Re: Nanchang PTR - Part 1: Arriving
The weather forecast for the whole weekend was rain and thunderstorms, which obviously didn’t bode well, especially for Chinese parks. It was supposed to start raining early on the Saturday afternoon, and rain pretty much all day on the Sunday, so I thought that I’d at least be able to get a morning in at the main park, so headed straight there first thing. It turned out that I needn’t have worried. It did rain a bit, and totally piss down at some point in the evening, but that was later than expected and didn't have much of an impact.
Nanchang Wanda Park
This place was about 20 minutes away from where I was staying and is part of a huge US$3.35 billion complex including a shopping mall, aquarium, cinema and hotels. The whole thing had opened just 3 weeks before I visited.
I’ve uploaded a crapload of pictures and am just going to throw them in in the order they were taken rather than fanny about with keeping stuff together.
The shopping mall design is based around Chinese porcelain, which was bizarre but cool at the same time.
The entrance to the park is also pretty fab. I was there just before opening and there was already a decent sized crowd.
Exciting!
I walked straight past the kiddy coaster.
But saw Coaster Through the Clouds (previously listed as Havoc in Heaven Palace – a much cooler name) testing.
I also bypassed the GCI woodie.
I figured that heading to the back of the park would be the best option, both in terms of making sure I’d get to ride the Intamin if it started raining soon, and in terms of nobody being there. It was definitely the right decision as people were mostly doing stuff as they hit it near the front of the park.
I had to wait around ten minutes for them to open it, but got on the first train of the day, bagging the back row. People always seem to fill up the train from the front in China, even if they’re not told to.
At just shy of 243 feet, it’s now the tallest coaster in China, and it’s an excellent ride. The first drop is obviously quite ridiculous. The pullout and the turnaround are really forceful, too. I greyed out every time. The following hills have varying amounts of airtime, some being really strong. I wish I could’ve ridden it later in the day after it had warmed up, but even “cold” it was very good.
There were still very few people at hat end of the park, so I got three rides in. On the third ride, it started lightly raining, which was pretty painful. Wonder of wonders though: THEY DIDN’T CLOSE DOWN THE RIDES!
I rode the drop tower later.
But headed back for the woodie first.
Since it was closer to the entrance, and I’d spent some time reriding the Hyper, a 90-minute queue had formed. It actually “only” took about an hour, but could have been a lot less if it wasn’t for one-train operations. Realistically, it could’ve been a 30-40 minute wait.
Ugh.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been though. Even though it was stupidly running only one train, they weren’t being too burdenous getting it out. They were holding people outside the station, but letting enough through to fill the air gates while the train was out. Other places (some Happy Valley/OCT and every f**king Fantawild) hold people outside the station until it’s completely cleared, leaving an empty train just sitting there for a good few minutes.
The coaster is called Python in Bamboo Forest. No idea why.
It really difficult to get pictures of it from off-ride, even from the flying island, since it’s mostly on a hill that drops behind the park, but it’s massive. It the tallest, longest and fastest wooden coaster in China (only behind T-Express in height for the whole of Asia), and also the tallest, longest and fastest that GCI have ever built.
I walked past the kiddy coaster again since it had a 30 minute queue and there was other stuff to prioritise.
The SLC was closed all day, which was annoying since it’s a totally new layout and looks pretty decent. The guy at the gate said it would be open the next day, but I wasn’t going to go back just on the off chance.
The pottery-themed area (yes really) had The Haunted Kiln, a walkthrough which was actually pretty good.
Unlike others in China, it was lit very effectively – not just practically pitch black – and had some decent sets and effects including some projection mapping.
The pottery area is also home to Spinning Porcelain, a Golden Horse spinner. Oh joy. At least it had a custom paintjob though.
They were running it semi-decently as well, with at least 2-3 cars on the track at any one time. There was also a Huss Giant Frisbee here, which was walk-on.
Booooooooooooo.
It was time to polish of the creds, so I waited about 25 minutes for Creep Catterpillar.
+1
Then it was onto the flying island to get some pictures of the park.
I haven’t really mentioned any theming yet. Everything was themed to Chinese culture. It wasn’t as visually impressive as Fantawild’s Oriental heritage parks, but the concept is quite similar. They had statues scattered around the park depicting traditional Chinese folktales, with information in Chinese and (surprisingly very good) English.
I haven’t done an Intamin Gyrodrop for quite a while. I thought it was weird that they’d go for the older style though. I don’t think one of these 1st-gen types has been built for ages.
At 80 meters, I
think it’s probably the tallest drop ride in China at the moment. In keeping with the traditional Chinese theme, they were blaring out Eminem’s “My Name Is” at the station. The full, uncensored, sweary version.
I hadn’t intended on sucking up another hour-long wait for the woodie, but I figured that I would have been waiting that long for the SLC had it been open, so gave it another go.
It’s very, very good. I think I’d put it at the top of my GCI list – if I had such a thing – especially since Wood Coaster at Knight Valley is getting rougher. I still prefer what Gravity Group are doing in China at the moment though.
The water thing was closed and I didn’t do the top spin or splash battle thing.
I had no intention of waiting an hour for the rapids. I’ll do these with little or no queue, or if they’re something a bit more special than the norm, but otherwise I won’t bother. I guess it could have been decent, but nothing was standing out about it from what I could see.
I’ll finish up the park with more pictures of Coaster Through the Clouds. Just because. I would have liked another ride, but the queue was up to 2 hours – though realistically that was probably 90-minutes.
Overall thoughts then. One train operations obviously sucks balls and is inexcusable. There’s no getting around that. They weren’t running stuff as badly as a lot of other Chinese parks though. In fact, they were loading the trains relatively efficiently, and weren’t using bulls**t stalling tactics like a lot of other places do. The flat rides were being run efficiently as well, at least the ones I tried. The drop tower, for example, had a holding pen at the front of the queue, so the right number of people were being prepared for the next batch while the ride was operating.
They’ve also mostly gone for quality rides, too, using Huss and Intamin for the major flat rides when they could have easily gone for cheaper options and nobody would know or care. Also, at around £20, the entrance fee is excellent value, being cheaper than any other of the Chinese chains at the moment.
Coaster Through the Clouds and Python in Bamboo Forest are an amazing steel/wood combo, easily the best in Asia and up there with some of the better American parks.
I’m also hopeful for some of their other parks now since all of their advertising/marketing has been truthful. They could’ve done what so many other Chinese parks do and claim rides as “the biggest in Asia” or “world’s only”, but they haven’t. They’ve rightly stated that they have China’s biggest coaster, and China’s biggest/fastest wooden coaster. This makes me think that their other claims for their upcoming parks will also be accurate: a one-of-kind, multi-track coaster for Guangzhou, and the world’s fastest for Wuxi. They’re also going for very different coasters and themes across their parks, none of which are anywhere near each other, as opposed to the frequent copy/paste of Happy Valley and Fantawild. It’s all very promising.
After leaving the park in the midafternoon, I popped across for a quick look inside the shopping mall.
Just inside the entrance (well, one of the entrances; the one closest to the park) are two small “parks”: Wanda Movie Park and some other small place next door with some simulator rides.
I didn’t try anything, but Movie Park had, I think, a flying theatre and shooting ride, bit that was about it.
They also had a cool “waterfall”, which was actually just a screen.
The place next to it, with a couple of simulators and some VR ride.
There was also a pretty big aquarium. It was a bit pricey at around £15, but I had a quick look around. It was designed by the same people who did the Georgia Aquarium apparently.
I was there in time for a dolphin/sea lion show, but decided not to stick around. I’m not a fan of them.
There’s a bit more to this day – a couple of small crappy parks – but I’ll leave that until later. This part is long enough as it is.
