Shanghai PTR - Part 3: Happy Valley

[Gavin]

A couple of weeks ago we had a Monday as a national holiday, so it was a good time to head somewhere for a long weekend. I’d been holding off on Shanghai for a while for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was thinking to hold off until Disneyland opens next year, and, secondly, there are quite a few major parks in nearby cities. I was basically going to do Shanghai as part of a bigger trip, maybe at Easter, taking in other places as well.

Thinking about it though, there are regular, cheap flights between Hong Kong and Shanghai, so a separate Disney weekend is more than doable. Plus, because there’s quite a lot in Shanghai, it would take a sizeable chunk out of a longer trip which, realistically, I could just knock off now.

Anyway, we had a staff meeting after work on the Friday, which was lovely of them considering we had a long weekend, so I went straight to the airport from there, getting a flight around 9 and arriving at my hotel in Shanghai sometime around midnight.

I stupidly left a small bag at home, which had my camera in it but luckily nothing important, so all of the pictures here are a bit crap since I had to use my phone.

The first day, a Saturday, was used to grab a bunch of +1s across the various city parks, taking a taxi up to the first park, getting there for around half nine, and then zigzagging my way back down. There was another park even further out, but it just didn’t warrant the effort.

Gongqing Forest Park

The amusement park section here was pretty decent for this sort of place. With the rides spread out slightly and not just plonked on a patch of concrete.

I didn’t try the bobcart as it had a pretty long queue – these pay-per-ride places are usually 100% walk-on – and I had a lot to try and cram in.

There were three coasters to grab here. First up was an oh-so-exciting Jungle Mouse. I know I rag on these because they’re absolutely everywhere, but to be fair, for their size they can be quite fun.

Next up was this Dragon thing, which was basically a larger-sized Big Apple.

The final coaster was more substantial, but fairly standard: a knockoff loopscrew.

Creds done it was into a taxi to the next place.

Huangxing Park

Powered dragon:

NEXT!

Heping Park

The coaster here was definitely the most whorish, though not powered like the last one.

Moving on…

Lu Xun Park

This place is named for a famous Chinese writer, Lu Xun, whose tomb is here. There’s a small museum and a statue at the entrance.

Then there are a bunch of statues of other classic writers from around the world. None of them wrote anything with Vin Diesel in it, so I won’t expect any of you to know who they are.

The area with the tomb:

It would be a shame to have such a nice park and not chuck in a cred though.

The next place was right in the middle of the city and was going to be the last park of the day before I did some other stuff.

People’s Park

I almost skipped it since they’d just removed a coaster, and the replacement was still listed as “under construction” on RCDB. However, since it was so central, I thought it was worth a quick look. Anyway, it was open.

The plan was to walk from here down to The Bund, the area with a bunch of old buildings that’s across the water from the business district, but I’d been knocking the parks off really quickly, so decided to grab another one that I’d planned to probably do the following day. Since I was going out that night, I figured it made more sense to get as much done as I could on that first day so that I could sleep a bit later.

Zhongshan Park

The cred here was another dragon thing, but not powered.

I decided to skip The Bund for the time being, instead heading directly over to the CBD to go up a couple of the tall buildings. When I’d been here before, about 10 years ago, only one of these buildings, the Jin Mao Tower, was here. It’s the one in the middle of these pictures. It was the tallest building in China at the time. It’s now number 8 in China and number 3 in Shanghai.

The building to the right is now the world’s 2nd tallest, but it’s not open yet. The other building, the one that looks like a bottle opener has an observation deck that I headed up to.

The Oriental Pearl Tower is in the same area. More on that in a bit.

The observation deck is on the bottom level of the bit above the “gap” at the top of the structure. It has a mostly glass floor, but it’s a but pointless as all you really see is the top of the main part of the building, which isn’t that far away.

I was here at the wrong time of day really, since the sun was shining onto the glass. It was still a decent view, but pictures came out crappy.

From there I walked to the Oriental Pearl. I’d been here before, but it was in my pre-enthusiast days and I hadn’t got the cred. I don’t think I even noticed it before, and would’ve missed it this time if I hadn’t known it was there.

I got the top-priced package which gets you up to the top “ball” of the tower.

Oriental Pearl Tower

It looks a bit murky because it was getting dark at this point, and the views are from behind glass, but it was actually really clear the whole time I was in Shanghai. You can see how ridiculous the new building is.

The next ball down has a 360° glass floor.

I actually missed the area with the coaster, which is in the lower ball, since the lift down from where I was went down to ground level. They let me go back up though, so that was fine, but I literally just managed to grab the cred before it was closed for half an hour for “maintenance”. For some reason they close it three times a day, for half an hour each time, for “maintenance”. Bulls**t.

Obviously, I would’ve just stuck around for the half an hour if I needed to, but luckily it wasn’t necessary.

From there I got the Metro back to my hotel since getting a taxi at that time in a busy tourist area was a pain in the arse, and it was on the same line anyway.

So yeah, seven parks knocked off in the same day if you include the tower, and +9 to the count - though obviously there was nothing of any note with any of them. Next up, an actual proper park.

 

[Pink Cadillac]

Re: Shanghai PTR - Part 1: Bunch o' +1s

Cool. Shanghai and surrounding cities have a lot of coasters that interest me. I cant wait to see where you went.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Shanghai PTR - Part 1: Bunch o' +1s

^It was just Shanghai for this trip. I decided to just knock it off rather than take a fairly big chunk out a longer trip sometime in the future. There are plenty of direct flights from Hong Kong to other cities nearby - Hangzhou, Ningbo etc. - so it means I can just bypass Shanghai next time, freeing up more time for other stuff.

I slept in the next morning, heading out at around 12 and getting a taxi out to the first proper park of the trip. It has its own metro station, but I just couldn’t be f**ked with the minor effort that would have entailed.

Jinjiang Action Park

You could go in for about £1 and pay for individual rides, or there was an option to pay about £10 and get any 6 rides included. Since there were 5 coasters here, I went for that.

I started off with Moto Coaster, which is, surprisingly, an original Zamperla model. Golden Horse now offer these and have installed at least 8 of them since they introduced them a couple of years ago.

It was fine, but, like any of this type, nothing special.

The main draw here is obviously Giant Inverted Boomerang. I’d better put some pictures in so that you can tell what kind of coaster it is.

The park was quiet, which is obviously a good think, but it also meant that they were waiting quite a while between dispatches to try and fill trains up a bit. I managed to get a back-row ride and really enjoyed it. This is the third one of these I’ve done now and I think they’re easily one of Vekoma’s best coaster models

A few weeks previously I’d seen some documentary on Discovery (I think) about the building of this coaster. A bit of trivia from the programme for you: Vekoma have a manufacturing plant in Xiamen where they build their Chinese (and assuming other Asian) coasters.

Next up was Roller Coaster, which I assumed to be a Chinese knockoff, but is actually an original Meisho shuttle loop. There aren’t many of these around any more.

I’d ridden one before at Seoul Dreamland a couple of years before the park was closed and all the coasters ripped out. Ain’t nobody getting them rare points!

They’re weird in that you go, very slowly, forwards up the lift hill to the flat section of track at the top, then drop down through the loop backwards before hitting the spike and doing it forwards. This one ran right alongside a main road, which made for a pretty weird experience.

There are some Chinese knockoffs of this model floating around – I’d done one at Beijing Shijingshan which is now apparently SBNO – but even those are few and far between.

Next up was Karst Cave Coaster, again an original Zamperla powered model.

The whole thing happens in one big “cave” with model dinosaurs and over a pool of water. Not a horrendous effort, but has clearly seen better days and as a ride, it’s crap.

I ended up sitting here for about 15 minutes before anybody else came in and the ride op put out his fag and set it off.

I didn’t do the rapids.

I would’ve loved to have done what appeared to be a Small World ripoff, but it was closed.

This was also closed:

I’ve seen a few of these around China, but they never seem to be working.

This was working – well, there was a ride op in the booth at least – but I didn’t see anyone riding it while I was there.

I also decided against being s**t out of a lion’s arsehole.

The last coaster here was, surprisingly really, the only knockoff.

Ugh.

I had one ride left on my ticket and was going to use it on a massive ferris wheel at the end of the park, but decided that I just wanted to get out of their really, so used it on a crappy ghost train, which I don’t seme to have pictures of, near the entrance on the way out.

This place was kind of a weird one really. It was ok for a Chinese city centre park, and they haven’t just filled it with knockoffs, but there’s little of any real note other than the GIB. It was cheap and convenient though I guess, and light crowds (it was getting busier as I left) meant an easy time getting stuff done.

The original plan for this day was to get Jinjiang done, then mop up some +1s at Zhongshan Park and Shanghai Zoo. Since I’d managed to polish off Zhongshan the previous day, when I got up that morning I decided to just sack off the zoo. However, since it was only about half two by the time I was done at Jinjiang, I thought I might as well go and get that done in the end.

Shanghai Zoo

This place was massive, and very good for a Chinese zoo, with the majority of the enclosures being of the size and standard you’d expect to see in a western zoo. Other than a couple of pandas and south China tigers, the collection was really generic though.

Just a quick example of the lion enclosure. A lot of Chinese zoos keep their big cats in very small, concrete cages.

I couldn’t find the coaster anywhere, which was incredibly annoying. After covering pretty much the whole place, I just decided it must have been removed and decided to leave. Heading out, I found it though.

Joy.

The zoo had its own metro station on the same line as the area I wanted to get to, so I figured I’d just use that. A taxi would only have been slightly quicker given that it was at the other side of the city, and if we hit any traffic, that would get cancelled out anyway.

I went to The Bund for a quick wander up and down. As I mentioned in the last part, The Bund is basically an embankment area, with a bunch of old s**t on one side and views across to new s**t on the other, where I’d been the previous evening. The view is pretty amazing, and the air was really clear, which is almost unheard of.

I had a wander up and down, grabbed something to eat and sat around or a bit before heading back to the hotel and meeting a couple of friends that evening.

Next up: Happy Valley.

 

[Hyde]

Re: Shanghai PTR - Part 2: Jinjiang Action Park

Interesting shuttle loop design - not what we normally see.

Great photos!

 

[Gavin]

Re: Shanghai PTR - Part 2: Jinjiang Action Park

I left the biggest park until the final day of the trip since it was a Monday, even though it was the day after a public holiday with the potential for a lot of people to have the day off. Since the actual holiday fell on a Sunday, a few places, and schools, could have given their staff the following day off instead. It turned out fine anyway; it seemed that, unlike in Hong Kong, most people in mainland China were already back to work.

I’d been wanting to go to this park for ages since it seemed to probably be the best in the chain, at least with regards to the coaster selection. I had a flight that night at around 9pm, so I’d figured that I could stay in the park until around 6 (it was open until 9 - though most of the coasters were closing around 5) and get a taxi to the airport which would take about an hour. It turns out that I didn’t really need that much time at all.

Happy Valley Shanghai

I got to the park around 10:30, knowing that, for Happy Valley, there’s usually little point in getting there for opening at 9:30 since they don’t tend to start opening stuff until a bit later. There were loads of coaches in the car park, full of school trips, but luckily they were all primary school kids who weren’t going/allowed on any of the bigger rides. They also left shortly after lunch time.

I headed straight to Fireball, a Gravity Group/M&V woodie which was the first wooden coaster to be built in China.

Walking up, I saw a board at the queue entrance, which is never a good sign. Luckily (kind of), it just said that the coaster would be open from 1pm due to scheduled maintenance in the morning. I’ve got a sneaky feeling that this “maintenance” happens every morning and it’s just a way to keep costs down by only opening it in the afternoons.

Anyway, I continued past Fireball to the park’s dive machine, which was already open.

I walked past this 4D cinema, but had a go later. It had a Pacific Rim film, which sounds like a sex act on a cruise ship to me, but otherwise meant nothing.

The stats put the dive machine as the tallest of the lot, before Valraven anyway, but I’m not sure how true that is. It’s basically Sheikra.

They were only running one train, but it really didn’t matter since it wasn’t too busy and they were actually running that one train properly, without any of the usual faff of other Happy Valley parks. I did an immediate reride and grabbed another one later in the day.

There’s a splashdown, but it’s totally pointless as you can’t see it from offride since it’s all boarded in with no viewing area. It completely misses the point of having one really since they’re way more of a spectator gimmick than anything else.

I also grabbed a ride on their Intamin Gyro Swing at some point since I hadn’t ridden one for ages. They’re better than the more common Huss giant Frisbees for some reason.

Following the path anti-clockwise got me to the park’s Intamin Mega-Lite.

The theming here is basically the same as the Shangri-La area of the Shenzhen park.

Again, one train operations, and, again, it didn’t matter. On my first ride, I had to wait for a couple of cycles. This park was definitely the best run in terms of how they were operating their coasters. There was none of the bulls**t making people wait outside stations which happens in most of the other parks. As soon as a train left the station, they were filling the gates for the next cycle. Also, there were no ridiculous pre-ride exercises, making people stand at the gates in front of an empty train doing warm-ups.

The coaster was excellent. I’ve now done all four of these and there’s absolutely no difference in the way that any of them ride. They’re such a great ride type. It’s a bit weird to see one as a “minor” ride though, tucked away in a far corner, when at the other parks, they’re the main coaster.

This kiddy coaster, a very common Golden Horse space car, was also closed until 1pm. It was slightly annoying since it meant coming back over to this side of the park later for the +1, but at least it opened.

This area also has a Zamperla spinner. I was worried that I’d have to waste quite a lot of time on this, since there was a bit of a queue and the park in Shenzhen run their spinner like crap, only having one car out on the track at any one time. However, they were running this one properly, with multiple cars. I was able to get it done and dusted within about ten minutes.

This area also had the new, and only, B&M family invert. The three smaller coasters were basically lined up next to each other.

There was a bit of a wait for this since there were a lot of kids in the queue and I think it had only just opened when I got there, but it wasn’t too bad. I think I waited about 20 minutes.

I just didn’t see the point of it really. For me, it just confirms that Happy Valley and Vekoma have fallen out. There’s no other reason to go with B&M to design this ride when Vekoma’s stock model would be so much cheaper and achieve exactly the same goal.

I stand by my theory that Happy Valley have allowed/sold Golden Horse access to the earlier Vekoma coasters at their Shenzhen and Beijing parks. We’ll never find out the actual truth of the matter, but it seems fairly obvious.

Like some of the other parks, this one has a Gold Mine Town area.

There was some kind of show here which I missed, but from the description seems like it could be one of those “Mystery Lodge” style projection things. They also had the Desperado shooting thing, but it was closed. I tried their “sit in the dark listening to headphones” thing, which was the same as Shenzhen’s: f**king s**t.

The other Gold Mine Town areas in the chain have Vekoma mine train coasters. This one, however, has a much better model from Intamin.

It was closed though. There were no signs out front, just a couple of ride ops sending people away. Bollocks.

There was a flying island right next to it, with no queue whatsoever, so I gave that a go. This is where I really wished I had brought my actual camera since it would have been a great vantage point to get some decent pictures of the Mega Lite, which was really hard to see from ground level.

Anyway, a few pictures from there:

I gave this a miss. They’re at every Happy Valley park and are ridiculously wet. They’re very good though admittedly.

I also skipped this:

And this:

There’s some major construction work going on, with boards advising of something new coming, but absolutely no indication of what it is. It’s a very large area though.

By this point, I’d done a circle of the whole park, and it wasn’t too far off the opening time to Fireball, so I started heading back there. I almost missed this:

It was a 4D dark ride based around being caught in a storm. It wasn’t very good, but it’s the first time I’ve ridden this ride type at a Happy Valley park. They have one in Chengdu which was closed when I went, and there’s one at Knight Valley which is owned by the same company, but I think that’s it unless I’ve missed one elsewhere.

This was closed, but I’m assuming it’s a flying theatre, so no big loss.

The haunted house walkthrough was, like others in the chain, piss-poor.

I joined the queue for Fireball about 15 minutes before it was due to open, which was timed pretty well since the queue really built up right after. I think there were about 2 or 3 trains in front of me, so I wasn’t waiting too long after it opened.

I really liked this, but maybe not quite as much as I was hoping to. It rattled a fair bit, without being rough, so had a bit more of a “traditional” woodie feeling than the newer Gravity Group/M&V coasters popping up at newer parks. Also, because it had only just opened, I don’t think it had had a chance to warm up.

The queue was almost full by the time I got off, so I decided against a reride. Signs in the queueline were posted at 90 minutes, which I’ve noticed to be accurate with Happy Valley in the past since they clearly plan for s**ty operations, so I went back for a reride on the Dive Machine and Mega Lite.

These were both walk-on, presumably because everyone had ridden them and had headed to Fireball, so I did 4 rides in a row on the Mega Lite and also noticed a rapids ride which I’d missed before. Nothing special really.

The park were setting up for Halloween. I noticed 3 of these temporary structures being set up in various locations across the park.

The Mine Train still looked dead.

However, when I checked the queue line, there was nobody blocking it off as they had been earlier. It was open, but empty.

It’s the same model as the one in Bakken for anyone who’s done that. These are the only two currently, and they’re very good. Well, for a mine train at least.

I was still relatively early at this point, I think around 3, and I had plenty of time before I needed to leave the park, so I decided to suck up the queue for another ride on Fireball. By the time I got there, the queue was down by about half, and the time taken from the 90-minute sign was only actually about half an hour since, as with the other coasters, they were actually running it properly, despite it being on one train.

Because of this, I went back around for another go. I liked it better this time around, probably due to it warming up quite a bit.

I still had plenty of time left, but the weather was starting to turn and it was very clear that it was about to rain. Knowing how s**t Happy Valley are with closing stuff in bad weather, I just decided to call it a day and head out. I’d managed to ride everything I’d wanted to, with multiple re-rides on a bunch of stuff, so it made sense.

I really liked this park. I think the Beijing park is better for theming and overall atmosphere, but in terms of the number and variety of rides, Shanghai is the best Happy Valley park in the chain – I haven’t done Tianjin yet though, and Beijing have added an S&S launch since I’ve been.

Because I had a lot more time, I decided to get to the airport using public transport, which took almost twice as long as a taxi would have, but saved me about a tenner and meant I wouldn’t just be sitting around the airport for too long. Also, I got to ride the Maglev train, the fastest train in the world, which I hadn’t done before.

That’s it then. It was quite a productive few days. It means that, other than when Disneyland opens, which I’ll just do as a separate weekend, I can now basically strike Shanghai off the list if/when I do another longer trip in that general area.

 

[TilenB]

Great report once more, gavin! The Shanghai one really looks like one of the finest Happy Valley parks out there (the only thing it 'lacks' is one of those S&S launchers, otherwise it seems to do everything better than the other ones).

It’s the same model as the one in Bakken for anyone who’s done that. These are the only two currently, and they’re very good. Well, for a mine train at least.

There's a clone in the new Turkish ViaSea park that has opened this year. It has the same layout, but no mine theme.

 

[Pink Cadillac]

As always, I enjoyed reading. I'm terrified by the chain's operations - I've been spoiled. But it's something I should experience to put things into perspective. I'd be grateful when faced with 'normal' bad operations.

 

[Gavin]

The operations in Shanghai were fine. Yeah, everything was on one train, but they were running things properly. It was no different to one - train operations in a Western park on a quiet day where a second train really isn't needed.

Fantawild have taken the crown for appallingly sh**ty operations now.