I was going to do this in a few sections, but have just been coming back to it between stuff at work, so will just chuck it all together.
I’d been to Vietnam years ago (Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi) and absolutely hated Hanoi at the time, vowing never to go back. To be honest, I think I was tired and cranky since it was the end of a very intense 3-week trip and I was just a bit over it by that point. Anyway, since then, a fairly major park has opened up not too far away, so creds.
Day 1 – Hanoi
There was a cred, which had been SBNO last time I was here but has since been renovated/repainted, partway between the airport and hotel, so I got a taxi there. They were just about to close, but I managed to run in quickly and get the cred, a crappy Meisho looper. The few pictures are from outside after closing since they kicked me out very quickly. I was hoping to get a look around and maybe find an unexpected kiddy cred or something but that wasn’t happening.
Onto the hotel then. I stayed in the same area as I had last time, near some lake/old town area that is most popular for tourists. I’d stayed in some s**thole last time, which may have contributed to how much I hated the place, but I’m not poor now, so stayed somewhere much nicer. I had an early morning coming up the next day, so I just did a circuit of the lake and got food. I hadn’t been overly impressed before, but thinking back I’d only seen it during the day. It was much nicer at night when the air pollution isn't visible.
Bunch of pictures:
That’s it for Day 1 then.
Day 2 – Halong Bay
There were quite a few annoyances and rearrangements with this, which I know everyone is positively gasping to know about, so I will bore you with the details as they happen. Basically, I didn’t need as much time as I’d originally given myself and the transport I’d booked required a bit of faff.
I’d booked hotel pick-up/drop off for 9am in the morning - the drive to Halong Bay is around 4 hours – but the company “advised” that I might want to get a 7am pick up instead since the 9am might not be as comfortable since it was busier – lots of luggage etc. and made up of “noisy local” people. I think they’d just overbooked to be honest, but whatever. I did them a favour and just went earlier, getting there for around 11.
It was too early to check into the hotel. This was annoying since the hotel was huge, almost totally empty and rooms were obviously ready. To be fair, they said they’d let me get the room a little earlier. I just had a walk around for a bit and got food. I’d been to Halong Bay before, so didn’t need to do any of the regular tourist s**t. It’s famous for the scenery and people do day trips or 2-3 day cruises around the area. The weather is miserable at that time of year though, so it’s not a great time to visit, making the whole place dead. I was on the "wrong" side of the bay as well, which is much more local than tourist-based, because I'd planned around a nearby park (wrongly it turns out, more later).
View from the hotel room balcony:
Annoyance number two. Well, it was a good thing really, but wasn’t what I’d planned for. Dragon Park wasn’t supposed to be open on this day – it’s only open Friday-Sunday and public holidays off-season – but when I double checked opening times for the next day as I was arriving in the area, they’d decided to open from 2pm on that first day. It was Valentine's Day, so I think they were trying to grab a bit of that market. The original plan was to just do the “Wheel” park (seen above from the hotel), which is open all week, that first afternoon and Dragon Park the next day. I’d chosen the hotel on the east side of the bay with the wheel park in mind.
Anyway, once I found out that Dragon Park was actually open, I got a taxi back over to the other side of the bay since, ya know, cred anxiety.
Dragon Park
A bit of background: this place is owned by the Sun World group who have a couple of other parks around Vietnam and are the ones who are installing new/relocated stuff around the place. I’ll sum up later, but I liked what I saw.
Nice entrance area with Year of the Dog decorations for Chinese New Year (also a major holiday here).
The place was totally dead, probably down to the last-minute decision to open which people wouldn’t have known about, along with the general quietness of the area as a whole at that time of year.
First priority. I’m sure everyone’s aware that it came from Hard Rock Park – Sun World bought all of their coasters (I think?) to spread around the chain, but two of them have now been scrapped without opening.
I got the first train of the day, completely to myself, and opted for the front row. The outside of the station is very nice, but it’s very generic inside.
I liked it. It’s by far the weakest of the 4 B&M sit down loopers I’ve done (all of them?), not including any floorless, but it was decent enough and a fantastic addition for Vietnam. The first drop and zero-g were the highlights really.
A back row ride later changed my mind a bit though. For a B&M, especially such a new one, it was pretty rough with a harsh rattle through a lot of the course. That’s being very picky though. Rough “for a B&M” is still very rideable, but it was much, much better in the front. No on-board audio, though you can clearly see the speakers throughout the train. Well, the speaker covers at least; no idea if there's actually any hardware left behind them. I'd guess probably not thinking about it.
I did a couple more front row rides (one of them even had two other people sitting next to me!) and went off to see what else was around.
Open, but no thanks:
The second coaster was a Vekoma family thing, a common clone which most people would have done, which I think was new and not relocated. There was nice theming here again.
The ride ops asked if I wanted to stay on for a second go. Not really, but they were really nice, friendly and eager to please, so I just said yes. This was the same across the park really. With the B&M, there’s a separate offload station, so they couldn’t let you stay on the train. However, they opened a little side door to let you get straight back to the loading platform rather than have to walk all the way back around. Good stuff.
I’ll just throw some pictures in. Everything was open except for the water rides (time of year) and the Topple Tower, which was far from shocking. No idea where it came from, but I’m pretty sure Huss stopped making/selling them? Either way, I’m sure this park, like all others, regret getting it.
The third coaster was the “Kvasten” layout of a Family Suspended Coaster. Again, I was the only rider and again was asked by enthusiastic ride ops if I wanted to "play again". Didn’t have the heart to say no, so off I went.
I did the monorail around the park. There’s a second station/park entrance directly opposite the main one, but it wasn't being used for obvious reasons, so the monorail didn’t stop there.
I finished up with some more rides on the B&M and decided to head over to the Sun Wheel park. It was only around 5pm by this point – the park was open until 8 – but I’d done everything I wanted with loads of rerides, so decided to just polish off the other place.
Overall thoughts then. The pictures make the place look a bit bland, but it’s because of the lack of people and the dull weather. I thought it was actually really nice, with a very impressive entrance area and decent theming scattered around the place. The staff here were great, all very efficient, friendly and enthusiastic (though it felt a bit weird getting cheers and a round of applause every time I trundled back to the coaster station, alone).
Operations were excellent as well. When I saw how quiet it was, I was expecting closed rides and/or long waits between dispatches, but that wasn’t the case at all. As soon as you sat down, they got the trains out immediately.
Mystic Mountain
I don’t think I mentioned earlier that the park with the wheel is owned by the same people as Dragon Park. There’s a cable car opposite the entrance of Dragon Park that takes you across the bay. The park is actually called Mystic Mountain. I’d bought a combo ticket for 500,000 dong (about 15 quid). The two places separately were 300,000 each. The cable car currently holds two world records: tallest cable car tower and largest capacity cabin.
Annoyingly, there were a couple of coachloads of Korean tourists just arriving, so it was a fair bit busier than Dragon Park.
Samurai Slide (double alpine coasters) and the wheel were included in the price along with the return cable car. There were a couple of upcharge things that I didn’t bother with, like a wax museum and 3D cinema.
The alpine coasters (yes, they’re creds) were pretty good. I haven’t done a huge number of them, but these were decent. I’ll just chuck some more general pictures in, plus some from the ferris wheel. The view was decent enough at night, but during the day, with decent weather, overlooking Halong Bay, it must be pretty spectacular really.
Now another annoyance. I’d figured that I could just walk back down to my hotel from there. There’s definitely a road, obviously all downhill, which looked like it would have taken about 15-20 minutes. However, unless I’d missed it, there was no actual public access. The park exit just takes you back to the cable car, meaning that I had to go back to the total opposite side of the bay, just to take another taxi back over the bridge to the “wheel” side to get to the hotel. There was no way to know this given that I’m such a pioneer and nobody had reported from these places before, but lesson learned. The cable car station on the Dragon Park side acts as an entrance, exit and ticket office. If I’d have known, I would’ve stayed in a hotel on that side and saved a bit of effort. Oh well.
Geek shot of the cable car machinery and the fountains at night:
Day 3 – Back to Hanoi
Because of the surprise opening of Dragon Park the previous day, I now had a whole day and night free in Halong Bay. I thought about doing a boat trip, but I’d done it already and the weather was just too cloudy/misty for it to be worth bothering. I then thought I’d just have a lazy day at the hotel since it was nice, but instead decided to just head back to Hanoi early, figuring that having extra time to kill in a bigger city would be better. Plus, it was Chinese New Year’s Eve, so it was probably going to be a decent night out.
I had the same company booked to get me back to Hanoi the next day, but I called to see if they could change it to that day. There was a bit more faff since the fancy “limo” minibus I’d used to get there was fully booked, but they were able to put me onto a bigger, not quite so nice bus instead. No problem. It also meant I would have to make my way to a major pick-up point, like some homeless person, rather than get collected at the hotel, but the pick up was right next to a park that I wasn’t going to bother with, and I had a couple of hours before the bus. Bonus!
White Rabbit Park
This is what the place was listed as on RCDB, but it’s not called that at all.
Tuan Chau Amusement Park
This didn’t look promising:
The place definitely wasn’t open. There were "no entry" signs from the road which I “didn’t notice” so just went in for a nose around. It was really hard to tell if it was just down for winter maintenance or down for good. I honestly don’t know.
Spiteful cred:
The whole thing is part of a very big complex, with the bus I needed at a different entrance to the one I’d been dropped off at, about a ten-minute walk away.
The bus was uneventful, but comfortable enough considering it was the semi-peasant option. The journey back into Hanoi was quicker than going out as well. I went for a walk down to some city park with a cred, to make up for the abject disappointment of the spite earlier in the day.
Then walked back to the hotel.
I went out that night and then spent the next day/night doing mostly nothing thanks to a hangover, a lot of stuff being shut anyway because it was New Year’s Day, and a distinct lack of enthusiasm to be arsed to do anything.
Not a bad few days really. Because of park openings, I ended up with an extra day that I didn’t really need, and that meant a bit of faff with rearranging hotels and transport, but whatever.
Anyone doing Halong Bay, (you know, because you’ve decided to actually boycott your Merlin annual pass this time after your annual Facebook hissy fit over reduced opening hours), should definitely take a day to do the boat trip since it’s a gorgeous area, but I didn’t feel the need to do it again, and I wouldn’t recommend that time of year to do it.
Hanoi slightly redeemed itself. It’s nowhere near as awful as I remembered it, but it’s still not somewhere I’m itching to get back to anytime soon. I had another, bigger trip lined up, but was back in Hong Kong for a night first. Just made more sense.
I’d been to Vietnam years ago (Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi) and absolutely hated Hanoi at the time, vowing never to go back. To be honest, I think I was tired and cranky since it was the end of a very intense 3-week trip and I was just a bit over it by that point. Anyway, since then, a fairly major park has opened up not too far away, so creds.
Day 1 – Hanoi
There was a cred, which had been SBNO last time I was here but has since been renovated/repainted, partway between the airport and hotel, so I got a taxi there. They were just about to close, but I managed to run in quickly and get the cred, a crappy Meisho looper. The few pictures are from outside after closing since they kicked me out very quickly. I was hoping to get a look around and maybe find an unexpected kiddy cred or something but that wasn’t happening.
Onto the hotel then. I stayed in the same area as I had last time, near some lake/old town area that is most popular for tourists. I’d stayed in some s**thole last time, which may have contributed to how much I hated the place, but I’m not poor now, so stayed somewhere much nicer. I had an early morning coming up the next day, so I just did a circuit of the lake and got food. I hadn’t been overly impressed before, but thinking back I’d only seen it during the day. It was much nicer at night when the air pollution isn't visible.
Bunch of pictures:
That’s it for Day 1 then.
Day 2 – Halong Bay
There were quite a few annoyances and rearrangements with this, which I know everyone is positively gasping to know about, so I will bore you with the details as they happen. Basically, I didn’t need as much time as I’d originally given myself and the transport I’d booked required a bit of faff.
I’d booked hotel pick-up/drop off for 9am in the morning - the drive to Halong Bay is around 4 hours – but the company “advised” that I might want to get a 7am pick up instead since the 9am might not be as comfortable since it was busier – lots of luggage etc. and made up of “noisy local” people. I think they’d just overbooked to be honest, but whatever. I did them a favour and just went earlier, getting there for around 11.
It was too early to check into the hotel. This was annoying since the hotel was huge, almost totally empty and rooms were obviously ready. To be fair, they said they’d let me get the room a little earlier. I just had a walk around for a bit and got food. I’d been to Halong Bay before, so didn’t need to do any of the regular tourist s**t. It’s famous for the scenery and people do day trips or 2-3 day cruises around the area. The weather is miserable at that time of year though, so it’s not a great time to visit, making the whole place dead. I was on the "wrong" side of the bay as well, which is much more local than tourist-based, because I'd planned around a nearby park (wrongly it turns out, more later).
View from the hotel room balcony:
Annoyance number two. Well, it was a good thing really, but wasn’t what I’d planned for. Dragon Park wasn’t supposed to be open on this day – it’s only open Friday-Sunday and public holidays off-season – but when I double checked opening times for the next day as I was arriving in the area, they’d decided to open from 2pm on that first day. It was Valentine's Day, so I think they were trying to grab a bit of that market. The original plan was to just do the “Wheel” park (seen above from the hotel), which is open all week, that first afternoon and Dragon Park the next day. I’d chosen the hotel on the east side of the bay with the wheel park in mind.
Anyway, once I found out that Dragon Park was actually open, I got a taxi back over to the other side of the bay since, ya know, cred anxiety.
Dragon Park
A bit of background: this place is owned by the Sun World group who have a couple of other parks around Vietnam and are the ones who are installing new/relocated stuff around the place. I’ll sum up later, but I liked what I saw.
Nice entrance area with Year of the Dog decorations for Chinese New Year (also a major holiday here).
The place was totally dead, probably down to the last-minute decision to open which people wouldn’t have known about, along with the general quietness of the area as a whole at that time of year.
First priority. I’m sure everyone’s aware that it came from Hard Rock Park – Sun World bought all of their coasters (I think?) to spread around the chain, but two of them have now been scrapped without opening.
I got the first train of the day, completely to myself, and opted for the front row. The outside of the station is very nice, but it’s very generic inside.
I liked it. It’s by far the weakest of the 4 B&M sit down loopers I’ve done (all of them?), not including any floorless, but it was decent enough and a fantastic addition for Vietnam. The first drop and zero-g were the highlights really.
A back row ride later changed my mind a bit though. For a B&M, especially such a new one, it was pretty rough with a harsh rattle through a lot of the course. That’s being very picky though. Rough “for a B&M” is still very rideable, but it was much, much better in the front. No on-board audio, though you can clearly see the speakers throughout the train. Well, the speaker covers at least; no idea if there's actually any hardware left behind them. I'd guess probably not thinking about it.
I did a couple more front row rides (one of them even had two other people sitting next to me!) and went off to see what else was around.
Open, but no thanks:
The second coaster was a Vekoma family thing, a common clone which most people would have done, which I think was new and not relocated. There was nice theming here again.
The ride ops asked if I wanted to stay on for a second go. Not really, but they were really nice, friendly and eager to please, so I just said yes. This was the same across the park really. With the B&M, there’s a separate offload station, so they couldn’t let you stay on the train. However, they opened a little side door to let you get straight back to the loading platform rather than have to walk all the way back around. Good stuff.
I’ll just throw some pictures in. Everything was open except for the water rides (time of year) and the Topple Tower, which was far from shocking. No idea where it came from, but I’m pretty sure Huss stopped making/selling them? Either way, I’m sure this park, like all others, regret getting it.
The third coaster was the “Kvasten” layout of a Family Suspended Coaster. Again, I was the only rider and again was asked by enthusiastic ride ops if I wanted to "play again". Didn’t have the heart to say no, so off I went.
I did the monorail around the park. There’s a second station/park entrance directly opposite the main one, but it wasn't being used for obvious reasons, so the monorail didn’t stop there.
I finished up with some more rides on the B&M and decided to head over to the Sun Wheel park. It was only around 5pm by this point – the park was open until 8 – but I’d done everything I wanted with loads of rerides, so decided to just polish off the other place.
Overall thoughts then. The pictures make the place look a bit bland, but it’s because of the lack of people and the dull weather. I thought it was actually really nice, with a very impressive entrance area and decent theming scattered around the place. The staff here were great, all very efficient, friendly and enthusiastic (though it felt a bit weird getting cheers and a round of applause every time I trundled back to the coaster station, alone).
Operations were excellent as well. When I saw how quiet it was, I was expecting closed rides and/or long waits between dispatches, but that wasn’t the case at all. As soon as you sat down, they got the trains out immediately.
Mystic Mountain
I don’t think I mentioned earlier that the park with the wheel is owned by the same people as Dragon Park. There’s a cable car opposite the entrance of Dragon Park that takes you across the bay. The park is actually called Mystic Mountain. I’d bought a combo ticket for 500,000 dong (about 15 quid). The two places separately were 300,000 each. The cable car currently holds two world records: tallest cable car tower and largest capacity cabin.
Annoyingly, there were a couple of coachloads of Korean tourists just arriving, so it was a fair bit busier than Dragon Park.
Samurai Slide (double alpine coasters) and the wheel were included in the price along with the return cable car. There were a couple of upcharge things that I didn’t bother with, like a wax museum and 3D cinema.
The alpine coasters (yes, they’re creds) were pretty good. I haven’t done a huge number of them, but these were decent. I’ll just chuck some more general pictures in, plus some from the ferris wheel. The view was decent enough at night, but during the day, with decent weather, overlooking Halong Bay, it must be pretty spectacular really.
Now another annoyance. I’d figured that I could just walk back down to my hotel from there. There’s definitely a road, obviously all downhill, which looked like it would have taken about 15-20 minutes. However, unless I’d missed it, there was no actual public access. The park exit just takes you back to the cable car, meaning that I had to go back to the total opposite side of the bay, just to take another taxi back over the bridge to the “wheel” side to get to the hotel. There was no way to know this given that I’m such a pioneer and nobody had reported from these places before, but lesson learned. The cable car station on the Dragon Park side acts as an entrance, exit and ticket office. If I’d have known, I would’ve stayed in a hotel on that side and saved a bit of effort. Oh well.
Geek shot of the cable car machinery and the fountains at night:
Day 3 – Back to Hanoi
Because of the surprise opening of Dragon Park the previous day, I now had a whole day and night free in Halong Bay. I thought about doing a boat trip, but I’d done it already and the weather was just too cloudy/misty for it to be worth bothering. I then thought I’d just have a lazy day at the hotel since it was nice, but instead decided to just head back to Hanoi early, figuring that having extra time to kill in a bigger city would be better. Plus, it was Chinese New Year’s Eve, so it was probably going to be a decent night out.
I had the same company booked to get me back to Hanoi the next day, but I called to see if they could change it to that day. There was a bit more faff since the fancy “limo” minibus I’d used to get there was fully booked, but they were able to put me onto a bigger, not quite so nice bus instead. No problem. It also meant I would have to make my way to a major pick-up point, like some homeless person, rather than get collected at the hotel, but the pick up was right next to a park that I wasn’t going to bother with, and I had a couple of hours before the bus. Bonus!
White Rabbit Park
This is what the place was listed as on RCDB, but it’s not called that at all.
Tuan Chau Amusement Park
This didn’t look promising:
The place definitely wasn’t open. There were "no entry" signs from the road which I “didn’t notice” so just went in for a nose around. It was really hard to tell if it was just down for winter maintenance or down for good. I honestly don’t know.
Spiteful cred:
The whole thing is part of a very big complex, with the bus I needed at a different entrance to the one I’d been dropped off at, about a ten-minute walk away.
The bus was uneventful, but comfortable enough considering it was the semi-peasant option. The journey back into Hanoi was quicker than going out as well. I went for a walk down to some city park with a cred, to make up for the abject disappointment of the spite earlier in the day.
Then walked back to the hotel.
I went out that night and then spent the next day/night doing mostly nothing thanks to a hangover, a lot of stuff being shut anyway because it was New Year’s Day, and a distinct lack of enthusiasm to be arsed to do anything.
Not a bad few days really. Because of park openings, I ended up with an extra day that I didn’t really need, and that meant a bit of faff with rearranging hotels and transport, but whatever.
Anyone doing Halong Bay, (you know, because you’ve decided to actually boycott your Merlin annual pass this time after your annual Facebook hissy fit over reduced opening hours), should definitely take a day to do the boat trip since it’s a gorgeous area, but I didn’t feel the need to do it again, and I wouldn’t recommend that time of year to do it.
Hanoi slightly redeemed itself. It’s nowhere near as awful as I remembered it, but it’s still not somewhere I’m itching to get back to anytime soon. I had another, bigger trip lined up, but was back in Hong Kong for a night first. Just made more sense.
