Time to see what else we can mop up around Nanjing then. Phoned Suzhou Giant Wheel park due to the imminent threat of Stingray retiring form service. I had already missed it once. Ride’s still closed. Phoned the mall park with the motocoaster. I had already missed it once. Still a building site, not answering the phone.
Oh well, had my eye on this place for a while. Day 7 – Gingko Lake Park
First impressions were mixed. Pretty much the most expensive park in China (other than Disney). Seemed like a lot for what they had on offer.
The amusement park isn’t a massive part of it though, once inside it’s like a big glamorous version of the city parks, so a good place for a stroll.
That was nice.
Onto the main event then. I’ve got a bit of a thing for Jet Coasters, so seeing that there was one relocated from Japan to China with no RCDB pictures definitely piqued my interest.
#1 Bullet Train
Being the weekend, it was managing to hold a bit of a queue, around 30 minutes. I can’t quite believe it, but they run it with 2 trains!
Not well admittedly. It has 2 lifts, the second train isn’t sent until the first train is well clear of lift 2, then with all the regular loading and unloading faff it ends up sitting on the brake run for 3-5 minutes. Still, a positive effort.
Technically 3 lifts. It has a bit of an unconventional transfer track and storage section.
The ride was glorious, as all Jet Coasters are. 1 accidental air time moment in the first half. 1 accidental dodgy moment at the end where it looks like they’ve retracked it badly for the transfer track.
I like a good ride stat sign. The reference to curve radius of a ride was new to me.
2 more creds to hit then. The amazingly named SLC: Flying and Floating Over the Clouds and Water, and a baby Jet Coaster cutely named: Cho Cho Train.
But then it rained, everything closed and I was back to being disappointed.
After getting as far as the entrance and not being able to ride anything here last time, I had greater than normal anxiety for doing Jungle Trailblazer, so made the possibly wrong decision of trying that straight away.
#1 Jungle Trailblazer (Wuhu)
Everyone else clearly had the same anxiety, or they just follow the ‘suggested route’ like sheep and do everything attraction once like they always do so the queue had about 200 people in it. Busy right?
At 1 train dispatching every 10 minutes, this might have topped my record in China set the previous day. All a bit fruitless really, as the ride was empty for the rest of the day, but wasn’t gonna let it go all Steel Dragon on me again.
Again, finally got on the damn thing and it’s really good. Wasn’t a huge fan of the previous layout of these with an inversion as it didn’t quite click with me, but this iteration has a bit more going for it.
It’s got the same big hill start as Fireball. The double down into the inversion is amazing. The rest is again filled with the stuff they do best, little twisty hills and little straight hills that go on and on and just chuck you about in all directions.
Only got one minor nitpick – the high up turnaround that doesn’t really do much and ruins the pace a bit, so having now done all of the unique layouts of the world’s Jungle Trailblazers (achievement unlocked), it left me torn between putting it 2nd or 3rd.
The indoor mine train clone had a bit of a queue from the natural flow of guests, so headed over to the Vekoma Boomerang next.
#2 Stress Express
Only 2 trains worth of people ahead of me, but they’ve reached new operational lows with this one. For some reason, they’ve decided to not put the usual storage bins on the platform at the far side of the train, rather a storage bin area at the point of batching, below the station. Guests still exit at the far side of the station, so the impact of this is that you have to wait for them all to slowly bumble along an exit path, return to the storage area in front of the waiting queue, faff around with their stuff, leave by the gate, forget their stuff, come back in, faff around with their stuff and leave again before the staff can start batching the next group. All while the train and station lies totally dormant for several minutes. Classic.
#3 Land of Lost Souls
The indoor mine train was now empty, so got that done. It was rougher than the previous iteration (which I think was in Jinan) and was missing the big screen at the end. Still a tad more interesting than the outdoor ones.
Went back to Trailblazer and was told it was down for half an hour while they fixed the water spraying fans in the queueline (life savers).
Believe I’ve already done everything else this park has to offer, but thought might as well have a spin on one of the dark rides while waiting. Devil’s Peak was closed until later, Nuwa had an offensively huge queue, Dragon King’s Tale it is. (Exit pictured above, all their exit signs have another confusing name above them). As in Xiamen, this cloned ride wasn’t running the preshow or the spinning water tunnel, assumedly because they can’t be bothered. Love the ride though, great attention to detail in all the screen based antics of a boy fighting a dragon.
Went back to the woodie once it had reopened and racked up several laps on the bounce. Great stuff, this trip is finally starting to make sense.
That’s about all of interest to come out of today. Let’s have a bonus picture round of signs!
Some more beautiful than others.
Legend of Nuwa layout.
Dragon King’s Tale layout.
Over to the other park in the resort then. Can’t slow down, creds.
Fantawild Dreamland Wuhu
Space Warrior layout.
Fantawild Dragon!
Wizard’s Academy yu-gi-oh card.
Anyway, we had the 2 park 1 day ticket, but I had had too much fun on Jungle Trailblazer and turned up too late to be able to do much here (no regrets). Lots and lots of show based attractions with timings that had all given up for the day.
#4 Golden Whirlwind
Got the cred. Bit of a stain on Fantawild, particularly a Dreamland park. Bad ride and no theming.
Didn’t get the worm, no adults.
Caught a 4D cinema showing I hadn’t done before – Origin of Life. From dinosaurs to bullet trains, it covered just about everything in the history of the world. Mildly interesting.
We also begrudgingly ended up waiting for another Space Warrior out of lack of things to do yet again. Actually got on it this time, my gun didn’t work at all and I was forced to wear kid sized 3D glasses. Didn’t care.
In summary: Oriental Heritage – would be a very good park if you haven’t done any of their attractions before. Still very good for, you know, having a world class woodie with a unique layout. Dreamland – wasn’t a great experience, but I was only in it for the +1. Probably needed the two big shows they have to step it up for me, but they’re difficult to fit into a tight schedule, particularly across 2 parks. If you’re new to the Fantawild game, Jinshan Temple Showdown, Wizards Academy and Qin Dynasty Adventure (all closed two and a half hours before park close) would make it worth the visit. You can find my reviews of these attractions at other parks in the chain.
Here’s a pic of that last one closed, a common sight.
Boonie Bear says come back for the food festival. I’m good.
The next basecamp was Nanjing, where I had allowed a couple of days to make up for the fact that the last time I visited this city it was a total washout and I achieved precisely nothing in the area.
With a quick phone call ahead to ask my favourite question in the country “Is the woodie open?” “Yes.” “I’ll hold you to that”, first thing on the agenda was a bit of vengeance at a certain Crappy Valley, which was within reasonable (for a madman) striking distance after another hour on a train.
Day 5 – Happy Valley Shanghai
It’s taken me 3 visits to get this park dusted off and I rather resent it right now, but I don’t get beaten that easily.
Just to be extra spiteful the place was completely rammed on a weekday, which was unprecedented in my experience of China. Too far gone now. Straight into the queue for Fireball.
It took about an hour (the current record holder for me in China) with one train operation and the famed exercise faff going on in the station.
This ride is unique in the chain in that it has it’s own exercise song built into the sound system, so you can hear the torturous inefficiency and you know exactly what’s coming for the whole time you’re in the queue.
Train 2 basking unused in the sunlight.
#1 Wooden Coaster – Fireball
Finally got on the damn thing and it’s really good.
The ride has more big hills than most Gravitys in the region, it’s always good to see strong variation in layouts.
There’s also a fantastic section of about 6 aggressive and twisty hills progressively downwards in the second half, packed full of the sort of sensations these rides are really good at.
Definitely in the upper reaches of their builds over here, I’ll enjoy plenty more of that later, but…
The final cred needed here was Mine Train Ulven #2, so sweated over to the other side of the park for that.
#2 Mine Train Coaster
It has better theming and rides about the same, just doesn’t quite have the charm of the Danish original.
Back row was a must, for the very punchy first drop and at least it’s two days in a row now of not another Vekoma/Golden Horse layout. Damn Turkey for spiting me the set.
Wandered over to see if the B&M Suspended Family Coaster was worth a quick spin. Closed.
Would be rude not to ride a Megalite while you’re standing next to one. Closed.
How’s the dive coaster doing? 1 car operation and a longer queue than the woodie. Disgusting.
Back to Fireball then. Queued another hour. Loved it again.
Then as I ran back round for another go they did a Phantasialand and closed the ride 3 hours and 40 minutes before the park was due to close to ‘clear the queue’. Heartless bastards.
Diving Coaster was still open so took a token lap on that. Normally easy to get whatever seat you want out here, but the locals spite you on these super wide trains. You may be first in your row of 10 to pass through the air gates, but by the time you’ve sprinted to put something in the boxes on the far side, they’ve nabbed all the outside seats, swapped rows and caused a massive confusion amongst everyone by not leaving enough space for the relevant groups and it takes a good 5 minutes to sort out.
Had made a phone call a couple of days prior to a park with a new S&S launch coaster and found out that it wasn’t yet open, so that’s yet another of the reasons I ended up at the previous Fantawild and was in no particularly hurry to get to the next base camp for the trip (Jinan), where the only remaining destiation of interest was…
Day 4 – Quancheng Euro Park
Yeah, it’s that place.
Anyone can cook.
First impressions weren’t great, being told that several coasters were down and the rest had some faffy time slots going on. The somewhat inspired main street area was a total construction site, so had to access the rest of the park through some weird side room that was anything but professional looking.
This kicks you out in the new family area they’ve got going on. It’s themed to Holland and plays German music, so a little of that Euro spark seems to be working its way into the park at least. A relocated kids coaster is now here and though the sign has no rules beyond ‘1 adult per car’, we were told no adults allowed. Having done one 2 days ago with 2 adults in a car, what a dumb rule.
This indoor coaster was closed for some reason.
Looks fine to me. According to some commentary on the train ride much later in the day, theyre getting 2 new coasters in here. Not hopeful.
Battle of Blue Fire was closed until later in the day for ‘maintenance’. This maintenance involved pumping empty trains out every couple of minutes for several hours which, for China, was rather impressive. Seems strange though, as the park was so dead, once it actually opened, it only really operated for about an hour before no one went on it again and it stopped running. Will get to the ride later.
#1 White Horse Coaster
First thing actually open was the ‘Family Coaster-Medium’. A Mack Youngstar inspired ride with the usual imaginative name.
Hilarity came into play here as you must wear a mandatory padded green jacket to ride. This protects you from the not much going on that the ride has to offer.
Bit of theming, bit of shelter from the scorching heat of the day, wasn’t too bad actually. Couple of near misses and accidental wonky air time moments.
A subtle nod to Europa Park on the walls. I wore my Europa Park shirt to this place, hope someone got the joke.
From here, entered another indoor section where some kiddie flat rides used to be. Found them later in the new area.
SLC was opening later.
Didn’t fancy a splash.
Spinner #1 was opening later. (No picture for some reason, so have a closed water ride instead).
Animal Crisis. The deceiving exterior might have you believe this ride was inspired by the Madagascar films, but it’s a bit darker than that. Once inside, there’s lots of images and stories on the walls of an apocalyptic future in which humanity is facing a crisis of some sorts.
That and glowy tunnels.
Once you’re in the cars, which use Universal Studio’s Spiderman ride technology, the attraction involves following 3 superheroes on screen (ice shooting woman, fire shooting man and lightning shooting man) around various scenes fighting various monsters (big water snake, big land snake, hybrid man-spider in a lab that produces gargoyles, big godzilla boss fight). Interspersed with this is some general city destruction and, to fit the name in there somewhere, seemingly random appearances from zoo animals such as a herd of rhinos sliding across a fountain courtyard with poor graphics. The characters win in the end, get statues erected in recognition of their heroics, and you get various treasures and gems shot at your face in 3D for tagging along.
I actually quite liked it. The quality of the ride was a bit lacking compared to the real deals, but it’s on a similar scale to the earlier Fantawild iterations and I thought it was a decent effort. There’s a couple of good physical sets thrown in, whilst you’re spinning madly between scenes. One particular 3D screen effect as you head down a tunnel and burst into another scene was rather visually striking and effective.
A refreshing mine train experience was next. Finally, a unique layout. Not even two lifts.
#2 Mine Coaster
The ride had a couple of rough tracking moments, but also got a little intense in some parts with some sharply banked curves as it wound its way down the mountain. Kinda good, if only for being different.
The Motorbike coaster was closed. Half glad because I hate those things, but at the same time, spite!
#3 Spinning Coaster
Spinner #2 was open. Same thing again, not great.
Having completed the first lap of the park, found some tigers out the back of the new kids area.
They’ve tried to add a a sense of danger to the exhibit.
But it doesn’t look like the tigers are interested.
Sat down and had a snack while waiting for other things to open.
There’s another building like Animal crisis on the opposite side of the park. The whole place is quite symmetrical in its execution. I wondered what it housed and it turned out to be another flying simulator. Might as well give it a go later.
#4 Battle of Blue Fire
Got to Blue Fire as it finally opened and took a couple of laps.
The launch section is a bit of a different experience to the original, being concrete, some blue lights and pop music.
The first installation of this ride has faded into obscurity somewhat in my mind (except the theme, which I love, and sang to myself on the first lap here), so it was nice to run a little refresher course on it.
It’s actually better than I remembered. I had often associated it with being solid fun with a lack of air time or significant force (other than the last killer inversion), but there’s definitely some there when you’re snapping in and out of the mid course brake run and on the twisty hill through the loop.
The inversions range from good to great, it is more forceful in places than I gave it credit for, a solid package.
Did Global Journey, the flying simulator from there. All I remember from this one is wondering how the ride system worked, with the pods all starting horizontal but being hooked into what looked like a permanent ceiling with tiles and lightning fixtures. The seats then somehow shifted into the vertical position, but not far enough apart so you could see lots legs dangling above your head. Film was eh, I guess.
Stuff inside the building about the park? I can see Hulk in there and maybe even a 4D coaster. What else can you spot?
#5 Twister
Oh no, the SLC. It looks so awful off-ride. The green padded jackets are back on this one to protect you. Didn’t make me feel any safer.
It was a survival experience. Nothing too lasting, but still rather grim.
Had another weird moment of upside-downess on the stupidly shaped second inversion, so it’s almost becoming a regular feature on these, as is losing its speed at a ridiculous rate from just how badly it judders around the track.
#6 Crazy Snowboard
Spinner #1 was open and forcing people to sit on opposite corners to reduce the spin. Even the German manufacturers can’t pull off fairground layouts like this decently and this one just rode particularly poorly.
All available creds complete, took another couple of laps on Blue fire before they gave up for the day again.
Wishing Lost Gravity was here too.
Went to Gods Station to find out about the train. Had 40 minutes to wait, so thought we may as well catch it from the beginning of the circuit at the entrance to the park.
Wandered past the kids coaster to see if staffing had changed. It hadn’t.
The train arrived and it goes round the perimeter of the park grounds, which are actually much larger than the ride sections would make it appear.
There’s a cave on the first corner of the park where you can see more tigers being lazy.
Located on the far edges are 2 mountainous sections. This one is the fiery one.
You can walk to them, but it’s a long way, it’s hot, and there isn’t much in them for now except a few dinosaurs.
Then out the back they’re apparently working on a massive zoo expansion.
Then there’s the icy mountain. Again you could walk here, but it’s a long way, it’s hot, and there isn’t much in them for now except a few ice age creatures.
Third station by the SLC was a ghost town. Wonder why.
There’s another tunnel section on the final corner, but I only remember it containing bricks.
The spiting Motorbike coaster.
I like this model of the park at the entrance. Shows a good scale of ambition. Shame it hasn’t quite come to fruition yet with a good proportion of the attractions being closed or on a very limited service. I doubt things will improve in the future as parks like this tend to slip into a perpetual state of laziness, doing the bare minimum with what they have on offer and simply hoping guests will put up with it anyway.
Final day in the city and my backup plan list was already running dry. It had all been very unsuccessful and rather demoralising. Options were: risk the Botanical Garden being winded out again (they weren’t answering the phone), do another city park with basically the same boring lineup as the first day, or put myself through another Fantawild Adventure park.
Reluctantly…
Day 3 – Fantawild Adventure Shenyang
The bus pulled directly into the car park which was a welcome start for one of these parks. There looked to be about 20 cars total, with someone in a BMW trying and failing to do donuts in the open space.
Walked down the massive main street section which is all set up for a second gate. It’s just wasteland for now, but will probably open before the new Hotgo park. For a rare change, I didn’t even care what was open and what wasn’t so ignored the signs, no questions to the staff, bought tickets and headed in.
The castle centrepiece is in scaffolding making for a pretty sight. Quite a nice effect, from a certain point of view.
Came to Sky Sailor first, which was next running in about an hour. Seen several of the buildings that housed these rides before, but hadn’t actually managed to do it yet, missing the most recent one by about 5 minutes. So we made plans to try it this time.
Water ride wasn’t open. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one of the themed ones open.
#1 Vesuvio Volcano
Cred then. Mount Tanggula, but with a volcano instead. That same double lift mine train layout that is just absolutely everywhere over here now. Not as hilariously bad as the previous iteration though.
#2 Flare Meteor
Standard operations meant that took an age, so cred ran to the Golden Horse SLC to get it out of the way. It actually felt a bit windy today, unlike the day before when things were closed, so my thoughts on the lift were mainly ‘please don’t stall, please don’t stall, please don’t stall.’
I reckon the wind made an impact as the ride had an overly long upside down moment in the cobra roll that actually felt quite cool. The rest of it was quite bad. It’s not the side to side that gets me on SLCs any more, it’s the weird backwards and forward pumping that some of them develop. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it just shakes your insides a little too much. This was the latter.
Slightly injured, cred ran back to the complete opposite end of the park (dedication) to arrive just in time for Sky Sailor.
Rode too many flying simulators on this trip, so I’m struggling to even remember which one this was… Nope. Can’t.
Not bad, but obviously nothing special. Better than Ferrari Land.
Did a full lap of the park from there, seeing what else might be new to me/interesting enough to do again. Everything we came to was either closed or had a time slot that was way later in the afternoon, by which time we would have to leave.
The only attraction even worth considering was Space Warrior in the end, the screen shooting ride that I really didn’t like previously.
Some of the dark rides at Fantawild parks have what I’ll call reception areas at their entrance, separate to the queue, with benches and in this case, books and colouring pencils. This is mainly because on quieter days they take regular breaks from running the ride, only operating in waves or a few cars at a time. Stood in this reception area for about half an hour while the staff girl was waiting for ‘the call’ from the ride team. Ended up having a good chat as she was rather friendly. Apparently only 3 ‘westerners’ had been to this park before (I reckon I can name them) and life working at Fantawild is rather boring. Gave up in the end, said we’ve got a train to catch and told her not to worry, we’ve done this ride in Zhengzhou. Shock face.
Gave up on the park as well, leaving nothing to chance with transport and getting out of this city. It wasn’t necessary to hurry as for the first time I’ve ever seen, all the high speed trains in the region were delayed by over an hour. Due to, yes, wind.
Didn’t mind this park as much as the previous iteration as there were zero stakes, minimum faff and no particular need to rush anything (though I still ended up running like an idiot). Still felt like achieving very little (other than a +2) out of half a day out though and, ugh, this hobby bothers me sometimes.
Grabbed a taxi the next morning and asked to head for the Hotgo resort. It contained another friendly driver but he was somewhat useless and must have smoked about 30 times during the journey. The somewhat useless part came half an hour into the journey where he pulled over and asked a man on the street where Fantawild was. Whoa whoa whoa, whoa whoa. There’s no way I’m going to another Fantawild Adventure in a hurry (HA!). In his mind, Hotgo was in the same place. In reality, I knew he was way off. He opened up maps on his phone and got us to find the route for him and then set off again.
Another half an hour later we had left civilisation behind and a massive castle with a couple of B&Ms appeared on the horizon. I fully expected them not to be ready as the construction progress was almost moving backwards by that time, but I wanted the woodie in the same resort, so told him to follow signs to the already completed Jungle World park. As he got near he pulled over to what looked like construction workers sitting around in the road, but he maintained these were local taxi drivers. Turns out the whole resort was closed. Turns out I’ve discovered a new adversary and stumbled across the only big brand park in China with a seasonal opening calendar. None of it wast open at all until the following weekend, so cheers to the website for being completely useless.
The driver now had no clue how to leave the area we had taken so long to find and, while I got out my list of backup parks again, he jumped out of the car and into the passenger seat of another passing taxi for a chat. “Where to next?” “Botanical Garden mate.”
Got a rather spiteful view of Time Travel on the way out of the area. The rollercoaster I had come so far to ride, only for it to slip through my fingers by a mere week. To add insult to injury, I didn’t realise how good it actually looked until I saw it in person. It seems to follow the terrain very well.
Day 2 – Shenyang Notanical Garden
This place wasn’t too far down the road and we were soon pulling over at the side of the road by a big bridge that crossed over to the entrance. Desperate to get back to civilisation, the taxi bloke had already acquired another passenger before we had even left the vehicle. Thanked him for the detour and jumped out.
Crossed the bridge into the massive entrance plaza and spotted the ticket window. Asked about the rides. Nope. Turns out I’ve discovered 2 new adversaries in China. All closed for the wind. Not wasting any more time with that then. Back over the bridge and into the car park where apparently a bus should be along soon. On closer inspection there was no way a bus was going to bother entering this run down car park with barriers everywhere, so waited by the side of the road while a dog barked at us for half an hour. Another taxi would have sufficed as well, but it was a desolate place. Salvation appeared on the horizon. A bus back to the city.
This terminated at the main station, directly opposite the hotel we had left many hours earlier. Well that’s the morning gone. Next backup park?
Jumped on the metro. Went to the wrong mall. Had ice cream.
Went to the right mall.
Day 2 – Sinbad Happy Castle
This place had a certain charm to it, reminding me most of Berjaya Times Square. Interesting setting inside a building, but a bit tacky really.
#1 Jungle Explorer
It felt so good to actually get on something for the day, so Children Coaster (dont think it’s called Jungle Explorer, but who am I to argue with the internet?) was an instant hit. Only 1 lap of magnificence though.
#2 Star Express
Another spinner was up next, high up in a mall alongside some bad windows looking out over a construction site of a city. Oh yeah, that’s where the resemblance comes from.
Were joined by a local couple, who received a swift nod, so had a full car on this version. It actually span a lot and the guy was loving every second of the girl’s reaction. Not bad.
Took a lap of the park to see if anything else interesting was lurking. It wasn’t.
Just to be sure, rode this suspended monorail which takes a lap of the park. Nope.
Well this trip was a right mess, hopefully that makes for a good read.
First day was cut in half by a ‘rescheduling’ of the flight. Not that this really mattered in the end (spoilers). Touched down in Shenyang halfway through the day to find that apparently there’s no legit public transport from the airport to the city. Ended up with a taxi ride that seemed to take forever, though the driver was friendly enough.
Checked into the hotel. Still time for a few creds. Took the metro to somewhere vaguely near a backup plan park. Strolled through a nice green space from there, but there were no surprise creds in sight. I always forget how massive everywhere is in China, so the plan to walk it was becoming a burden and ended up jumping on a bus to…
Day 1 – Nanhu Park
Always good to start strong. One of those ‘stick a grubby amusement park in the back of some trees in the city’ places that China does so well.
Walked past various other activities like karaoke in the pagoda, karaoke on the bridge and karaoke on the riverbank. Varying vocal quality.
Eventually stumbled into the hustle and bustle of the amusement area. Turned down about 50 people wanting customers for some dodgy looking flat rides. “Nah mate, creds only.” The first person to earn some money was standing outside this ride, somehow managed to negotiate a 2 for 1 deal out of him.
#1 Spinning Coaster
Classic spinner of unknown origins. The cars have the ability to rotate from the top of the lift, unlike the usual ones of these that don’t allow any spinning to kick in until about halfway through the layout, but the poor trackwork never allows it to pick up enough speed to do anything much.
A proper beast was up next, looking lonely and abandoned. An old woman was running some insignificant ride in front and beckoned. No no, open the cred for us instead. Money in hand, how could they say no?
#2 Golden Dragon Roller Coaster
Loved this one. Such character. Before we could sit in the train, a musty old cushion was placed on the seat for us. After squeezing in, a second musty old cushion was wedged in between my left side and the edge of the car. I like where this is headed.
Got 3 laps of pure comedy, each time the lift struggling more and more to engage, breaking our backs once it did. Need to relocate that cushion.
#3 Jungle Squirrel
JUNGLE MOUSE! I’m ashamed to say that I’ve had to enter the country 5 times to get on one of these, so I was very happy to finally do it. Close your eyes and the spirit of Wild Mouse lives on. Minus the air time.
Headed over a bridge to a more barren section of the park for the biggest ride of the day. Now some damage could be done. The guy running it was delighted to have a customer and immediately jumped on the microphone to try and churn up some more business with me as the poster boy. Nah. No one was buying it.
Off we go then.
#4 Roller Coaster
The layout starts with a slow helix of doom that builds tension before you plunge into the undersized loop.
The inversion was pretty grim, something akin to a sucker punch. The remainder was manageable.
The final and most shameful cred in the park was a small worm thing, but it was abandoned and the train parked in the wrong place, so that didn’t happen. Pity, probably one of the few of those that would actually let adults on. Here’s a depressed monkey instead:
Jumped on the ferris wheel opposite for some views.
Boat ride on a zipwire there that I expected to go into the water at least. Nope.
The pods on the wheel didn’t smoothly follow with gravity, rather lurched and grated in stages, so it felt a little sketchy. Not the worst wheel of the trip though.
I had some days spare to use in Asia while out in Singapore again and wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Not enough time to do anything too major, though sadly there aren’t many places left out this way I could do for too long anyway. With RMC consistently hammering into my rankings over the last 6 months, Hakugei was obviously the most major draw in the region. But it didn’t feel like enough – all that way for one ride… I don’t think I’m quite ready for that stage of the hobby just yet.
Hit some more of China was the other idea, with new stuff up and coming all the time and the odd bits to mop up in between. But they’re so slow in getting things built – rides that spited me over a year ago still not being ready and I couldn’t be arsed with the disappointment again for now.
If I can add one more major coaster to this trip, I’ll be happy.
So I took a gamble on some wood and booked three dirt cheap one way flights.
And in no way did it look like it was going to pay off.
I’ve been spited by Wood Coaster twice before. It’s about my most spiteful ride going. I got as far as the entrance of the park the first time, after 90 minutes on a bus from hell and then being chased down by people trying to sell me plastic buckets and spades for a trip up the mountain. The ticket desk said the coaster was closed. I walked away. The second time I was in Shenzhen I didn’t bother with all that, just phoned up the park 2 days in a row from somewhere nicer and got the usual stories about “it’s been raining the last few days so… you know… maintenance.” Yeah, I know.
The park website has become more fancy these days and now has details in writing about their extensive maintenance schedules for rides. For the star attraction it says every Monday, every third Thursday of the month, every April (and from personal experience every January or every time there’s sight of rain either before or after that day). In summary, the world’s most closed coaster. To avoid all that then, we’ll hit it on a Saturday in June.
As the day drew nearer, the weather forecast for the city was just… terrible. 2 weeks of thunderstorms either side of the day I was going. It doesn’t make meteorological sense, but it’s China, so that’s that then.
Day 0 – Arrival in Shenzhen
So I landed with the full expectation of just spending a rainy day in a hotel.
I’m obviously getting too complacent with the whole immigration/entry/getting around system in China because I expected to just walk in the door and get a transit visa on arrival this time. There weren’t any staff available for this when I got there, so I spent a good hour standing around in ghost town airport waiting for someone to show up at the visa desk while the immigration helpers did their best to avoid eye contact with me following our initial encounter and a couple of other officers at their desks eyed me suspiciously. I thought the people I was waiting for were gonna be one of the official uniformed looking immigration officers that rocked up with their 7-Eleven instant noodle dinners and disappeared into an office to eat said dinners rather than acknowledging my existence, but it wasn’t them. Instead what seemed to be some random/normal looking airport staff member appeared while chatting into her phone and asked to look at my passport. She looked at it and walked off again without saying another word to me, still on the phone. Clearly no one knew what they were doing and they don’t get many people doing it this way. I would say I’ve missed this fun, but it already felt like a wasted journey to begin with. She eventually reappeared with a friend and they bumbled their way through the process over the period of another hour or so, constantly phoning people up, running off to somewhere else in the airport to get information on something, looking up something on the internet or chatting to other officers at the desks. Eventually I got a stamp and got in. They were gone again before I could thank them for their swift service. And now the metro is shut for the day. I do love a good taxi.
The faff didn’t end there as the hotel ended up being the first I’ve ever come across in China that doesn’t accept ‘foreign cards’. It’s 2am, give me a break, I want to sleep. This was only a daytrip, so I wasn’t packing enough cash to settle that and do everything I wanted to do the next day but fortunately, as they bluntly told me, there was a cashpoint round the corner. Ugh.
It’s not actually raining though.
Day 1 – Knight Valley
Less than 3 hours later and I’m getting déjà vu from the previous time I was in this city, waking up stupidly early in the morning to check the ‘weather situation’ outside before deciding whether to bother with a 2 hour journey to the park for absolutely nothing. It’s still not actually raining, but I’m too tired to care. Back to sleep.
Still wasn’t willing to commit to the extra journey purely on a whim at this stage, so waited ’til office hours and phoned the number we had had some success with before. No luck, couldn’t get through to a human. Well, I’ve come this far, lets see if I can at least lay eyes on the damned thing this time, open or otherwise. But I ain’t taking that bus again, someone can drive me. The hotel staff were like “whoa man, don’t do it, that’s gonna cost you £20.” Their opinion was ignored.
It rained the tiniest of bits on the journey over to the park, but otherwise was just lots of low hanging cloud in a regular fashion for a mountainous climate. Game over I thought, they’ll be doing their track walk now and instantly think ‘time to go home’. Driver bloke was friendly enough to offer his phone number and a return journey once we arrived, as it was a ‘remote area.’ That’s a sound option, I thought. Could be returning in about 5 minutes.
Got to the ticket desk. There was a sign of closed rides up on display, which I don’t even remember existing before, more positive steps? Wood Coaster wasn’t on it. The woman with the tickets re-confirmed this. In we go then.
I think the following walk was my new peak in cred anxiety. I’ve been lied to by staff enough times now to still think it’s not open. I failed to pick up a map so didn’t know where I was going either.
You keep climbing these escalators up the mountain, half of them broken, and still can’t see the ride for about 15 minutes of walking – I expected it to be dominating the hillside, but it’s insignificant in comparison to the size of the resort. Passed a sign with ride specific opening times. ‘The Wood Coaster is open from 10:00-18:00.’ Is this actually happening?
I joined the queue at 10:00 and there was a bunch of engineers on platform, with the ride making familiar GCI brake noises. It took them another half an hour, but it tested and it opened.
#1 Wood Coaster
Ahhhhhhhhh. It was so good to get on it. That and the ride itself is… so good. I was a little worried as GCI have been a source of minor let downs for my last 2.5 years as well as seeing reports of it having not aged well. But if there’s one GCI out there to rival the mighty Bamboo, it’s this thing.
I got everything I want from one of these – it’s fast, relentless, has buckets of airtime, goes on forever and is aggressive – really, really, aggressive. Perfectly on the limit.
The layout is just majestic. Never mind the station flythrough that due to questionable park operations no queueing guest ever sees, there’s a bloody quad down passing in between the station and the brakerun. It did a Lightning Rod before Lightning Rod and it made me giddy with happiness. I loved everything about this ride so much.
And whose wonderful idea was it to stick a big wooden coaster up here anyway? It did the Wildfire turnaround atop a mountain before Wildfire did. That makes me love it even more.
There was a bit of jeopardy added to the whole experience (which probably heightened it even more) in that the lift hill contained an assault of weird looking moths and other weird and not wonderful flying creatures that would crash into your face or land on you as the train climbs 200ft into a rainforest. Eww. I hate bugs. I don’t even want to know what those things are doing to you when you hit 60Mph, but I ended up with one inside my shirt that looked like a leech at one point. So much no. But so much yes. Have some more pics.
Just to tease me a bit further it also rained a little more during a queue for another lap. They made announcements about stopping if it got worse, but it didn’t, so they didn’t. Good for them.
Kinda wish the park ended there, but there was some other stuff to see. Stumbled into what I only knew as discount Waterworld. Sums it up nicely. Wasn’t the most professional of performances, but it was a laugh. The show ended to announcements of “stick around to have a photo with the white man.” Think I’ll pass on that one.
Foolishly followed the crowd out of there into the queue for an underwater ride simulator. Some aggressive announcements were being made about an 80 seat capacity and 30 minute show intervals. It then turned into an old timey bumpkin scrum as the, less refined, guests started pushing and shoving to make sure they made it in to the next show. It’s only the second time I’ve seen this sort of behaviour (the first being that awful tour group at Fantawild Ningbo) so it’s far from the norm, but it is rather disgusting to behold. We didn’t make it to that show and left the queue rather than wait again. I’m sure it was nothing mindblowing.
From there it was a hot and sweaty queue for the cablecar up to the top of the mountain. Things only got sweatier when the greenhouse-rooved portion of the queue became home to two huge hairy moth things that were bigger than my hands. If they end up at Wood Coaster, I’m dead.
Some lovely views up top. Didn’t bother with any of the rides as the queues were too grim.
Did the funicular train back down, it was completely empty in contrast to the cablecar for some reason.
The Bobkart spited me disappointingly, but got what I came for.
Got a friendly staff girl to lend us her phone so we could contact the driver from earlier, as our Chinese SIM had conked out up the mountain. He said 40 minutes. This made an easy excuse for me to have one more lap of Wood Coaster, as the queue was invariably 30 minutes for 30 people.
When he turned up we made an outlandish request to be driven to a mall in the city to get some food rather than straight back to the hotel, at which point he got all mopey saying he wouldn’t have bothered coming back for us if he’d known it wasn’t the full fare. Well thanks.
And that’s it for one long day in China. Seems like a lot of text for one ride. Good times.
There was time for one more park in the morning before the plane home. A humble affair in the middle of the city.
Hunan Martyr’s Park
Entertainment ground. That’s the one.
Spongebob x Nemo collab.
#1Jungle Flying Mouse
Jungle Mouse was the order of the day of course. It had a weird smoother track style and a much less vicious layout. A questionable modern perk.
And there used to be a looper here on this patch of grass. Spite.
The end.
Summary
New creds – 45 Total parks – 18 Dark rides – 26 Jungle Mouses – 8 Best coaster – Jungle Trailblazer (Nanning) Best not-a-clone coaster – Harpy Best park – Fantawild Asian Legend for the overall lineup. Honorable mentions to Colourful Yunnan Paradise and Oriental Heritage Changsha Distance travelled ~ 3313 Miles-ish Not counting things that haven’t opened at all yet (Xingdong and the S&S), Spites – 5/50 (10%)
Back where the trip began then, in Changsha, they’ve got this shiny new Fantawild resort.
With a second gate on the way? From the décor it looks like they’re going backwards and doing an Adventure next. I hope it’s an upgraded version. I do like it when they do something new, as we’re about to find out, again.
Day 13 – Oriental Heritage Changsha
Having being put back in a cynical mood, I wasn’t expecting the coasters to be open for another 6 hours after the park, if at all due to the cold. So the first thing we ended up on was…
Another flying theatre called Let’s Fly! Yes! It was alright, I think.
In poor taste it did have this picture in the queue of that stupid Vekoma Stingray that spited me twice before being demolished.
On to better things, the area for Celestial Gauntlet looks amazing. I’ll be doing lots of visuals as I go along for this park as I really think they’ve outdone themselves this time. Normally the ‘thrill ride’ areas with a Woodie and bog standard water rides are very plain and often lazy by their standards.
#1 Celestial Gauntlet
To my surprise it was already open and they were just waiting for someone to ride it. Go on then.
I liked the look of this thing, other than the vests. Ride without prejudice.
And it didn’t disappoint overall. The lift hill provides some unusual audio of people screaming as you approach the summit. The drop gives you the briefest moment of ‘wahey I’m out of the seat, oh no I’m not.’
The hang in the inversion is insane. I love how all these modern rides are managing to pull off sensations like this now. Loops used to be so boring.
Everything else in the layout is about a third of the height of the first element so it hauls its way through a bunch of hills and a couple more inversions with a varying degree of pleasure – some of them actually are good and some of them just look good while not really doing anything to you.
Tunnels at the end provide some great interaction.
It’s a cool ride. Nothing game changing. Very fun and re-rideable, but to me not quite worthy of being the stand out attraction at a park. It should be a secondary compliment. To a Jungle Trailblazer. With a new layout.
From there, we unknowingly wandered into one of the standouts of the whole trip. I had something written down on my bit of paper for the day saying ‘new dark ride?! – rocks and vines out front’ and didn’t even notice this was that until afterwards.
The queue went on forever and just kept getting more and more insane, to the point where I was beginning to think it was the attraction and there was no ride at the end.
Particularly when you end up in this room looking like an art gallery with this big ancient scroll on display. So, it’s just a museum?
No, keep going.
It’s a trackless dark ride. Oh yes.
It’s called Magic Gallery or perhaps better, Magic Brush. It follows this boy who can turn into a brush and then bring to life the contents of any drawings or paintings. He takes you on a bit of an adventure.
The ride is really, really long and packed full of intimate detail. Stuff of proper wonderment and awe as you go round. What real dark rides are made of.
The smells are back and more amazing than ever. You end up inside a physical set of a rotting ship at one point and it smells just like the Mary Rose museum. Then a massive flood effect happens while a dragon is playing hide and seek with you.
You learn some history along the way, you meet a sexy water Goddess with her Kirin-drawn chariot, then it smells like the nicest soap ever, you go behind a curtain and he’s found that giant scroll painting from the gallery in the queue and it comes to life and you fly around and it’s all magical and ahhhhhhhhhh. So much to take in. So much charm.
I get back to the station in the midst of re-contemplating my life, like you get on the brake run of a new top 10 coaster. The ride host walks over with two cups of tea for us as we get off. I can’t describe how happy this makes me. It’s the simple things.
Stuff like that just doesn’t happen and yet here we are.
So we’ve got a potential Jinshan beater on our hands here. I’m tempted to give it the edge as it’s much more of a ‘ride’ and therefore better paced, without reliance on a show. The ONE criticism I do have is that because it was running so few vehicles (no capacity required), you often got a bit ahead of the scenes and you’d have to swivel and crane to catch all of it.
Here’s one of those water rides that looks anything but plain. Sadly all closed for the weather.
A show was starting here soon.
#2 Puppy Coaster
The puppy was round the corner to fill the time.
Entrance area to the show.
No big deal.
In a similar vein to Magic Brush the story was about reawakening a famous lady who was mummified in a tomb, along with all the creatures in that flag, but this time it was done with science rather than magic. The characters came to life, portrayed by actors, some conversations and traditional dance happened. I don’t know what black magic was going on here. The techonology of the Butterfly Lovers show I described at the start of the trip with the translucent projection screens around a stage was cranked up to the max. They described it as augmented reality and you couldn’t see a screen at all in front of the single big stage but projections appeared out of thin air, completely covering up the action when required. This was complimented by a huge screen behind the stage as well. Sometimes they used that lying on the floor of the trick with more projections and a giant mirror to make it look like people were flying and it was overall pretty epic.
Same closed for winter story with the rapids, but wow.
Legend of Nuwa has had an upgraded entrance façade since the other parks as well. She’s much bigger and more detailed and the fighting blokes aren’t normally there.
In fact the whole package felt like a Legend of Nuwa 1.1 to me. I may be suppressing things but it felt like there were a couple more details thrown in. Most importantly it was running with a ton more ferocity. Properly vicious movements from the car that make you concerned for your safety. Do they weaken over time or do they just make them better now?
They’ve got another cool show here that I’ve seen before – Legend of Lady Meng Jiang, that contains a brick version of the bubble ballet amongst other things. Good lineup.
And something else that stands out to me about this park is how each attraction has much more of it’s own dedicated themed area. Often they can look amazing out front, but where they are is a bit plonked amongst everything else.
#3 Big Top
Not quite as pretty, but it’s in the kids area themed to Boonie Bear at the circus.
I like the Orkanen layout. The opening drop and turn are really good and it’s generally much less meandering than the smaller models.
They had the most relaxed staff in China here. You could just walk in and sit on the train at any time without any of the usual batching nonsense. Or even have a nose around the operator’s box because they’d just disappear down the queue for a chat while people were taking their seats. And it’s one of very few rides in China, if any, that I’ve been allowed to keep my glasses on. A nation that doesn’t like them on gentle flat rides.
Maybe it is pretty after all.
Maybe I’ve just got a thing for reflections now.
I hadn’t done this drop tower ride, The Plummet for about 3 years, back in my first Fantawild where I despised the place. Maybe that gave me a bad impression of it.
Nah, it still sucks. So much wasted potential. It has that horrible controlled sensation all the way up and all the way down. It has doors at the top that make it look like it’s trying to be Tower of Terror. But it doesn’t do anything. It has screens in the middle that make it look like it’s going to do something cool. But it doesn’t do anything. Very slowly drifts past a snake on them at the end of the ride cycle while the hardware hisses loudly. Staff were friendly though, sneaking me up the exit path just before the sequence was about to start. High chance it was time slotted
I’ve managed to put the Marvels of Chinese Culture off at about 10 parks previously. Finally gave it a go on this day. Expected a lengthy 3D cinema that wasn’t particularly interesting, but actually got a brief and graphic history of all the different Chinese dynasties and the various wars involved.
From other reports I’m not sure if these are all the same now, even if the names are. It was decent enough.
This was amazing. Another boat ride with a new theme, River of Tales is all about 4 letter Chinese idioms or ‘Chengyu’, represented by scenes.
Rerides until satisfied then, followed by a slight sadness on departure.
Really, really liked this place. I thought I would be done after the Asian Legend park on this trip but even after so much fatigue I fell in love with Fantawild all over again here. They’re now by far my favourite chain in the country – and it’s taken them long enough. Ningbo was clearly an anomaly and I’ll take the Adventure parks as a learning process for them to develop their rides further. This is a spectacular example of that process continuing.
I shall now follow their future with greater interest than ever. Sunac can suck it.
