Xiamen isn’t really on route to anything to have been part of one of my bigger trips here, but it was a necessary step in my quest to knock out everything ‘decent’ in 2 years worth of visa. Started with another dirt cheap Scoot to Shenzhen (via Singapore again). They weren’t so hot this time, losing their gate by getting in the way of other airlines, being very late to take off and then somehow losing another hour on approach to the city in a straight line. Well I did say ‘you get what you pay for.’ First day was very familiar territory. It was raining. Phoned the relevant parks. All closed. This isn’t my first time in Shenzhen so I just laughed and went Kpop shopping in Hong Kong instead.
Day 7 – Oriental Heritage Xiamen
It was a nervous 4 hour train ride due to the possibility of more weather spite, but we had committed. It turned out to be a beautiful day.
Fantawild adversity begins (though not quite at Zhengzhou levels) with a massive spiteful walk over a big rainbow bridge to get to another typically huge entrance plaza. I swear I took a picture, but can’t find any.
Exhausting.
The shape of this resort gives the parks a long, thin layout, so it felt like another half hour walk, greatly exaggerated by cred anxiety, to Jungle Trailblazer.
#1 Jungle Trailblazer (Xiamen)
Very glad to have done it, but it was a bit of a let down. It certainly doesn’t keep up its pace like other Gravitys. On paper it looked fantastic, but after a strong start it loses all momentum and was crawling by the end.
The weather might play a bigger part than how much it gets run in the day. I’ve never done any of these that weren’t total ghost town parks and walk on rides that hardly ever get dispatched, but it was about 20°C colder here, which might count for something. That or they just plain messed up the maths on this one. It’s done at least, only 1 more layout to complete the set.
#2 Galaxy Express
Another Vekoma SFC clone. Also not running very well.
Oriental Heritage being its usual glamourous self.
Water park is getting an upgrade. If the entrance plaza is anything to go by, it’s actually the centrepiece of this resort.
Skip.
They’ve got a strong lineup of the usual Fantawild dark rides here, but hiding under different names. I know this one as Dragon King’s Tale rather than Rumble Under the Sea. The pre-show and spinning water tunnel were off here, but it’s a very good ride. They love to copy paste and so I shall do the same. ‘Actual ride is a big boat taking you around various scenes. Oh no, the city is flooded and the (supposedly meant to be a boy, but i’ll maintain it’s a girl) has to ask the Dragon King to fix things. Dragon King is a bit of a dick and refuses for a while, but after a bit of persuasion through few action sequences, including real FIRE, he sorts it in the end.‘
The Flaming Mountains also goes by Devil’s Peak/Better than Forbidden Journey. ‘It’s the Harry Potter arm system, but all slowed down a good 10x so there’s no ridiculous rushing through an incoherent amount of scenes, but it feels a lot more awkward in the movements. It has more of an actual story, being about the Monkey King scaling a big mountain, fighting that golden dragon and a big ass lava bloke (part of Journey to the West).‘
Legend of Nuwa. Same name, still good. ‘Spiderman technology with another Chinese tale. There’s a hole in the sky and you’re helping out some magic woman with the key to fix it, but big red bloke, big blue bloke and a couple of dragons are out to stop you.’ The staff in the park weren’t particularly nice compared to some other locations, particularly on the woodie. They clearly weren’t happy to have to deal with guests as there was literally no one else in the park (a standard day for them must just be sitting around on the phone for 7 hours) and they actively made it a bit of a hassle to do many rerides.
Due to some lazy resarch on my part (only knowing the coaster lineup), I had assumed that next door to this was an Adventure park, which I despise. As we weren’t as enthralled as we might have hoped with this place, decided we might as well suffer the creds. Yes, I was fully prepared to skip them. How unlike me.
On closer inspection…
It’s a Dreamland with the same coaster lineup as my last Adventure. My last Dreamland had the same coaster lineup as this Oriental Heritage. Did you get that?
Fantawild Dreamland Xiamen
The front and back halves of the park felt very Adventure but they’ve padded out the middle with some good dark rides. It was another ghost town thankfully, as a 2 hour queue for a Skyloop would have ended the day, and operations were surprisingly decent.
#3 Mount Tanggula
Mount Tanggula was nothing more than hilarious. Very weird vibrations going on that brought new experience to such a well traversed mine train layout.
#4 Stress Express
Ugh.
‘Fantawild so big, I’d like to hire a car.’ Yes, but outside the park. Also ‘Quick, that Boomerang is about to do the inversion from the outside, call an engineer!’
#5 Terror Twister
Double Ugh.
I seem to be missing half my pictures from this day, or I’m just getting lazy. Did another 3 dark rides in this park, all ones I’ve done previously and really enjoyed a lot:
Wizard Academy ‘We use the term academy loosely here. Yet another spiderman ride. The wizard is evil and says you shouldn’t have come. He then proceeds to send many large mythical creatures to attack you, chucking in a few of his own spells as well. Those are the lessons. You survive. You get a certificate from the academy. Well done.‘
Qin Dynasty Adventure ‘In my best film trailer voice: “Things take an unexpected turn when an archaelogical dig at the Terracotta army uncovers something more sinister.” I started off liking the vehicles for this as they have quite a punchy acceleration between scenes and they bank the wrong way on corners to exaggerate things. Then it goes up hills and does fake juddery drops and I wish they just called Premier and made it a cred.’
Jinshan Temple Showdown ‘With the big ass boats and hugely impressive effect scene at the end. The showdown in question is between a woman who can become a snake and a demon hunter who is rather irrational. Has a bit of a cliff hanger ending, which makes a change.‘
Then the park closed. Could have got a bit more in if I had considered doing this half in the first place, but I’m sure these rides will crop up again.
Apparently it had finally stopped raining back in Chongqing, so I guess there’s time for one more excessive day trip to get the major attraction schedule back under control.
Is this the right place?
Oh there it is.
Day 13 – Happy Valley Chongqing
The final park in the chain (achievement unlocked). Didn’t know what to expect from this one, other than it was very new.
For somewhere very new, it had a shocking amount of things closed according to a sign outside. Didn’t bother translating, too late now.
Got told the ferris wheel was closed while entering the turnstyles. That was a lie, it wasn’t.
The park entrance is on a big hill, so spent the first few minutes going down escalators watching the creds intently for any signs of life with the usual anxiety. I’d like to make the hill comparison to Liseberg, but it’ll probably end up with a more unfortunate one like Legoland Windsor. It is different for Happy Valley at least.
Ooh, that looks tasty.
#1 Jungle Dragon
The whole ride sits on top of another hill, with the queue area being at the bottom. At the final batch point, a trains worth of people gets let into a lift which takes you up to the station. That was all rather fun and from what I could see at the top, this could be a mini Python and the GCI excitement that had faded the previous day was temporarily restored.
It’s really good, but to be honest it should have been fantastic, so I can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed again. They seem to have developed an obsession for large swooping drops which do absolutely nothing. I’m sure the terrain had a lot more to offer than just that.
There’s plenty of good sensations in there, some of the straight hill sections in particular, but again less of their surprise moments than I’ve become accustomed to.
That thing next then, doesn’t look far.
It’s actually miles away. The park layout is 2 huge s-bends around the water, another central hill and the entire length of this beast.
#2 Flying Wing Coaster
The one with the airtime(?) hill and the loop. Still not entirely sure how I feel about this one. Was it really good? Or was I just wrecked by this stage of the trip.
It felt pretty damn intense for a B&M wing coaster. Is that what I want out of one? Probably.
All hope of any relief from the vest restraint goes out the window from the bottom of the first dip so the following hill ain’t great. I’ve concluded that airtime only works on these out of a straight first drop, so you can’t have any positive force on your shoulders preceding it.
It’s then a very fluid sequence of inversions as it winds its way downhill, passing over the pathways as it goes. Beautifully integrated into the area.
The ride ends with the classic slow inline twist, but instead of just mild discomfort and not being able to breathe for a second, I was seeing stars on the brake run. What just happened?
Operations were pretty dire, with one half of the train being loaded at a time and then the standard practice of having to let previous riders sort their belongings and clear the station before even considering batching any new ones. The park was also filled with a ridiculous amount of school groups of varying ages on this day, and very little else, so I didn’t arrive at the ride at a very good time and though it may have quietened later on, it was such a ridiculous journey to go back again more than once or twice in a day.
Can’t be good for their necks.
#3 Family Coaster
There’s a Vekoma junior boomerang overlooking a quarry. Themed to planes and/or rainbows.
These rides are smooth, reasonably forceful and decent enough for a family cred. Good to see HV still trying some different product types for themselves at both ends of the scale.
Game Ride (what a name) was very enjoyable. Mouse of Chocolate style shooter but without getting a sore arm, as you can just press and hold the buttons with your thumbs for maximum firepower.
Also reminded me of Lotte World’s shooting ride, as you have to aim at dragons, just slightly less evil in this case. They’re making meals or interfering with the preparation of said meals by standing around and pelvic thrusting.
The sections between screens were of decent quality as well. I do hope they look after this attraction more than the Santa ones.
#4 Mine Train Coaster
One more cred. It’s built into the hill, but it’s the same damn layout as always, so that was a disappointment. Oh yes, they’re still making mine train clones. This Golden Horse exists alongside Vekoma in the park and they’ve adopted the same look of new style track from somewhere. The queue was awful, filled with a million schoolkids, half of which were too small to actually ride but were getting as far as the station to find that out and then traipsing back past everyone in groups of at least 100. The ones that were big enough spent an entire half an hour trying to slowly nudge past us. +1.
Back to the impressive looking woodie for a bit then. Rode it with some Koreans. That improved it slightly.
Jumped on the closed Ferris wheel on the way out for some views.
Decent park then overall, one of the stronger Happy Valleys. No major issues and finally a park where everything was running. It has a good enough lineup, but it’s an arse to get around for rerides, a much more prominent issue due to Chinese operations.
And with that, we’re gone from China. Not sure about the love any more.
Summary of a Chinese Visa
I’d like to think I made the most out of one visa by getting 3 major trips and 1 side trip knocked out over the 2 year period. Looks a little something like this:
01/17 | 09/17 | 01/18 | 04/18
Fun facts and scary statistics:
Total parks: 37 Total creds: 104 Total mine train clones: 11 Total woodies: 10 Total Fantawilds: 9
Total train distance: 11615 km/7259 Miles Total train time: 64 hours 21 minutes
Spites: January 2017 – 5/32 (15.6%) September 2017 – 15/52 (28.8%) January 2018 – 3/11 (27.3%) April 2018 – 29/61 (47.5%)
So what have we learnt? January is the best time to go apparently… and the more you do it, the worse it gets. That April figure is truly abysmal, but there were still some cracking rides on this trip. No regrets.
The second journey here was somewhat easier, now knowing what awaits at the other end. No chickens for our entertainment this time unfortunately.
Ticket window sign had changed a little, Desert Rally had become Desert Storm (some guy with his feet on the table behind the ticket girl still maintained that this was “the wooden one”), and the B&M had been replaced with the mine train. Well, nothing to lose now.
Discount China Dinosaur Park.
Circled round to the new area to begin with, to settle some anxiety and hopefully prove the bloke was an idiot.
Thankfully he was, Desert Storm being the closed flat ride and a posted opening time of 10:30 on the woodie.
To be fair to him, they can never make up their mind on names. The Dive coaster on this sign is called Flying Asparas in Western Region, so here’s a cultural lesson while we wait for something to open: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsara
Also checked that out, posted opening time of 13:00.
Gonna be a long day.
#1 Magic Carpet, a bog standard spinning coaster nearby was running, so grabbed that first. Judging from old pictures it’s had a decent retheme (from concrete wasteland) to integrate with the new area. They were only running full cars, so had a good little sit down waiting for a couple of locals to rock up and join us. Was alright for a car seatbelt model.
Hung around for a while longer, eventually joining the queue early with a few others to watch some test laps.
Finally the time came to do some stretching. Contrary to every other park in the chain, they hold a very firm belief in their exercise routine here. Where the rest of them treat it as a bit of fun and a laugh, the staff here will aggressively shout at anyone who is not following the instructions with the utmost of seriousness. I usually half-arse it just to show I’m in the zone and have a vague understanding of what’s going on, but this wasn’t good enough today and I was one of many victims to a sharp tongue.
#2 Great Desert-Rally
On to the ride then. Seems a while since I was last acquainted with a GCI and due to their consistency so far I was rather excited.
This one lacked something however. A Wodan style beginning with meandering up high sections and then nothing particularly notable came of it afterwards. It didn’t seem to have the signature surprise moments that I’ve come to associate with the brand, everything just rode exactly how it looked, no surprises. Maybe Gravity has just spoiled me recently. Solid fun, but nothing amazing.
Having never seen them before and then seeing them at 3 parks in a row, decided to do the modern version of the Flying Machines attraction. Another good little sit down, slightly ruined by the parks nonsense rule of no glasses on a gentle observation ride and thenn trying to force everyone to remain seated for a minute after it had finished, because if you get up too fast you will become dizzy…
Took a lap of the park from there to see what else was cooking.
Mine train closed, as promised.
Rapids looked cool, but been put off ever doing a Happy Valley one by my first attempt in Shenzhen.
Jumped on the flying island for some views.
Closed creds and high rise buildings, the usual stuff.
Had a Mcdonalds in the park out of boredom and for the novelty of HV not having all the major food establishments outside the park entrance with a no re-entry rule.
SLC started testing. Joy.
Priorities though, this had as well.
#3 Western Regions Heaven
Forgot about the unorthodox loose article storage system here, the suspended wooden box that carries itself over the track to the far side. Seemed very flimsy up close and almost didnt trust it to not tip everything out onto the train along the way. Made it easier to get the seat you wanted at least.
The ride was decent enough. It’s pretty. It does what dives do, just slightly weird to have the straight drop with less anticipation at the top. The section after the second drop starts cool, with the tunnel and the interaction with the woodie, but then it’s just two dumb corners and feels a little pointless, ending on a low.
Had a bit of an unpleasant situation on the second lap, when 2 Americans(?) appeared out of nowhere and started abusing the staff. First problem was nothing to do with Asian operations at all, in that they got shouted at for putting their shoes in the storage device and trying to ride barefoot. The reply to this was “you guyyys are STOOPID”, to which the staff just laughed in their face, which I respected. Second problem was local operations, in that they didn’t like the exercise concept, loudly booing the staff, making gestures at them and saying ‘we just wanna get on the riiide’, while I stand there thinking please don’t associate me with this awfulness.
The staff then seem confused by the length of my legs and kept shouting and gesturing at me to sit back in my seat so they could try and get an uncomfortable extra click of the restraint on me, even though I was as far back as I could go. They were getting quite worked up and frustrated with me while I physically can’t do anything about it and I began to regret even coming back for another lap. I was rooting for you, bastards.
Took a couple more laps on the woodie to forget that ever happened.
This proverb amuses me.
From there, found a dark ride I never knew existed. Panda Warrior 4D. Another system in the style of Spiderman, also like their storm themed one in HV Shanghai, but far superior to the latter. It went on a lot longer and did a lot more. Contrary to the name and queue, showing Kung Fu Panda the film on TVs, the panda is a magician. Some city is getting wrecked by an earthquake and the magic panda is whisking you through it all for a bit of light entertainment. He seemed rather emotionally disconnected from the destruction and death around him and was a bit mean in some cases, but he got rewarded with a medal for services at the end. Odd.
Also did another flying simulator, Flying over the West. This was alright, going over some different sights from before. The ‘West’ here meant ‘Western part of China and neighbouring Asia’ so lots of mountains, temples, buddhas and stuff. Think the Wuhan version is still my fave, cos dragons.
Confirmed the Megalite was indeed closed for ‘Annual maintenance’, further going against the web of lies the previous day. It’s only a clone, but someday it’ll spite me the full set of these and I wanted it at least for scientific research purposes, with the previous one being so inferior to the original.
Just the SLC then. Oh no, the SLC.
#4 Dragon in Clouds
The queueline consists of half a mile of narrow cages, just to get you in the mood for torture. Had the exact same issue with the staff again, angrily telling me to sit further back in the seat when I can’t. Not like I’m trying to trick them into a loose restraint for a bit more airtime on an SLC is it? Another observation here on how they worship the pre-ride exercise routine. If the train is half empty and you’re sitting in it ready to go, but 2 more people rock up into the station, everything stops and they’ll make them do the whole routine separately before letting them get on with it.
The ride experience awful as well, I think Vekoma wins worst of the trip. Just a really unpleasant shaking throughout, haven’t felt it that bad since Condor. Ugh.
Can’t really say no to the shooting Santa rides, though I should have learnt to by now. The staff on North Pole Adventure were bored to death and rude, no one rides it and absolutely nothing works on it any more. For somewhere that loves maintenance so much, they really don’t look after these.
No idea.
What other stupid ideas can we come up with? Let’s ride the ferris wheel.
We had already had some views with reasonable ventilation, but it’s only 35°C outside and about 45 in this greenhouse that’s scratched to pieces.
In case you can’t tell, I wasn’t particularly fond of this park by the end of the day. I thought I would have had the worst of Happy Valley behind me, but Chengdu hit brand new lows. As much as some of the other parks had their faults, I’ve very rarely had issues with the staff as well and they haven’t even got a killer ride here to aid any kind of forgiveness.
Woke up here to find it raining somewhat. There goes that day then. I do resent how easily everything takes a turn for the worse again.
Spent a bit of time dwelling on the catastrophe and it looked like it was going to rain the next day as well. In order to stand any chance of salvaging the last few days of trip, I decided to reschedule the following day as well to allow the chance to come back to this city later in the week, at an additional cost of course.
The weather had cleared by the afternoon, so took a chance on a smaller park to try and get something done.
Shenming Unoversal City
Struggled to get into this place as they were in the middle of setting up huge marquees for an upcoming food festival. As is usual on a day that once contained rain, many stares of ‘what the hell are you doing outdoors?’ were shot in our direction by everyone we encountered. The park has no entrance as such, you just wander into a rides area in between some buildings and it’s a wristband or token system. There were lots of staff milling around, cleaning things, running some kiddy flats for a laugh, but absolutely no guests. Interrupted a bloke chatting up the token girl to ask if the creds were gonna happen. “It’s not safe, the track is wet.”
Example of wetness.
Thought so.
Day 11 – Chengdu
Arrived first thing in the morning, the sun was shining. Let’s get something done this time.
Happy Valley Chengdu?
Took a bus to the park. It did a Fantawild Zhengzhou, but worse, dumping guests on the wrong side of 12 lanes of fast moving traffic with no way to cross. There wasn’t even an enterprise of tuk-tuks to come to the rescue. Ended up complaining a lot, getting back on another of the same buses until somewhere much further down the road where there was a bridge to cross, then getting another bus in the opposite direction to end up on the right side of the death trap. How is this a thing?
I later worked out that there’s 4 bus stops for ‘the resort’ on the corner of Chinese spaghetti junction and it depends on which route the various buses that serve it are headed (east-west/north-south) as to whether you can actually get into the place without dying in a traffic accident or not.
Highlight of this experience? Chicken on a bus.
Well that took longer than expected. Let’s actually ride some rollercoasters today then.
Got to the ticket window, read the dreaded ‘things that are closed’ sign. All 3 major creds (Megalite, GCI, B&M) closed for today. Sweet. Another park that can’t be bothered to run more than 50% of what it has. Asked the staff for a bit more info, stating that we could reasonably come back in the next couple of days to actually ride something worthwhile, if that concept meant anything to them at all. The response was some obviously made up crap about annual maintenance for the 2 new coasters (not even a year old yet) and the “red one” (Megalite) “might be back tomorrow. It’s best if you buy a ticket, go inside and ask them yourselves.”
Laughed in their face and went to see some pandas instead.
Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
Most likely the best place in the world to see pandas of all shapes and sizes.
Unfortunately many of the shapes and sizes weren’t accessible at the time.
But I’ve never seen so many in one go, so still impressive stuff.
Always been a bigger fan of red pandas to be honest.
Happened to catch the feeding time.
Some small birds came in to steal a portion, but they’ve emplyed a peacock security guard.
Awww.
Hmmm.
Quite enjoyed the place. It is what it is really. There’s a few buildings with information, stories and interactive stuff around (panda porn included) and they’re doing some good work in trying to stop the fussy fellows from making themselves extinct.
A two day drought of rides on a trip like this is just unacceptable. Let’s see if we can get back on track tomorrow.
Back to the important stuff then. Jumped on a free shuttle bus with a handful of guests, one of whom was bringing a cat to the park.
This particular bus dumps you the other side of a big food court that you have to walk through to get to the park. I believe they’re commercially linked, but you can never be too sure.
And here we are. Day 9 – Lewa Adventure
Ticket lady said all of the rollercoasters ‘should’ be open. Hmmm.
Had a bit of faff upon entering the park, where the bag scan found a couple of snacks of ours and they didn’t like that. They did however let us store food at guest services for free.
Powered over to the back of the park to find out for myself if I was instantly going to hate this place. One of the biggest draws of this trip was the opportunity to ride Flash, the very first Mack hyper coaster, but with my luck so far it could easily all have ended in another let down.
Where other rides had opening times, this had nothing. It’s a humourous read though.
Staff guy in front of some tensa barriers says “they’re just doing some cleaning before opening for the day. Wait 10 minutes.” Well that’s a relief.
Camped out the entrance with a few others. This never usually happens, so the locals obviously have a rare sense of appreciation for quality rides here. 20 minutes later he got the call and everyone excitedly rushed up to him again, only to stand and watch him slowly take down 5 of the barriers, one at a time, walk them over to another area of queue and set them up again.
From there, he lead us to the cattlepen holding section where we waited yet another 20 minutes, watching the staff wander backwards and forwards in the station, occasionally looking over at him and saying nothing. Gets another call. Safety announcement spiel. We’re in.
#1 Flash
First impressions were really good. Going up the lift with the loop track directly above you is quite a surreal sensation, making you think it’s not going to make it up there, but then the train just keeps on climbing. The power-dives alluded to on the sign are great fun, as are the gallops and vrilles.
It’s very well paced and rather graceful about the whole execution, with a great mix of forces all round. I couldn’t feel the trims on the hills, all of which had a very decent kick to them. The zero-G is spot on (great to see hyper coasters breaking the mould by having inversions now) and the fast twisty section at the end adds a bit more flavour.
Operations note: The station has an exit ramp, but they weren’t using it for the first half of the day, resulting in that same old problem where the already ridiculously low throughput is further destroyed by having to wait for everyone to slowly bumble out of the station and back down the entrance ramp. It didn’t matter at all on this day, as they were struggling to fill the train, but I hope they don’t pull that nonsense with any sort of queue present. False hope. If one of the ideas out of this great Chinese park mystery is true, that they purposefully run these rides slower to keep costs down, it gets cancelled out by them missing out on potential revenue from not diverting you through the exit shop here.
Interesting note from the ride plaque: My favourite Mack trains have a predicted life span of 10 years. The structure has a life of 50 years!
What other things do I have to suffer before I can come back for more laps then?
SLC?
Another great sign, ‘tortuous way’ sounds about right.
But the demon of spite says it’s closed all day.
Not to worry. Been a whole 3 days without a mine train clone.
Sabertooth tiger, eyes filling with blood, says come on in.
#2 Crazy Mining Kart
It was a thing. The operator was having a good time singing.
Another Chinese youngstar?
Demon of spite says no.
There’s also another worm ride here but with specific signage saying no adults. Fair enough.
(Not) a Vekoma Boomerang? This had no signs at all, but apparently it’s broken. Bit disappointed, rather wanted to try a different manufacturer’s attempt at awfulness.
You guessed it. Closed.
Another hideous loopscrew coaster? This one has a very peculiar maximum height restriction of 1.73m which, being a top end thrill attraction, rules out almost anyone from riding it. Got the briefest of eye ups from a staff member who very scientifically said nope, you’re too tall. Laughed in his face. Next.
#3 Motor Rider
Which only leaves the Motocoaster. I believe I’ve only done a Zamperla original of this and this Golden Horse edition was somehow better. Slightly. It’s still moving for the sake of motion.
And that’s the park. I’ll leave you with some Flash porn then.
Racked up a fair few laps and it seemed to get even better over those hills, both front and back. Great stuff.
I would criticise the park for having less than 50% of its major attractions available during the day, but I don’t care now. I got what I came for and I absolutely loved it. It takes a ride like this to see the priorities sometimes.
I know it’s not like me, but today you’ll have to suffer through pure sightseeing. Not a single cred was squeezed in.
Day 8 – Terracotta Army
So this place isn’t how I imagined it to be. For some reason I pictured it out in the sticks a bit, but instead it still feels like it’s in the city, which is a bit run down and rubbish. The bus wasn’t great, taking 90 minutes for what was meant to be an hour of journey and then dumping you in the hell, next to the actual attraction, which is 100 people running over and shouting at you to come buy their touted tickets/MERS food/knock off souvenirs. This observation is mainly in comparison to the Great Wall buses, which all had a dedicated guide instructing you during the journey on what to do when you arrive to avoid this crap. Powered past it anyway and into the legit ticket office. We had arrived painfully early (~07:30) to avoid any ridiculous levels of overcrowding and this worked, getting us through the turnstyles within 5 minutes, slithering past 10000 tour groups of confused old people already causing chaos.
Another swift 10 minute walk through some trees and here we are.
The place is split into 3 ‘pits’, the first one having all this lot standing to attention:
Also not quite what I imagined. Pictured it to be a little adventure through some narrow old tomb (mainly thanks to Fantawild), rather than an aircraft hanger. But with other people involved, that would probably be disgusting.
Pit 3 has some broken ones.
Pit 2 they haven’t fully dug up.
It was all nice, quiet and relaxed in those bits. They had a few exhibits to the side of the buildings with stories and individual statues in glass (making for terrible pictures).
There was also a seasonal exhibition hall which had something in, but by the time we reached that it was a total scrum and you couldn’t really see anything. Believe it was about light and dark. Meh.
For one of the ‘big things’ to do out here, I wouldn’t really rate it personally. Might be because I prefer more of a visual experience as opposed to reading history while standing up. As we’ll come to later, I’d say there’s better ‘culture’ elsewhere in this city.
Heading back out of the place, there’s an assortment of shops, restaurants and stalls.
We’ve all got this guy to thank for discovering all that apparently. Smug.
Included free in the same ticket is the Emporer’s Mausoleum, so jumped on the shuttle bus for that next.
Heading into the place there’s an assortment of stalls and animals.
They were all just setting up for the day, so it was still very early.
Again, not what I was expecting. The tomb is an underground pyramid, under some grass in a closed off area. They ain’t done yet.
Turns out it’s a bit of that.
Some of that.
And a whole lot of this.
Here’s a model of the 2 for reference. Terracotta buildings on the left, whatever this place is on the right. All those surrounding areas of trees, now run down suburbs.
Looked like you can just walk out the back of the pit area and into this other place, rather than all the way off the left edge of the screen to take a shuttle bus, but that would be too clever wouldn’t it.
Legs already tiring, decided that was enough of that.
From the plaza outside, we found someone offering a completely unofficial ride to the next thing on the agenda. Jumped in some bloke’s minivan with 1 other customer and off to
Huaqing Palace
This place seems more seemlessly integrated with the city, rather than having slums form around it. I actually really liked it.
Palace is an understatement to be honest, it’s a whole complex of its own, similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing but nowhere near so ’99 things the same’. It wasn’t built as a place to rule China from, it was built as a place to chill out with the ladies.
Also comes with a free mountain.
Some of the buildings have museums in.
Others just sit pretty.
The complex is also linked to Huaqing Pool, in which some of the areas are hot springs.
Wisely decided to take the cable car up to the top of the mountain. It did an E-stop not far into the journey, which was rather fun, and then restarted very quickly. A woman at the top decided to have a hilarious shouting assault at the ticket window about the incident, claiming they shouldn’t have stopped it like that. All they could do was laugh in her face.
An overview of the size of the palace area.
Still going up.
Bit murky at the top. From here it gets a bit more complicated, as you’ve entered normal civilisation again, public roads and houses.
There’s a team of golf buggy entrepeneurs on hand who do pick-ups and drop-offs at the various bits to see up here. They’d have you believe the sights are spread across “3 mountains” meaning “walking up and down each one”, but that’s a slight exaggeration/sales pitch. It is walkable, though as we’ll soon find out the sit down is rather welcome.
Stop 1.
Stop 2. There’s a bird park up here. Didn’t fancy it.
Stop 3. A nice quiet temple area.
Stop 4. More, busier temple areas.
Final stop. Still more temples. They all have different shrines and statues for various Gods within. Not meant to take pictures inside though.
Unwisely opted to walk back down to the bottom of the mountain from here. It’s a long old way – must have been a couple of thousand stairs downwards, interspersed with winding pathways.
All those steps turned the legs to jelly and it was somewhat more difficult to walk for the next couple of days.
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.
