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Re: An Englishman in the Orient: Part 7) World Joyland
Day 7 saw a trip to a park we've all heard a lot about. The brand new World Joyland, This park is a complete pain in the arse to get to from Shanghai but it's worth it. Boy is it worth it. In my opinion this is one of the best parks I've ever been to. The themeing is top notch and the rides are almost all excellent. Ok they really have taken a complete disregard to all copyright almost across the board which may get them into trouble sooner rather than later but if you can look past that you will have an excellent time.
I've read reports slating the unfinishedness of the park and the general mess but they seem to have cleaned up their act recently and the park is beautiful and on some occasions draw dropping. The park does come across as a little unfinished in areas such as the tower at the back not being open and the water park still being built to the side of the park (it was 2degrees C so I wasn't too fussed about the water park
)
Anyway bear in mind all opinions in this are mine and mine alone, (Although Oli also thought this place was amazing, And I would consider him a pretty standard member of the GP)
I shall start my review with tip on how to get to the park
Traveling to and from the park: The park is miles away from any major station which makes public transport a bit of a pain. Myself and Oli caught the bullet train from Shanghai Central to Wuxi (It also stops at Shanghai West Station). This takes about an hour but the train really goes some and rockets along like it's associated bullet. However if you are a foreigner in Shanghai wanting to buy long distance train ticket there are a couple of things to remember.
1) Take your passport, i cannot stress this enough, you will not even get a ticket without one and there is no way round this.
2) The ticket office at Shanghai Central Station is across the road to the right of the main entrance (it's a few minutes' walk) there is only 1 English speaking window and its not easy to see the little sign above the window. I would advise taking pictures of the Chinese station names you wish to visit and a pen to write down times.
3) Chinese stations operate a lot like an airport. you will have a carriage and seat number on your ticket and you will be told to wait in a specific waiting room (all trains have numbers which are easy to spot on your ticket and on the departure board telling you where your waiting room is) you will then be let out on the platform a couple of minutes before the train arrives. The platforms all have carriage numbers on them so you can find where you carriage will be and wait in the right place.
We were told there was a bus from Wuxi Station to the park but it appears that it doesn't run year round and was not running the day we visited. As we found out later the bus to Changzhou station wasn't running either. In the end we caught a taxi for the hour long trip to the park. this cost about £12 between the 2 of us which wasn't too bad.
Getting back was more of a nightmare. There were no taxis to be found outside the park and the only bus went to Changzhou bus station. Thankfully a friendly university student helped us catch the bus we needed to get to Changzhou train station. Overall it took us almost 2 hours to make it back to a train station and almost 4 hours in total to get back to Shanghai. In fact we spent 6 hours total travelling today and that's actually more time than we spent in the park.
The Park:
When we visited the park was dead, there were probably less than 50 people in the whole park all day, however the ride ops were streets ahead of the happy valley counter parks, The two of us rode Starry Night Ripper repeatedly as the only two people on the train and the ride ops allowed repeat rides if we wished.
The themeing in this park is a notch above Happy Valley too. As I mentioned at Happy Valley the themeing doesn't appear to interact much with the rides themselves. Here the themeing is an integral part to many of the rides and it really works, even the warcraft restaurant was superbly done and served excellent food.
Rides:
Heaven Trip of the Demogoagon: This ride is a 3D ride similar to Spiderman at Universal, It's not quite as good as Spiderman but is is excellent and the effects are stunning, this is easily the best simulator ride I've ridden since Spiderman and is well worth trying out. There are plenty of good slow motion 3D effects and the ride has been designed with very little dialog so its easy to follow.
Starry Night Ripper: I've heard people say this ride is good.... in my opinion they are wrong, this ride is amazing. I'm not one to rate my rides much but this is up there with Nemesis and Olympia Looping for my favorite rides of all time. It's been a while since I've ridden a forceful B&M and I wasn't holding out too much hope having ridden Black Mamba and Silver Bullet last year but the forces on the entrance and exit to the vertical loop are incredible and that weird inversion under the lift is just a really bizzare feeling, like a zero-G-roll that just keeps going. The ending lets up a little on the intensity but it's still brilliant fun and that straight first drop just is awesome. This ride is worth the hassle of getting here alone.
Cosmo Hacker: THis is another 3D simulator ride but you sit in large vibrating chairs in front of a giant screen, I have no idea why it's called Cosmo Hacker as the movie was a Canyon themed rollercoaster ride. But its a solid attraction with some nice 4D effects.
Soul Hunter: This is one of the strangest attractions I have ever seen. It is essentially an alternative reality shoot-em-up, When you enter you are given a backpack attached to a large gun with a big LCD screen on top. You then proceed to walk through a haunted house where you shoot ghosts you can only see on your LCD screen. Once you have cleared each room of ghosts you move on to the next room. The AR system works quite well with ghosts coming out of holes and darting behind objects in the room. It's not perfect but it's a nice idea and is great fun, especially the boss fight at the end where you must take out power orbs before being able to hurt the boss.
Kart Attack: I'm not sure on the exact name of this ride but again its something i haven't seen before, It is essentially real life mario kart. The ride system is similar to the race track ride at Magic Kingdom as your card is attached to a rail which you can move left or right on slightly. However the difference here is you have another Alternative Reality screen in the front of the car which overlays a Mario Kart style world over the track. You can then pick up power ups like rockets and banana skins to slow down other drivers. There are different tracks each of which takes a slightly different route (although they are mostly parallel. With only 2 of us on the course it was a bit empty but I can see this being a great laugh with a ton of people.
Dragon Roaring Heaven: This is a golden horse knock off Vekoma mine train. Its essentially the same as the Happy Valley versions you may have seen and the one at Walibi Belgium, Not a bad family ride but a little slow. The themeing does manage to set this appart though with a massive Dragon skeleton covering the lift hills and much of the track.
3D theater: This is housed in the giant dome in the starcraft section of the park. It's essentially a giant 360 degree theatre and the story follows the quest of our heroes to collect 3 elemental beasts to kill the fire dragon which has corrupted your world. The effects are really very good and some of the landscapes are stunning and reminicent of Avatar. There are only a few showings a day but it's well worth catching if you can.
Clouds of Fairyland: This is a standard X-Car sky loop ride. If you have been on one then you know what to expect. It's good fun if a little short and I'll never get used to that up and over lift. It's not as good or as long as Abismo in Madrid but It's a solid enough ride.
Rapids: This rapids ride is pretty good, theres nothing groundbreaking about it but its a solid ride. One thing i noticed is the Queue line features some slides at various points which kids can use while you queue. A nice idea but I'm not sure how it works on a busy day.
In summary all the rides we rode at this park were above average and I rate this park up there with PhantasiaLand for experience. It's not a perfect park by any means but I think it has the potential to be one of the best in the world if they iron out the bugs.
This was the scene upon arriving at the park.
Needless to say it was not a busy day.
Very Universal.
Even at the entrance you start to get a feeling for some of the detail they've added to this park
The main street has plenty of shops selling terrible knock-off goods, Disney, Universal, Warner Brothers... they are all here.
The entrance to the Warcraft area.
Oli could easily fit into the Warcraft.
This is the entrance to the excellent 3D simulator ride Heaven Trip of the Demogoagon
It has a good Splendour Index
The restaurant across the way which we shall visit later.
Even the restaurant themeing was good.
Oli really just wants to be an Orc.
No they don't have any of the licences... but that hasn't seemed to stop them.
This water ride was shut.
But again the themeing is pretty impressive.
The entrance to Terrain of Warcraft from the Starcraft area.
The Starcraft area is very distinct.
The first rides you see are these S&S shot and drop towers. They provide nice views of the park but are pretty standard otherwise.
This is what we came for though.
This turnaround provides a lovely flying feeling.
The ride finale.
One of the most intense elements I've ridden in a long time.
A panorama of one of my new top coasters.
Surprisingly this is one of the least themed rides in the park.
A view from the back side of the ride.
Cosmo Hacker is another 3D motion simulator.
Oli shows off the 3D Glasses.
These are the large vibrating, air blasting seats.
Not sure what this is, but we didn't get a chance to find out as we kept missing the show times.
Plenty of random details around the starcraft area.
This dome houses a large 360degree theatre which we shall come back to in a bit.
Across the way is this well themed Golden Horse knock off mine train.
No riding broomsticks?
It's not a brilliantly thrilling ride, but as the parks family coaster it serves its purpose well.
The dragon theme works well too.
Not sure on the name though
More casual copyright infringement.
The Sky-Loop was fun.
Some more nice themeing round the rapids ride queue.
This rather garish castle sits in the centre of the lake and houses a nice little tea shop.
More good themeing.
The kids climbing area was nicely done too.
Ah so almost a boob credit.
This is the inside of the previously mentioned 360degree theatre.
It's a fairly impressive film.
Some of the landscapes are stunning and very avatary
Another trip over to ride the excellent B&M Flyer.
Although the ride does appear to have 2 names.
We headed back to the Warcraft restaurant we saw earlier.
The interior was really nicely done and the food was excellent.
Yet more casual copyright infringement.
Soul Hunter is a bizzare alternative reality romp through a haunted house with a big gun. (see review at the top)
The Mario Kart style kart shooter was a real WTF moment.
You can shoot other riders with power ups you pick up such as rockets and banana skins.
There are nice details all around the park.
There is a big Nvidia sponsored games area towards the childrens area of the park with loads of 3D games and Kinects set up.
There is also yet another 3D theatre.
Some of the themeing in the land of adventurers.
These girls pretty much stalked us round the park taking pictures of us, You can't get away when you are strapped into a ride either :s
The kids area is nice but it really is a shameless rip-off from IOA, Tomorrow I head to Seoul to try out some Korean style parks. Although i shall be returning for more Shanghai Parks later in the trip.
Day 7 saw a trip to a park we've all heard a lot about. The brand new World Joyland, This park is a complete pain in the arse to get to from Shanghai but it's worth it. Boy is it worth it. In my opinion this is one of the best parks I've ever been to. The themeing is top notch and the rides are almost all excellent. Ok they really have taken a complete disregard to all copyright almost across the board which may get them into trouble sooner rather than later but if you can look past that you will have an excellent time.
I've read reports slating the unfinishedness of the park and the general mess but they seem to have cleaned up their act recently and the park is beautiful and on some occasions draw dropping. The park does come across as a little unfinished in areas such as the tower at the back not being open and the water park still being built to the side of the park (it was 2degrees C so I wasn't too fussed about the water park
) Anyway bear in mind all opinions in this are mine and mine alone, (Although Oli also thought this place was amazing, And I would consider him a pretty standard member of the GP)
I shall start my review with tip on how to get to the park
Traveling to and from the park: The park is miles away from any major station which makes public transport a bit of a pain. Myself and Oli caught the bullet train from Shanghai Central to Wuxi (It also stops at Shanghai West Station). This takes about an hour but the train really goes some and rockets along like it's associated bullet. However if you are a foreigner in Shanghai wanting to buy long distance train ticket there are a couple of things to remember.
1) Take your passport, i cannot stress this enough, you will not even get a ticket without one and there is no way round this.
2) The ticket office at Shanghai Central Station is across the road to the right of the main entrance (it's a few minutes' walk) there is only 1 English speaking window and its not easy to see the little sign above the window. I would advise taking pictures of the Chinese station names you wish to visit and a pen to write down times.
3) Chinese stations operate a lot like an airport. you will have a carriage and seat number on your ticket and you will be told to wait in a specific waiting room (all trains have numbers which are easy to spot on your ticket and on the departure board telling you where your waiting room is) you will then be let out on the platform a couple of minutes before the train arrives. The platforms all have carriage numbers on them so you can find where you carriage will be and wait in the right place.
We were told there was a bus from Wuxi Station to the park but it appears that it doesn't run year round and was not running the day we visited. As we found out later the bus to Changzhou station wasn't running either. In the end we caught a taxi for the hour long trip to the park. this cost about £12 between the 2 of us which wasn't too bad.
Getting back was more of a nightmare. There were no taxis to be found outside the park and the only bus went to Changzhou bus station. Thankfully a friendly university student helped us catch the bus we needed to get to Changzhou train station. Overall it took us almost 2 hours to make it back to a train station and almost 4 hours in total to get back to Shanghai. In fact we spent 6 hours total travelling today and that's actually more time than we spent in the park.
The Park:
When we visited the park was dead, there were probably less than 50 people in the whole park all day, however the ride ops were streets ahead of the happy valley counter parks, The two of us rode Starry Night Ripper repeatedly as the only two people on the train and the ride ops allowed repeat rides if we wished.
The themeing in this park is a notch above Happy Valley too. As I mentioned at Happy Valley the themeing doesn't appear to interact much with the rides themselves. Here the themeing is an integral part to many of the rides and it really works, even the warcraft restaurant was superbly done and served excellent food.
Rides:
Heaven Trip of the Demogoagon: This ride is a 3D ride similar to Spiderman at Universal, It's not quite as good as Spiderman but is is excellent and the effects are stunning, this is easily the best simulator ride I've ridden since Spiderman and is well worth trying out. There are plenty of good slow motion 3D effects and the ride has been designed with very little dialog so its easy to follow.
Starry Night Ripper: I've heard people say this ride is good.... in my opinion they are wrong, this ride is amazing. I'm not one to rate my rides much but this is up there with Nemesis and Olympia Looping for my favorite rides of all time. It's been a while since I've ridden a forceful B&M and I wasn't holding out too much hope having ridden Black Mamba and Silver Bullet last year but the forces on the entrance and exit to the vertical loop are incredible and that weird inversion under the lift is just a really bizzare feeling, like a zero-G-roll that just keeps going. The ending lets up a little on the intensity but it's still brilliant fun and that straight first drop just is awesome. This ride is worth the hassle of getting here alone.
Cosmo Hacker: THis is another 3D simulator ride but you sit in large vibrating chairs in front of a giant screen, I have no idea why it's called Cosmo Hacker as the movie was a Canyon themed rollercoaster ride. But its a solid attraction with some nice 4D effects.
Soul Hunter: This is one of the strangest attractions I have ever seen. It is essentially an alternative reality shoot-em-up, When you enter you are given a backpack attached to a large gun with a big LCD screen on top. You then proceed to walk through a haunted house where you shoot ghosts you can only see on your LCD screen. Once you have cleared each room of ghosts you move on to the next room. The AR system works quite well with ghosts coming out of holes and darting behind objects in the room. It's not perfect but it's a nice idea and is great fun, especially the boss fight at the end where you must take out power orbs before being able to hurt the boss.
Kart Attack: I'm not sure on the exact name of this ride but again its something i haven't seen before, It is essentially real life mario kart. The ride system is similar to the race track ride at Magic Kingdom as your card is attached to a rail which you can move left or right on slightly. However the difference here is you have another Alternative Reality screen in the front of the car which overlays a Mario Kart style world over the track. You can then pick up power ups like rockets and banana skins to slow down other drivers. There are different tracks each of which takes a slightly different route (although they are mostly parallel. With only 2 of us on the course it was a bit empty but I can see this being a great laugh with a ton of people.
Dragon Roaring Heaven: This is a golden horse knock off Vekoma mine train. Its essentially the same as the Happy Valley versions you may have seen and the one at Walibi Belgium, Not a bad family ride but a little slow. The themeing does manage to set this appart though with a massive Dragon skeleton covering the lift hills and much of the track.
3D theater: This is housed in the giant dome in the starcraft section of the park. It's essentially a giant 360 degree theatre and the story follows the quest of our heroes to collect 3 elemental beasts to kill the fire dragon which has corrupted your world. The effects are really very good and some of the landscapes are stunning and reminicent of Avatar. There are only a few showings a day but it's well worth catching if you can.
Clouds of Fairyland: This is a standard X-Car sky loop ride. If you have been on one then you know what to expect. It's good fun if a little short and I'll never get used to that up and over lift. It's not as good or as long as Abismo in Madrid but It's a solid enough ride.
Rapids: This rapids ride is pretty good, theres nothing groundbreaking about it but its a solid ride. One thing i noticed is the Queue line features some slides at various points which kids can use while you queue. A nice idea but I'm not sure how it works on a busy day.
In summary all the rides we rode at this park were above average and I rate this park up there with PhantasiaLand for experience. It's not a perfect park by any means but I think it has the potential to be one of the best in the world if they iron out the bugs.
This was the scene upon arriving at the park.
Needless to say it was not a busy day.
Very Universal.
Even at the entrance you start to get a feeling for some of the detail they've added to this park
The main street has plenty of shops selling terrible knock-off goods, Disney, Universal, Warner Brothers... they are all here.
The entrance to the Warcraft area.
Oli could easily fit into the Warcraft.
This is the entrance to the excellent 3D simulator ride Heaven Trip of the Demogoagon
It has a good Splendour Index
The restaurant across the way which we shall visit later.
Even the restaurant themeing was good.
Oli really just wants to be an Orc.
No they don't have any of the licences... but that hasn't seemed to stop them.
This water ride was shut.
But again the themeing is pretty impressive.
The entrance to Terrain of Warcraft from the Starcraft area.
The Starcraft area is very distinct.
The first rides you see are these S&S shot and drop towers. They provide nice views of the park but are pretty standard otherwise.
This is what we came for though.
This turnaround provides a lovely flying feeling.
The ride finale.
One of the most intense elements I've ridden in a long time.
A panorama of one of my new top coasters.
Surprisingly this is one of the least themed rides in the park.
A view from the back side of the ride.
Cosmo Hacker is another 3D motion simulator.
Oli shows off the 3D Glasses.
These are the large vibrating, air blasting seats.
Not sure what this is, but we didn't get a chance to find out as we kept missing the show times.
Plenty of random details around the starcraft area.
This dome houses a large 360degree theatre which we shall come back to in a bit.
Across the way is this well themed Golden Horse knock off mine train.
No riding broomsticks?
It's not a brilliantly thrilling ride, but as the parks family coaster it serves its purpose well.
The dragon theme works well too.
Not sure on the name though
More casual copyright infringement.
The Sky-Loop was fun.
Some more nice themeing round the rapids ride queue.
This rather garish castle sits in the centre of the lake and houses a nice little tea shop.
More good themeing.
The kids climbing area was nicely done too.
Ah so almost a boob credit.
This is the inside of the previously mentioned 360degree theatre.
It's a fairly impressive film.
Some of the landscapes are stunning and very avatary
Another trip over to ride the excellent B&M Flyer.
Although the ride does appear to have 2 names.
We headed back to the Warcraft restaurant we saw earlier.
The interior was really nicely done and the food was excellent.
Yet more casual copyright infringement.
Soul Hunter is a bizzare alternative reality romp through a haunted house with a big gun. (see review at the top)
The Mario Kart style kart shooter was a real WTF moment.
You can shoot other riders with power ups you pick up such as rockets and banana skins.
There are nice details all around the park.
There is a big Nvidia sponsored games area towards the childrens area of the park with loads of 3D games and Kinects set up.
There is also yet another 3D theatre.
Some of the themeing in the land of adventurers.
These girls pretty much stalked us round the park taking pictures of us, You can't get away when you are strapped into a ride either :s
The kids area is nice but it really is a shameless rip-off from IOA, Tomorrow I head to Seoul to try out some Korean style parks. Although i shall be returning for more Shanghai Parks later in the trip.
