This trip was around a month ago now. When I get back to work after the summer holidays, there’s a whole-school staff meeting about 10 days before the kids actually come back to school, and the time between is punctuated with other annoying bits of crap that could be emails (department meetings, committee meetings etc.). Depending on when those fall, I often get a few days free between the crap. It’s been up to five days before, but this time I got three and a half – basically just a long weekend – but it was enough time for a decent park trip.
I’d had Wuxi on the radar for ages, ever since Wanda opened one of their parks there in 2019. I’d been to Joyland before, but done it as a day trip from Changzhou. I’ve been a bit stupid in not doing it sooner to be honest. Wuxi has its own airport, which has direct flights to/from Hong Kong, but not very frequently. Doing it as a weekend trip would be possible, but because of flight times, it would mean flying back to Shenzhen, arriving there quite late and then some extra faff getting back to Hong Kong.
Wuxi is really close to Shanghai though, isn’t it? Idiot. There are high-speed trains that run every 15 minutes and take around 40 minutes. It was so stupidly easy, especially flying into Hongqiao Airport. This is the old airport which is now mostly used for domestic flights, but also still has a number of international flights including regular ones to/from Hong Kong. It’s on the west side of the city, so on the “right” side to quickly head to Wuxi, and is a stop or two (depending on the terminal) to a high-speed train station. Ugh, could’ve done this ages ago. What a tw*t!
It wasn’t far from the train station to the hotel, but it was hot and gross so I just took a 5-minute Didi (local version of Uber). I got a really good deal on the Hyatt Regency, which is in the city’s tallest building. The views would’ve been good, if it had been clearer, but a combination of morning haze and crappy air quality put paid to that.
The first park had been on the “If I have time” list, but I saw that it opened really early, and there were no RCDB pictures, so I headed there first thing.
Axiong Paradise / Wuxi Zoo
The zoo opens at 8:30 in the morning, so I got there soon after. I wasn’t really expecting the rides to open that early, but they were getting stuff ready, so I had a fairly quick walk around the zoo (bigger than expected) and then back to the rides. The zoo was quite decent for a Chinese one. They had decent-sized enclosures for the most part, and lots of information in both Chinese and English. They’re supposed to have pandas, but that area was under renovation. No big deal since they’re basically everywhere.
The rides area is right next to the main entrance and translates to Bear Paradise. It’s all very new apart from a very old-looking water ride, including an “unknown” Jinma stock model family coaster. It turned out to be called “Jungle Porters”, or “Bush Poeter” according to the terrible sign on the station. +1.
Getting this out of the way early meant that I could still get to the major park, and main point of visiting Wuxi, not too long after opening.
Wuxi Sunac Land
This used to be a Wanda property, as evidenced by the huge shopping mall next to it, but they sold off their parks to Sunac.
I’d done a couple of Wanda parks before, but only one under Sunac, the one that opened in Guangzhou a few years ago. The entrance area was all very “Wanda”.
When I went to the Guangzhou park, they were still operating on the pay-one-price model, but they’ve moved to a pay-per-ride system, with various (way too many) packages available. You can still get an all-inclusive ticket though. This ticket wasn’t even scanned at the entrance – a staff member just waved me through – so it might have even been free entry; I’m not sure on that one.
The way it works is that on your first ride of the day, the QR code on your ticket is scanned, and a picture gets taken. For later rides, it just works on facial recognition, so you don’t need the ticket again. Other people were using their ID cards in place of a paper ticket, so I’m guessing that either gets linked at the ticket counter or you can maybe do it yourself with an online booking.
Somebody on Facebook said that they’d been told they MUST have a passport to get into the park. This isn’t true, but I’m guessing this is through a group tour and the passport will be used to book the ticket. Anyway, it’s fine to just show up and get a ticket at the counter.
The main attraction here is Falcon, which becomes visible very shortly after walking down the main entrance street.
It’s (kind of) the tallest B&M wing coaster. Apparently, Wild Eagle is actually taller (no height info on RCDB), but the drop is much smaller.
Operations were, predictably, s**t, with people being held well outside the station until the previous train had been emptied, and then counted through. The bint doing the counting wasn’t very good at it since there always seemed to be empty seats. With her being so far away from the platform though, she couldn’t even see it to check. So yeah, one train roughly every ten minutes, so what would be a B&M people eater elsewhere was managing around 160-180 people per hour.
This didn’t really matter though. The park was quite busy, but it was a Friday, and the pay-per-ride / package system worked really well in keeping the queue down. I never had to wait more than two trains to get on, but that still meant a 20-minute wait for something that could’ve been a walk-on.
Seating wasn't assigned - this would be true of all the parks this weekend - so one plus of only letting a trainload of people in at a time resulted in pretty much always getting the seat I wanted. The locals' faff upon entering the ride area (waiting to be told what to do etc.) meant I could just walk past them to any seat I wanted, meaning usually no issues getting front or back row rides.
Anyway, I really liked it, but then again, I tend to like this ride type more than most people seem to. I’ll throw more pictures in later as they appear in the upload.
There was what I think was a flying theatre, but the queue was quite long and was clearly going to take ages. I've got a feeling this was part of a popular package ticket since the queue for this, plus another dark ride later, were much, much bigger than anything else here.
Further into the park is a “steam” themed area with two of the other coasters. Dream Factory is a Zamperla factory coaster, the only one that exists at the moment. It’s their version of a multi-dimensional coaster, and despite seeming quite promising from the queue line, it was a bit s**t. The coaster sections don’t do anything, you stop and look at bad screens for way too long, there’s a backwards section and a drop track.
The other coaster in this area is a Mack Blue Fire clone. Again, people don’t seem to like these much, but if you’re going to get a stock model, I’d rather see one of these then most other options.
The biggest pain in the arse is that the entrance is nowhere near the exit, making rerides a chore. There were almost no people at this end of the park though, so there was no wait apart from general unnecessary station faff.
I’d made the mistake at Guangzhou Sunac of not realising that their water ride was actually a (dubious) cred. Lesson learned, but such a burden since these things are ridiculously wet. It was hot though, and I was wearing stuff that dried off very quickly, so it had to be done.
Up-charge = nope:
I also skipped the drop tower but joined the long queue for what seemed like a very big dark ride, Final Sea Battle. I got to the front over an hour later, only for it to go down. Ride ops were taking people’s phone numbers along with their position in the queue - I guess to message them when it reopened – but I was sure that just wasn’t going to work with a Hong Kong number, if they even bothered messaging anyone at all, and it was going to be my last ride before heading out anyway, so I didn’t want to hang around.
I’ve looked it up since and it looks very good, so that’s annoying. I kind of wish I’d stuck around for a bit now since I would've still had plenty of time.
I just took a few (loads) more pictures and then headed out. I’ll just chuck a couple more in.
There was a +2 park to be had, so I headed there. It’s apparently open quite late, but when I got there at around 4, it was dead.
Taihu Zhi Xing Park
This place has a huge Ferris wheel, which apparently has some decent lighting package, which seems to be the main draw here. There are also a Jinma family coaster and spinner.
A bit off topic, but this style of spinner, of which there are still loads admittedly, is starting to get phased out with quite a lot now either SBNO or removed completely. This adds to the idea, which a few of us who follow Chinese parks have, that coasters in China are given a very definite, fixed shelf life, which seems to be 20 years.
The Ferris wheel was huge. I did a brief search for information on it – by which I mean spending 30 seconds on the Wikipedia Ferris wheel page - but didn’t come up with anything. I’ve got a feeling it might have been relocated from Suzhou, from the park where the Vekoma Stingray used to be. The size seems to match up and the two cities are very close to each other. If that's the case, I've ridden it in both places.
I did a quick walk around the block near my hotel to say that I’d seen a bit of Wuxi, but I hadn’t really. From the taxis and view from the Ferris wheel, there seemed to be lots of nice areas though. There’s lots of greenery, lakes, parks etc., which could possibly be hiding a cred or two, but I got a train out to Suzhou the next morning.
I’d had Wuxi on the radar for ages, ever since Wanda opened one of their parks there in 2019. I’d been to Joyland before, but done it as a day trip from Changzhou. I’ve been a bit stupid in not doing it sooner to be honest. Wuxi has its own airport, which has direct flights to/from Hong Kong, but not very frequently. Doing it as a weekend trip would be possible, but because of flight times, it would mean flying back to Shenzhen, arriving there quite late and then some extra faff getting back to Hong Kong.
Wuxi is really close to Shanghai though, isn’t it? Idiot. There are high-speed trains that run every 15 minutes and take around 40 minutes. It was so stupidly easy, especially flying into Hongqiao Airport. This is the old airport which is now mostly used for domestic flights, but also still has a number of international flights including regular ones to/from Hong Kong. It’s on the west side of the city, so on the “right” side to quickly head to Wuxi, and is a stop or two (depending on the terminal) to a high-speed train station. Ugh, could’ve done this ages ago. What a tw*t!
It wasn’t far from the train station to the hotel, but it was hot and gross so I just took a 5-minute Didi (local version of Uber). I got a really good deal on the Hyatt Regency, which is in the city’s tallest building. The views would’ve been good, if it had been clearer, but a combination of morning haze and crappy air quality put paid to that.
The first park had been on the “If I have time” list, but I saw that it opened really early, and there were no RCDB pictures, so I headed there first thing.
Axiong Paradise / Wuxi Zoo
The zoo opens at 8:30 in the morning, so I got there soon after. I wasn’t really expecting the rides to open that early, but they were getting stuff ready, so I had a fairly quick walk around the zoo (bigger than expected) and then back to the rides. The zoo was quite decent for a Chinese one. They had decent-sized enclosures for the most part, and lots of information in both Chinese and English. They’re supposed to have pandas, but that area was under renovation. No big deal since they’re basically everywhere.
The rides area is right next to the main entrance and translates to Bear Paradise. It’s all very new apart from a very old-looking water ride, including an “unknown” Jinma stock model family coaster. It turned out to be called “Jungle Porters”, or “Bush Poeter” according to the terrible sign on the station. +1.
Getting this out of the way early meant that I could still get to the major park, and main point of visiting Wuxi, not too long after opening.
Wuxi Sunac Land
This used to be a Wanda property, as evidenced by the huge shopping mall next to it, but they sold off their parks to Sunac.
I’d done a couple of Wanda parks before, but only one under Sunac, the one that opened in Guangzhou a few years ago. The entrance area was all very “Wanda”.
When I went to the Guangzhou park, they were still operating on the pay-one-price model, but they’ve moved to a pay-per-ride system, with various (way too many) packages available. You can still get an all-inclusive ticket though. This ticket wasn’t even scanned at the entrance – a staff member just waved me through – so it might have even been free entry; I’m not sure on that one.
The way it works is that on your first ride of the day, the QR code on your ticket is scanned, and a picture gets taken. For later rides, it just works on facial recognition, so you don’t need the ticket again. Other people were using their ID cards in place of a paper ticket, so I’m guessing that either gets linked at the ticket counter or you can maybe do it yourself with an online booking.
Somebody on Facebook said that they’d been told they MUST have a passport to get into the park. This isn’t true, but I’m guessing this is through a group tour and the passport will be used to book the ticket. Anyway, it’s fine to just show up and get a ticket at the counter.
The main attraction here is Falcon, which becomes visible very shortly after walking down the main entrance street.
It’s (kind of) the tallest B&M wing coaster. Apparently, Wild Eagle is actually taller (no height info on RCDB), but the drop is much smaller.
Operations were, predictably, s**t, with people being held well outside the station until the previous train had been emptied, and then counted through. The bint doing the counting wasn’t very good at it since there always seemed to be empty seats. With her being so far away from the platform though, she couldn’t even see it to check. So yeah, one train roughly every ten minutes, so what would be a B&M people eater elsewhere was managing around 160-180 people per hour.
This didn’t really matter though. The park was quite busy, but it was a Friday, and the pay-per-ride / package system worked really well in keeping the queue down. I never had to wait more than two trains to get on, but that still meant a 20-minute wait for something that could’ve been a walk-on.
Seating wasn't assigned - this would be true of all the parks this weekend - so one plus of only letting a trainload of people in at a time resulted in pretty much always getting the seat I wanted. The locals' faff upon entering the ride area (waiting to be told what to do etc.) meant I could just walk past them to any seat I wanted, meaning usually no issues getting front or back row rides.
Anyway, I really liked it, but then again, I tend to like this ride type more than most people seem to. I’ll throw more pictures in later as they appear in the upload.
There was what I think was a flying theatre, but the queue was quite long and was clearly going to take ages. I've got a feeling this was part of a popular package ticket since the queue for this, plus another dark ride later, were much, much bigger than anything else here.
Further into the park is a “steam” themed area with two of the other coasters. Dream Factory is a Zamperla factory coaster, the only one that exists at the moment. It’s their version of a multi-dimensional coaster, and despite seeming quite promising from the queue line, it was a bit s**t. The coaster sections don’t do anything, you stop and look at bad screens for way too long, there’s a backwards section and a drop track.
The other coaster in this area is a Mack Blue Fire clone. Again, people don’t seem to like these much, but if you’re going to get a stock model, I’d rather see one of these then most other options.
The biggest pain in the arse is that the entrance is nowhere near the exit, making rerides a chore. There were almost no people at this end of the park though, so there was no wait apart from general unnecessary station faff.
I’d made the mistake at Guangzhou Sunac of not realising that their water ride was actually a (dubious) cred. Lesson learned, but such a burden since these things are ridiculously wet. It was hot though, and I was wearing stuff that dried off very quickly, so it had to be done.
Up-charge = nope:
I also skipped the drop tower but joined the long queue for what seemed like a very big dark ride, Final Sea Battle. I got to the front over an hour later, only for it to go down. Ride ops were taking people’s phone numbers along with their position in the queue - I guess to message them when it reopened – but I was sure that just wasn’t going to work with a Hong Kong number, if they even bothered messaging anyone at all, and it was going to be my last ride before heading out anyway, so I didn’t want to hang around.
I’ve looked it up since and it looks very good, so that’s annoying. I kind of wish I’d stuck around for a bit now since I would've still had plenty of time.
I just took a few (loads) more pictures and then headed out. I’ll just chuck a couple more in.
There was a +2 park to be had, so I headed there. It’s apparently open quite late, but when I got there at around 4, it was dead.
Taihu Zhi Xing Park
This place has a huge Ferris wheel, which apparently has some decent lighting package, which seems to be the main draw here. There are also a Jinma family coaster and spinner.
A bit off topic, but this style of spinner, of which there are still loads admittedly, is starting to get phased out with quite a lot now either SBNO or removed completely. This adds to the idea, which a few of us who follow Chinese parks have, that coasters in China are given a very definite, fixed shelf life, which seems to be 20 years.
The Ferris wheel was huge. I did a brief search for information on it – by which I mean spending 30 seconds on the Wikipedia Ferris wheel page - but didn’t come up with anything. I’ve got a feeling it might have been relocated from Suzhou, from the park where the Vekoma Stingray used to be. The size seems to match up and the two cities are very close to each other. If that's the case, I've ridden it in both places.
I did a quick walk around the block near my hotel to say that I’d seen a bit of Wuxi, but I hadn’t really. From the taxis and view from the Ferris wheel, there seemed to be lots of nice areas though. There’s lots of greenery, lakes, parks etc., which could possibly be hiding a cred or two, but I got a train out to Suzhou the next morning.
