HeartlineCoaster
Theme Park Superhero
Hello and welcome back to another edition of complaints about weather and ride availability.
I've always loved travelling in Japan, including for creds, so it's been far too long since my last visit at just over 6 years. There's something about their average +1s that just aren't your normal overpriced wacky worm or powered dragon.
Ok there's still a lot of powered dragons.
But as a sucker for many of the Japanese ride manufacturers, including my boys at Togo and the simple pleasures of the native Jet Coaster, it's always been a jolly time.
The main inspiration for this trip was simple FOMO, in that I get the continuing sense of their industry continuing to die, outside of Disney and Universal. I'll soon be mourning the loss of another of my namesake and there's one in particular that's just been on my bucket list for far too long now.
We've got to get there first though, with price and routing ending up taking us through Shanghai, which I instantly saw as an opportunity for a 24-hour stint to nab something else that's been eluding me for what feels like forever.
Day 1
Thus proceedings began on a BA flight that was delayed over an hour after boarding, for having a faulty radar system and then air-con that spat ice over everyone when it was turned on, both of which needed fixing by an engineer. It came very close to a full evacuate the plane and put us on another one situation, which would have sucked immensely no doubt, but thankfully they got it sorted.
It didn't really matter, was just boring and an opportunity to moan at the British. We landed in China bright and early, took too long to get an on-the-spot Visa, grabbed a SIM card, Didi to the hotel, dropped off bags, Didi to the park, breathe.
When I say bright, it was already 38°C by 08:30, so it was right back into the seemingly inescapable furnace. Oh, what park? This one.
Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park
Though I've never graced its gates, I feel like I've had this place on at least 5 separate Chinese itineraries. Have always phoned ahead because it's an ass to get to from actual Shanghai, being like an hours drive south of the airport that's also a long way out of actual Shanghai. They are extending a metro line down this way though it seems.
Anyway we were always, inevitably, being told that Steel Dolphin was closed. So pretty spiteful, just indirectly.
This time however it was all systems go. Asked again on the door for final verification and then headed in, aflame, to witness a launch and then some happy(?) riders pass me by on both sides of this bridge.
However, upon arrival at the entrance, it had been closed off, only slowly eating through the remainder of its sweaty queue. Broke the cardinal rule of asking the entrance staff why, by putting the words in their mouth of 'too hot?'
'Yes, too hot.'
You can come up with any of your own reasons for these situations and they'll just nod and agree to save coming up with another excuse, regardless of the truth.
The good news was that it was scheduled to reopen again in a few hours, after the ride 'cooled down', if we believe it. The weather certainly didn't.
The bad news was having to stay in the park another few hours.
There is a +1 just opposite, this lumpy Zamperla thing with a penguin pilot on it. Took a few cycles but got the job done.
Then headed over to find somewhere or something indoor. Being an 'ocean park' it's quite animal exhibit focused, so this whole building was full of sharks and stuff.
We then got stuck in a miserable counterflow of literally thousands of guests pouring out of a dolphin show or equivalent, while trying to get to a cable car over to another indoor area. Turns out the cable car was upcharge, in a park that cost me more than Disneysea this trip, so that was a defiant no.
Disgusting weather and disgusting crowding was doing no favours to the park and travel exhaustion was quickly catching up to us. With around an hour 'til Steel Dolphin I decided to just camp it for fear that the queue would instantly be ruined again upon opening and make the visit even more lengthy than necessary. I did at some point have grand schemes of knocking this out in an hour and heading over to the new Legoland, but though that's also 'in' Shanghai they couldn't be further apart, at about 3 hours journey. Next time.
My fears were confirmed as it got quite sweaty in more than one sense of the word, around 30 mins beforehand, with growing guest attention blocking the entire pathway, all jostling for position and awkwardly staring down the ride host. After a poor attempt at crowd control which turned into a bit of an unruly scrum that included queue-jumping, I stood my ground. They eventually caved and opened the queue a bit earlier, the obvious logical option anyway - where could we possibly store all of these people waiting for a ride?
Upon powering through the queue, staff were handing out water balloons to each guest as a bit of fun and source of coolant, one of the few positive touches about the place. Not sure if we were supposed to drop them on the LSMs or something to help the ride out.
The ride also reopened a little early, thankfully, ended up on the second despatch, back row. There's a bit of a familiar Taron grunt to the first launch, something which no doubt garnered a lot of excitement back in the day for this ride, when such rides were such a hot topic.
It's a little more unjustified here as Steel Dolphin borders a little more on the family-thrill side. There were a handful of standout moments in the back, a wonky off axis thing, a lurch out of the top hat thing and another similar one into a tunnel around halfway through. There's also just a lot of weird pacing and meandering however, seemingly to suit certain ideas they had around the visual presentation of the ride.
Passing along the bridge the first time just has this forceless flat hump, and then much of the cornering soon after is done for the look over the entrance plaza rather than the onboard experience.
The return trip over the bridge contains the second launch and it's another of my bugbear ones, perhaps one of the first designs to do it, it's just a tiny little brr to squeeze out like 5-10Mph more. There's no satisfying or sustained regaining of momentum, that gloriously raw, multi-launch moment of here we go again. Just a quick little oops, could have designed that better, oh well, on we go. Inverse trims.
What follows after is a snakey bit through some foliage and around the back of the station building to the brakes. It's ok, there's nothing special going on here, no build to a climax. Just a perfunctory petering out to join the track back up at the end, which is a shame.
So, eh, not the most redeeming of arcs for a ride that had eluded me for so long, but glad to get the bloody name off the hit list. It was fun enough. Wouldn't and couldn't queue again in those conditions. Would have lapped it given standard Chinese crowd levels, but I think the Venn diagram overlap for both that and the coaster being open is quite slim.
Coasters complete we checked out the other big indoor bit and saw some of this.
They have a 4D cinema thing but I wasn't queuing for it.
They used to have a dark ride but it's gone.
And that was that. Wouldn't recommend really.
Up next - Japan
I've always loved travelling in Japan, including for creds, so it's been far too long since my last visit at just over 6 years. There's something about their average +1s that just aren't your normal overpriced wacky worm or powered dragon.
Ok there's still a lot of powered dragons.
But as a sucker for many of the Japanese ride manufacturers, including my boys at Togo and the simple pleasures of the native Jet Coaster, it's always been a jolly time.
The main inspiration for this trip was simple FOMO, in that I get the continuing sense of their industry continuing to die, outside of Disney and Universal. I'll soon be mourning the loss of another of my namesake and there's one in particular that's just been on my bucket list for far too long now.
We've got to get there first though, with price and routing ending up taking us through Shanghai, which I instantly saw as an opportunity for a 24-hour stint to nab something else that's been eluding me for what feels like forever.
Day 1
Thus proceedings began on a BA flight that was delayed over an hour after boarding, for having a faulty radar system and then air-con that spat ice over everyone when it was turned on, both of which needed fixing by an engineer. It came very close to a full evacuate the plane and put us on another one situation, which would have sucked immensely no doubt, but thankfully they got it sorted.
It didn't really matter, was just boring and an opportunity to moan at the British. We landed in China bright and early, took too long to get an on-the-spot Visa, grabbed a SIM card, Didi to the hotel, dropped off bags, Didi to the park, breathe.
When I say bright, it was already 38°C by 08:30, so it was right back into the seemingly inescapable furnace. Oh, what park? This one.
Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park
Though I've never graced its gates, I feel like I've had this place on at least 5 separate Chinese itineraries. Have always phoned ahead because it's an ass to get to from actual Shanghai, being like an hours drive south of the airport that's also a long way out of actual Shanghai. They are extending a metro line down this way though it seems.
Anyway we were always, inevitably, being told that Steel Dolphin was closed. So pretty spiteful, just indirectly.
This time however it was all systems go. Asked again on the door for final verification and then headed in, aflame, to witness a launch and then some happy(?) riders pass me by on both sides of this bridge.
However, upon arrival at the entrance, it had been closed off, only slowly eating through the remainder of its sweaty queue. Broke the cardinal rule of asking the entrance staff why, by putting the words in their mouth of 'too hot?'
'Yes, too hot.'
You can come up with any of your own reasons for these situations and they'll just nod and agree to save coming up with another excuse, regardless of the truth.
The good news was that it was scheduled to reopen again in a few hours, after the ride 'cooled down', if we believe it. The weather certainly didn't.
The bad news was having to stay in the park another few hours.
There is a +1 just opposite, this lumpy Zamperla thing with a penguin pilot on it. Took a few cycles but got the job done.
Then headed over to find somewhere or something indoor. Being an 'ocean park' it's quite animal exhibit focused, so this whole building was full of sharks and stuff.
We then got stuck in a miserable counterflow of literally thousands of guests pouring out of a dolphin show or equivalent, while trying to get to a cable car over to another indoor area. Turns out the cable car was upcharge, in a park that cost me more than Disneysea this trip, so that was a defiant no.
Disgusting weather and disgusting crowding was doing no favours to the park and travel exhaustion was quickly catching up to us. With around an hour 'til Steel Dolphin I decided to just camp it for fear that the queue would instantly be ruined again upon opening and make the visit even more lengthy than necessary. I did at some point have grand schemes of knocking this out in an hour and heading over to the new Legoland, but though that's also 'in' Shanghai they couldn't be further apart, at about 3 hours journey. Next time.
My fears were confirmed as it got quite sweaty in more than one sense of the word, around 30 mins beforehand, with growing guest attention blocking the entire pathway, all jostling for position and awkwardly staring down the ride host. After a poor attempt at crowd control which turned into a bit of an unruly scrum that included queue-jumping, I stood my ground. They eventually caved and opened the queue a bit earlier, the obvious logical option anyway - where could we possibly store all of these people waiting for a ride?
Upon powering through the queue, staff were handing out water balloons to each guest as a bit of fun and source of coolant, one of the few positive touches about the place. Not sure if we were supposed to drop them on the LSMs or something to help the ride out.
The ride also reopened a little early, thankfully, ended up on the second despatch, back row. There's a bit of a familiar Taron grunt to the first launch, something which no doubt garnered a lot of excitement back in the day for this ride, when such rides were such a hot topic.
It's a little more unjustified here as Steel Dolphin borders a little more on the family-thrill side. There were a handful of standout moments in the back, a wonky off axis thing, a lurch out of the top hat thing and another similar one into a tunnel around halfway through. There's also just a lot of weird pacing and meandering however, seemingly to suit certain ideas they had around the visual presentation of the ride.
Passing along the bridge the first time just has this forceless flat hump, and then much of the cornering soon after is done for the look over the entrance plaza rather than the onboard experience.
The return trip over the bridge contains the second launch and it's another of my bugbear ones, perhaps one of the first designs to do it, it's just a tiny little brr to squeeze out like 5-10Mph more. There's no satisfying or sustained regaining of momentum, that gloriously raw, multi-launch moment of here we go again. Just a quick little oops, could have designed that better, oh well, on we go. Inverse trims.
What follows after is a snakey bit through some foliage and around the back of the station building to the brakes. It's ok, there's nothing special going on here, no build to a climax. Just a perfunctory petering out to join the track back up at the end, which is a shame.
So, eh, not the most redeeming of arcs for a ride that had eluded me for so long, but glad to get the bloody name off the hit list. It was fun enough. Wouldn't and couldn't queue again in those conditions. Would have lapped it given standard Chinese crowd levels, but I think the Venn diagram overlap for both that and the coaster being open is quite slim.
Coasters complete we checked out the other big indoor bit and saw some of this.
They have a 4D cinema thing but I wasn't queuing for it.
They used to have a dark ride but it's gone.
And that was that. Wouldn't recommend really.
Up next - Japan
