their forms up until this point.

A lone woman was at a desk providing ‘assistance’ with this and, after a short queue to question her about why our code was no good, casual racism kicked in and she couldn’t be bothered to deal with us, shunting us even further to the side and saying wait until she’d dealth with everyone else Chinese first. Everyone else Chinese just kept on coming, from multiple planes, and becuase they’re eternally useless, so I just took a guess at the WeChat thing being the issue, used that link, the form was ‘ever so slightly’ different, filled it all in again, got some new codes and got through. Thanks for nothing I guess.

More classic rubbish continued at the immigration desks where a batch woman checked our arrival cards and kept insisting that we needed a local contact in China, even though it was literally written as optional on the form and it had the address and phone number of our hotel instead. Three further immigration officers had to have a lengthy discussion about this ramifications of this procedure themselves once at the desk, I’m guessing none of them had this job back when tourism was actually a thing out here.

After that, it took an hour to get our pre-paid sim working properly on the 4G network, and on the various apps needed, without a local number, as literally nothing technological works properly any more. Old mate Didi was fired up, and a car booked straight to the first park. No more time for faff.

Day 1 – Hot Go Jungle World

April, 2018. My first time in Shenyang brought the discovery that some parks in China are seasonal. Until that point everywhere I had visited had operated (to a limited capacity of course) all year round. Thus, we were driven to this place only to find it closed, and the best I got was seeing the Gravity woodie out the window, before being driven to another park where literally every ride was closed because of ‘wind’. That place has since gone. This one is still clinging on.

The driver was an idiot and kept doing laps of the mostly empty car park, ‘worrying’ about a 5 minute drop off rule that an attendant had explained to him on the way in. He wanted to drop us off at the arse end of the tarmac for some reason, as if he was being covert, with the man literally watching him, bemused, a good half mile from the literal entrance he had just driven past, but we convinced him to take us to the front steps.

Luggage in tow, it was to the ticket desk.
Is the woodie open?
Yes, but rain is forecast. Then it will close.
Can we store our luggage?
Yes, free at that building just round the corner.
Two tickets please.

And breathe.

Or not, the threat of rain in the sky look genuine and this park is stupidly massively spread out, so it was a nervous 10 minute power walk over to the very far left end where the singular reason I was here was lying in wait. So many of these trips hinge on tiny moments like this that make or break the ridiculous effort involved and this was a brutal reminder of that fact.

#1 Time Travel was open. As I skipped down the queue, the much more heart-warming reminder of when it all works out just so hit just as hard. This is why we do it.

A handful of other guests were milling around in the station as I received the usual incredulous look from the ride staff. The hell is this guy doing here? I parked myself in the back row and waited for them to bother to run the thing. All the usual quirks came flooding back, the way it takes other people 10 minutes to sit down because they can’t comprehend loose item policies, or what they’re about to experience, or the implications of what row they sit in (front and back seem ‘scariest’) so they’re not even sure they want to do it, at the expense of other people’s time. I was specifically instructed to ‘hold on’, sometimes this is endearing, other times obnoxious. Let’s see.

The train chucks a right and heads up the lift before a straight, but steep and reasonably kick ass first drop that dives under a bridge. At the base of this I was immediately woken up to the fact that this thing has not been looked after. It’s riding rough as hell, but in a manner that I’d argue enhanced the experience. In the moment it felt like it was absolutely wrecking me, and by every right should have been in my sleep deprived state, but no noticeable harm came of it afterward, so I guess it was just right.

Anyway, the layout is very terrain based and winds its way through the jungle, with several more surprisingly steep drops chucked in throughout the layout. Several legitimate, cling to the restraint with terror big drops happen while dodging trees, so the instruction was justified. It brutally rattles around some corners at high speed off the side of a hill, reminding me a bit of Jungle Dragon (now amusingly known as Jerome’s Wooden Dragon and themed to a cartoon plane, as a 150ft intense woodie). Eventually it pops back under the bridge directly alongside the lift structure and does a Gravity favourite of several poppy hills on the bounce, some really good stuff. Back station-side it does a few more dives down into a valley before lurching up high into a brake run.

The pacing was a little off in places, but it delivered a bunch of fantastic moments amongst the insane rattle and roar of a woodie crying out for some maintenance in the jungle heat. I really liked it, far from my favourite amongst the Chinese collection, but I prefer it to any of the stateside ones that spring to mind. Hades without the the hideous lack of doing anything for at least a third of the ride (and deafening) basically.

Gave it another go to be sure (and safe, for weather reasons) and encountered a brand new procedure to me. There’s been discussions on here before about upper age limits to ride rollercoasters, and I’ve seen 60, 65 thrown out around a lot of Asia, but always questioned whether they’d actually verify or act on it.
Well sure enough, for my second lap I was asked to verify my age. Wasn’t sure whether or not to be worried, being half that, were they really implying I look that old (I’m generally guessed under) or do they not have a frame of reference? This will come up, once more, in the direst of circumstances. Anticipate.

With a hideous walk on the card back to any other attraction of interest, jumped on the chairlift things they have running parallel to the path and out over the trees on this side of the park. The views are pretty good and it’s one of those scary ski lift type ones that would be very easy to fall out of, should you want to, so was decent fun.

From here you can also see the weird patches of not amusement park that make the place so much bigger than it needs to be.

Upon touch down, there was a second one that headed out in the other direction, over some dinosaurs, towards a hideous looking SLC that I didn’t want to ride.

As such, put that off too for a minute and walked over to the mine train from there.

It was gone, train tarped up in the station. First spite! Will it be the la..ha ha no, where are we again?

At the literal opposite far end of the whole establishment from the woodie, lie two Wiegand creations. Jumped on the Mystical Hex, #2 Jungle Walk, which was open, and very surprisingly free and easy about loose items, bags, you name it. What did Wiegand tell them?

It was pretty good, backwards especially, got a bit fruity in parts when I couldn’t see what was coming and lurched downwards, swinging wildly a few times as it followed the hillside. Is the Alpine open too? I asked aloud, at the exact moment we happened to spot the track of it running alongside ourselves, deeply overgrown in jungle. I think that’s a no.

Are the two B&Ms in the other park open? I nearly got shouted at by a security guard for daring to look at them through a fence here. I think that’s a no.

4D Cinema was next door, but timeslots were awkward and there was still a cred to be had, can’t be arsed with that stuff out here when time is at a premium.

The weather suddenly got real dangerous looking so I literally sprinted towards the SLC (why?). Walked into the station with a handful of others, sat down, restraint down. Faff, more faff, slow attendant, slow attendant, a clap of thunder. Suddenly she wasn’t slow any more, running back to the op box. Ooh, a cheeky sense of urgency? Am I going to get this? Of course not. Restraints released. Asked to leave.

Sure enough, 2 minutes later the heavens opened and absolutely drowned the place. It was a double edged sword, as I really didn’t want to ride the thing, but of course wanted the cred. There’s also the consideration that, had this been somewhere that operated things efficiently, I might have bagged that. But also, had this been somewhere that had efficient weather prediction, I might not have even got that far. On top of that, I may have got it, and the Wiegand, had I done them in the other order. Or had the driver not been an idiot. Or had the 4G worked. Hinging on those tiniest of moments.

Oh well, rain, that’s game over for the day. We headed straight back to the exit with a whopping 2 out of 7 desired attractions experienced. Only one of them mattered though! Never mind, there’s a completely indoor Hot Go park just around the corner. We enquired about it with the staff upon leaving, only to be told it had only operated for a couple of days this whole year, it was gone.

Well there’s another 3 spites straight off the bat. The joke for this trip was that if literally everything went perfectly, I’d hit 1600 by the end of it. I knew that was never going to happen, but being 6 down on the first day is pretty special. Good work, China.

Picked up the bags, bagged another Didi over to the railway station and were soon Beijing bound for the evening.

And breathe.

What’s new with the trains in China? Well everything is ID based now, they don’t bother to use paper tickets any more and instead, as a foreigner, your passport is your ticket. This both works for and against you, you can’t use the standard machines to either let you into the station to begin with, or at the final gates before the platform and train, because they only process ID cards. The only way in is with human, manual verification, putting you in a separate queue that often times does let you skip past all the locals, but is also a hideously slow procedure because none of the humans know what to do with a passport. Many locals also try and beat the system by pretending they’ve got issues and sliding into your much shorter queue as well, so that’s a pain. If they ever had 10-20 tourists at once, they’d probably miss the train. Luckily they don’t.

Security wise, they were running a very tight ship in all locations. There was a time when I’d be factoring in an extra half hour just to get into these stations, with the long queues for bag checks and pat downs, but those waits seem to be a thing of the past. Getting something right at least.

Day 2