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What's going on with Xishuangbanna Sunac Land?

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For those not aware, Xishuangbanna Sunac Land is a Chinese park that has a custom B&M flyer named Harpy and a large Intamin water coaster named Hydro Racer. The park is soon to turn six years old, opening in May of 2015 according to RCDB, but apparently, the place has been shut since May 2020 for "refurbishment" and is expected to reopen in December 2021.

I know things work very differently over in China, but a park being closed for over a year and a half for refurbishment is pretty staggering, so I was wondering if any of our resident China experts could provide some more details on what is happening and if this December re-opening is actually looking to come to fruition, or if the park is more likely to shut permanently. I came across this today and it left me pretty perplexed, especially since I can't find much else information online, so any answers would be much appreciated.
 
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Matt N

CF Legend
I’m not sure whether the resident China experts know any more, but I think the park was only recently purchased by Sunac, so maybe Sunac just want to put their mark upon it a little more?
 

gavin

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Sunac have had it for a while. Without checking dates, I guess I was there about two years ago, and it was already Sunac branded.

It's far too new to be needing renovations. Everything was impeccable when I was there. That's bulls**t and a very typical excuse for China, especially regarding rides/parks that are closed, where they're not keen on transparency at all. Saving face comes far and above honesty, so anything that looks like failure will not be admitted.

I can only speak for the one visit I had, but I went at the weekend, with gorgeous weather, and there were probably, no exaggeration, somewhere between 20-30 people in the park. The water park may have been busier, but there was no indication of that either given the lack of people around the entrance plaza.

What's strange about this park is that it's out by itself purely as a park and not attached to anything else. Wanda basically got away with building huge shopping malls and luxury apartment complexes by including theme parks in the package which enabled them to get around certain planning restrictions. "We're building an entertainment complex to massively benefit the city which just happens to have apartments and shopping (which is where ALL the profits for the venture will come from); it's not about the apartments at all; honest!"

When Sunac bought Wanda's tourism assets, they didn't get to choose parks individually. I'd like to be wrong since it was a lovely park, but since there's clearly no money coming in from Xishuangbanna, I really think it will just quietly disappear.



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HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
so maybe Sunac just want to put their mark upon it a little more?
Not really their style.
I had a quick dig and couldn't find anything other than plans to massively expand the overall resort of Xishuangbanna, which pulls people in for a ton of different reasons outside the theme park - it's small change really and it also showed on my visit where staff easily outnumbered guests for the day.
The park closed for covid obviously and then there was a government initiative to reward key worker equivalents with free days out and experiences, of which the resort, perhaps the park itself - not sure, was a participant of.
The announcement on the website itself reads along the lines of the renovation being to meet 'new provincial tourist regulations', which sounds a bit dodgy at face value but could be far more generic. It's a terrible website anyway, they always have been for Sunac/Wanda, news hasn't been updated since '18.
I'll err on the side of optimism and say it will reopen, unchanged, in the hopes that other new stuff in the area will bring footfall. I would say 'don't care, got the creds', but Harpy is awesome so it would be sad.
 
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