I’ve just got back off my Easter holidays, and decided to try and keep it cheap (didn’t happen) by heading over to a few places in mainland China. Since I spent a few days each in three different cities, I’m going to write separate reports for each one, starting with Chengdu.
It’s about a two hour flight from Hong Kong, but the flight was delayed (every flight that day between Chengdu and Hong Hong was delayed for some reason), so I ended up not getting to my hotel until around 11 at night. I had a quick wander around – an area called Tianfu Square, which was nice – and called it a night.
My hotel was very subtly lit, making it quite difficult to find:
The view from the window was pretty fab.
The area around the hotel was cool during the day as well.
The first full day I had there was a Friday. I had originally thought to head down to a park called Dream Land in the morning, but didn’t know anything about the place and thought it might just be one of those small amusement park areas within a normal city park. Google maps just show a lake/park/resort with no mention of an actual amusement park there. Since it was pretty far away, I didn’t want to risk getting there around 9 on a Friday morning for there not to be anything open that early. Instead, I decided to walk the 5 minutes from my hotel to People’s Park, figuring that even if the amusement park section wasn’t open first thing on a Friday morning, that I wouldn’t have wasted any time and could move onto something else, hitting it again later.
Anyway, it turns out that all the parks on this trip basically operate in the same way as some I’ve been to before in other Chinese cities; they’re always open with most rides operating, even on weekday mornings when there’s nobody around and the places look closed, so I needn’t have worried.
People’s Park
The entrance to the park was extremely welcoming.
The park was actually lovely, and full of people doing various morning exercises, like Tai Chi and other such Chinese crap.
Food in Sichuan Province is notoriously spicy:
As expected, the amusement park area was a bit s**t, which seems to be a running thread in a lot of these Chinese city parks. The parks themselves are often gorgeous, but then the “Children’s Playground” areas are just a concrete corner with some crappy rides shoved in.
The shuttle things weren’t operating, which was a shame since Coaster-Count has now decided to include them as creds.
The coaster here was just a small, crappy kiddy thing. 50 pence spent and +1 for the count.
Despite the amusement park section being predictably crappy, I really liked People’s Park on the whole. It’s a good way to get some cultural s**te done while still mopping up a cred. It was still only a little after 10 at this point, so I got a taxi over to another +1 park.
Chengdu Zoo
It was £2 to get in. The entrance was very dramatic.
I didn’t spend a great deal of time looking around the zoo, but it was better than some of the others I’ve seen in China.
They had south China tigers, which were cool to see as I’ve never seen one before and they’re pretty much definitely extinct in the wild now.
I find it funny how China is very strict about the conditions their pandas are kept in when they loan/rent them out to foreign countries, but in so many of their own zoos, they’ll just shove them in a concrete box.
This pretty much sums up Chinese zoos to be honest. The animals shout and throw food at the exhibits:
I **** ing LOVE this picture:
To give it a bit of context though, you could pay a pound for a bowl of vegetables to feed the hippos with. It was still stupidly thoughtless and irresponsible to hold a baby over the gaping jaws of one the world’s most dangerous animals though. It’s not even as if the baby was a girl!
You could also do your bit for animal conservation by purchasing some of them inside keyrings.
Oh yeah, crappy amusement park section. Again, all open (except for the log flume) but with nobody bothering with it:
The coaster was just a crappy powered dragon that goes around the log flume. It was a pain to take pictures of really. Not that it matters since there are loads of these things anyway and they’re w@nk.
It was still only about 11:30 by this point, meaning that there was still plenty of time for my first proper park of the trip.
Happy Valley Chengdu
This place was the third Happy Valley park to be built, after Shenzhen and Beijing and a few months before Shanghai.
As with the other Happy Valley parks I’ve been to, they have a closed ride list at the gate, but in Chinese. There were a couple of things on it. This park also had an “opening at 1pm” list with quite a few things on it, but again in Chinese. The park was really quiet, meaning that most rides were walk-on all day.
I headed straight for the parks’s main coasters, only one of which was open at that time:
This SLC is the same as the one in Beijing, which is basically the “Kumali” layout, but with an extra helix. I’ve always said that I prefer the regular SLCs as the layout is much better, but that this model is smoother. This particular one was more disgusting than the contents of an abortion clinic bin though.
Couple the roughness with a **** layout and you get my least favourite SLC after that POS in Canada. Despite it having very short queues for the rest of the day, I didn’t bother with it again.
One of the worst coaster types sits uncomfortably next to one of the best.
Mega-Lite!!!!!!
It wasn’t running, but luckily the sign out front said it would be opening at 1pm. There was about half an hour or so to wait, so I went to the area behind it to check out what else was there. This was walk-on all day, so I gave it a go. I think it was a “real” one as opposed to the knockoff model I’ve seen elsewhere.
Panda Warrior was closed all day. It looked to be some kind of Spiderman/Transformers ripoff.
There was also a huge “Soarin’” type ride, named after China’s foreign policy.
“The West” of the title was actually just the area of China immediately west of Chengdu. It was huge and pretty cool though, and easily the best of its type that I’ve ridden so far.
I ended up coming back to this 3D show at the end of the day – despite it being “open” from 10 - 6, they were running it at hourly intervals - but I’m going to stick it in here now as it was in the same area.
I can usually take or leave 3D shows now, but this one was excellent. The whole theatre was themed to being underwater, with 3 3D screens that worked together to make it all really immersive. I think it’s possibly the best 3D show I’ve seen, with the exceptions of perhaps Philharmagic and Terminator 3D.
Just around the corner was an amazing Golden Horse spinner. I’m always ecstatic to see these in every **** ing Chinese park.
Back to something decent then. The Mega-Lite was, predictably for Happy Valley, only running on one train, which wasn’t an issue since the park was quiet. However, they were doing their best to keep things moving as slowly as possible.
I forgot to mention it with the SLC, but this park makes guests do stupid warm-up exercises before riding the coasters. I’d seen this before at the Shenzhen park, and it’s infuriating as there’s absolutely no point to it other than waste time and reduce operations. They did this for every train, waiting for the previous riders to completely leave the station first, meaning that people are doing this **** while there’s an empty train just sitting in the station.
At least later in the day, when there was a bit more of a queue, they let two trains worth of people into the loading area, meaning that the bull **** exercises were only being done half as much.
Clearly, I stood there looking the ride ops right in the eye and refusing to take part. Have a video of this f*ckery:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8al94IupeNY&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
The ride was amazing though. This is now the third one I’ve ridden, and they’re all just as good as each other.
What was also great, not only for this coaster but throughout the trip, was that the locals always filled up the trains from the front, even though the ride ops weren’t allocating seats. This meant that I was always guaranteed a back row ride if I wanted it, as I’d just ignore the “system” and head straight to the back. Over the course of the day, I got seven rides in – usually unheard of at a Crappy Valley park - four of those in the back row. There was a pretty big difference at the end of the day as well. After it had warmed up, it really was pretty insane.
One thing that I’d noticed is that this park was nowhere near themed as much as the parks in Shenzhen and Beijing. The area with the final coaster, a Vekoma mine train, and the rapids was a bit better though.
I quite liked this model the first time I tried it, but I’ve now decided that they’re actually pretty s**t. I think it’s because the first one I’d done at the Shenzhen park was really well-themed, so I was more forgiving of a bit of a crap coaster. Oh, and this place made you do the **** ing exercises again. Twats.
The rapids were a bit crap until right at the end, where there was a very turbulent section that also went under three waterfalls. I don’t normally bother with the body condoms for water rides, but at Chinese parks I make an exception as they always get you soaked.
The other water ride was just around the corner. These are another staple at Happy Valley parks, only this one wasn’t really themed at much as the others. They’re really good, but again get you drenched. Even with a poncho thing, you get soaked from the knees down. Well, you do if you’re taller than Peter Dinklage anyway.
It was good to see a different Top Spin model to the regular Huss version that the other parks have.
I never got to ride the flying island as they were running it in the same way as the 3D show. It was “open” all day according to the ride sign, but they were actually only running it at 30 minute intervals. I never managed, or was bothered to time it right, especially as the entrance was a bit of a trek from anything else and didn’t warrant the effort after the first attempt.
I did go into this ice house thing though, which they had the audacity to upcharge (about £2.50) for.
It was ok, but a bit **** really.
Until I found this:
No, it’s clearly not a cred, though it did have a lift hill at the end – after you’d got off - to take the carts back up to the top.
Where shall we take our wedding pictures? Fake Europe!
To the right of the entrance, which I’d come to last as I worked around, was another typical area in Happy Valley parks. Basically, it’s just an area of flat rides all shoved together. I usually wouldn’t bother, but the park was quiet and I had plenty of time, so I did a few of them this time around.
The ferris wheel was decent for getting an overview of the park, but I think the flying island would’ve been better.
There was also a 4D theatre, which I skipped and didn’t take any pictures of, and a horror walk through, which looked like it was going to be decent from the outside and the first room.
It was **** though; they all are from the ones I’ve done at the Happy Valley parks. They’re all just full of piss-poor, cheap, fairground style animatronics, with very little real theming or atmosphere.
All in all, I had a great time at the park, partly thanks to it being so quiet. The Mega-Lite is the only decent coaster, and it was great to able to get quite a few rides on it, but there’s a lot of other stuff to do at the park as well, much more than I’d expected really.
I think they’re probably due for a new coaster though. They haven’t had one since the park opened, while the two older parks have both had major additions, and the park that opened at roughly the same time is currently building something new.
It’s about a two hour flight from Hong Kong, but the flight was delayed (every flight that day between Chengdu and Hong Hong was delayed for some reason), so I ended up not getting to my hotel until around 11 at night. I had a quick wander around – an area called Tianfu Square, which was nice – and called it a night.
My hotel was very subtly lit, making it quite difficult to find:
The view from the window was pretty fab.
The area around the hotel was cool during the day as well.
The first full day I had there was a Friday. I had originally thought to head down to a park called Dream Land in the morning, but didn’t know anything about the place and thought it might just be one of those small amusement park areas within a normal city park. Google maps just show a lake/park/resort with no mention of an actual amusement park there. Since it was pretty far away, I didn’t want to risk getting there around 9 on a Friday morning for there not to be anything open that early. Instead, I decided to walk the 5 minutes from my hotel to People’s Park, figuring that even if the amusement park section wasn’t open first thing on a Friday morning, that I wouldn’t have wasted any time and could move onto something else, hitting it again later.
Anyway, it turns out that all the parks on this trip basically operate in the same way as some I’ve been to before in other Chinese cities; they’re always open with most rides operating, even on weekday mornings when there’s nobody around and the places look closed, so I needn’t have worried.
People’s Park
The entrance to the park was extremely welcoming.
The park was actually lovely, and full of people doing various morning exercises, like Tai Chi and other such Chinese crap.
Food in Sichuan Province is notoriously spicy:
As expected, the amusement park area was a bit s**t, which seems to be a running thread in a lot of these Chinese city parks. The parks themselves are often gorgeous, but then the “Children’s Playground” areas are just a concrete corner with some crappy rides shoved in.
The shuttle things weren’t operating, which was a shame since Coaster-Count has now decided to include them as creds.
The coaster here was just a small, crappy kiddy thing. 50 pence spent and +1 for the count.
Despite the amusement park section being predictably crappy, I really liked People’s Park on the whole. It’s a good way to get some cultural s**te done while still mopping up a cred. It was still only a little after 10 at this point, so I got a taxi over to another +1 park.
Chengdu Zoo
It was £2 to get in. The entrance was very dramatic.
I didn’t spend a great deal of time looking around the zoo, but it was better than some of the others I’ve seen in China.
They had south China tigers, which were cool to see as I’ve never seen one before and they’re pretty much definitely extinct in the wild now.
I find it funny how China is very strict about the conditions their pandas are kept in when they loan/rent them out to foreign countries, but in so many of their own zoos, they’ll just shove them in a concrete box.
This pretty much sums up Chinese zoos to be honest. The animals shout and throw food at the exhibits:
I **** ing LOVE this picture:
To give it a bit of context though, you could pay a pound for a bowl of vegetables to feed the hippos with. It was still stupidly thoughtless and irresponsible to hold a baby over the gaping jaws of one the world’s most dangerous animals though. It’s not even as if the baby was a girl!
You could also do your bit for animal conservation by purchasing some of them inside keyrings.
Oh yeah, crappy amusement park section. Again, all open (except for the log flume) but with nobody bothering with it:
The coaster was just a crappy powered dragon that goes around the log flume. It was a pain to take pictures of really. Not that it matters since there are loads of these things anyway and they’re w@nk.
It was still only about 11:30 by this point, meaning that there was still plenty of time for my first proper park of the trip.
Happy Valley Chengdu
This place was the third Happy Valley park to be built, after Shenzhen and Beijing and a few months before Shanghai.
As with the other Happy Valley parks I’ve been to, they have a closed ride list at the gate, but in Chinese. There were a couple of things on it. This park also had an “opening at 1pm” list with quite a few things on it, but again in Chinese. The park was really quiet, meaning that most rides were walk-on all day.
I headed straight for the parks’s main coasters, only one of which was open at that time:
This SLC is the same as the one in Beijing, which is basically the “Kumali” layout, but with an extra helix. I’ve always said that I prefer the regular SLCs as the layout is much better, but that this model is smoother. This particular one was more disgusting than the contents of an abortion clinic bin though.
Couple the roughness with a **** layout and you get my least favourite SLC after that POS in Canada. Despite it having very short queues for the rest of the day, I didn’t bother with it again.
One of the worst coaster types sits uncomfortably next to one of the best.
Mega-Lite!!!!!!
It wasn’t running, but luckily the sign out front said it would be opening at 1pm. There was about half an hour or so to wait, so I went to the area behind it to check out what else was there. This was walk-on all day, so I gave it a go. I think it was a “real” one as opposed to the knockoff model I’ve seen elsewhere.
Panda Warrior was closed all day. It looked to be some kind of Spiderman/Transformers ripoff.
There was also a huge “Soarin’” type ride, named after China’s foreign policy.
“The West” of the title was actually just the area of China immediately west of Chengdu. It was huge and pretty cool though, and easily the best of its type that I’ve ridden so far.
I ended up coming back to this 3D show at the end of the day – despite it being “open” from 10 - 6, they were running it at hourly intervals - but I’m going to stick it in here now as it was in the same area.
I can usually take or leave 3D shows now, but this one was excellent. The whole theatre was themed to being underwater, with 3 3D screens that worked together to make it all really immersive. I think it’s possibly the best 3D show I’ve seen, with the exceptions of perhaps Philharmagic and Terminator 3D.
Just around the corner was an amazing Golden Horse spinner. I’m always ecstatic to see these in every **** ing Chinese park.
Back to something decent then. The Mega-Lite was, predictably for Happy Valley, only running on one train, which wasn’t an issue since the park was quiet. However, they were doing their best to keep things moving as slowly as possible.
I forgot to mention it with the SLC, but this park makes guests do stupid warm-up exercises before riding the coasters. I’d seen this before at the Shenzhen park, and it’s infuriating as there’s absolutely no point to it other than waste time and reduce operations. They did this for every train, waiting for the previous riders to completely leave the station first, meaning that people are doing this **** while there’s an empty train just sitting in the station.
At least later in the day, when there was a bit more of a queue, they let two trains worth of people into the loading area, meaning that the bull **** exercises were only being done half as much.
Clearly, I stood there looking the ride ops right in the eye and refusing to take part. Have a video of this f*ckery:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8al94IupeNY&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
The ride was amazing though. This is now the third one I’ve ridden, and they’re all just as good as each other.
What was also great, not only for this coaster but throughout the trip, was that the locals always filled up the trains from the front, even though the ride ops weren’t allocating seats. This meant that I was always guaranteed a back row ride if I wanted it, as I’d just ignore the “system” and head straight to the back. Over the course of the day, I got seven rides in – usually unheard of at a Crappy Valley park - four of those in the back row. There was a pretty big difference at the end of the day as well. After it had warmed up, it really was pretty insane.
One thing that I’d noticed is that this park was nowhere near themed as much as the parks in Shenzhen and Beijing. The area with the final coaster, a Vekoma mine train, and the rapids was a bit better though.
I quite liked this model the first time I tried it, but I’ve now decided that they’re actually pretty s**t. I think it’s because the first one I’d done at the Shenzhen park was really well-themed, so I was more forgiving of a bit of a crap coaster. Oh, and this place made you do the **** ing exercises again. Twats.
The rapids were a bit crap until right at the end, where there was a very turbulent section that also went under three waterfalls. I don’t normally bother with the body condoms for water rides, but at Chinese parks I make an exception as they always get you soaked.
The other water ride was just around the corner. These are another staple at Happy Valley parks, only this one wasn’t really themed at much as the others. They’re really good, but again get you drenched. Even with a poncho thing, you get soaked from the knees down. Well, you do if you’re taller than Peter Dinklage anyway.
It was good to see a different Top Spin model to the regular Huss version that the other parks have.
I never got to ride the flying island as they were running it in the same way as the 3D show. It was “open” all day according to the ride sign, but they were actually only running it at 30 minute intervals. I never managed, or was bothered to time it right, especially as the entrance was a bit of a trek from anything else and didn’t warrant the effort after the first attempt.
I did go into this ice house thing though, which they had the audacity to upcharge (about £2.50) for.
It was ok, but a bit **** really.
Until I found this:
No, it’s clearly not a cred, though it did have a lift hill at the end – after you’d got off - to take the carts back up to the top.
Where shall we take our wedding pictures? Fake Europe!
To the right of the entrance, which I’d come to last as I worked around, was another typical area in Happy Valley parks. Basically, it’s just an area of flat rides all shoved together. I usually wouldn’t bother, but the park was quiet and I had plenty of time, so I did a few of them this time around.
The ferris wheel was decent for getting an overview of the park, but I think the flying island would’ve been better.
There was also a 4D theatre, which I skipped and didn’t take any pictures of, and a horror walk through, which looked like it was going to be decent from the outside and the first room.
It was **** though; they all are from the ones I’ve done at the Happy Valley parks. They’re all just full of piss-poor, cheap, fairground style animatronics, with very little real theming or atmosphere.
All in all, I had a great time at the park, partly thanks to it being so quiet. The Mega-Lite is the only decent coaster, and it was great to able to get quite a few rides on it, but there’s a lot of other stuff to do at the park as well, much more than I’d expected really.
I think they’re probably due for a new coaster though. They haven’t had one since the park opened, while the two older parks have both had major additions, and the park that opened at roughly the same time is currently building something new.
