For the Easter Holiday, I decided to do a few Chinese cities that I hadn’t visited before, some as definite cred-runs, and a couple that had a bit more to them. I’d done something similar the same time two years and told myself that I wouldn’t do more than a long weekend in mainland China again, but decided to just get it done. It was actually fine, with very little faff for the most part.
I did a few cities around the Shanghai area, without actually going into Shanghai as I’d done it over a long weekend just a few months earlier, starting by flying into Ningbo. Originally, this was partly because I wanted to get to the new Oriental Heritage park there which I’d hoped would be open by then, but I just missed out on it since it’s actually opening at the end of this week. Fantawild F**kers.
To be honest, it was a bit of a relief since it looked like a bit of a pain to do. I would have done it after leaving Ningbo, taking all my luggage with me, and then headed on to the next city, Hangzhou, from there. In reality, it’s not really that close to either one, and I think, with it being so new, it would have been a nightmare trying to find a taxi driver who had a clue what/where it was.
I’ll likely try and do it as a day trip from Shanghai at some point later. There’s another park, with two coasters, very close to it, but I wasn’t going to make the effort just for that with an almost open park a mile away that will need a revisit anyway. The new Six Flags park is also getting built pretty much directly opposite, on the Shanghai side of the bay, though that’s not due for at least a couple of years yet.
Anyway, I arrived in Ningbo late since my flight times had been chnaged, so just went to the hotel. Originally, I should have arrived around 6pm, but it ended up being closer to midnight. This was fine though. The airline had e-mailed the changed flight times a couple of weeks previously, and it meant I could go home after work and relax for a bit rather than hauling luggage to work and going straight to the airport from there.
The next morning I took a taxi out to Ertong Park, or Children’s Park. Taxi drivers seemed to be clueless as to where it was, but it’s right next to a big aquarium, so I just told one to go there.
Ertong Park
Like I said, it was next to this big aquarium, which I didn’t go into.
The park itself was just a typical city park with some rides. I was in and out in about 10 minutes.
Just the one coaster here: a Chinese Big Apple. I’m becoming less and less inclined to go out of my way for the +1s these days, but this place had no pictures or info on RCDB, so there was the curiosity factor I guess. There’s always the chance that there’s an unknown cred at these sorts of places. There wasn’t. Meh.
It was back to a taxi and onto a more major park. I’d originally been in two minds whether to bother with this place since there was only one coaster and it was pretty far out of the city. Since Oriental Heritage was off the table though, and taxis are cheap, I decided to get it done. If I’d done some proper research, I’d have known that an extension of the Metro system had just opened last month, with a station not too far from the park. As it is, Google Maps hasn’t yet been updated to include this extension. Ah well.
Harborland
This place looked dead from outside, but it was actually packed with kids on school trips. This would be a common theme for a fair few places. Mostly, it wasn’t a problem as the school trips consisted mainly of young kids who weren’t riding any major stuff, but at this place it was all teenagers. Because of this, I ended up only riding the cred and not bothering with anything else.
The coaster, Flight of the Phoenix, is the “old” Intamin 8-inversion model. Thorpe basically just asked them to add two more inline twists to get the 10-inversion one.
This actual coaster was built in 2006 though, so even though the design is older, the 10-inversion version was built earlier than this particular coaster. Strange choice to go for 8 in that case as I can’t see the cost being drastically different and the footprint is pretty much identical.
I’ll just throw in some pictures of other stuff in the order they were taken/uploaded.
Quite a bit of the indoor stuff seemed to be closed, or it might have been on a schedule I guess since it was probably show-based.
There was a decent enough collection of flat rides, all Chinese knockoff, but I didn’t ride any thanks to big queues and not really being interested
When you can’t find a picnic table…
I had a look in here just to see what it was really. It was just a room full of those optical illusion photo op things.
Obligatory Chinglish sign:
I didn’t do the rapids. I tend to skip most of them in China these days. They’re mostly not very good, but have stupid jets of water spraying all over them. A lot of people on here seem to think that the wetter you get, the better the rapids are. Those people are retards.
The coaster then. As it was very busy, they were obviously running one train. I waited about an hour for it.
It was fine. I’ve never personally had an issue with Colossus, though I’d say this was definitely a bit smoother.
So yeah, this place was fine for a small local park really, and at least the sole coaster was a substantial one. I’d arrived just after ten and got out a couple of hours later to get to the next park for the afternoon. I’ll stick that up in the next part of the report though since there’s quite a lot more to it.
I did a few cities around the Shanghai area, without actually going into Shanghai as I’d done it over a long weekend just a few months earlier, starting by flying into Ningbo. Originally, this was partly because I wanted to get to the new Oriental Heritage park there which I’d hoped would be open by then, but I just missed out on it since it’s actually opening at the end of this week. Fantawild F**kers.
To be honest, it was a bit of a relief since it looked like a bit of a pain to do. I would have done it after leaving Ningbo, taking all my luggage with me, and then headed on to the next city, Hangzhou, from there. In reality, it’s not really that close to either one, and I think, with it being so new, it would have been a nightmare trying to find a taxi driver who had a clue what/where it was.
I’ll likely try and do it as a day trip from Shanghai at some point later. There’s another park, with two coasters, very close to it, but I wasn’t going to make the effort just for that with an almost open park a mile away that will need a revisit anyway. The new Six Flags park is also getting built pretty much directly opposite, on the Shanghai side of the bay, though that’s not due for at least a couple of years yet.
Anyway, I arrived in Ningbo late since my flight times had been chnaged, so just went to the hotel. Originally, I should have arrived around 6pm, but it ended up being closer to midnight. This was fine though. The airline had e-mailed the changed flight times a couple of weeks previously, and it meant I could go home after work and relax for a bit rather than hauling luggage to work and going straight to the airport from there.
The next morning I took a taxi out to Ertong Park, or Children’s Park. Taxi drivers seemed to be clueless as to where it was, but it’s right next to a big aquarium, so I just told one to go there.
Ertong Park
Like I said, it was next to this big aquarium, which I didn’t go into.
The park itself was just a typical city park with some rides. I was in and out in about 10 minutes.
Just the one coaster here: a Chinese Big Apple. I’m becoming less and less inclined to go out of my way for the +1s these days, but this place had no pictures or info on RCDB, so there was the curiosity factor I guess. There’s always the chance that there’s an unknown cred at these sorts of places. There wasn’t. Meh.
It was back to a taxi and onto a more major park. I’d originally been in two minds whether to bother with this place since there was only one coaster and it was pretty far out of the city. Since Oriental Heritage was off the table though, and taxis are cheap, I decided to get it done. If I’d done some proper research, I’d have known that an extension of the Metro system had just opened last month, with a station not too far from the park. As it is, Google Maps hasn’t yet been updated to include this extension. Ah well.
Harborland
This place looked dead from outside, but it was actually packed with kids on school trips. This would be a common theme for a fair few places. Mostly, it wasn’t a problem as the school trips consisted mainly of young kids who weren’t riding any major stuff, but at this place it was all teenagers. Because of this, I ended up only riding the cred and not bothering with anything else.
The coaster, Flight of the Phoenix, is the “old” Intamin 8-inversion model. Thorpe basically just asked them to add two more inline twists to get the 10-inversion one.
This actual coaster was built in 2006 though, so even though the design is older, the 10-inversion version was built earlier than this particular coaster. Strange choice to go for 8 in that case as I can’t see the cost being drastically different and the footprint is pretty much identical.
I’ll just throw in some pictures of other stuff in the order they were taken/uploaded.
Quite a bit of the indoor stuff seemed to be closed, or it might have been on a schedule I guess since it was probably show-based.
There was a decent enough collection of flat rides, all Chinese knockoff, but I didn’t ride any thanks to big queues and not really being interested
When you can’t find a picnic table…
I had a look in here just to see what it was really. It was just a room full of those optical illusion photo op things.
Obligatory Chinglish sign:
I didn’t do the rapids. I tend to skip most of them in China these days. They’re mostly not very good, but have stupid jets of water spraying all over them. A lot of people on here seem to think that the wetter you get, the better the rapids are. Those people are retards.
The coaster then. As it was very busy, they were obviously running one train. I waited about an hour for it.
It was fine. I’ve never personally had an issue with Colossus, though I’d say this was definitely a bit smoother.
So yeah, this place was fine for a small local park really, and at least the sole coaster was a substantial one. I’d arrived just after ten and got out a couple of hours later to get to the next park for the afternoon. I’ll stick that up in the next part of the report though since there’s quite a lot more to it.
