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Nanning PTR - Part 4: Fantawild Asian Legend

gavin

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It seems like I haven’t been anywhere for ages thanks to the first term at work always being s**te, but I managed to get a bit done at the weekend.

I had some bulls**t work thing where all the teachers had to go to Guangzhou for some anniversary thing. The place I work started off in Guangzhou before being taken across to Hong Kong. I tried to get out of going by claiming I had no Chinese visa, and that it was impossible for me to get one without plane tickets anfd hotel bookings - not true, but they don't know that - but when they offered/threatened to get a travel agent on the case, I suddenly “remembered” that I had one after all. Twats. Anyway, because this was a Friday/Saturday thing, they gave us Monday off to make up for it, so I decided to get the train from Guangzhou to Nanning on the Saturday evening rather than head back to Hong Kong with everyone else.

The end of our staff trip was at some crappy “cultural” theme park. We got there around 2 and were left to our own devices until 4, when we were supposed to meet back at the bus, but I just took my stuff and f**ked off almost immediately, not before scouting the place for creds.

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“Theme Park” here just meant crappy tourist trap selling s**te from fake “traditional” buildings.
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This looked promising:

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The map also showed something which looked as though it would be a powered dragon coaster, but the map lied. It turned out to be this:

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Like, what the f**k even is that? It didn’t move or do anything. Just sat there on a short piece of track. Bastards.

Anyway, since I’d decided that, unlike my coworkers, I didn’t need to spend two hours taking selfies in front of fake s**t, I ditched early. There had been no plan to get any creds in Guangzhou, but there were a couple of +1s listed not too far away. These were also, quite luckily, in a stupid part of the city which I’d decided to ignore when I finally get back to Guangzhou for a proper cred mop since they’re nowhere near anything else.

As I was looking these places up, something else caught my eye on Google Maps. Since it was on the way to a place I knew to have a cred, I thought I might as well scope it out even though there’s nothing listed there.

Baolong Amusement Park

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Although this was “in” the city, it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, just off some very minor road in a farming area. As is the usual these days, I used Didi, so there was no issue with taxi drivers. It wasn’t too far from the place I’d just come from, but I still doubt many drivers would know the place.

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And the hard work pays off! Another glorious jungle mouse to add to my collection. Discovering creds is fab. At this point, I feel I’m probably in line for a Nobel Prize or summat, given all these life-changing discoveries I’ve made for the betterment of humanity.

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The next place, which should’ve been the first place until I made my Earth-shattering discovery, wasn’t too far away, so I decided to walk it. See what I mean by middle of nowhere:

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Fantasy D World

Despite the promising name, this place was extremely disappointing. They were getting ready to close up for the day and there was nobody around at all. Given the state of the place, I’d be surprised if anyone had been there at all. Awful craphole in a crap location, but like many of these awful Chinese crapholes, it’s somehow still clinging on.

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Yay for another Jungle Mouse at least.

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My favourite thing here is the stolen height marker from Chimelong Paradise just down the road. When I say stolen, I don’t think it was just copied, but actually nicked.

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Onto the final +1!

Xinghai Park

This was much more of the typical city park with rides type of affair, so was actually busy.

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Look! People actually riding something!

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So, considering no creds were on the cards for this day, the +3 – including the new discovery – was a decent little bonus. Like I said before, I need to do a proper Guangzhou weekend at some point to mop up the 20 or so +1s dotted around, but the two (now three) in that area would definitely have been last on the list given the location, so my crappy work trip worked out quite well in that respect.

From there, it was onto the train station to take the three-hour trip to Nanning for some proper parks. That’ll be next then.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
I've missed this sort of thing. What real trips are made of.
Guangzhou area always looked like the biggest headache for volume of crap, so good luck in the future.
 

gavin

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I've missed this sort of thing. What real trips are made of.
Guangzhou area always looked like the biggest headache for volume of crap, so good luck in the future.
It's such an easy place to do from here, especially given the new high-speed train from Hong Kong - the station of which is right next to my flat - but I just can't find the motivation to go. I'll have to go for Wanda when that opens next year, so I'll probably hold off a while longer.
 

gavin

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Nanning then.

I’d been here before a few years ago, back when there were no decent parks but an easy cluster of ten +1s around the city centre. These days, I probably wouldn’t make that kind of effort again, but I was newer to the area and a bit more cred hungry. Since then, a couple of decent places have popped up, so it was time for a revisit.

The old report is here: http://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/nanning-photo-trip-report.38643/#post-918859

The first day was a massive pain in the arse unfortunately. Feel free to skip through to some actual park stuff with pictures while I have a moan about it.

The main reason for visiting was for the new Fantawild park. These days, I’m pretty over them, but this was an entirely new type/theme from the usual. The hotel I was staying at was at the opposite side of the city centre, and the quickest way to get there –according to Didi - seemed to be to cross the river at the hotel side, drive around to the other side and then cross back to get to the park, rather than go through the city centre. Males sense.

The problem was that there was a f**king marathon on on that day, and the bridges at the Fantwild side – two huge new ones – were both closed to cars and pedestrians. I could see the woodie across the river, but couldn’t get to it. The only option would have been basically to drive back to where we’d crossed the river –right next to my hotel – and then drive all the back though the city. UGH!

We were right next to the new Wanda shopping mall though, with a cred inside, so I just got out of the car and went there. It was around 10-minutes from opening and already had loads of people waiting outside, so I decided to sack that off for the time being.

There was another park absolutely ages away which I was thinking about doing the next day. It was a 90-minute drive, about half an hour away from the airport but in the “wrong” direction from the city, so the plan was that if I wanted to go, I was going to do it the next day and go to the airport from there rather than come all the way back into the city. Thinking back, I probably should have just taken the long way back round to Fantawild, but decided to try the other place anyway.

Long Gu Wan Dinosaur Park

My confidence in Didi disappeared slightly when it directed the car down a dirt track, through a cornfield, for the final 2km of the trip. The app then refused my payment, meaning that I couldn’t book another car until that was settled, meaning I was very much stuck. The place was dead. I probably saw another twenty people the whole day, and this was a Sunday.

The two coasters here weren’t exactly a massive draw, but I was more curious to see the place since it’s very new and there are no pictures up on RCDB yet. So excluse!

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Right from entering, you can see why this location works very well for a dinosaur-themed park. This building had a 4D dark ride:

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I’m pretty sure it was the same as the Dino Rampage rides from Fantawild. I know that Fantawild sell their rides to other parks, but this was the first time that I’d seen one.

The major coaster here is a next-gen SLC from Golden Horse. It’s the same as the old “Kumali” layouts, but the track is different, and it’s a lot smoother.

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Some other stuff, including the park’s second coaster:

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A huge area of the park was given over to Valley of the Dinosaurs, with the option to walk through it or be driven around.

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It starts off well enough, with a large “swamp” area with models and animatronics.

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This leads around to Dinosaur Ruins, an exhibit/research facility for creating/breeding dinosaurs. Something has gone horribly wrong though, and the dinosaurs have escaped. It’s an absolutely genius idea; somebody should make a film about it.

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As you can see, it’s all a bit cheap looking and not particularly well-executed. One problem with a lot of the dinosaurs throughout the park was that they were broken. A lot of them were moving, and a lot were not supposed to, but there were also others which clearly had power/cables going to them, but they weren’t doing anything. Considering the park is only a year old, that’s not good. In other areas, the metal bases of the dinosaurs are very clear to see as well.

On exiting Dinosaur Ruins, you’re faced with another, much more impressive area of Dinosaur Valley.

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There are two moutainy thingies with construction going on, which seem to part of the park. No idea what’s going on there, though.

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As I mentioned before, it’s hard to imagine a better location for a “Lost Kingdom” dinosaur attraction, a “Triassic Playground” if you will.

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There was a decent rapids ride with nowhere to take pictures of it from.

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I generally avoid Chinese rapids since the rides themselves are usually a bit s**t, and they just dump water on you for no reason, but it was a hot, gross day and I was curious. It was so busy that they were literally running it with two boats. It was good, and pretty long, with a mid-course lifthill, tunnel sections and dinosaurs.

I didn’t bother with the Power Surge and there was some large VR building/museum thing that wasn’t open.

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I’ll just throw more of the SLC in since it’s actually pretty fab-looking.

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And then I had to try and leave…

Because I hadn’t/couldn’t pay for my last ride, I couldn’t order a Didi car. Customer services on the app said that the issue would clear itself within a day and I could pay, but that didn’t help when I was out in the middle of nowhere. Even if that hadn’t been an issue, the app was showing no cars around at all.

Luckily, this is China, and you can always get s**t done. There was, as always, a customer service centre at the entrance, so I managed to get someone to arrange a driver to take me back Nanning. It took him about 45 minutes to get to/find the place, but I was just relieved to be able to get out at all.

While waiting, there was a video running in the customer service area, with English subtitles. Apparently, this is just phase one of a three-phase resort. The map showed a hotel and there was a “hotel shuttle” stop at the entrance, but it’s unclear as to whether that’s open or not yet. Also, the beautiful construction on those hideous limestone karsts started to make a bit of sense.

Overall, I guess this is one to keep an eye on. The accessibility issues are the worry at the moment I guess despite the place being quite close to the airport and, technically, just off a main highway. I’m just not convinced it’s ever going to get anywhere near the visitor numbers to make it even remotely sustainable.

I got another cred that same day, but I’ll throw that into the next part.
 

Coaster Hipster

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Interesting to hear the new Gen SLC from Golden Horse rides a lot smoother. The part about the app not working properly is kinda worrying tbh, but I'm also glad to hear customer service at the park was able to help. Out of curiosity, I presume you did ask for arrangements in Chinese? I plan on going to Shanghai next June for the AAE 19 and creds, so I'd be curious to know more about how to get out of the 'middle of nowhere' and potential language barrier issues to overcome.

I do speak and understand a bit of Chinese and am learning the language though.
 

gavin

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The app thing really wasn't a big problem, just bad timing that it decided to play up at that moment. It was back to normal that evening. It was a credit card/payment issue rather than an app issue.

I don't speak enough Chinese to communicate what I needed, but just used Google translate to show what I needed and that was enough to sort it.

Despite that one-off issue with DiDi, I'd definitely still recommend it. It makes things soooooooo much easier when it comes to parks. Occasionally, taxi drivers won't know where parks are, especially less major ones.
 

Hixee

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I don't speak an ounce of Chinese, and got on just fine in Shanghai (all the way out to Hefei and back) earlier this year (route here: http://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/china-march-2018-day-10-–-suzhou-summary.42416/).

I didn't use Didi, but I probably would next time. Although the only park where it wasn't 'easy' was Joyland, as it was so out of the way. I ended up asking guest services and they helped get a taxi arranged for me. The rest just had taxi ranks outside.

I did have data (picked up a pre-paid SIM from Amazon), so just used Google Translate when I was really stuck. Apart from that, a smile and bit of patience sorted the rest. :p

Enjoying this report Gavin, as always. The adventure of finding totally new creds is always good to read!
 

gavin

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^ China is much easier than everyone thinks or expects. The first few times I went before I moved to Hong Kong (Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou), smartphones weren't even a thing and I still managed it ok. These days, with phone data especially, you'd have to be a total f**king moron to have any real problems beyond some minor annoyances.

Next bit then.

I left Dinosaur Park sometime in the afternoon and headed all the way back to Wanda, taking another 90 minutes. The original plan for the day was Fantawild for most of the day with Wanda, just across the river, in the evening since it’s open until 10pm. I figured I’d still have time to do both the next day, but also figured that I still had time on this one despite the ridiculous journey back and forth.

Nanning Wanda Theme Park

I took these first few photos that morning, just before the park opened. When I got back in the late afternoon, there was no queue outside.

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The a place called Wanda Rainforest Park, which is just a kiddy area with a bunch of climbing stuff, which I thought was separate, but it turns out it connects to the main park at the back.

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It’s free entry and then pay per ride. There are a couple of ticket booths around, but most people were using WeChat or AliPay on their phones. You just scan the QR code at the entrance to the ride to pay.

I’ll just chuck some pictures in. It wasn’t a big place, but there was a lot crammed in and it had a pretty fab atmosphere.

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The most noticeable things are obviously the cred and the rapids. Indoor rapids always look pretty weird. My camera, while being more than adequate for most things, doesn’t like moving coaster cars/trains in artificial light. I guess the blur creates an illusion of speed, so let’s go with that.

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For those who don’t know, the coaster here is a Golden Horse drop-track coaster. After the lift hill, it fannies around a bit, goes into the mountain which has a bit of projection stuff going on, drops about 10 feet, then goes out the other side to fanny about a bit more. It’s was pretty dull to be honest, though very inoffensive in that it was smooth enough. The drop was decent – the only one I’ve done is Thirteen, and it felt similar – but it took a while after the drop for the car to move out again.

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I only did the cred (pretty much walk-on and cost 3 quid), minced around a bit taking pictures and left. It’s a cool little place really and is definitely worth popping across to after Fantawild since it’s right there and everything’s open later. The rides were closing at 8pm the day I was there, which still gives a good couple of hours after Fatntawild closes.

Fantawild next.
 

Hixee

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How was the drop-track? I've been curious about the Golden Horse one ever since I realised they'd done one.
 

gavin

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^ Ah yeah, I should've mentioned that.

Oh, wait...

For those who don’t know, the coaster here is a Golden Horse drop-track coaster. After the lift hill, it fannies around a bit, goes into the mountain which has a bit of projection stuff going on, drops about 10 feet, then goes out the other side to fanny about a bit more. It’s was pretty dull to be honest, though very inoffensive in that it was smooth enough. The drop was decent – the only one I’ve done is Thirteen, and it felt similar – but it took a while after the drop for the car to move out again.
 

Antinos

Slut for Spinners
Loving the report so far! It's amazing to see the progression of the industry over in China where their parks are becoming bigger, better themed, and look like they have a relatively high quality instead of a random jungle mouse plopped at the edge of a city park. Although it looks small, Wanda Nanning looks pretty well done for what it is. Can't wait to read the rest!
 

gavin

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^ I secretly love the random Jungle Mouse / worm /dragon coasters that are just plonked in "children's playgrounds". In the UK, a children's playground will consist of a burnt-out swing set and a piss-covered slide. In China, they get creds!
 

gavin

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The main purpose of this trip then, which I should’ve done the previous day, Fantawild Asian Legend. Before that though, I decided to check out a city park nearby.

Nanhu Park

I’d scouted this place out before on a previous visit, and hadn’t found anything. However, the park is huge, so I didn’t cover the whole thing. Google maps has since labelled “Nanhu Park Recreation Ground” though, and it’s tucked away at a far end that I hadn’t been to, so I thought it might be worth a look.

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Looking promising so far.

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YAY!

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Unlisted, newly-discovered cred number 2 of the weekend. I’m pretty much the Marco Polo of creds.

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The proper park then.

Fantawild Asian Legend

I’ve done a bunch of Fantawild places before, but this is a new type from them. For that reason, I’ll try to go into a bit of detail for each ride. They were mostly existing ride types from Fantawild, but with unique themes. A bit of background d on the place first, which I found out after the fact. It opened in August of this year, and seems to have been built to coincide with the ASEAN Expo which was held in Nanning in September.

When I was at the park, I found some of the countries represented to be a bit strange, but that’s only until the Expo came to light. ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) has 10 members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. It was these 10 countries which had themed areas and rides.

Anyway, let’s start with some pics of the entrance area.

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I bypassed the flying theatre, but ended up doing it at the end of the day.

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I’m glad I did since despite the loading faff, it was actually really decent. It covers the highlights of all 10 countries mentioned earlier.

The Philippines is represented by an attraction called Manila Manila, housed inside a replica of Manila Cathedral.

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The inside is very different though, with a very cartoon-like, “Small World” vibe. It’s a huge 3D cinema with multiple screens and a rotating seating platform. The screens on one side have a kind of wraparound effect (3 different screens kind of surrounding the seating) while on the opposite side there’s just one huge screen. There are also projections around the walls to help “connect” the action while the auditorium is rotating.

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It was fab! Definitely fab in a WTF way, but fab. The highlight was the finale – an underwater scene with various sea creatures playing instruments and a singing manatee (Welcome to Maneeeeela! Welcome to Maneeeeeeeeeeeeeela!) and bubbles falling from the ceiling.

Next to Manila is Singapore, a recreation of the Gardens by the Bay “trees”, the Singapore skyline, and the famous Merlion statue.

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The building houses a huge “Back to the Future/Simpsons” style simulator. The older Fantawild Sdventure parks have this system, but they have a space theme. This one was called Finding Merlion, and was a general flying around Singapore affair. It was at this point that I started to suspect that the rides may have been sponsored by the countries they represent. A lot of them, especially this one, were basically just large tourist adverts.

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Cred. I had intended to run to the creds first, but the dark rides had been distracting me. It was dead anyway, pretty much everything was open and the weather was good, so I didn’t get much cred anxiety anyway.

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Cambodia was probably the most impressive area given that it was more than just one show building:

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I bypassed this and came back to it later. It’s easily one of the most impressive show buildings I’ve ever seen.

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After Cambodia, there’s a tunnel that goes under a main road, effectively splitting the park into two sections and meaning the whole place is really pretty huge. Indonesia is on the other side.

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This was the only attraction that was closed, but from the description, it seemed to be a show.

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Having a quick look on Youtube, I found this. I’ve seen a similar system being used in a show in Wuhu called Bubble Ballet, but this seems on another level.


Laos was next, with a 3D 360 cinema thing. The “roof” raises off and the whole platform moves up into the screen area and rotates around. It was alright, but strengthened my idea that each country had paid for their own rides since this was a lot more low-key than most others and Laos is the poorest of the countries represented.

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CRED! This one is a clone of the one in Zhengzhou, which I’ve rated really highly before.

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This one didn’t quite measure up though. It was definitely running cold compared to Zhengzhou given that the park was empty and it wasn’t being sent around anywhere near as often as Zhengzhou’s on the day I was there. Apart from that, though, it was pretty shaky, with a proper rattle all the way round. Not good for a coaster that’s only 4 months old, and not the first time I’ve noticed this with Chinese Gravity Group coasters. They’re really pretty inconsistent.

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The final coaster is Puppy Coaster, notable only for the amazing train.

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Vietnam had another impressive show building, this time Hanoi Cathedral, to house their ride, Meeting in Halong Bay. This used a large, trackless vehicle (think Great Movie Ride or Ellen’s Energy Adventure) to move through large sets, telling a kind of love story of a couple who meet in Halong Bay. As with others, the whole thing is just a big advert for the area.

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What was good here is that Fantawild seem to have maybe learned from previous mistakes, or I guess whoever paid for the ride might have insisted on some cuts. Previous versions of this ride type have used 4 vehicles which are all loaded at once, split up and then regroup for a final scene at the end. This is always overkill as they’re never close to being filled, and it ruins the flow of the ride since cars are waiting to leave at the start, or waiting for the others to catch up at the end. This version, though having multiple cars, only loaded and sent one at a time.

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Fantawild’s rapids have always been piss poor in the past, but they’ve really upped their game with this one. I think it’s from Golden Horse, and it was soooooooo much better than most Chinese rapids, with a decent course and eve a drop. It unfortunately had a very, very slow section right at the end with a bunch of water guns for spectators, but luckily nobody was around to use them.

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I’m such a Fantawild goon that I recognized the shape of this building meant that it was a “Jinshan Temple Showdown” type of attraction. I was right, but this one has an entirely new theme, Hero of Malacca, and represented Malaysia.

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The queue line of this was amazing. It’s pretty much a walkthrough of a whole town. I couldn’t really get decent pictures though since we moved straight through it.

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As expected, next came a huge boat ride through a bunch of different scenes. The whole system was, I think, an exact clone of “Jinshan Temple Showdown”, but completely rethemed to tell some story of some Malaysian folk hero. Pictures are a bit s**t unfortunately, but it’s pretty epic.

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Upon leaving the boat, you finish in a large showroom with projection, fire and water effects, finishing with a huge “flood”.

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As expected, I really liked this, but was especially impressed that whoever gave the go-ahead for it wasn’t too interested in just selling Malaysia as a tourist destination, but were more concerned with just offering a decent attraction.

More of the cred:

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Colourful Trip is at a lot of other Fantawild parks, but this one was very different. The usual model is a “Small World” type boat ride, but focuses purely on China and is pretty piss-poor, with crappy animatronics. This one was the Brunei attraction of the park, so the whole thing was just selling Brunei. Unlike the usual version, this used a lot of screens in combination with the animatronics, which themselves were MUCH better than in the usual ride. It was impossible to get decent pictures though.

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The ride in the Thailand section was Rama and Sita, and was a large 4D dark ride. Again, the queue line was pretty epic. The ride itself was excellent as well. I think the layout was the same as Wizards’ Academy from some of the other parks, but I can’t be exactly sure. The theme was, obviously, completely different though.

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Back to Cambodia to see what was in the huge building. It was called Amazing Ankor, and was just a 3D cinema. Yawn. It was impressive enough – a CGI film showing the history/building of Ankor Wat - and obviously a lot of work had gone into it, but I think whoever made it was more concerned with the technical aspects of it rather than if it was actually any fun.

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The Myanmar attraction was Bagan Legend, a new take using Fantawild’s live actor/projection screen shows. It wasn’t very good unfortunately. In terms of performance it was decent, but the projection/screen work wasn’t utilised to anything close to its full potential.

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I finished up with the flying theatre mentioned earlier, and headed out to the airport.

All-in-all, I have mixed feelings about this place. It was a pretty stunning park, and it was good to see different versions of the usual Fantawild rides, but it just felt too much like one huge tourist commercial for large parts of it, namely Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia and, to an extent, The Philippines.

Also, with this place obviously being built with the Expo in mind, I’m curious as to how things will play out with it now that that’s over. I was there on a Monday in December, so it was obviously dead, but I’ve got no idea on whether this place is bringing many people in. It should be, given that it’s the only major park in a city of 7 million.

If my suspicions are correct, and the rides were financed by the countries represented, what happens next? It's one to keep an eye on I suppose, but I’ve got a feeling that getting there sooner rather than later is probably a good idea.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
Really want this place, but stuff like that happening with the woodie worries me. Love the original to pieces and riding a stupid clone that isn't running so well is just going to detract from that.
All about those new dark rides though. World needs more Jinshan style rides.
 

Edward M

Strata Poster
Seems very similar to World Showcase at Epcot if you are right about it being funded by governments. Since Epcot's World Showcase has had such little investment since opening, I wonder if this park will have a similar future.

Great report as usual. I'm officially dying to get to one of these parks.
 

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
Really want this place, but stuff like that happening with the woodie worries me. Love the original to pieces and riding a stupid clone that isn't running so well is just going to detract from that.

It's so annoying, and it's not the first time either. I'm a big GG/M&V fan, but there are a lot of inconsistencies with their coasters in China. Some of them are really smooth and just amazing rides while others have got a pretty horrible rattle to them. None of them are "rough" exactly, but brand new rides really shouldn't have that (the Hot Go Park woodie was the same), especially a flat-out clone of a very smooth ride. I guess it could be down to whomever they contract out for the actual construction. With China being so huge, it must be different teams building the things.

Seems very similar to World Showcase at Epcot if you are right about it being funded by governments. Since Epcot's World Showcase has had such little investment since opening, I wonder if this park will have a similar future.
Like I said, it's a total guess on my part given the timing of the park opening and the fact that most of the rides really do seem to just be advertising their respective countries. It would be interesting to find out the details for sure, but I'm guessing we'll never get anything close to the full information.
 
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