Re: India PTR - Part 8: Innovative Film City
The last park of the trip – well, the last thing I did at all before heading to the airport – was about a fifteen-minute drive away. I think I got there a little after one, and figured I’d need to get out of there by about half four to make it to the airport in time.
Wonderla
This place was quite a bit bigger than I thought, and was actually really busy, so I stumped up the extra tenner to get a fastpass, which could be used on literally everything to skip the queues. Some queues, like for the drop tower, were approaching an hour, but literally nobody else that I saw was using fsatpass, so I managed to walk on to everything.
The dominating feature of the park is a big wheel on top of a tower. Pretty impressive really.
Another Indian park, another one of these f**king things. I got it out of the way quickly so that I’d have time to dry off. This one at least looked really nice.
I didn’t do the top spin. Totally sick of them. I don’t think I’ve seen this model before though.
They had two tower rides, this was the smaller of the two, which I didn’t ride. Just realized how s**t and blurry the picture is. Apologies.
The park was actually pretty strong on flat rides. I gave this one a go because I don’t think I’d done one before. Not bad. No need to rush on one again.
I skipped the Energy Storm though. I’ve done a few and I’m really not a fan.
The boomerang was still under construction. This was one that I was hoping might be open since RCDB had it listed as opening in 2015, but I was pretty sure wouldn’t be. It’s opening this summer. This is now its fourth home after two parks in Australia and Alabama Adventure.
I’d only seen one of these before, a Moser Hoppla, at Wonder Island in Russia. That one was pretty decent, so it’s a shame this one was closed.
Have some more pictures of the biggest coaster here until the Boomerang opens.
They had a Mixer which was actually open. F**king horrible things.
I didn’t do the frisbee. Again, kind of over them – even the smallest Chinese parks tend to have one - unless they’re the giant variety and even then I can take them or leave them these days.
I did the wheel though. You take a lift up the tower, which has a viewing platform all the way around it for excellent views over the park.
Like most parks I went to in India, there was a water park. It was included in the entrance price, but I had no time for it. I should probably try more water parks to be honest. They don’t hold a massive appeal, but I haven’t given them a real chance.
The wheel itself seems kind of superfluous since the views don’t change from those you get on the observation deck. Yeah, it’s higher, but the cars are small and cramped and are basically cages.
By the time I got off, they were doing some work on the boomerang.
Exciting.
There were two other coasters here, Termite Train and Termite Coaster, both housed inside this termite hill.
The “bigger” one was just a basic Big Apple, but I think it’s probably the biggest effort I’ve seen made for one apart from maybe Valle degli Gnomi (the
original big apple) in Italy. Without the fastpass, it would’ve been a 40-minute wait!
The second coaster is just a powered oval thing that travels around the base of the “big” coaster.
They had two sets of dodgems, the second one for woman and kids only. Weird.
Some more flat rides:
The Dungeon Ride was run to a schedule. It had been open in the morning and was reopening at 4:15. I was pretty much done with the park about 45 minutes before that, but decided to hang around to get it done.
It was very good actually. Large, individual cars holding around 16 people run on a continuous chain. At least that’s what it seemed like The whole thing moves at the same time, with each car being brought into a new scene, usually with doors at either end to close things off, where various s**t happens.
It was half four when I got off, which was perfect timing to get me to the airport really, which was about an hour and a half away. The parks on this day were outside the city to the south, while the airport is out to the north.
I really liked this park. After Adlabs Imagica, it was easily the best one in terms of an overall package. It was clean, well-maintained with a nice atmosphere and had a decent ride selection, even if the coasters weren’t up to much. Wonderla have another park in Kochi, with plans to build a couple more in the near future. They’re never going to be a world-changer, but for a small, national chain they see to be doing a good job.
The India trip as a whole was great. I’d been putting off going for ages after hearing very mixed reviews from friends, usually involving dirt, beggars, poverty etc. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert based on one fairly short trip, but I didn’t have any issues with the place. Chennai was a dump, sure, but I was never hassled and never felt unsafe anywhere; the people in all three cities were lovely actually. Mumbai was much better than I expected and Bangalore was really nice and loads of fun.
I’m thinking I might do another India trip at the same time next year – well, this year now - taking in some different places. It’s obviously huge, and I didn’t even touch on any of the more famous sights since I was wanting to get parks in and there really aren’t any around Agra, Jaipur etc. We’ll see anyway.
Done! Yay!
