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Xishuangbanna PTR - Part 1: Sunac World

gavin

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I’ve had this place on my radar for ages, but never managed to make it work before now. It’s pretty out of the way, close to the borders with Myanmar and Laos, with no direct flight options from around here.

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There are plenty of flights from Kunming though, which is a MUCH more major city. I’d always planned to tie the two in together, but caved and did Kunming as a weekend trip by itself a while ago, not having time for Xishuangbanna as well. Regular weekends just don’t work from here because of flight times, and even a long weekend would be a bit rushed if I wanted to actually see anything of the area. Prices have always been ridiculous as well.

Anyway, everything finally lined up last weekend. I could finish work early on Thursday, being able to make a 5pm flight, then had Friday off, meaning that I had all day Friday and Saturday there before flying back on Sunday morning. No idea how it happened, but I managed to bag a flight for around 130 quid return (they’d been running between 400 – 700 when I’d looked at other times).

I got there quite late on the Thursday night, checked into my “International” hotel which was nothing of the kind (still very decent rooms, but VERY local), and headed straight out to the park the following morning.

Xishuangbanna Sunac Land

This used to be a Wanda Park, but they sold their theme park division to Sunac a while ago, so most of them have now been renamed. Nothing has really changed other than that, though I can’t see new parks being thrown up at the same rate anymore.

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Despite being a public holiday, the place was dead (the whole of Xishuanbanna was ridiculously quiet – theories later…), but everything was open.

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I went straight for the B&M, Harpy, half expecting it to not be open so early in the day - I was in the park by 10am – but it was. There was no sitting and waiting around either; they sent it straight off with just me on it. Have a bunch of repetitive pictures with no trains going around:

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I liked this. With this one, I’ve now done every B&M flyer (who wants to touch me?), and it sits fairly comfortably in the middle. It’s better than the Superman clones in that it seems to do a bit more and be an overall much more pleasant experience, but isn’t as unique or large-scale as the ones that sit at the top of my list (Flying Dinosaur, Tatsu, Sky Ripper…)

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I walked past this at first, and then forgot about and didn’t do it later. Oh well, it was probably s**t.

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Hydro Racer was a new coaster type for me. I’d done that thing that they used to have at Holiday World, which had the same lift, but was basically just a water chute after that.

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Again, I was the only person there, but they sent me off by myself with no faff.

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Meh. The elevator lift is a bit freaky I guess, but the rest of it was a bit s**t. I don’t know how the others work (and can’t be arsed to get on YouTube to check), but there’s no splashdown at all after the first drop; it just skims across the top of the water and into the coaster section. There is a splashdown after that, before it gets back to the station, but it was minimal. The boat was, admittedly, empty though, so it might have more of a splash if there are more people in it. Anyway, I prefer the Mack water coasters to this.

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Did the rapids. Look: another person!

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The final coaster was a Zamperla Motocoaster thing with horse theming. I think it was pretty much a clone of Pony Express at Knott’s, but I can’t be f**ked to check.

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Some other general stuff. There were a couple of shows that I didn’t see. One I missed as I was at the other end of the park, but could kind of hear from across the lake and sounded like some “cultural” thing, and the other seemed to be a fairly major ice skating thing, but it wasn’t on until hours later (and it seemed to be an upcharge). I did the awful inverting thing (Zamperla?) for something to do and since I hadn’t done one for years, and the shot tower as well. No idea who made that, but it felt very S&S at least.

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There were a couple of small groups in the park by now, so I stuck around to get these amazing action shots of the coasters and decided to call it a day after getting another ride in each on the two bigger ones, leaving at around half twelve I guess.

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The park then. I really liked it. Obviously, it was empty, so it lacked a lot of atmosphere, but it was a really pleasant place to be. It’s all very green and lush and feels very tropical, which obviously it is thanks to the location.

Operations were great. I’ve got no idea how things work if it’s busy, but I was pleased that they had everything open and had no issues running stuff with just me, and without making me sit there for ages waiting for non-existent other people. Staff were very smiley and friendly, which you rarely get in Chinese parks, with ride ops trying to call me over to ride their stuff, no doubt because they were just bored.

The ride selection was decent if not very big. There’s also a huge water park next door, and while the entrance area was still very quiet as I was leaving, the few people who were around seemed to be heading in there.

Park-wise, that’s it for this weekend, but I did some general sightseeing s**t that afternoon and on the next day, so I’ll chuck that in later.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
Good job on finally getting out there. I've had it on the radar forever as well but after doing Superman layouts and only vaguely knowing that this was almost the same layout, I couldn't be bothered as much. Glad to hear the ride is actually better.
The friendly staff calling you over thing seems to be a Wanda taught thing from my experience, had the same most notably in Nanchang with it being completely dead, the staff being bored and actually wanting to interact with humans. Most other places make you feel like an annoyance for making them do work.
 

gavin

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Since I don’t like leaving things unfinished, and since I’m sitting around at work with nothing to do, here’s the rest of the weekend.

I was done at the Sunac park fairly early, so got a taxi over to some botanical garden sort of place. It was nice.

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From there I walked back to the hotel area so I could see a bit of the place. I popped into some zoo on the way past to see if there were any surprise creds. There weren’t.

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The city itself is really nice though. There are a couple of areas with the typical huge Chinese buildings/squares etc., but the overall atmosphere is pretty laid back and feels a bit more Thai/Burmese/Laotian than Chinese.

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There was a big public square to the side of the hotel, which turns into a giant fountain. I didn’t realise this and was 2-minutes away from being stuck right in the middle of it when it all kicked off.

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I love that China just does mad s**t like this. The whole area was fab, just people hanging out, kids playing in the water or racing around on little electric vehicles you could hire.

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I had a full day left the next day, so started by walking around 10 minutes to what looked like a nearby city park, Manting Park, expecting the usual Chinese city park, which are usually really nice anyway, but getting something quite different.

The botanical garden from the day before was sort of listed as a must-do in the area, and it had been lovely, but this place was sooooooooooo much better.

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This was also the Sunday of a holiday weekend, but it was really quiet. The whole area is a really popular domestic tourism area, but it was dead for the whole weekend. I’m guessing it’s because of what the holiday actually was. It was the Dragon Boat Festival, and this area doesn’t do any dragon boat related s**t, so tourists who want to see that crap would go elsewhere (Hong Kong is always VILE for that holiday). Anyway, no complaints.

There was a temple outside another entrance to the park, but the whole thing was very “Thai” as opposed to the usual Chinese style.

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One of the main draws of the area is Wild Elephant Valley, which I’d originally planned on not doing, expecting it to be ridiculously busy because of the holiday, but since everywhere else was dead, I headed up.

Yunnan Province is the only place in China to have wild elephants, and there are supposed to be around 70 in this valley area. I didn’t see any, but I wasn’t that bothered since the whole area is gorgeous anyway. I took a cable car one way, which ends at a viewing area where the elephants often appear, then walked back from there.

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Again, the place was very quiet. I hung around at the main viewing area for a while – they’ve artificially widened part of the river to create a bathing pool for the elephants – but nothing showed up. Well, a few monkeys, and they were different from the usual macaques we get around this area.

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Lies:

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The walk back was lovely anyway. They’ve constructed a wooden walkway (must be about 3km) through the jungle, with widened rest stop/food/drinks areas, without doing the usual Chinese thing of covering it with flashing lights and noise.

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And I saw a gibbon, so that was a first. It was hard to get decent pictures because the sun was really bright behind it, and it looks half-dead because it was sleeping/dozing.

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Seen these things everywhere, but still:

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Near the entrance, there a butterfly house, which was nice, and an elephant show, which was disappointing to see. They’ve gone to an amazing effort to show off this huge natural habitat, with a good chance of seeing wild elephants, and then shoved elephant rides and a show in there as well, no doubt to placate the locals who expect this kind of s**t. Oh well.

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So, Xishuangbanna. Loved it.

The theme park isn’t really worth a huge effort, but the area itself is lovely, so it was definitely worthwhile finally making it work. It’s not far from Kunming, so anyone who’s there for a coaster trip (Colourful Yunnan Paradise is great) could easily take a quick detour down for the park if they had a day spare, but it’s definitely worth taking an extra day on top of that to see more stuff around the area.
 

Kw6sTheater

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The final coaster was a Zamperla Motocoaster thing with horse theming. I think it was pretty much a clone of Pony Express at Knott’s, but I can’t be f**ked to check.

Actually, Storm Rider is a near clone of Pony Express at Knott's Berry Farm, minus the finale. Whereas Pony Express does a turn into the brakes, Storm Rider negotiates a 540 degree helix as its finale.
 

Hixee

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That final section looks excellent. Really digging all of the colours with the temples/shrines etc buried in the big trees - beautiful!
 

gavin

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So how did you get to the park, was there a bus or did you have to get a cab?
I took a taxi. Well, DiDi (Chinese Uber). No idea about buses. Taxis are cheap enough in China that I never bother even looking into buses.

Sent from my Redmi Note 7 using Tapatalk
 
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