Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 3 - More Macau

[gavin]

I’ve been wanting to hit up Ocean Kingdom for a few months now, but wanted to give it time to open properly and have everything up and running. Originally, I had thought of spending the weekend in Zhuhai, since that’s where the park is located, but looking more into it, I found that it’s actually much closer to one of the borders with Macau than it is to the actual city centre of Zhuhai, so decided to check out the park as part of a Macau trip instead.

Macau – Cotai Strip

There are two ferry terminals serving Hong Kong, one of which is located on the main peninsula for the older area, and the other that’s on the Cotai strip, which is a big chunk of reclaimed land which is being used for new hotels and casinos, mostly owned by the same companies that run the hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. Since the best border crossing for Ocean Kingdom was near here, we stayed there for a night before heading to the park the next morning.

We checked into the Sheraton Hotel (no cheap options around that area, or Macau at all really), which was fab.

We went for a wander around the area, which is dominated by The Venetian, which was connected to our hotel (and a few others) via covered bridges and walkways. It’s basically the same as the one in Vegas (I’ll be able to compare in August), only bigger. It’s actually the biggest hotel in Asia, the world’s 7th biggest building by floor area, and contains the world’s biggest casino. You’ve just learned something, and you’re welcome!

Like Las Vegas, it also has a huge Venice-themed shopping area, which is ridiculously over-the-top, gaudy and trashy. It was amazing.

The food court was ridiculous:

After wandering here for a bit, we crossed the street to City of Dreams, another hotel and casino complex, which includes the Hard Rock Hotel. It was much more understated than the Venetian, but had some cool stuff including this mermaid “tank”:

Dragons were a theme here.

That last one was at the entrance to show called Dragon’s Treasure. We probably wouldn’t have bothered, but because we’d spent over $200 (only about £17) on dinner, we got a free ticket, so we only had to pay about £4 for another one.

It’s basically a huge dome (called the Bubble Theatre) with water falling from the ceiling and these jelly fish things as you enter.

When it starts, the jellyfish disappear into the ceiling, and the actual show is an amazing 360° projection thing with ridiculously high definition and other lighting and smoke effects. It’s not 3D, but is totally immersive. I tried to take a couple of pictures, but they don’t really do it justice at all.

Anyway, it was definitely worth the £4 ticket price. Not my video, but someone has uploaded the full thing on Youtube. Again, you don’t get the full scale of the thing, but it gives you a decent idea.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeIsmTBGDNA[/youtube]

The main reason I wanted to go to City of Dreams was for another show called The House of Dancing Water. I’d already booked the tickets as a surprise after we’d decided before the trip that it was too expensive given the costs of the hotel etc., basically because I really wanted to see it. It’s housed in a theatre specially built for the show. At US$250million, it’s the most expensive stage show ever produced, and it’s **** ing stunning.

I didn’t take any pictures during the show since I wanted to sit back and enjoy it, especially given the £75 price tag. I opted to go for the 2nd best seats, just four rows from the front and almost dead centre. I’m glad I went for decent seats, but realistically you’d get a great view from anywhere in the theatre.

Again, there are a few Youtube videos floating about, but only for small sections of the 90 minute show (they’re strict about not filming, though photographs are allowed), and the quality isn’t great.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M06t0uIkMf0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjfM4YnETUE[/youtube]

Take that Amanda Thompson!

After the show we just had another quick wander to see the area at night – it’s really very compact - and headed back to the hotel.

I know I promised a theme park, but I’ll get that up tomorrow.

 

[Gazza]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Ewww, there's a Crown in Macau? Seems so common compared to what else is on offer there.

 

[gavin]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

^ I don't think they are, are they? I've just had a quick look and the only hotels they have are in Melbourne, Perth and Macau. The one in Macau is their second "Crown Towers", (one already in Melbourne - voted "best Australian hotel" by a bunch of travel publications - and one currently under construction in Perth) which are 5/6* properties. A lot of hotels have "Crown" in the name, or even "Crown Tower" but by the look of it they're not connected to this chain which is definitely top-end.

Chimelong Ocean Kingdom

The next morning, we took a five minute taxi ride to the Lotus Bridge border crossing, having to wait about ten minutes until it opened at nine o’ clock. We’d expected to get a taxi on the other side to get us to the park, but there was an Ocean Kingdom shuttle bus waiting right outside, so we just jumped on that, had to wait about 15 minutes and then were off to the resort which was only about 5 minutes away again.

We’d booked a package that included a hotel room, two park tickets and two circus tickets. It was all a bit of a faff though to be honest. First up, the hotel is pretty amazing.

It took ages to get checked in though since the staff really didn’t seem to know what they were doing. After we’d checked in (leaving bags as it was too early to get to the room – fair enough), we had to then go to a different desk in another area of the hotel to get the park and circus tickets, which again took ages. Then it was to another desk to get our thumbprint scanned which were then linked to the tickets. For no apparent reason whatsoever.

They then tried to fob us off with tickets for the 5pm circus show, which would’ve meant having to leave the park by half four, when we should have had tickets for 8pm. Even though we’d booked the package ages ago, the only 8pm tickets left were for seats at the back. This was fine, as I’d rather get more time in the park and I wasn’t bothered about the circus anyway.

If I’d known how much hassle it was going to be, I would’ve just stayed the extra night in Macau and just done the park as a daytrip which would’ve been very easy given the proximity and the shuttle bus to the border. Anyway, we ended up getting to the park about half an hour after opening. The entrance is really impressive.

Because it seemed like a really busy day, I wanted to get Parrot Coaster done first before queues got too long.

Despite the issues, as hotel guests we got a wristband that allowed for queue jump on the coasters. They had barcodes, and were only supposed to be used once for each ride, but they haven’t set up the barcode scanners yet (if they’re going to at all), so at the gate they just used a pen to mark off what you’d ridden. A moistened thumb and a quick rub soon put paid to that!

It turned out to not really be necessary on Parrot Coaster anyway. The park was HEAVING, but the queue never went above 10 minutes any time we saw it. The operations were excellent, and I think that the majority of the guests were there more for the animal shows and exhibits. It looks really intimidating to be fair.

We waited for front row for the first ride, which added a whole train’s wait, and immediately ran back around for two more goes, assuming at that time that the queue would get longer later in the day, which it never did. We managed to get in 8 rides over the course of the day, without having to bother using the hotel pass.

Some thoughts then. I absolutely loved it. I’ve only done two other wing coasters (Raptor and Swarm), but this was by far my favourite of the three. It just seemed a lot more substantial given the height and length (basically the same stats as Gatekeeper), and seemed to last for a decent amount of time.

The first drop is amazing, especially at the back of the train. I’m not a fan of Swarm’s “drop” – which I don’t consider to really be a drop since it rides like an inversion – so I don’t imagine I’d reckon much to Gatekeeper’s, which would feel the same. The first inversion is massive, and taken at the perfect speed for you to really realise how high up you are. There are two other drops which give decent airtime, the zero-g is excellent, there’s a pretty forceful helix which was unexpected, and the tunnels and scenery really add to the whole thing.

In short, it does exactly what this style of coaster was designed to do in my opinion.

Parrot Coaster is in an Amazon (the forest, not the online bookshop) themed area, which included a large aquarium with South American species including about 5 or 6 manatees. As with a lot of other animal exhibits here, the animals seemed to be quite young. Some of the fish in the Amazon area were a lot smaller than those from the same species that I’ve seen elsewhere, those arapaima things for example, so the park has obviously imported a bunch of juvenile animals which will no doubt seem a lot more impressive a couple of years down the line after they’ve grown.

Next up, we checked out the whale shark aquarium, which now has a bunch of Guiness world records for the biggest tank, biggest aquarium, biggest viewing panel etc.

Poor Unfortunate Souls:

The main tank had two whale sharks. I’d never seen one before, so was pretty excited. They were stunning, but again seemed to be juveniles as they didn't seem quite as big as in pictures I’ve seen of them in other aquariums.

Connected to this aquarium was a ride called Deep Sea Odyssey, which was one of those omnimover type rides that went through dark ride sections with various sets and projections, but also through underwater tunnels in the aquarium.

There was a beluga whale habitat next to a beluga whale theatre.

I would’ve happily skipped both of these as I’m not a fan of whales and dolphins in captivity at all – especially these fresh deliveries from Russia - but the day wasn’t, for once, all about me, so we ended up watching it. You can start to get an idea of how busy the park was and how much of a big deal the shows are.

The second coaster of the day was up next, Polar Explorer, a Mack water coaster which is a clone of Poseiden at Europa Park.

What I liked about this is that you couldn’t see the coaster section at all before riding, only the two splashdowns. The coaster section is completely hidden behind and inside the mountain. It also goes through a brown bear enclosure. It looks a bit crap from the perspective in the photo, but from onride the illusion of being inside the enclosure is better since you can’t see the moat separating you from the animals.

Operations were again great, but there was a queue of about an hour, so we used our hotel wristbands to get straight on, rubbed the pen off and went back again about half an hour later, after grabbing a drink and going to see the polar bears next door.

There was a huge building with penguins directly opposite, which we intended to go back to since there was a long line out of the door, but then forgot about. Second time around on Polar Explorer, we went for the back row and got absolutely drenched.

There weren’t a great many rides at the park really. We saw some kiddy rides near the dolphin theatre as we were heading out later, but the only things we bothered with were a rocking tug thing and the dodgems, which again I would’ve been happy not to even bother with.

The third, and final, coaster at the park is Walrus Splash.

This is, again, a clone of a ride at Europa Park: Atlantica SuperSplash. I find it really strange to have two such similar coasters in the same park. At Europa, it’s not a problem as they’ve got a huge coaster selection, but for a park with three coasters to have two Mack water coasters is a bit much really.

It looks amazing though, and something else which was impressive is that, before it hits the lift hill, it goes through an underwater tunnel through a sea lion enclosure. The queue for this was shorter at half an hour, but we did the same thing as Polar Explorer, rubbing the pen off the wristband and going back half an hour or so after the first ride.

There’s also a large pool here with seals and walruses. Again, they seemed to be juveniles as they were quite small and didn’t yet have tusks. I’m pretty sure these were also from Russia, as they have a program of “rescuing” young walruses that have been “orphaned” and rehousing (selling) them to marine parks. I counted six walruses, which has to be some kind of record; I’ve never seen more than two in the same park before.

There were a couple of different dolphin enclosures, along with a dolphin show in an absolutely enormous theatre. Again, not the sort of thing I enjoy seeing these days since I’ve educated myself a bit more on the entire industry, but I’m not going to be hypocritical about it since they already had my money.

There was also a sea lion show that we didn’t bother with. On the way back over to get some rerides in on Parrot Coaster, there was some kind of stunt show on the central lake.

We’d pretty much done everything by this point, so just whored Parrot Coaster for a bit. Well, I did anyway.

By this time it was still only around 4pm. The park was open until 8pm, but we just decided to go back to the hotel and chill out for a bit. I hadn’t mentioned it before, but it was a really, really hot, sticky day, so it wasn’t particularly comfortable being outside for too long.

On the way out, we watched the ceiling at the entrance for a bit. It’s absolutely stunning.

Getting back to the hotel and picking up our key card, I had a bit of a go at the manager on duty because of all the faff that morning. It was basically along the lines of them being a 5* hotel, but the service and staff being ****, which was all true. Most of the staff we had dealt with that morning, while friendly and polite, just didn’t seem to be well-trained enough to handle the job. Anyway, we got upgraded to a massive suite with a private lift that only serviced our floor (no sharing with peasants!) at no extra cost – it would’ve cost about £150 more than the room we were in - which was obviously a nice little bonus.

While the staff were crap, the hotel was gorgeous:

On the hotel map, this was labelled as “Dolphin Pool”:

However, it had a bunch of massive turtles in it. I’m hoping that it’s just a name or they’ve changed their minds about the dolphins, and they’re not just waiting for a new shipment. You could see into the pool through glass panels in the swimming pool.

The circus was a five minute walk from the hotel, partway towards the theme park. Neither of us was that bothered to see it, but it was paid for, so we had a walk down.

The hotel looks great at night, too.

The show was actually really impressive in parts, including some amazing strength/balancing acts, jugglers and tightrope walkers, but after House of Dancing Water the night before it really paled in comparison.

I was hoping we’d get away with no animal acts. Performing dogs are ok though.

There were also some parrots sent to fly around the auditorium , and one section where a line of penguins chased a clown around the outside of the stage, themselves being chased by a bear in a dress, but it was really pretty innocuous stuff until this happened:

It was hard to take pictures since it was moving so fast, but those are chimpanzees on a wheel of death. It was amazing to watch, but just so, so wrong at the same time. At one point, all three simultaneously took blindfolds out of their pockets, put them on, and just casually continued with the act.

We had another day in Macau the next day, which I’ll stick in here later, but the park stuff is done now. Some overall thoughts then:

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t bother with the hotel/park/circus package. It would cost the same to stay in a decent hotel on the Macau side, with much better service and less faffing to get anything done, and just hop over for a day trip, getting off the shuttle bus at the park and bypassing the hotel completely.

The park looks gorgeous, and has done a brilliant job with the three coasters that they have, especially Parrot Coaster which is excellent. Apart from those though, it’s really lacking in rides at the moment, and I still don’t get the decision to have two out of three coasters being so incredibly similar. Having said that, people seem to be there more for the animals and the shows.

Operations on the rides are excellent. Even on the quiet Parrot Coaster, with a short queue all day, they were running two trains and getting them dispatched quickly. No bull **** exercises and other stalling, money-saving tactics here.

The animal exhibits are impressive, but will be even more so when the clearly very young animals have grown. They’ve got some species there which will be enormous a few years down the line (manatees, a lot of fish species, walruses), which, thinking about it, could cause them some problems.

They’re clearly doing very well, as the place has only been open since January and they’re already building a large second hotel and cinema/entertainment complex. The place was packed. I’ve never seen a Chinese park that busy, but it was run really well and wasn’t in any way stressful to deal with. If they release gate figures, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this very high up in those park attendance reports next year.

 

[ATTACKHAMMER]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Great report! The Parrot Coaster looks amazing, like the fact that it has a good drop.

 

[DelPiero]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Really good report Gavin, some great pics in there.

 

[Rachel]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Love the look of the first drop on the Parrot Coaster.

Another fantastic report!

 

[Martyn B]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

That park looks pretty nice, you took some really good pics, especially of the Parrot coaster.

T'was a good read, as always.

 

[davidm]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Very cool report - been waiting for you to do this trip for a while

Good to hear that you enjoyed the Parrot thing - I'd really liked the look of it from videos but a lot of other people were all "meh" about it so was keen to hear a real opinion!

The park (and the pics) all look rather good - is the whole "resort complex" new (i.e. not just the park?) - and did it feel like a 'startup' park - a few flash things but not a full-park yet - or did the fact it was busy not make it feel like that?

 

[gavin]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Yeah, the whole thing is completely new. The park itself felt very complete to be fair, but the fact that the whole resort is just sitting by itself with nothing else around it makes it obvious that it's a brand new place. I wouldn't be surprised if Chimelong did what they've done in Guangzhou and expand with a water park and/or safari park at some point.

 

[Darren B]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Love the trip report, Gavin.

The park looks fantastic and so do the rides. It's refreshing to hear that there is a decent wing coaster out there; I've only experienced average/good personally and that seems to be the opinion of most non Cedar Point/Thorpe Park fanboys. Do the lack of inversions improve the ride?

 

[gavin]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

^ I think that's a big part of it yeah. Before I rode it, I was disappointed that there were "only" three inversions, but actually it's all the better for it.

The first inversion is great due to the sheer size and the fact that it's taken slowly enough to appreciate how high you are, the zero g is really good, and then you've got a decent "flying" section, including the tunnels, before hitting the final inline right at the end.

It's just a really well-paced coaster that doesn't just hit you with a bunch of inversions like Swarm.

 

[Smithy]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

What a **** magnificent looking park.

 

[nadroJ]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

Oh my god, Walrus mountain! It looks photoshopped XD I love the way they've gotten the rides to interact with the animal enclosures, it's like what Sea World COULD be if they tried. So amazing.

 

[gavin]

Re: Chimelong Ocean Kingdom: Part 1 - Macau

^ It looks even more impressive in person (goes without saying really), especially as you can get right in front of the drop by using the bridge that goes over it.

More Macau

No more park stuff, but the next day we headed back over to Macau to do some more touristy stuff before heading back to Hong Kong. Unlike the area we were in last time, the older area is a lot more crowded and a very weird mix of old Portuguese stuff, China, and even more Vegas-style casinos.

We didn’t do the tower since the visibility wasn’t great. It’s got the world’s second highest bungee jump, but the prices for that are ridiculous.

Some old Portuguese building. Macau was the first, and last, place in Asia to be colonised by Europeans. Officially, Portuguese is the second language, and all the signs are in Chinese and Portuguese, which is weird to see, but actually nobody really uses it. Everyone speaks English though.

The southern end of the peninsula is where the casinos are located.

Including the Grand Lisboa, which is now one of my favourite buidings.

It was really gross and sticky, and we were carrying bags, so we tried to pop inside as much as possible for quick air-conditioned breaks. The Wynn casino was fab.

There was another free show in here, in the shopping mall area, again featuring a dragon.

My camera battery died just as it was starting, and I didn’t want to miss anything by fannying about changing it. It only runs every half an hour, so I didn’t get pictures. Someone’s stuck a Youtube video up though:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZDwcCsNvak[/youtube]

The Grand Lisboa again because it’s fab.

We walked up to Senado Square, which is an old Portuguese area, with the old buildings now containing McDonald’s, Starbucks and Hong Kong fashion brands.

The most famous sight in Macau is probably the ruins of Saint Paul’s, which burned down a couple of hundred years ago, leaving only the front wall.

You can see the mix of European and Asian, like the Virgin Mary riding a dragon:

On the hill next to it is an old fort, again very European.

All the canon seem to point squarely at the Grand Lisboa.

By this point we’d kind of had enough of schlepping around with bags, so we decided to head to the ferry terminal by way of the casino area again.

Right next to the ferry terminal was the Sands Casino and Fisherman’s Wharf.

It looked pretty cool (all modern by the way), but the whole place was like a ghost town with barely anything there, and what was there having barely anything open.

There was an SBNO coaster here until very recently. There used to be a huge volcano with a coaster inside it. The volcano was still here at least last August as I saw it from the ferry/ferry terminal when I was doing a quick in-an-out of Hong Kong to activate my Visa. Now there’s just an empty space with a “coming soon” on the map of the area.

Yep done. No creds in Macau, but it’s an interesting little place.

I guess there’s a bit of a Swarm Church, so **** off if you’re disappointed; that's as much of a Thorpe Park report as you're ever going to get from me.

 

[JamesB]

Ah this is bringing back memories of last year! I visited Macau twice, love it there. Glad you got to see the Venetian, its quite impressive. As are the casinos and the the old Portuguese buildings. I think Macau has some kind of agreement with the Portuguese to keep signs in their language for a certain amount of time, not sure how long is left of that agreement. Ocean Kingdom looks stunning, I was bummed it didn't open on schedule last year and then I would have been able to visit!