A First Timer In China (China Megatrip) - Pt 3: Happy Valley Beijing

[NemesisRider]

Intro: A Family Affair

My Japan 2023 trip had been a blast – I’d seen some amazing sights, had plenty of fantastic food, and ridden some great coasters. At the start of the year, I knew I would have some time off between finishing my degree and starting full-time work in the Autumn, so doing some travel in this period was a no-brainer. I wanted to tick off another bucket list country and ideally ride some cool coasters in the process, so where better to do this than China?

As luck would have it, my brother Josh was also interested. Unlike myself, he’d been to China once before during Sixth Form, but saw very little beyond Beijing. He was looking to revisit the country in more depth, as well as practice some of the Mandarin he had spent nearly 2 years learning on-and-off.

Despite being siblings, I am distinctly a Type A man whereas Josh is much more Type B, so I took on the vast majority of itinerary and logistics planning. Most most of our time would be spent experiencing the country and visiting cultural sites together, but I also planned several days apart for me to go and ride some coasters whilst he did whatever he fancied. I ultimately settled on a mostly standard first-timer itinerary of Beijing, Xian and then Shanghai, albeit adding an extended stop in Suzhou so I could use it as a base for regional theme parks. As with my Japan TRs, I'm going to just focus on the coaster stuff for the sake of brevity.



As a first timer in China, planning this trip was not the easiest and required an above-average amount of research. Sure, some parts are just like visiting any other country, like booking hotels with Expedia. However, China’s isolated digital ecosystem means that Westerners can’t use many of the services they’d typically rely on abroad like Google Maps. For me, necessary apps included LetsVPN to avoid the Great Firewall, Alipay and WeChat for payments, Didi for taxis, Amaps and Metroman for general navigation, and trip.com for attraction tickets. I particularly cannot stress the importance of Alipay and WeChat – China is basically a cashless society nowadays, debit/credit card alone is not widely accepted, and seemingly half of ticket sales are via WeChat/Alipay mini-apps. Once you get inside the ecosystem, it gets easier to find information too, as most useful websites are in Mandarin and harder to find via Google. With that said, if you do your homework, the vast majority of stuff should work as you’d hope and expect.

Time rolled by, as it does. Come September, I and my brother were fully equipped with tourist visas and ready to go East once again.

Day 1: Existential Crisis! At Sun Park

Our flight touched down in drizzly Beijing more or less on-time around 10am. Me and my brother very quickly became acquainted with the glories of Chinese bureaucracy, as we walked off the plane and straight into an hour-long queue to get through immigration at Daxing. This, naturally, also involved filling in an additional paper form demanding information which we’d definitely already given the Chinese government when we applied for our visas. The subsequent SIM card purchase setup process was mercifully quicker, albeit made more cumbersome by China Unicom’s requirement to register the SIM to a specific person and passport (to pre-empt the question, no, eSIM was not an option for us). In a final gut punch of faff, my brother revealed that he had not in fact pre-installed Alipay, further slowing down our journey towards the city centre. By the time we had dropped bags at the hotel and eaten some lunch, it was 3pm. My brother was exhausted, and the weather was still sufficiently uninspiring to visit one of the famous tourist spots, so I hopped on the metro and headed for some creds.



Chaoyang Park is a large public park in Eastern Beijing. On the Sunday I visited, there were plenty of families enjoying time together, as well as community stuff happening and even couples doing what looked like pre-wedding photos? Anyways, Sun Park is a set of mostly permanent rides looking within Chaoyang Park. They’re run by individual vendors so you will pay per ride.

Sun Park’s largest and most notable coaster is Flying Coaster, a Beijing Jiuhua Amusement Rides (catchy company name) knock-off of Toverland’s Booster Bike. I remember seeing a POV of this a good half-decade back and thinking it looked at least a decent laugh; it was time to put this hypothesis to the test.



Talk about a baptism in fire for Chinese coasters. After much hand-waving on my part, I paid the 50 RMB to ride and boarded the coaster. The restraints are surprisingly similar to those on Vekoma’s version, albeit with an extra seatbelt. Our train gradually thunked its way onto the launch track, where it proceeded to inexplicably wait for a good 30 seconds (maybe the bloke running it went for a cigarette). Eventually, an alarm sounded, then we were abruptly launched. The rest of the course is a hilariously brutal, Bizarro version of the Booster Bike layout, seemingly precisely misprofiled to induce just enough pain to be funny. Sure, it’s got no airtime or whatever, but it left me with a stupid grin on my face.



Unfortunately, it’s all very much downhill from here. Crazy Skateboard, a Beijing Jiuhua Amusement Rides knock-off spinner, rode like it was ready to fall apart at any moment. The restraints were awkward, it tracked poorly, and it just wasn’t much fun.



I also did a very bad powered coaster-esque, “shooting ride” thing. It was not worth my time or money.

The remaining coasters at Sun Park were all either shut or indisputably kiddie coasters, which I find more of an obligation than a pleasure of this hobby. In the face of such shamefulness, my typically impenetrable enthusiast code finally broke down. There was seemingly not another soul queuing for these coasters for literal children, so I couldn’t just slot myself innocuously onto an existing train. This was made worse by the fact I was still adjusting to the occasional stares that being a tall-ish white guy attracts in China and only just beginning to learn how to best handle the sizable language barrier for non-Mandarin speakers. So, I decided to go back to the hotel with 5/7 creds unridden. Even now, I wake up in cold sweats thinking about it – did I, in that moment of weakness, bring shame to the name of coaster nerds everywhere? Or did I make the right call to save my money and my dignity?



As I sat debating this with myself on the metro home, I realised I was very jet lagged, slightly delirious, and should probably just go to bed.



Next time: Sam visits his 2nd Universal park.

 

[NemesisRider]

Day 2: Universal Studios Beijing

Two full days into the trip, it was time to visit the only international brand park I had on the trip. Universal Beijing opened in 2021, but few Westerners were able to visit until 2023 when COVID restrictions began to relax. The park has very good and inexpensive public transit connections, requiring about an hour’s journey from central Beijing on the metro. As of 2024 it’s currently the terminus of one end of Line 1 which serves Tianamen Square – you can’t miss it.

Upon arrival, you are treated to the quintessential mandatory Chinese security check before you can access CityWalk. From the moment I reached the square with the iconic globe, I was struck by how massive the place felt – one can only imagine that Universal management has tried to learn from the mistakes of Universal Studios Japan, which is perpetually completely overwhelmed by the crowd level it has to sustain. The entrance plaza feels almost inhuman in scale, somewhat like certain places in the city centre, but the park interior feels much more personable.



Universal Beijing felt much more focused on its themed lands than individual attractions, so I’ll group my reviews by area in this report. I want to preface this review with two notes. First off, Universal sometimes proves a challenge for me as mostly screen-based or motion simulator dark rides have a habit of making me feel nauseaous. Whilst I got through the day without any chunning incidents, this definitely does impact which ones I end up enjoying most. Secondly, I’m not a total completion so there were a non-zero number of rides I did end up skipping. Usually I’d rather focus on reriding my favourites and attractions I can’t find elsewhere, or give any initially middling rides a second chance to prove themselves.

From the moment of arrival, I could see a huge number of Harry Potter robes, so I decided to start around the Wizarding World to beat the queues. First up was Flight of the Hippogriff, a Mack Youngstar coaster. The ride queue and layout are standard, though it seemed to track smoother than its Vekoma cousin in Japan. It goes without saying that it does nothing much beyond offer a couple of decent views of Hogwarts.



I’ve already reviewed Forbidden Journey in Japan once, where I found it technologically impressive but quite nausea inducing. After two rides, I found I felt similarly about the Beijing version, which has only minor differences from its Japanese cousin. The quality of theming is undoubtedly world class, but the ride experience just doesn’t quite land for me. It also doesn’t help I’m already bored of seeing the exact same Harry Potter rides again and again after a mere two Wizarding Worlds. Can we finally move onto a new IP, please?



Universal Beijing’s Illumination themed section “Minion Land” is, however, more unique to this park. The centrepiece of the area is the indoor Silly Fun Land, a mini amusement park which houses a couple of rides inspired by the funfair in the first Despicable Me film. Most notable of these is Universal’s second cred Loop-Dee-Doop-Dee, a Jinma rides Kiddie Coaster. It tracks very smoothly, and they've done a pretty good job with the neon-y carnival aesthetic. That said, I can't help but feel a 1 train coaster was not the best choice for a park this popular, even if queues were tolerable for me.



It wouldn’t be a Minion Land without Minion Mayhem. This ride is, once again, a clone with only minor differences from what I rode in Japan. Whilst I understand Beijing’s uses an older (and probably more outdated) ride system, I found it less sickly than the more contained pods at USJ. Not for me, but sure to please little kids.



Continuing anticlockwise, the Hollywood section of the park has no true rides, acting primarily as a gateway to the park with shops and restaurants. They did a stunning job framing the Jurassic Park Isla Nublar mountain from here, but we’ll get to that later.



Hollywood does house several shows, most of which I skipped as I only have so much desire to sit around when there are rides to be ridden. The exception was How To Train Your Dragon’s Untrainable, which currently runs in the Majestic Theatre. I am a shameless fan of the first HTTYD film and I had heard this was great, so I was super excited. I was not disappointed – the puppetry here is astounding, with the giant flying Toothless being unquestionably the highlight. The performing and music was perfectly good, but honestly it all took a back seat to the dragons for me. The Americans are in for a treat if/when this comes to Orlando with Epic Universe.



Beijing’s high-octane thrill area, Transformers Metrobase, is sleek and futuristic looking. Whilst the area has plenty going on in the daytime, it is best at night, with vibrant neon signage and pulsing lights.



In 2015, Universal revealed that their brand spanking new Chinese resort's headlining coaster would be a reprofiled and rethemed version of Florida's Incredible Hulk. Whilst I still find it was an odd choice for a headlining coaster in Beijing, I reckon the design team were playing it safe by cloning an existing success story. The result, the Transformers Decepticoaster, is currently the park’s signature roller coaster.

Decepticoaster does an alright job by Universal standards with its theming and presentation. The station and indoor queue are themed as an Energon research facility but end up feeling a little austere compared to other richly themed rides in the park. I loved the launch sequence though, which uses light and sound to show the Driller starting up before the train fires out of the cannon.



Onride, Decepticoaster combines the fluidity of 2010s B&M design with a more traditional (and arguably intense) looping layout from the 90s. The obvious highlight is the pleasantly punchy launch and floaty first inversion, but the downwards twist before the MCBR is notably fab in the back. Unfortunately, the forces Decepticoaster offers are a little homogeneous by 2020s standards, being overwhelmingly positives. It does these very tastefully though, stopping just short of grey out territory with the cobra roll and loop combo as well as the following helix. Even in the high-G valleys, whole coaster is glass smooth, making it really rerideable. Lastly, in a solid indication I am the lowest common denominator guest, I loved the onboard audio. Something about speeding through a coaster layout with guitars ripping out the sick-ass Transformers theme speaks to me on a primal level. Hell yeah.



I ended up riding Decepticoaster 13 times due to the short queues. It was basically the quietest thing in the park, adding to my theory that the Chinese don’t really love big coasters in the same way some other countries do. Sure, Decepticoaster is far from the great thing in the world, but I feel plenty of affection for it.

Next to Decepticoaster is another famous clone, Transformers: Battle for the Allspark. I was quite excited for this, having absolutely loved Spiderman at USJ. Unfortunately, I was a little let down. Whilst the 3D is well-executed and there’s some really neat moments (shout out to the missile with the heat explosion), I found the story uncompelling and would have liked a bit more in the way of physical set pieces. It mostly felt like a lot of watching big robots fight onscreen, as opposed to being truly involved in the action. It’s still great, but I reckon it’ll take me trying one of the English versions to be convinced this is a top-tier Universal dark ride.



On the subject of top-tier dark rides, let’s move to Jurassic World’s Isla Nublar. Compared to Universal Japan, Beijing’s Jurassic World is a lot visually cleaner, in no small part because it doesn’t have an enormous B&M flyer dwarfing everything and requiring tons of netting. It’s got a towering central mountain, the classic Jurassic Park pavilion thing, and big fiery entrance gates.



The area’s headlining dark ride is Jurassic Park Adventure. I knew this was going to be good, but I went in basically blind and had my mind blown. The dinosaur animatronics are amazing. The screens feel well-integrated and well-placed in the ride. The story is clear even to an English speaker; I genuinely got goosebumps the first time when the lights went out near the start. This uses the Jurassic Park IP to perfection; it’s the best ride in the park and quite possibly the best dark ride I’ve ever done. Bravo Universal, you knocked it out of the park with this one. Hell yeah.



Jurassic Flyers is another solid supporting coaster, if a smidge underwhelming. On the day of my visit, this was the most popular ride in the park. It's visually delightful, being set partly indoors in the "aviary" of Jurassic World (though this part does have some ugly evac walkways), before bursting through the mountain and going outdoors. The outdoor section feels comparable to something like Max & Moritz - glass smooth, with a couple of moments that throw you around a bit, but unquestionably a family coaster. However, the ride is a little on the short side, and I can't help but feel that this ride system hasn't been used to its full potential yet. Still, better than Arthur.



Also grabbed lunch at the "Birds of Prey" cafe near the Aviary. Food was pretty darn good, albeit expensive for China.



Universal’s final full area is another Beijing original, indoors and themed to Kung Fu Panda. The lighting and vibe here is absolutely immaculate; if I had more time I could have happily just chilled here for a while and watched the world go by.

The Kung Fu Panda: Dragon Warrior’s Journey boat ride has some cool animatronics and lighting but felt a little too sedate for an action-packed franchise like Kung Fu Panda. It’s basically a recap of the third film and heavily relies on mediocre screen-based action, which is a shame.



I also watched the Waterworld stunt show. As a non-Mandarin speaker, it’s a little hard to follow precisely what’s going on, but it’s pretty easy to figure out who the goodies and baddies are. Various acts of apocalyptic boat-based violence occur before the good guys strike back and blow up the whole place. Kaboom. Bonus points for the absolutely excessive soaking that guests in the “you will get wet” areas got from the performers during the pre-show warmup.



Universal Beijing feels far more complete than I initially expected, despite the small-ish coaster line-up. One full day should be fine if the crowds are low, but two more leisurely days here definitely could be justified. The place still feels brand new, and everything is very good quality, though some parts of the park feel a tad sterile compared to USJ. This park is an easy must-do if you’re visiting Beijing, if anything for Jurassic Park Adventure alone. Maybe this Chinese theme park malarkey isn't so bad after all!



Next time: this Chinese theme park malarkey is, in fact, very bad at times (Happy Valley Beijing)

 

[Gavin]

It mostly felt like a lot of watching big robots fight onscreen, as opposed to being truly involved in the action. It’s still great, but I reckon it’ll take me trying one of the English versions to be convinced this is a top-tier Universal dark ride.

Nope, you got it right the first time. Doing it in English makes almost no difference. It really is just watching smashy-smashy robots on big screens.

 

[NemesisRider]

Day 3: Happy Valley Beijing

Two-thirds of Happy Valley Beijing’s name is incorrect: it is certainly in Beijing, but it is not identifiably in a valley, and it definitely did not make me happy. This place is a strong contender for the worst run park I’ve had the misfortune of visiting, although a very low crowd level and good weather helped soften the blow a little.



Spite is an inevitable part of a trip to China. For some reason, at regional parks seemingly both the management and park guests do not care if half of the major rides are acting as glorified paperweights. Happy Valley’s Extreme Rusher, an S&S air-launch coaster and arguably the park’s headlining attraction, has been SBNO ever since Bullet Coaster at Happy Valley Shenzhen experienced a major incident almost a year ago. This was definitely disappointing but at least advertised well in advance. To top this off, the park’s Superman clone Crystal Wings was spontaneously “temporarily unavailable” all day during my visit, testing a handful of times but never actually opening. Having 2/3 of your headlining coasters shut on a Friday with perfect weather is frankly embarrassing, even if the park is fairly quiet. This is on top of various staggered ride openings, which meant that the SLC didn’t open until midday. I mainly find these points relevant to whine about as the entry price of Happy Valley is £33, which is easily comparable to a decent European amusement park. Just… do better OCT, dammit.



Happy Valley Beijing is at least easy to get to. It is about 35 minutes journey on the subway from Tiananmen Square, having a dedicated stop on Line 7 of the Beijing metro on Line 7 – ironically, this line also terminates at Universal Beijing, so you have ample chance to reconsider your poor choices and go there instead. Tickets can be purchased in advance via trip.com and entry done is via your passport, saving you any faff at the gate.

First impressions of the park are surprisingly competent. It's clean, there’s a bit of an atmosphere with pop music on the speakers, and the skyline is filled with cool looking (if mostly inoperational) coasters.



The park is divided into several areas with varying levels of theming. As the area around Extreme Rusher had basically nothing of interest to me open, I first headed for the sweet-treat themed Dessert Kingdom and the B&M Family Inverted Coaster. This was probably the best run ride in the park despite having only a single train. Whilst the ride looks great with the slick B&M box track and vibrant pink, it’s a bit of a nothingburger which only offers any force towards the back row. The restraints are a little odd, basically being a B&M vest restraint but without a vest. I’ve not ridden the exact Vekoma equivalent of this layout, but I’d consider it a far inferior product to the Orkanen clones like Dragon at Energylandia.



Continuing your journey around the central lake, I next reached the Shangri-La area. This is easily the best part of the park, with some thoroughly decent efforts on the aesthetics, despite lacking some of the finer details like themed music.



Shangri-La’s headliner and the park’s shiniest new toy, “Flight of the Himalayan Eagle Music Roller Coaster” (AKA: The Bird) was the only one of the park’s top 3 coasters that decided it could be arsed opening on the day of my visit. This was until around 1pm when it promptly broke down and didn’t reopen for the rest of the day. The Bird naturally invites comparisons to Universal Japan’s Hollywood Dream: The Ride between the comparatively unimpressive stats, unconventional layout and onboard audio. Unlike Hollywood Dream however, this is a genuine floater airtime machine with a few moments of really good positives. In typical OCT fashion, the music was broken, but luckily the ride was still running glass smooth.



The ride’s lack of stats results in a first drop which is fine but not exceptional, made more characterful by a strange shaping kink which gives the back row a surprise pop of strong airtime. After a semi-successful floaty banked manoeuvre, the train races through the turnaround with much more vigour than most B&M hypers provide, offering the first big dose of positives. From here the fun stuff continues in the form of a few airtime hills, most of which twist in on the entrance and go straight on the exit or vice versa. Unlike most B&Ms featuring the element, the subsequent splashdown bleeds very little speed, allowing the train to rip through the final elements. The following helix left me on the verge of greying out, before I was fixed well and proper by the final speed hill-esque airtime moment. Whilst the Bird doesn’t look like much on paper, I found it a well-rounded ride which offers surprising forces. It’s a shame that it’s ended up stuck at Crappy Valley instead of somewhere which would actually run it to its full potential.



Cred number 3, Golden Wings over the Snowfield, offers a beautifully detailed themed queue. Sadly, there is a truly awful roller coaster at the end of it. This Vekoma Shenlin SLC starts off with a tolerable first drop and loop, before destroying any accrued goodwill with a huge pothole on the cobra roll. The rest is grim but acceptable. A second ride confirmed my suspicions that this was very bad, but perhaps marginally preferable to a standard SLC.



Shangri-La also has some alright if unexceptional supporting attractions. First off, there’s a decently tall pair of S&S shot/drop towers, though I will confess to being somewhat desensitised to these nowadays. Next up, the park’s rapids are adequately themed if somewhat forgettable. Mostly it just amused me that I was seemingly the only rider that day who wasn’t wearing a poncho, despite the ride being on the drier end for a rapids. Lastly, there’s a horror walkthrough thing. Sure, it may be filled with cheap looking theming, but the low light level and near absence of other guests made it at least a bit creepy.



Continuing on to the Mayan area was the final available cred, Jungle Racing. This Jinma Rides mine train has possibly the most plastic trains ever invented by a ride manufacturer; these are, accordingly, deeply uncomfortable. The layout is more or less a worse tracking version of a Vekoma equivalent but isn’t any near awkward or disastrous enough to be funny.



Let’s take a moment of pause post-cred-run to discuss Happy Valley’s operations. Impressively, they were not the worst I’ve seen, falling well short of the unbelievable density of nonsense I witnessed at Fuji-Q in 2023. The policy is basically “we will send the train once every/almost every seat is full” which leads to slow waits for dispatches on a quiet day like when I visited. I saw this a few times across China and whilst it’s not ideal, I’ll tolerate it for sure. Unlike Fuji-Q, there are no dumb stretching exercises as of right now, but I’m sure they might add some back in just to spite me.



I went for lunch at the Extreme Rusher café. It was cheap enough, but it wasn’t good. I got a pork/mushroom with rice set, accompanied with a very sad side salad. Possibly one of the worst meals I had in China, sadly.



After lunch, I stumbled on a show thing with some terrifying characters who looked ready to beat me to death.



Lunch more of less digested, I realised that most of the non-coasters in the park were not exactly inspiring to me. Shoot-the-chutes? Don’t fancy getting utterly drenched today, thanks. Knock-off top spin? Uh, maybe, but I’d rather not go home with a headache. I ultimately settled on riding the Small World knock-off, Happy World, which was at least amusingly terrifying.



By 2:30pm I was starting to lose patience. Himalayan Eagle was probably f***ed for the rest of the day at this point and Crystal Wings was totally silent. Stalling for time, I went to see a stunt show which featured various blokes shooting at each other and eventually blowing up a house.



I did a few more rides on the Family Invert, but at 4pm I finally got bored of waiting for The Bird to reopen and threw in the towel. I went back to the hotel feeling dispirited. Is this what I’m going to be in for across all of these regional parks – spite, filler, and mediocre rides?



I imagine that on a good day with everything open Happy Valley Beijing is a really fun time. There is some genuinely pretty great hardware and theming here, but they evidently do not care about keeping it running. I'm sure I'll end up at some other OCT parks in future - I will continue to naively hope they don't get much worse than this.

Next time: Sam finds a cred at a mountain?