Re: Easter in China PTR: Part 11 - Fantawild
As mentioned, I decided to keep the newest park until the next day, hoping that the weather would improve; it didn’t. I still went since I didn’t really have any choice in the matter regarding trying again since I was leaving early the next day. I hoped the weather might improve later, but it never did.
One good thing, I guess, about Fantawild is that the majority of their attractions are indoors. Well, unless you’re interested in knockoff flat rides anyway. Obviously, this doesn’t help in getting coasters, but it doesn’t mean that the whole day is necessarily wasted, as it would be at many parks, since there’s still plenty to do.
Oriental Heritage
This was the second of the Oriental Heritage brand I’ve done, having missed out on the one in Ningbo by a couple of weeks. It was, for the most part and as to be expected, very copy and paste.
I had the
exact same ticket faff that I’d had at the second park. My 3-park ticket wouldn’t scan and the staff were absolutely clueless as to what to do. Despite having staff cards to scan that would’ve let me through, they still made me wait around for ages while they all deliberated and examined my ticket as if it was some ancient Egyptian artifact before eventually calling over a manager. Pisstake, yet totally indicative of Fantawild.
Jungle Trailblazer was closed, which I was fully expecting, but I was still pretty gutted. The rain didn’t stop for the whole day, so I’ve got no idea if it would’ve opened had the rain stopped later. It looks to be the best of the bunch in my opinion, with the guys at Gravity Group describing it as an amped up version of Fireball in Shanghai, which is already a fantastic coaster.
Since it’s built right up to one side of the park, there aren’t many vantage points to get pictures of it from inside. I realized, much later and after I’d left, that you would be able to see more of it from a car park at the side.
Despite their general cloning, Fantawild have, for the most part, gone with unique layouts for their woodies though as more of them appear, I think we’ll start seeing more cloned layouts.
The Tune Tour is Fantawild’s version on It’s a Small World, only focusing on different aspects of Chinese culture rather than different countries.
It’s f**king dire. I’d done the one at their Jinan park just a few weeks after opening, and most of the animatronics were f**ked. This one was no different.
I feel personally offended that they just haven’t bothered to address the issues with this. No doubt the newer parks - though the two parks I’ve done were brand new anyway – will still just shove these in with all the existing problems. I’m hoping that, as with their screen-based rides, their animatronics improve, but at the moment, Fantawild are just piss-poor in this area.
I’ve forgotten the name of this ride now, and don’t have the park map to check, but it’s a large 4D dark ride.
Instead of the smaller cars with more movement, this one has much bigger cars, holding loads more people, that don’t move as much.
As with the other Oriental Heritage I’d visited, and I’m assuming all the others which are opening, there was an indoor Golden Horse mine train. Being indoors it was open, so CRED!
Most people probably wouldn’t realise since it’s indoors, but having this ride here means that they’ve got two Golden Horse mine trains built over three parks, just a few miles from each other. Even the trains are “mine train” themed.
The other park had also had a totally unthemed splashboat right next to the indoor coaster. They look awful in such otherwise well-themed parks. Nope.
Closed. Not bothered.
Another knockoff Flying Circus. As with most Chinese knockoffs, there are probably now more of these than the originals.
I didn’t do the rapids; the Fantawild versions are s**t.
Another huge dark ride then, this time based around Chinese music.
The huge vehicles, think of that Energy Adventure thing at Epcot, first travel through a Chinese town with various forms of Chinese music/theatre being performed on screens. At the end, the cars rotate on a platform to see a 360° 3D screen. It was a faff to get going since the 3D glasses are in pockets in the cars, clearly one set for each person, but people are stupid and crammed too many people onto each row, then realised they didn’t have glasses and had to have extras handed out. Plus, it’s only the final, rotating section that’s in 3D, which is explained on a sign on the glasses pocket, but most people didn’t notice this and wore them, pointlessly, through the whole thing.
Legend of Nuwa is another 4D dark ride and (I think) Fantawild’s 3rd iteration of the ride type, following Dino Rampage and Wizards Academy. It’s the best of the three, though it also means that each of the three parks (so far) in Wuhu have one of these.
The pagoda houses a shot/drop tower.
I’d seen the exterior of Devil’s Peak at two (or three?) previous parks, but they hadn’t been open at that stage.
This one, however, was. I’m assuming that all the others are now as well. It’s Fantawild’s take on the Harry Potter Forbidden Journey ride system. The throughput was absolutely horrendous. It’s not a continuous system like the original, so they (very, very slowly) load three cars at a time, after faffing with putting bags in lockers at the far end of the platform. I think I worked the throughput out at about 80 people an hour at best.
The ride itself was better than I expected. It was a mix of real sets and screens, though the screens were poor which was surprising since on most of their rides, the newer ones especially, they’re excellent. The vehicles had a much better range of movement than I expected, but you could clearly see the track they were on a lot of the time, and any attempts at “surprises” didn’t work because Fantawild are just crap at animatronics and you could see everything coming a mile away.
Bollocks:
3D show about China, which Hong Kong and Taiwan would go apes**t over to see their inclusion.
Some new stuff. No idea what this will be:
This next one’s a theatre. The other parks have a huge show (Lady Something) which is amazing; I’m guessing this will be a copy although the building is different.
Butterfly Lovers in another projection/live actor show, only with this one the audience are seated all around the stage instead of viewing it end on, meaning that there are actually 4 projection screens with the actors in the middle.
I don’t seem to have a picture of the outside, or at least I haven’t uploaded one, but this park had
another tilting-seat dome thing. Yeah, it’s a different theme/story, and it’s much better than the one at the Adventure park, but it’s much more obviously an identical ride type than some of the other copy-across-the-park rides, like the 4D dark rides for example.
I got a taxi to drop me off in the city centre and I walked back to my hotel since I’d seen nothing of the city. Meh, quite frankly. I’m sure it would be better if the weather was nicer. Wuhu means “weedy lake”; you’re welcome.
I splashed out a bit on a decent hotel for the last few nights, which was still fairly cheap. To be fair, all of the hotels on this trip had been decent bar a couple of generic Ibis/Holiday Inn places, which were still actually fine.
I couldn’t find the Catholicism Church next to the hotel.
I had a flight back to Hong Kong the next day from Nanjing Airport – Wuhu doesn’t have one – which was pretty far from Wuhu but is luckily quite far south of Nanjing, making it relatively easy. There are regular buses, but I couldn’t be f**ked to find out where from, so got the hotel to book a taxi, figuring that getting one in the street might not be the best idea since it was pretty far.
It’s disappointing about Jungle Trailblazer since Wuhu isn’t a place I’d be in a rush to get back to, and is a bit of a pain in the arse to get to really. Having said that, Oriental Heritage is already in the process of adding two major new attractions, and there are rough plans for even more parks – though no idea how those will pan out since Fantawild have already exhausted their entire ride catalogue, with repeats, across the existing three - so if I’m still around a few years down the line when that happens, who knows?
The trip on the whole was ok despite missing out on two major coasters thanks to weather and a park I’d hoped to be open by that point still a few weeks away. Having said that, the general area, which once would have been the “must-go-to” area for coasters in China, thanks to the likes of Dinosaur Park and Joyland, is probably less interesting these days when looking at the development of parks across the country as a whole. I hadn’t included Shanghai though, so I guess including that the area becomes much more of a “must-do” kind of place, and the generally close concentration of cities and parks makes it more attractive I guess.
And done.
