roomraider
Best Topic Starter
I've recently been going through some old photo and realised i never posted a TR. So 4 years late here is my Pre Covid trip around Asia.
Park 1: Happy Valley Beijing
The main reason to fly out to Asia was to go and visit some friends. My old uni housemate was at the time serving in the British Embassy in Beijing so my first stop was a week with him and another friend in the capital. While most of the trip was spent doing the touristy stuff (Climbing the wall, cooking courses and the like) I did convince them to take a trip out to Happy Valley Beijing.
Now HV Beijing is a park I have visited before but since I was last there the park has added 2 new B&M Coasters and now has a really solid lineup.
Entrance area - The park now has its own Metro stop on Line 7 which it did not have last time i visited. Making things a hell of a lot easier.
The park now of course has 3 B&M coasters, the oldest being this Superman Clone but it's a superman with somewhat better themeing than its US Cousins
Unfortunatly the ride had yet to open as had Extreme Rusher so we wandered past to the rear of the park and my first new cred of the trip
The worlds 2nd B&M Junior coaster and a direct rip off of the Vekoma model found around the world. The layout is almost identical but with a slightly modified figure of 8 section that feels a bit more dynamic. Having ridden its sister ride in Shanghai as well I can say It is as expected pretty much identical to the Vekoma in ride experience but perhaps a little smoother.
Next up was the main draw for me and the beautiful new at the time B&M mini hyper coaster. The fantastically named "Flight of the Himalayan Eagle Music Roller Coaster" or "FotHEMR" for short.
The ride is great. It's not world beating and was never goint to be the equal of rides like Fury 325 but it's a really solid ride with decent airtime and some fun interaction with the surroundings, The onboard sound system is a nice addition too and the water splash is beautifully placed over the lake. Overall i'd give it an 8/10 and a great addition for the park.
We wandered round the corner and took a ride on the Frisbee
A ride that has lost a lot of its themeing since my last visit. Always a good flat ride experience especially when theyre this big but I can help but prefer the Intamin model in Shanghai which just feels more out of control.
We noticed that Extreme Rusher had now opened and headed round the parks central lake.
The queue for Extreme Rusher was already 45 mins long and easily the longest queue in the park. This isn't helped by standard Happy Valley levels of operations and could easily have been a 20min queue at any efficient park but this is China. I've been here before and knew what to expect
I've sung the virtues of these rides before and really wish someone in the west would pick one up. Extreme Rusher was the first of the 5 currenly in China and is the weakest of the 3 I've ridden but it is still a top tier ride. The Air Launch has such a good punch and I just love S&S's 4 across lap bar cars.
The ride was perhaps a little rougher than when I last rode it but nothing too bad and it's probably still the best ride in the park, just edging the B&M aross the water.
Of course there was one B&M we hadnt ridden yet. The previously mentioned Superman clone known as Crystal Wing.
The ride has been painted since I was last here. It used to be Yellow but now sports a lovely orange facelift. I can only assume they didnt want 2 Yellow B&Ms right next to each other.
As for the ride experience its as you would expect of a Superman clone. A decent ride but nothing special. certianly lifted by the themeing with some lovely close fly bys but not a patch on some of the bigger flyers like the brilliant Sky Ripper down in Wuxi.
For me the pretzel loop is still the highlight of any flyer and it shines here but the 2nd half of the ride swooping through the ruins doesn't quite live up to the bombastic begining.
Having completed all the bigger rides we did a quick loop of the park picking up the SLC.
Beautifully themed and sporting a gorgeous new Blue Tornadoesque paint job but it really hasnt aged well. Its one of the earliest Shenlin layout SLC's and I fully expect it to go the way of its Shenzhen sibling in the next few years.
We skipped the mine train as it somehow had an hour long queue (it was 10mins earlier in the day) and I'd already ridden the ride years before.
Considering the prevelance of the layout in China I knew I'd be riding it again before the trip was over.
We took a quick spin on another new ride the heavily themed rapids ride.
A decent ride actually and really well intergrated into the new B&M Himalayan area.
It was unfortunatly getting late and I'd ridden all the other rides in the park before and my GP friends werent too bothered. Plus we had a date with some beers at a brewery in central Beijing so we took a couple more spins on Music Coaster to end the day and then caught the metro back into town.
Happy Valley Beijing is an excellent park and has a great coaster lineup. It's easilly the best park in the Beijing area and while It perhaps lacks a wooden coaster that some of the newer Happy Valley parks have. With the likely demise of the SLC in the next few years and HV being pretty good at installing new rides in old parks (looking at you Fantawild) we could well see one soon.
Park 1: Happy Valley Beijing
The main reason to fly out to Asia was to go and visit some friends. My old uni housemate was at the time serving in the British Embassy in Beijing so my first stop was a week with him and another friend in the capital. While most of the trip was spent doing the touristy stuff (Climbing the wall, cooking courses and the like) I did convince them to take a trip out to Happy Valley Beijing.
Now HV Beijing is a park I have visited before but since I was last there the park has added 2 new B&M Coasters and now has a really solid lineup.
Entrance area - The park now has its own Metro stop on Line 7 which it did not have last time i visited. Making things a hell of a lot easier.
The park now of course has 3 B&M coasters, the oldest being this Superman Clone but it's a superman with somewhat better themeing than its US Cousins
Unfortunatly the ride had yet to open as had Extreme Rusher so we wandered past to the rear of the park and my first new cred of the trip
The worlds 2nd B&M Junior coaster and a direct rip off of the Vekoma model found around the world. The layout is almost identical but with a slightly modified figure of 8 section that feels a bit more dynamic. Having ridden its sister ride in Shanghai as well I can say It is as expected pretty much identical to the Vekoma in ride experience but perhaps a little smoother.
Next up was the main draw for me and the beautiful new at the time B&M mini hyper coaster. The fantastically named "Flight of the Himalayan Eagle Music Roller Coaster" or "FotHEMR" for short.
The ride is great. It's not world beating and was never goint to be the equal of rides like Fury 325 but it's a really solid ride with decent airtime and some fun interaction with the surroundings, The onboard sound system is a nice addition too and the water splash is beautifully placed over the lake. Overall i'd give it an 8/10 and a great addition for the park.
We wandered round the corner and took a ride on the Frisbee
A ride that has lost a lot of its themeing since my last visit. Always a good flat ride experience especially when theyre this big but I can help but prefer the Intamin model in Shanghai which just feels more out of control.
We noticed that Extreme Rusher had now opened and headed round the parks central lake.
The queue for Extreme Rusher was already 45 mins long and easily the longest queue in the park. This isn't helped by standard Happy Valley levels of operations and could easily have been a 20min queue at any efficient park but this is China. I've been here before and knew what to expect
I've sung the virtues of these rides before and really wish someone in the west would pick one up. Extreme Rusher was the first of the 5 currenly in China and is the weakest of the 3 I've ridden but it is still a top tier ride. The Air Launch has such a good punch and I just love S&S's 4 across lap bar cars.
The ride was perhaps a little rougher than when I last rode it but nothing too bad and it's probably still the best ride in the park, just edging the B&M aross the water.
Of course there was one B&M we hadnt ridden yet. The previously mentioned Superman clone known as Crystal Wing.
The ride has been painted since I was last here. It used to be Yellow but now sports a lovely orange facelift. I can only assume they didnt want 2 Yellow B&Ms right next to each other.
As for the ride experience its as you would expect of a Superman clone. A decent ride but nothing special. certianly lifted by the themeing with some lovely close fly bys but not a patch on some of the bigger flyers like the brilliant Sky Ripper down in Wuxi.
For me the pretzel loop is still the highlight of any flyer and it shines here but the 2nd half of the ride swooping through the ruins doesn't quite live up to the bombastic begining.
Having completed all the bigger rides we did a quick loop of the park picking up the SLC.
Beautifully themed and sporting a gorgeous new Blue Tornadoesque paint job but it really hasnt aged well. Its one of the earliest Shenlin layout SLC's and I fully expect it to go the way of its Shenzhen sibling in the next few years.
We skipped the mine train as it somehow had an hour long queue (it was 10mins earlier in the day) and I'd already ridden the ride years before.
Considering the prevelance of the layout in China I knew I'd be riding it again before the trip was over.
We took a quick spin on another new ride the heavily themed rapids ride.
A decent ride actually and really well intergrated into the new B&M Himalayan area.
It was unfortunatly getting late and I'd ridden all the other rides in the park before and my GP friends werent too bothered. Plus we had a date with some beers at a brewery in central Beijing so we took a couple more spins on Music Coaster to end the day and then caught the metro back into town.
Happy Valley Beijing is an excellent park and has a great coaster lineup. It's easilly the best park in the Beijing area and while It perhaps lacks a wooden coaster that some of the newer Happy Valley parks have. With the likely demise of the SLC in the next few years and HV being pretty good at installing new rides in old parks (looking at you Fantawild) we could well see one soon.
Last edited:
