I made a fairly last-minute decision to take a trip out to Jinan a couple of weekends ago, mainly for two major new parks that have opened there recently and after finding out accidentally that using Shenzhen Airport instead of Hong Kong was very doable.
There are only a couple of direct flights a week between Hong Kong and Jinan, but there are around 7 a day from Shenzhen. There’s a large shopping mall just a few minutes’ walk from my house, which includes a bus terminal that I’d always ignored. Anyway, one day a few weeks ago I noticed that there are direct buses from there to Shenzhen Airport – well, with some border crossing faff - leaving every 15 minutes.
Obviously, this isn’t as easy as using Hong Kong Airport since it takes around an hour longer to get there and has a border crossing first, which means it’s unusable without a Chinese visa. It is, however, a very useful option to now have since Shenzhen serves a lot of smaller Chinese cities that Hong Kong either doesn’t fly to or, like Jinan, only has a very limited number of flights. I’d always discounted Shenzhen Airport after assuming I’d have to get there using the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Metros, which from my place would take close to three hours.
There was a two-hour delay unfortunately, meaning that by the time I got to my hotel on the Friday evening, I ended up not doing anything, but got up early the next day.
Saturday
The plan was to walk from my hotel straight to Daming Lake to grab a cred there before getting to a major park, but I ended up popping into a smaller park on the way just in case there was anything else in there. There wasn’t but it was really nice anyway.
The centre of Jinan has a large canal/moat with the lake at the top and connecting a number of natural springs. The park I’d just been into had the Five Dragons Spring.
I followed the moat up to the lake. It was pretty huge, with the typical small amusement park area. Often these are stuck away in a corner somewhere, but this one was right on the lake, so the atmosphere was a bit nicer.
I never bother with any of the rides at these places apart from the coasters.
I knew that there was just the one coaster here, but as usual couldn’t remember what it actually was. I thought at first that it was the same piece of s**t model that I’d had to do two of just a couple of weeks earlier in Shenyang, but it’s actually slightly different and from a different manufacturer. It was still awful though.
There were some nice views over the lake back into the city. My hotel was just on the right of this picture.
After a pleasant enough walk and a dreadful +1 coaster – I had a look for any bonus creds, but there weren’t any – I got a taxi out to the first major park of the weekend.
Quancheng Euro Park
This place only opened last year, along with a major aquarium nearby and operated by the same people. There is also what looks to be hotel under construction, too. The main entrance is horrendously, gloriously tacky.
Once you get through there, it starts to all look slightly familiar.
There was a coaster in here which I don’t seem to have taken any pictures off. I had to pass it on my way t the park’s major coaster, so it was just a quick in-and-out job before the cred anxiety kicked in. It’s a Chinese job, but was actually pretty good – maybe because it was dark – and set me up with some false hope for the rest of the place.
The main coaster here is a Blue Fire clone, called Battle of Blue Fire.
I was stunned to see that they were running two trains, basically unheard of in China. Demonstrating true Chinese efficiency though, they took the second train off just as I joined the queue. This made perfect sense since the park was starting to get busier and the queue longer. What would’ve been a 15 minute wait suddenly became half an hour. Not long admittedly, but still annoying. To be fair to the ride ops though, they were actually doing a pretty good job, with minimal faff, even with one train.
There’s not a great deal to say about it really. I really enjoyed Blue Fire at Europa, and I really enjoyed this. Yeah, there’s a lack of theming which does take away from it a bit, but it’s still a great ride.
This rather impressive building housed a flying theatre ride.
It’s kind of unfair to call them Soarin’ knockoffs anymore since there are so many of them, made by a number of different companies, and with a bunch of different films. This one was decent enough for the type, which I’m not a huge fan of admittedly, but not really worth the 30 minute wait.
After a reride of Blue Fire – sorry, Battle of Blue Fire - and feeling pretty confident with the park since I’d enjoyed two out of two coasters and a decent dark ride so far, it was on to an absolute slew of s**te for the rest of the day. Seriously, the park as a whole is f**king awful.
The totally original castle makes a nice centerpiece at least.
This huge building had a few kiddy rides, restaurants and a cred.
Behind this building there was a circus, which I don’t think is running yet though I didn’t pay much attention, and an Equestrian Show, which had a performance later that day which I forgot to go back to. It seems like it could’ve been decent though.
The park also has a train that runs around the perimeter, leaving from an elevated station just inside the entrance. I really don’t know where this idea came from, but it was closed on the day I was there. At the back of the park though, it goes into this huge tunnel, so I guess it could be interesting.
Next coaster then: a Chinese SLC. It’s one of only four from Beijing Jihua, the company that built all the coasters here except Blue Fire, and it wasn’t too bad really.
Opposite this was Children Coaster. It’s the third one of these dull models I’ve done now for the +1.
I didn’t do the water chute.
Another cred, but at least this one was a new model for me, a Crazy Skateboard. It was actually fine for what it is, and they were getting cars out fairly quickly.
The huge building behind it housed a 4D dark ride. Despite the cartoonish manner of the entrance, it was actually pretty dark, with the story revolving around a bunch of mutant animals escaped from a science lab.
This was the longest wait of the day at almost 90 minutes. These Chinese versions just don’t have the capacity of the original Spiderman/Transformers rides since each vehicle only holds eight people and there don’t seem to actually be that many of them on the track at any one time. The ride ops here were a f**king joke as well, holding people back away from the car/station and then sorting people into groups of eight with an empty car just sitting there.
Didn’t do the Frisbee because I’m a bit sick of them, and didn’t do the rapids as the queue was a bit stupid and I could see that they were running it poorly.
The mine train was ok since it was at least different from the double lift Vekoma/Golden Horse model that is now everywhere.
The second-to-last coaster was a knockoff spinner, meaning that this place actually has two spinning coasters.
The final one was knockoff Motorbike thing. I’ve ridden a few of Golden Horses knockoffs of the Zamerla model, and they’re ok. Beijing Jihua have knocked off Vekoma’s model though, specifically the Toverland/Chimelong layout.
It was being run like absolute turd, with one train going out every 7-8 minutes. This was partly due to crappy operations – keeping riders outside the station until it was completely clear – and partly due to over-rigorous checking of the restraints. Purely a guess on my part, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole launch system takes longer to reset than on the real models. It was also f**king disgusting to ride as well, just really rough the whole way round.
As I was leaving, I was lucky enough to catch the amazing parade.
I absolutely hated this place. I knew that they’d opened with only one “real” coaster, but I still wasn’t prepared for how totally s**t everything else there would be. I’ve been to plenty of parks with nothing BUT Chinese knockoffs, and actually had a decent time, but this place was just f**king horrible.
Getting a taxi back into the city, I got the driver to drop me off at one of the main public squares, which was close enough to my hotel to walk back easily, to have a look around and get some food. It was nice. There’s a huge fountain thing which does a show twice a day, once in the afternoon and once at night, but I didn’t want to hang around that long.
The tall building near my hotel was fab at night. I’d seen it from the taxi coming in the night before.
I debated going out that night, but really couldn’t be bothered with the effort and just had a lazy one at the hotel instead.
There are only a couple of direct flights a week between Hong Kong and Jinan, but there are around 7 a day from Shenzhen. There’s a large shopping mall just a few minutes’ walk from my house, which includes a bus terminal that I’d always ignored. Anyway, one day a few weeks ago I noticed that there are direct buses from there to Shenzhen Airport – well, with some border crossing faff - leaving every 15 minutes.
Obviously, this isn’t as easy as using Hong Kong Airport since it takes around an hour longer to get there and has a border crossing first, which means it’s unusable without a Chinese visa. It is, however, a very useful option to now have since Shenzhen serves a lot of smaller Chinese cities that Hong Kong either doesn’t fly to or, like Jinan, only has a very limited number of flights. I’d always discounted Shenzhen Airport after assuming I’d have to get there using the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Metros, which from my place would take close to three hours.
There was a two-hour delay unfortunately, meaning that by the time I got to my hotel on the Friday evening, I ended up not doing anything, but got up early the next day.
Saturday
The plan was to walk from my hotel straight to Daming Lake to grab a cred there before getting to a major park, but I ended up popping into a smaller park on the way just in case there was anything else in there. There wasn’t but it was really nice anyway.
The centre of Jinan has a large canal/moat with the lake at the top and connecting a number of natural springs. The park I’d just been into had the Five Dragons Spring.
I followed the moat up to the lake. It was pretty huge, with the typical small amusement park area. Often these are stuck away in a corner somewhere, but this one was right on the lake, so the atmosphere was a bit nicer.
I never bother with any of the rides at these places apart from the coasters.
I knew that there was just the one coaster here, but as usual couldn’t remember what it actually was. I thought at first that it was the same piece of s**t model that I’d had to do two of just a couple of weeks earlier in Shenyang, but it’s actually slightly different and from a different manufacturer. It was still awful though.
There were some nice views over the lake back into the city. My hotel was just on the right of this picture.
After a pleasant enough walk and a dreadful +1 coaster – I had a look for any bonus creds, but there weren’t any – I got a taxi out to the first major park of the weekend.
Quancheng Euro Park
This place only opened last year, along with a major aquarium nearby and operated by the same people. There is also what looks to be hotel under construction, too. The main entrance is horrendously, gloriously tacky.
Once you get through there, it starts to all look slightly familiar.
There was a coaster in here which I don’t seem to have taken any pictures off. I had to pass it on my way t the park’s major coaster, so it was just a quick in-and-out job before the cred anxiety kicked in. It’s a Chinese job, but was actually pretty good – maybe because it was dark – and set me up with some false hope for the rest of the place.
The main coaster here is a Blue Fire clone, called Battle of Blue Fire.
I was stunned to see that they were running two trains, basically unheard of in China. Demonstrating true Chinese efficiency though, they took the second train off just as I joined the queue. This made perfect sense since the park was starting to get busier and the queue longer. What would’ve been a 15 minute wait suddenly became half an hour. Not long admittedly, but still annoying. To be fair to the ride ops though, they were actually doing a pretty good job, with minimal faff, even with one train.
There’s not a great deal to say about it really. I really enjoyed Blue Fire at Europa, and I really enjoyed this. Yeah, there’s a lack of theming which does take away from it a bit, but it’s still a great ride.
This rather impressive building housed a flying theatre ride.
It’s kind of unfair to call them Soarin’ knockoffs anymore since there are so many of them, made by a number of different companies, and with a bunch of different films. This one was decent enough for the type, which I’m not a huge fan of admittedly, but not really worth the 30 minute wait.
After a reride of Blue Fire – sorry, Battle of Blue Fire - and feeling pretty confident with the park since I’d enjoyed two out of two coasters and a decent dark ride so far, it was on to an absolute slew of s**te for the rest of the day. Seriously, the park as a whole is f**king awful.
The totally original castle makes a nice centerpiece at least.
This huge building had a few kiddy rides, restaurants and a cred.
Behind this building there was a circus, which I don’t think is running yet though I didn’t pay much attention, and an Equestrian Show, which had a performance later that day which I forgot to go back to. It seems like it could’ve been decent though.
The park also has a train that runs around the perimeter, leaving from an elevated station just inside the entrance. I really don’t know where this idea came from, but it was closed on the day I was there. At the back of the park though, it goes into this huge tunnel, so I guess it could be interesting.
Next coaster then: a Chinese SLC. It’s one of only four from Beijing Jihua, the company that built all the coasters here except Blue Fire, and it wasn’t too bad really.
Opposite this was Children Coaster. It’s the third one of these dull models I’ve done now for the +1.
I didn’t do the water chute.
Another cred, but at least this one was a new model for me, a Crazy Skateboard. It was actually fine for what it is, and they were getting cars out fairly quickly.
The huge building behind it housed a 4D dark ride. Despite the cartoonish manner of the entrance, it was actually pretty dark, with the story revolving around a bunch of mutant animals escaped from a science lab.
This was the longest wait of the day at almost 90 minutes. These Chinese versions just don’t have the capacity of the original Spiderman/Transformers rides since each vehicle only holds eight people and there don’t seem to actually be that many of them on the track at any one time. The ride ops here were a f**king joke as well, holding people back away from the car/station and then sorting people into groups of eight with an empty car just sitting there.
Didn’t do the Frisbee because I’m a bit sick of them, and didn’t do the rapids as the queue was a bit stupid and I could see that they were running it poorly.
The mine train was ok since it was at least different from the double lift Vekoma/Golden Horse model that is now everywhere.
The second-to-last coaster was a knockoff spinner, meaning that this place actually has two spinning coasters.
The final one was knockoff Motorbike thing. I’ve ridden a few of Golden Horses knockoffs of the Zamerla model, and they’re ok. Beijing Jihua have knocked off Vekoma’s model though, specifically the Toverland/Chimelong layout.
It was being run like absolute turd, with one train going out every 7-8 minutes. This was partly due to crappy operations – keeping riders outside the station until it was completely clear – and partly due to over-rigorous checking of the restraints. Purely a guess on my part, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole launch system takes longer to reset than on the real models. It was also f**king disgusting to ride as well, just really rough the whole way round.
As I was leaving, I was lucky enough to catch the amazing parade.
I absolutely hated this place. I knew that they’d opened with only one “real” coaster, but I still wasn’t prepared for how totally s**t everything else there would be. I’ve been to plenty of parks with nothing BUT Chinese knockoffs, and actually had a decent time, but this place was just f**king horrible.
Getting a taxi back into the city, I got the driver to drop me off at one of the main public squares, which was close enough to my hotel to walk back easily, to have a look around and get some food. It was nice. There’s a huge fountain thing which does a show twice a day, once in the afternoon and once at night, but I didn’t want to hang around that long.
The tall building near my hotel was fab at night. I’d seen it from the taxi coming in the night before.
I debated going out that night, but really couldn’t be bothered with the effort and just had a lazy one at the hotel instead.
