Like Yoyo Land, I wasn’t really planning on hitting this place while I was in Bangkok. It’s a major park, but I’d been before and the only other coaster addition since then was a Mack powered coaster. For anyone who doesn’t know, this place got most of the rides, including three coasters and a load of flats, from Jerudong Park in Brunei after it closed down.
Anyway, since it was New Year’s Eve, I’d gone home early the night before to make sure that I could make the most of that night, so I woke up early(ish), with an afternoon to kill. The last time I’d visited, I’d taken a bus, but just went for a taxi this time. It took about half an hour from where I was staying.
The entrance to the park hasn’t changed much.
The Coke can Christmas Tree was tacky and fab.
I gave the Boomerang a miss this time around. It was actually really decent last time I’d ridden it, but I just wasn’t really in the mood.
Last time I visited was just a few days after people had been killed on the log flume, which was understandably closed. Instead of fixing and reopening it, they tore it down and replaced with a much more substantial one.
It was really good! First there’s a backwards drop, followed by a small forwards drop and finishing with a large double-down drop .
The horror walkthrough was a bit crap and a bit bizarre. As soon as we went in, some woman bolted back out of the entrance, leaving her 5-year-old kids by themselves. These kids then just grabbed my legs and cried the whole way around.
The second to last scene is a vision of hell, with devils boiling people in a pot. The kids were hysterical. The final scene is some kind of “redemption”, with some goddess, dressed in white. The kids stopped screaming, stood in front of the goddess and bowed with massive grins on their faces. No idea.
Dinotopia was here last time, but it was set off by itself and you had to walk over a dirt path to get to it. Now the whole area has been properly landscaped and it looks really nice.
It’s a walkthrough in two parts. The first part is a dark jungle with animatronic dinosaurs. Light and movement are set off when you trigger sensors; it’s actually pretty decent.
The second park is more of a museum with fake dinosaur skeletons.
Right next to this was the newer coaster, Grand Canyon Express. Work on this seems to be ongoing, as some of the supports have started to have rock theming added. It looks pretty ridiculous having just been transplanted from Jerudong with all the original footers. It was long for a powered coaster, but really slow and boring.
Jurassic Adventure was still here from last time. It’s one of those so-bad-it’s-good sort of rides, with awful dinosaur models. The setting is very green though, and the fact that it’s a real truck with a driver, rather than a tracked ride, kind of adds something to it.
It’s highly educational, too, as you get to learn about the people of the Jurassic era, including what they ate. You can’t tell from this picture (the truck was bouncing around a bit), but judging from the skeleton, these people have managed to catch and kill a triceratops!
The flat rides were pretty much the same. There’s an undercover area with a bunch of old stuff, with the newer stuff, again scavenged from Jerudong, sitting outside.
I kind of didn’t want to ride the SLC, Vortex. I’ve always labelled it as the best SLC I’ve been on, and knew that there was no way it would still be riding as well years later. Without a word of exaggeration, it was pretty much B&M invert smooth when I’d ridden it before. In the interests of fairness though, I thought I’d have to give it another go.
Yes, it’s got considerably rougher, but it’s still much better than the majority of SLCs I’ve tried. It was also the most forceful, especially through the first inversions. I only rode once, in the front seat, but it seemed to be really flying around the track.
I had a quick go up the sky tower to get a few pictures:
The old shuttle loop got listed as SBNO about a year after I’d ridden it. It’s still sitting there, but I think it’s safe to say that there’s more chance of the cast of Benefits Street working again before this thing does.
Another new attraction since my last visit was African Adventure, which was kind of along the same lines as Jurassic Adventure, only a million times more amazing.
You get to choose a train or a boat. I chose the boat.
The ride is full of amazingly high-tech, realistic animatronics, and is extremely educational. First you get to see King Kong.
Then you get to travel through some African villages, learning about how people in Africa live. It’s like you’re really there!
Then you get to meet some hyper-realistic African animals.
“It’s the circle of liiiiiiiiffffe!”
My favourite African animals are tigers, so I was thrilled to get to see them up close and to learn that they hunt zebra.
As well as being incredibly educational, the ride also had a very sound ecological message: Evil white man comes and kills the animals!
It was incredibly moving, so there were cheers all round when the evil white hunters’ truck crashed.
Africans are known around the world for taking really good care of their native wildlife, so there’s no way they’d allow evil whitey to get away with coming in and killing their precious tigers.
Instead, they do what Africans are well-known for doing with white visitors; they burn them alive and eat them. The animals are safe! YAY!
And then for some reason King Kong appears again, but this time he’s got hold of something that looks like it came from a Japanese cartoon.
I felt that I left the ride with a new appreciation for African wildlife and culture. I got in a taxi back to Bangkok safe in the knowledge that I hadn’t just wasted an afternoon in a theme park; I’d actually left as a better-educated, far more rounded human being.
That, and I've now ridden every known operational coaster in Thailand.
Anyway, since it was New Year’s Eve, I’d gone home early the night before to make sure that I could make the most of that night, so I woke up early(ish), with an afternoon to kill. The last time I’d visited, I’d taken a bus, but just went for a taxi this time. It took about half an hour from where I was staying.
The entrance to the park hasn’t changed much.
The Coke can Christmas Tree was tacky and fab.
I gave the Boomerang a miss this time around. It was actually really decent last time I’d ridden it, but I just wasn’t really in the mood.
Last time I visited was just a few days after people had been killed on the log flume, which was understandably closed. Instead of fixing and reopening it, they tore it down and replaced with a much more substantial one.
It was really good! First there’s a backwards drop, followed by a small forwards drop and finishing with a large double-down drop .
The horror walkthrough was a bit crap and a bit bizarre. As soon as we went in, some woman bolted back out of the entrance, leaving her 5-year-old kids by themselves. These kids then just grabbed my legs and cried the whole way around.
The second to last scene is a vision of hell, with devils boiling people in a pot. The kids were hysterical. The final scene is some kind of “redemption”, with some goddess, dressed in white. The kids stopped screaming, stood in front of the goddess and bowed with massive grins on their faces. No idea.
Dinotopia was here last time, but it was set off by itself and you had to walk over a dirt path to get to it. Now the whole area has been properly landscaped and it looks really nice.
It’s a walkthrough in two parts. The first part is a dark jungle with animatronic dinosaurs. Light and movement are set off when you trigger sensors; it’s actually pretty decent.
The second park is more of a museum with fake dinosaur skeletons.
Right next to this was the newer coaster, Grand Canyon Express. Work on this seems to be ongoing, as some of the supports have started to have rock theming added. It looks pretty ridiculous having just been transplanted from Jerudong with all the original footers. It was long for a powered coaster, but really slow and boring.
Jurassic Adventure was still here from last time. It’s one of those so-bad-it’s-good sort of rides, with awful dinosaur models. The setting is very green though, and the fact that it’s a real truck with a driver, rather than a tracked ride, kind of adds something to it.
It’s highly educational, too, as you get to learn about the people of the Jurassic era, including what they ate. You can’t tell from this picture (the truck was bouncing around a bit), but judging from the skeleton, these people have managed to catch and kill a triceratops!
The flat rides were pretty much the same. There’s an undercover area with a bunch of old stuff, with the newer stuff, again scavenged from Jerudong, sitting outside.
I kind of didn’t want to ride the SLC, Vortex. I’ve always labelled it as the best SLC I’ve been on, and knew that there was no way it would still be riding as well years later. Without a word of exaggeration, it was pretty much B&M invert smooth when I’d ridden it before. In the interests of fairness though, I thought I’d have to give it another go.
Yes, it’s got considerably rougher, but it’s still much better than the majority of SLCs I’ve tried. It was also the most forceful, especially through the first inversions. I only rode once, in the front seat, but it seemed to be really flying around the track.
I had a quick go up the sky tower to get a few pictures:
The old shuttle loop got listed as SBNO about a year after I’d ridden it. It’s still sitting there, but I think it’s safe to say that there’s more chance of the cast of Benefits Street working again before this thing does.
Another new attraction since my last visit was African Adventure, which was kind of along the same lines as Jurassic Adventure, only a million times more amazing.
You get to choose a train or a boat. I chose the boat.
The ride is full of amazingly high-tech, realistic animatronics, and is extremely educational. First you get to see King Kong.
Then you get to travel through some African villages, learning about how people in Africa live. It’s like you’re really there!
Then you get to meet some hyper-realistic African animals.
“It’s the circle of liiiiiiiiffffe!”
My favourite African animals are tigers, so I was thrilled to get to see them up close and to learn that they hunt zebra.
As well as being incredibly educational, the ride also had a very sound ecological message: Evil white man comes and kills the animals!
It was incredibly moving, so there were cheers all round when the evil white hunters’ truck crashed.
Africans are known around the world for taking really good care of their native wildlife, so there’s no way they’d allow evil whitey to get away with coming in and killing their precious tigers.
Instead, they do what Africans are well-known for doing with white visitors; they burn them alive and eat them. The animals are safe! YAY!
And then for some reason King Kong appears again, but this time he’s got hold of something that looks like it came from a Japanese cartoon.
I felt that I left the ride with a new appreciation for African wildlife and culture. I got in a taxi back to Bangkok safe in the knowledge that I hadn’t just wasted an afternoon in a theme park; I’d actually left as a better-educated, far more rounded human being.
That, and I've now ridden every known operational coaster in Thailand.
) and the fact that it's educational and enjoyable seems to make it all the more more worthwhile.
