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Changsha PTR - Day 3: Fantawild

gavin

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What with that HK Disney report yesterday and that long, summer American thing, it’s been months, MONTHS, since I’ve posted pictures of Jungle Mouse coasters and Golden Horse spinners.

I’d originally planned this weekend right after I got back to Hong Kong after the summer, buying train tickets and paying for a hotel upfront, but then realised that I was a total f**king moron and couldn’t go since I didn’t have the day off work that I thought I had; I had to go into “work” and sit, seething, in a Cantonese meeting all day instead.

Anyway, since I’d already planned stuff out, I just rebooked the exact same stuff for a couple of weeks ago since I actually did have a long weekend. I’d had Changsha on the cards for while since there are regular high-speed trains from just over the border in Shenzhen, but held out for a bit since Fantawild were finishing off a new park. Plus it was all a bit of an unknown entity since RCDB has basically no pictures from most places there.

I left straight after work, got the metro up to Shenzhen – for better or worse, the station right next to work sits on the line that connects directly to China - transferred onto Shenzhen’s metro and got to the high-speed train station for an evening train. The train took around three and a half hours, not bad for about 500 miles.

It was around 10:30 by the time I got to the hotel, so I didn’t bother doing anything. It was in a really convenient area, and I had a lovely, relaxing room overlooking a picturesque ten-lane road.

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I got up early the next morning for some crappy cred whoring.

Changsha Ecological Zoo

This was quite a way out of the city, and would likely have been skipped if I’d been able to take this trip on the original dates, but I figured I’d have plenty of time.

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I didn’t have to actually buy a zoo ticket since the amusement park is off by itself rather than inside the zoo. I was here too early though. I got there around 9:30, figuring that the zoo would be open from around 9, which is was, and that the rides would open around 10, which they did, but since I didn’t have to go into the zoo at all, I had nothing to do to kill time until the rides opened other than take a few pictures.

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I was literally the only person there though there were quite a few people heading into the zoo. I’m guessing that the amusement park would get busier as people leave the zoo though.

Just one cred here. A stunning Golden Horse spinner.

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Back to a taxi then and onto the next place.

Nanjiao Park

RCDB had this place listed as Cartoon Paradise, but that was slightly inaccurate. Cartoon Paradise was just one very small amusement section, but there were different ride areas scattered around the park, which was pretty big and very hilly.

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I found Cartoon Paradise, and what a paradise it truly was.

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No coaster. Worrying. But there was a Ferris wheel over in another area, which is always a good sign.

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9D!!!!!!!! But still no cred. I was resigned to the fact that it had been ripped out.

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I finally spotted it as I was on my way out, off by itself and nowhere near Cartoon Paradise.

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Fuxake:

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A Jungle Mouse. So that made it two out of three of the ubiquitous dragon, spinner and jungle mouse options for these places. Just a dragon to get later.

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I would have actually found this really quickly if I hadn’t followed the signs for Cartoon Paradise, which took me completely the wrong way around the park. Ah well, there’s always a chance of finding an unlisted coaster at places like these, so I probably would’ve scoped out the other areas anyway.

Another taxi then.

Ocean Lake Wetland Park

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This place was massive. And there was absolutely no sign of any rides.

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The “keep off the grass” signs were unintentional poetic genius.

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After wandering around for ages, I ended up looking at the satellite view of Google maps to try and track something down, realising that the amusement park was really far away and involved having to find a tunnel which passed under a road to a totally different section.

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Oh joy.

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There was a powered dragon here, completing the usual trio.

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And another Jungle Mouse. Fantastic.

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Getting to this area had been a good 20+ minute walk from the main entrance, but luckily there was a smaller entrance about 10 minutes away. Final view.

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The next place was a bit of a lucky accident. It had popped up on RCDB just a couple of days before I took the trip. If I’d have made it on the original dates, I wouldn’t have known about it.

Galaxyland

Being new, it was a massive ballache. From looking at Google maps, I had worked out that it must be attached to a massive new shopping centre, but with the whole thing being so new, absolutely nothing was labeled. There was no way a taxi driver would know what Galaxyland was, even with the Chinese translation, and there was no way for me to find out the name of the shopping mall it was attached to.

I ended up sticking a pin in it and getting a very worried taxi driver to follow the sat-nav on my phone.

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The shopping centre was huge, and obviously brand new as there was still a lot of work ongoing, and it was totally dead. The taxi driver seemed really surprised to see it there as we were pulling up.

The park was outdoors, and had its own entrance, but was also accessible through the mall. This seemed to be an indoor skydiving centre, and was due to open a few days later from what I could work out.

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Dirt:

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There’s a Golden Horse Motor Coaster here. As with most of Golden Horse’s knockoffs, these now greatly outnumber the rides they’re copied from, and offer an identically craptacular ride experience.

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The outdoor entrance, which I imagine will get absolutely no use whatsoever.

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Other stuff:

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There’s apparently a tiny kiddy cred on a separate rooftop level, but that whole area was blocked off. Spite.

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It’s on top of the “indoor amusement park” section, which looked stunning:

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Some stuff connecting the park to the mall, and a few pictures from inside.

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So yeah, a bit of a mission, but it’s always cool to be the “first” to get somewhere and it was a nice little bonus considering I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t had to take this trip a few weeks later than planned.

When Galaxyland popped up on RCDB, another place also popped up at the same time, so I decided to finish up the day’s cred whoring there.

Wangling Park

This was just a regular city park, and luckily wasn’t too big this time.

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I found the rides area quickly enough.

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But no cred. Bollocks. I double-checked RCDB again, but the park wasn’t listed. It turns out that it had been mistakenly added for a couple of days and then removed again, so my spotting it was perfect f**king timing.

Luckily, it wasn’t out of the way at all; it was near the city centre and I would have had to have passed it on the way back to my hotel area from Galaxyland, so no big loss.

It was late afternoon by this point. There was a large island in the river right next to my hotel, which I’d intended to check out the following morning, but decided to just do it then and have a bit more of a chilled day the next day.

The island – Tangerine Island – is really long and narrow. There were shuttles running up and down it, but I just walked down one side and back up the other, which was probably about a 6km walk.

I imagine if/when the air’s clearer, it would be really nice, but on that day it was just shocking really.

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There was a cool sculpture garden about halfway down.

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The highlight, at the far south of the island is a giant Mao head.

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This is why I love China, for bats**t stuff like this, which is done in all seriousness and with no sense of the ridiculous at all. It’s very different to somewhere like Japan, where the “quirky” is, these days, incredibly contrived to the point of being trite and obvious.

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I walked back up and across the bridge to my hotel.

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There was a pedestrianised area right next to the hotel, so I had a quick wander down there and got something to eat, but went back and had a proper look around the next evening since I was a bit knackered by this point.

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Day one done.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
"Roger Rabbits Cartoon Spin" and a 9D ride - you so lucky.

Good to see you are back to the jungle mouse rides now. ;)
 

Lofty

CF Legend
I love these types of trip reports, they're hilarious.

Also, why is Dumbo so cross-eyed? That's terrifying.
 

gavin

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Since I’d already done a lot the previous day – including that island which I thought I might have done later - and didn’t need a huge amount of time for the two parks I had planned for the second day, I left the hotel a bit later and headed to some old building/tower thing about a 20-minute walk away.

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Most places would have something roughly educational somewhere like this. China shoves in a 4D theatre. At least they were honest and labelled it as such though. It could so easily have had a lot more Ds.

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Enough culture. Onto the creds.

Hunan Martyr’s Park

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This place was massive, with a large monument in the middle, lakes, gardens and an amusement park.

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I really don’t know why they put this at the entrance. This is a list of government guidelines which, very recently, has started to be distributed to Chinese tour groups thanks to quite a few instances of dreadful, peasant-like behaviour when they travel abroad. Why it’s been posted in a local park, especially with an “English” translation, is anyone’s guess.

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Some more of the park and the Martyr’s Monument:

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The amusement park area was actually pretty substantial.

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A lot of these places have crappy little aquariums. This one was slightly less crappy in that it had sharks and a short walkthrough tunnel.

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Two coasters here. I crapped my pants in sheer excitement when I saw the first one.

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They were using the transfer track as storage for these cars from something else. F**k knows what, but they weren’t for this coaster.

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The second coaster:

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This was a Sameco SLC (Single Loop Coaster). Sameco haven’t made many coasters at all compared to most other Chinese manufacturers. I think I’ve only done two others of theirs – which were pretty much in line with any Chinese looper - but this was the first I’ve done of this model.

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It was actually pretty decent. Sure, it doesn’t do very much, but it was really smooth in the front of the train.

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After that, it was a taxi onto the next place.

Window of the World

This is one of OCT’s (the company behind Happy Valley) earliest parks, but actually came 3 years after the park of the same name in Shenzhen. You’d never know it to look at them since this one actually seemed a lot more run-down in most places.

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The main difference between them is that the Shenzhen park has a lot more models, some of which are enormous, but a lot fewer rides. This place was much more ride heavy, with very few models in comparison.

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The first of, supposedly, three coasters was this motorcoaster. I’ve never seen one like it before. It’s from Zamperla, but doesn’t have a launch. It’s got a tire lift instead and is a much more substantial ride. It was actually pretty decent, much better than the standard model at any rate.

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The high-tech photo booth. They’ve still got a guy who takes pictures with a digital camera and then runs to upload them. These are then printed and laminated. So piss poor.

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This was a first: a knockoff skyfly.

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I thought at first that maybe it couldn’t spin/flip. People were just sitting in it, mostly clutching the OTSR. A few people were moving the wings, but nothing was happening. Turns out that they’re all just f**kwits. I’ve only had one ride on a proper one and didn’t really know what I was doing, so never got it to flip. I managed to get this one spinning though. I don’t think even the ride ops knew it was supposed to do that as they looked pretty shocked as I was getting off. Anyway, it’s a decent ride.

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Just going to throw some pictures in.

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Upcharge. Nope:

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This “Europe” area to the side of the park was actually quite nice. As is very usual in these sorts of places, some idiots were getting wedding pictures done.

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The waterpark was closed for the season.

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The ziplines looked pretty epic, but it was a massive uphill walk to get to this area and there was a coaster just past them. I didn’t fancy having to climb all the way back up again.

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I needn’t have worried though.

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SBNO. I could’ve probably worked that out from the park map. The coaster was still shown on it, but had no number/name next to it. Checking the park website later showed that it’s been taken off. They’re using the area around the base of it for some lazer tag thing now. Bollocks.

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There’s construction for some new stuff though. There’s a ropes course which looks almost done, is pretty huge and looks great in the forested area.

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There’s also this:

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Bastards. I’m assuming the Blue Fire track is just for s**ts and giggles and that it’s a Chinese SLC that they’re getting.

At least there was still another cred to grab. Too bad it was f**king s**te.

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At least it was a slightly rarer Beijing JIuhua version – a knockoff of the the Reverchon style mouse – rather than the much more common Golden Horse spinners. Equally crap though to be fair.

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I finished up by walking up to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which housed a horror walkthrough. It was actually pretty decent. A lift takes you up to the fifth floor and then you work your way back down. It probably took about 15 minutes to do, so was fairly substantial. I’ll just throw the remainder of the pictures in here.

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I went back to the hotel for a bit, and then went back out for a wander as it got dark. As I mentioned earlier, the hotel was at the end of a pedestrianised area full of shops, restaurants and bars, so it was decent for a walk around. I probably shouldn’t have got a window seat for dinner in a city like this though, with so few non-Chinese, since I ended up getting more of an audience than an Amsterdam hooker. At least those whores have signs out front requesting that people don’t take photos of them.

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One more section of this left with two Fantawild parks.
 

gavin

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Staff member
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In an attempt to avoid marking a pile of essays – the annual “Biography of an Inspirational Person” piece of crap where I have to read about Helen Bastarding Keller 35 times – I’m going to use my class-free afternoon to get this report finished off.

I’d been holding off on heading up to this area until one of the Fantawild parks opened, which it did a few months ago. It’s the Fantawild Zhuzhou resort, but the parks are pretty much the same distance from Changsha and Zhuzhou.

There are two parks here an Adventure and a Dreamland. I’ve done everything the Adventure parks have multiple times over now, so just decided to cred run that and get to the newer park fairly quickly.

Fantawild Adventure

I got there for opening, knowing full well that no rides would start running for a good half hour at least, so just did a quick circuit to take some pictures while I was waiting.

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It was really nice for an Adventure park. These are the older style, usually popping up first before a Dreamland or Oriental Heritage is added later, and can often feel a bit run-down. This one still had the same staple of their older rides, but the park itself felt quite fresh.

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Typically, there was a Golden Horse SLC and Mine Train combo.

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Conch Bay – a 4D theatre. It’s very good. Think along the lines of It’s Tough to be a Bug, but with an underwater theme.

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The Dino Island water ride wasn’t running – maybe it opened later - but I tend not to do them anyway.

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It makes a great backdrop to these toilets anyway:

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I didn’t see this projection/perfomer show this time. There’s no way it’s not a copy and paste from across the other parks.

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It’s very good, admittedly, but I’ve seen it about 4 times now.

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I grabbed a ride on Dino Rampage before leaving. It’s always worth a go, but the tech has been improved upon with their later 4D dark rides now.

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Special Effects Studio is an absolute joke of an attraction with piss-poor tech that they really should stop automatically including in their Adventure parks.

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The 4th time I’ve see this show at an Adventure park, and the 4th time I haven’t seen it due to timing. It’s only on once a day at 2:30pm, and I’m usually out of these parks and into the better, newer ones by then. It seems to be huge though.

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I skipped the Space Expo thing

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the massive 3D cinema

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and the Toy Story Mania style shooter

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Because they were being run at intervals and I was there at the right time, I did Sky Sailor – a flying theatre – and Space Adventure – a simulator ride. I’ve skipped both the last few times I’ve been at one of these parks. The simulator is just very outdated and flying theatres are s**te.

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There was a decent view over the park from the exit ramp at least.

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As I was heading out, there was a small show starting.

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Every park needs fire-breathing children.

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There were a bunch of flat rides which I haven’t taken any pictures of, including an S&S shot tower where the map shows a skyflyer, which was a stupid, yet not surprising, choice since the park next door had the exact same ride.

I’ll just chuck a couple of final pictures in. I probably only spent about 2 hours here since I skipped most stuff and it was dead anyway. It was easily one of the nicer Adventure parks from the Fantawild chain, but in terms of rides I’d literally done everything there multiple times at other parks already.

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Next door was the newer park. I had a one-day-two-park ticket, which was only about 4 quid more than a single park, so very good value. Having said that, if you wanted to do everything at both parks, you’d never manage thanks to a combination of actually loads of stuff and s**t operations. As I said before though, the Adventure park was, for me, just to grab the +2 anyway.

Fantawild Dreamland

This place had just opened a few months previously, and a lot busier than the first, older park, though it doesn’t look it from the entrance area.

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Obviously, I headed straight for the creds, but got sidetracked by the wonderfully-named Rumble Under the Sea.

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I thought this was a new one for me, but I’ve done the same thing under a different name at one of their other parks. It’s a huge 4D dark ride. The cars themselves don’t do as much as the smaller ones – they’re huge – but just move between screens and scenery. It’s stunning though.

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Qin Dynasty Adventure – an Indiana Jones style dark ride – over it to be honest.

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Cred. +1.

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They have the newer, vest restraints at least, and being shuttle coasters means that Fantawild can’t f**k up the capacity much more than the ride type already allows for.

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I didn’t do the shot tower this time. I’ve done one of these before and the throughput is appalling. They’re clearly designed as observation towers with a ride shoved on top, but that’s not how they run them.

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They literally take one car’s worth of people up the tower at a time, waiting until they’re completely cleared before sending the next batch. They’re operating the tower literally once every 15 minutes because of this. It’s a f**king joke, and a massive shame because the views from the observation deck, which you can’t use, would be excellent.

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Anyway, the main point of being here:

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Another Gravity Group Jungle Trailblazer woodie. Apparently it’s a clone of the woodie at Happy Valley Tianjin, but I haven’t tried that one.

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It was very good, but for me it was the weakest of the Fantawild woodies that I’ve done. That’s not to say it’s not a great ride, because it is, but the others have been really exceptional. It could be to do with the trains? This one had Millennium Flyer trains when the others have Timberliners; it didn’t seem as smooth as the others, despite being newer.

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It’s a pain to get pictures of too since most of it sits on the edge of the park.

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So yeah, it’s very, very good, but still probably my least favourite Chinese woodie after Time Travel at Hot Go Park. Obviously, being Fantawild, they run it like a bunch of c**ts, getting a train out every 10 minutes. I managed two rides on it, waiting close to an hour each time in a queue that could/should have taken 20 minutes.

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These bother me. They’ve popped up in the Dreamland and Oriental Heritage parks, which are generally themed exceptionally well, and then just plonked, as is, in a corner.

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Wizard’s Academy, a 4D dark ride. These are the 2nd iteration of the ride type after Dino Rampage and they really bring the whole thing up more than a notch. The 3rd version, Legend of Nuwa, which is in the Oriental Heritage parks, is better again.

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Another projector/performer show, which I watched this time. This newest version has the audience on 4 sides of the stage, meaning there are actually 4 projection windows.

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This was known here as “The White Snake Maiden’s Fury”. I’ve seen it called that in another park, too, but it usually goes by the name Jinshan Temple Showdown.

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It starts off as a massive boat ride through a Chinese town, with screens showing what’s going on in the houses and a couple of actors and projection effects.

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After the boat ride, there a battle between the two characters, mostly via a huge water screen, and it finishes off by flooding the stage. The pictures make it look crap, but it’s pretty impressive.

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I skipped this one this time around. You sit on a rotating platform, the seats tilt, and you watch some crap on a domed screen. It’s crap really.

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I’ll just throw in some general pictures.

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I skipped this, too. It’s their version of Small World, only based exclusively in China and it’s f**king dreadful. It’s worth doing once for the laugh, but not worth wasting time once you’ve done it.

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Devil’s Peak. Despite seeing the mountains at a number of parks, I’d only managed to ride one of these before this park since they’ve only just started opening them.

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I think this must have the worst capacity of any ride I’ve ever done. Ever.

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It’s Fantawild’s version of the Forbidden Journey ride system, only they’ve got nowhere near the technology needed to make it work properly. I waited close to an hour, gave up, and came back at the end of the day when there was no queue.

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They’ve got space to load up four cars of four people at a time, but were only managing to use one loading platform. They were getting 4 people out every 5 minutes. 4 PEOPLE EVERY FIVE MINUTES. In case you’re thick as s**t, that’s around 50 people an hour.

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The ride itself is a strange one in that it’s the total opposite of my critique of most of Fantawild’s stuff. With most of their rides, the screen work and sets are fantastic, while the ride vehicles are a bit crap in terms of range of movement etc. This is the opposite. The vehicles are great, with a massive range of movement from the robotic arms, but the content of the ride is a bit crap.

I’ll just chuck in a few last pictures of Jungle Trailblazer and then rant a bit at the end.

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I’ve still very much got a love/hate relationship with Fantawild. I love the ambition and the huge scale of the parks, rides, theming etc. They’ve built some of the world’s best woodies. Seriously, take RMC out of the equation, and I honestly think China now has some of the best wooden coasters on the planet, and most of them are at Fantawild parks.

The frustrating this is, though, is that you’re unlikely to ever ride them at their best. We all know that woodies improve over the course of the day, when they’ve been running constantly and everything has warmed up. The coasters at Fantawild will never get fully-warmed up since the single trains are going out so infrequently.

Their own, in-house rides can also be epic, but when they fail, they fail big time.

Fantawild can NOT do animatronics yet, and that’s where the problem lies with something like Devil’s Peak.

Their Small World ripoff is crap because the animatronics are f**ked. While the sets on Devil’s Peak are god enough, it has a lot of animatronics, too, but the quality of those isn’t much better than you’d find on a sh**ty ghost train. You’ve got some ultra-modern, and no doubt very expensive, ride vehicles throwing you around to look at cheap, jerky, noisy s**t.

I’m passed being pissed off about their operations now, but it annoys the hell out of me that they must know that some of their rides have problems which are more serious than crappy dispatching, but they do nothing to address these and instead continue to just copy and paste the problem rides across their parks.

I also find it bizarre that they continue to open new Adventure parks first, and fill them with their now very dated rides, with absolutely no thought given to updating them or making improvements. Then a couple of years later, they make those parks pretty much defunct by opening a far superior Dreamland or Oriental Heritage right next door. Maybe over time, the numbers will even out over the two parks – or three in some cases – but when the level of quality is so massively different across the parks, I can’t see it.

Ugh. In so many ways they’ve got an amazing product, but they’re so obstinately clueless in others. F**king FANTAWILD!!!!!

Anyway, I got a taxi from there to Zhuzhou Station, which was about the same distance as heading back to Changsha, but meant a slightly quicker ride back to Shenzhen since it was in that direction anyway.

This weekend overall then? Meh, to be honest. Changsha was nothing special as a city, though there was nothing wrong with the place. The parks on the first couple of days were crap really. Fantawild, while clearly being decent parks, didn’t offer anything new for me since I’ve been to so many of them now.

So yeah, all just a bit “whatever” to be honest.
 

Pink Cadillac

Giga Poster
With most Fantawild reports
Images: place looks amazing
Text: Place sounds horrendous
I don't know if this is a really stupid question but you travel everywhere by Taxis in China right? Are there taxis parked everywhere? I never see them parked outside theme parks. I assume to don't call them as they probably don't speak English...
 
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caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
I hope you didn't sneeze in the face of others or spit about, and that you said no to feudal superstitious activities!

That rules board has lightened up my day after the depressing news from America..
 

gavin

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^ I did my best not to get involved in feudal superstitious activities, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

^^ The operations are only bad on their coasters and rides with smaller vehicles. Devil's Peak is just a really, really bad example and nothing else of their's actually comes close to being that bad. The problem largely lies with how many vehicles they've got going around the ride at the same time.

With something like Spiderman at Universal, they're dispatching a car every, what, 20 seconds? The ride building will be full of cars going around. The same ride type at Fantawild might dispatch a car every 3-4 minutes, and there's only a handful of cars moving around inside at a time. Dino Rampage is worst for this, but the newer versions - Wizards Academy and Legend of Nuwa - seem to get more cars out. That's kind of what I meant when I said it's silly that they keep copying and pasting old rides like Dino Rampage. They've bettered their ride tech to allow more vehicles to get out, but they've kept the old systems whenever they roll out that ride.

I can honestly see new versions of the Devil's Peak ride type going into parks in the future, and they will be a lot better. However, they'll still continue to roll out the flawed original version first.

Having said all that, they have a lot of attractions with huge capacities, which you never have to wait for. They usually run these at 30-60 minute intervals, which can be a pain since you have to be quite organised, but it means that can show up a couple of minutes before it's due to run and you'll walk straight on. Realistically, for about half of their attractions - not including any flat rides here since I don't bother at Fantawild - you don't actually have to queue at all.

About the taxis then. There will usually be a few taxis hanging around outside parks, especially towards closing. However, they won't want to use the meter and will fix a price beforehand which will be up to around double what the fare should be, but not always that much. It's annoying since you are getting ripped off, but it's just common practice and is still really cheap compared to what you'd pay in most other countries. A 45-minute ride will cost you around a tenner at the "rip-off" price. On the meter, you'd pay about 6-7 quid.

If the park isn't quite so isolated though, or is near a residential area, you can often bypass these guys and flag one down normally.

On top of the taxis, there are ALWAYS other guys with private cars hanging around. They're illegal since they don't have taxi licenses, but perfectly safe to use and often better than taxis since the cars are cleaner and more comfortable and they'll have sat-navs. Since they're not running a meter, they're always keen to get you where you want to go as quickly as possible. They tend to charge roughly the same as the taxis with no meter. There are often quite a few of them trying to get you to go with them, so they'll haggle each other down a bit. You'll absolutely be paying more than a local would - there's no question of that - but I just pay what they ask since it's never outlandish based on what I'm used to paying. You can kind of tell that you've overpaid when you see their eyes light up when you just agree to pay the tenner and don't bother to haggle them down. Without sounding like a cock, a tenner means f**k all to me when I just want to get somewhere; let him have his extra 3 quid.
 
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roomraider

Best Topic Starter
It was very good, but for me it was the weakest of the Fantawild woodies that I’ve done. That’s not to say it’s not a great ride, because it is, but the others have been really exceptional. It could be to do with the trains? This one had Millennium Flyer trains when the others have Timberliners; it didn’t seem as smooth as the others, despite being newer.
Fjord Dragon which this ride is a clone of was also fairly rough compared to the other Chinese woodies I've done.

I guess the roughness could be partly because this was actually the first Fantawild woodie to be built out of all of them. It was built before they switched to Timberliners hence uses the older PTC cars (I think Millennium Flyers are GCI but I'm being pedantic). The ride sat there SBNO for more than two years when the park construction stalled.
 

gavin

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^ Ah yeah. I'd totally forgotten that this place opened much later than planned. That makes a lot of sense now. It seemed weird that they'd gone "backwards" with their woodies.
 

roomraider

Best Topic Starter
Its interesting to see how WOW has changed. that castle was all grey when i was there. They have painted only a bit of it weirdly. Seems like theyve given the place some TLC too. It was even more run down a couple of years ago. The mouse has been given a fresh coast of paint and they are adding a few new rides.
Interested to see what that new coaster is. The area of land clearing is enormous compared the the existing park size.
 

gavin

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^ If you mean that area of land clearing that you can see from Google satellite, next to the car park and at the front of the park, that's not where the SLC is going. It's actually right up inside the park, past the SBNO looper.
 

roomraider

Best Topic Starter
^ ah right. I put 2 and 2 together and got 5 clearly.
Wonder what that section is for. Its massive. If its not the SLC i guess it is directly next to the water park.

Is it me or does the park have 2 separate water parks? Theres a big one down below that massive land clearing and theres a fair few number of slides to the east of the SBNO looper.
 

gavin

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There are a bunch of slides inside the park yeah. Not sure if the other place is even part of OCT though. That big construction space also seems to be outside of the park limits. No idea what they actually own/run though.
 
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