HeartlineCoaster
Theme Park Superhero
Ah, China. The bane of my life, but I can't get enough. It's been three-and-a-half long months since I could visit and they've built and closed a hundred more things I want to try in that time.
Nothing fancy, landed in basic old Shanghai to kick proceedings off with some new dark ride newness. Mercifully all the health declarations have gone out the window by now and being such a major airport there was minimal fuss getting in and getting going, for a change.
To kick proceedings off with some faffness however, the hotel didn't have room to store our bags for the day, instead offering to just put them out in the open, in a busy lobby, unlabelled, where someone would 'keep an eye on them'. That wasn't happening, so we argued the point and were eventually given a room early in order to avoid that disaster waiting to happen.
Day 1 - Shanghai Disneyland
As with all Disney visits I've done around the world, there was no planning involved beyond pre-booking a ticket online for an 'offpeak' visit. The technique has yet to fail us and from previous experience in Shanghai the park was totally manageable. Not today. Arrival on resort resulted in several miles more walking than I recall from before, all for the benefit of easing traffic, batching queues and lining you up for some slow security checks, followed by some even slower ticket checks.
I should have known from the website warnings back at Christmas time stating that guests were not allowed to queue overnight to get into the park that something was amiss. It was naive to think that the initial rush would have died down by now. Alas, on this 'offpeak' day it took 2 hours to first lay eyes on the castle I didn't even bother to take another picture of.
Things went from bad to worse as we headed to the new Zootopia area, which had opened about a month prior. A sign outside of a rabble of guests no doubt arguing with staff about how their day was about to be ruined declared that there would be a 2 hour queue to get into the new land, followed by another 2 hour queue should you wish to ride the new ride.
Well, that's what we came for. Cattlepen for days currently fills out the extensive pathway that leads up to the area in question, of which you get a teasing glimpse into before chucking a hard right through a service gate and into a highly temporary looking marquee.
Thousands and thousands of bodies all lined up and miserable in this queue that's crudely styled as waiting in line for the Gazelle concert marked the next couple of hours of our lives. It moved with a degree of pace to be fair to it, just the scale of the operation was ridiculous. I wasn't sure exactly how it worked, whether they were counting people out of the area before letting more in, or using simple guesswork and pacing the numbers every few minutes. A more worrying thought struck me that perhaps once you had finished the ride, you were booted straight out with no opportunity to explore or reride, but this wasnt the case, fortunately, I guess.
Eventually we were batched in. Whether the wait or the mood affected things in any way I can't vouch for, but it lacked the 'wow, I've arrived' moment of the more spectacular Disney locations out there. I'm a fan of the film and it's cool that this is a thing now, plus the detail is there in spades for sure if you take the time to look hard enough, but I suppose having queued just to exist in this part of the park, there was no real striking visual akin to say Pandora.
The station window had silhouettes and trains to give it some bustle.
This giraffe is gymming it up.
Why is this one icy?
These tubes contain moving hamsters. That I like.
The perfect commentary on Chinese life.
See.
Impatience to just get on the ride at this point, along with the fact that it's still rather crowded and hard to move around, with nothing else to do but look and take pictures of people getting in the way of other people's pictures, we dived into the next queue pretty quickly. This starts out pleasant enough, with winding outdoor pathway and the same Gazelle concert posters repeated a few more hundred times. Spoiler averse, I was guessing this was the setup to the plot, but it's not.
Around halfway through the wait you enter into the lobby of the police department, where things get a lot more fun. The Clawhauser animatronic at the desk has a few different sequences and tales to tell as you zigzag in front of him for a bit, then head into the depths of the police station.
Posters on the wall, bulletin boards, officer's offices, there's good detail again here - they pay particular attention to the scale of things a lot, so doors and equipment being different sizes for different species, but it doesn't quite feel lived in. I get the feeling of this inherent disconnect between the world in which animals are people and this theme park world where you can't actually see or interact with the animals as people, so it's not quite all there, somehow. Overthinking? Probably.
The corridors lead further into a tour of the prison cells. All vacant, but full of various artifacts.
The story almost plays out in real time as you continue on to see Bellwether's cell (villain of the film, with the events of the ride being set after it), with obsessed drawings on the walls, past that to a ventilation shaft through which he has supposedly escaped. Sirens begin to blare and announcements are made and finally you get rushed into a briefing room with the legendary Chief Bogo.
He gives you the lowdown - don't tell me, we're new recruits and we're being put on a high-tech all-terrain vehicle in order to help with this latest mission.
Well yes, of course.
Excitement builds as you move through to the station and finally see vehicles in motion, there is a ride at the end of the tunnel. PPE is available on the walls in all shapes and sizes and repetetive safety announcements are played as you get batched.
And then it ceases operation.
Don't worry, it's a new ride, it'll happen a lot, I'm sure it's only temporary.
No, we're being evacuated.
Well God damn.
Had this been Cedar Point, this would have been game over, but thankfully it's Disney, so we immediately received a fast track for both the land and the ride, tied to our ticket.
Nevertheless it was now approximately halfway through the operating day and we hadn't experienced a single attraction. Best check on some queue times.
Well God damn.
The park was gone. Nothing but the stupid Flying Theatre got over an hour when I was here last, at pretty much the same time of year. They've also added other areas and attractions since then, in a somewhat poor attempt (the worst of Toy Story Land) to ease the load.
Today saw 3 hours for Tron and the Dwarves. 3 hours for the stupid Flying Theatre. Glad I didn't need or care about those.
I only had 4 things on the hit list and we'd just failed the first.
RC Racer would be a spurious +1. 2 hours. Not happening.
The rapids which was closed before. Closed again. Guess I'm never seeing that dinosaur up close.
Voyage to the Crystal Grotto - is it a dark ride? Well it's 'only' 30 minutes so I guess we'll find out.
There's a few versions of these things around. Paris for example, the boat ride with the various fairytale dioramas. This one is the same concept, with some of them dialled up a bit, a bit larger. You waft around and see a few effects, hear a few songs before heading into a cave. I was hoping it would be a bit more Jungle Cruisey and actor led with some spectacle, but alas no.
The flight schedule had not been kind to us and sitting down for the first time in half a day suddenly got the better of me. I was essentially drifting in and out of consciousness for the indoor portion of the ride and honestly couldn't tell you what went on in there. We answered the question though. Yes.
By the time that was done and dusted, Zootopia was back in operation. We skipped past two even more vast queues than they had been before and got put straight into the Bogo preshow section. Given the scale of the evacuation and how many people must have been compensated, I'm surprised it was so smooth. Guess they were all stuck in some other ridiculous queue for the time being.
20 years service life on a dark ride too? Maybe it's not just coasters.
So, the ride then. Is good. Perhaps I had expectations set a little too high, what with the ride system being what it is and what's been done with it in a galaxy far, far away. I went in knowing nothing for that reason and thought maybe there'd be another new trick up their sleeve, but at best it does the same beats, and less with them.
What it does do very well is the noticeable changes in environments. They make full use of all the different climates and locations from the film to take you from arctic to desert (with good use of temperature differences), from city to rainforest.
The sequence in the middle with the nudist llama guy and his fellow animals is great fun with the lighting setup and 'scares'. There's quite a significant emphasis on screen based action, high speed chases and the like, unusually for Disney, but the styling feels rather fresh. I'm not so sold on the cable car bit because the range of movement inside doesn't go full simulator enough to do it justice.
Flash, Flash, 100 yard dash. Delivers some pun-based comedy in the local tongue.
This screen looks great.
The animatronics when used are amazing of course and it all ends with an uplifting rendition of Try Everything, straight into the gift shop. Four and a half thumbs up or thereabouts.
The queue situation remained just as dire, if not worse, as darkness descended on the park. The single one we could bear to stomach was a posted 50 mins for Pirates, which moved very well and went even quicker because it's a beast. It remains my favourite dark ride on park, this thing is next level with the scaling on some of the sets. It just floats from wow moment to wow moment and I love a dark and brooding atmosphere, a lack of preshow, a lack of needing to be recruited, a lack of high tech all terrain vehicles. Gorgeous.
And with that being the best queue on park for the best attraction, it was decided to call it a day. 3 attractions experienced. 13 hours of operation. A new low for Disney. It's a good thing I'm pretty immune to bad park visits these days. Yay.
Up next - spite
Previous analyses have shown that statistically speaking I've had more success in China in January than at any other time of year, so let's see if the trend can continue. A clue - no.
Nothing fancy, landed in basic old Shanghai to kick proceedings off with some new dark ride newness. Mercifully all the health declarations have gone out the window by now and being such a major airport there was minimal fuss getting in and getting going, for a change.
To kick proceedings off with some faffness however, the hotel didn't have room to store our bags for the day, instead offering to just put them out in the open, in a busy lobby, unlabelled, where someone would 'keep an eye on them'. That wasn't happening, so we argued the point and were eventually given a room early in order to avoid that disaster waiting to happen.
Day 1 - Shanghai Disneyland
As with all Disney visits I've done around the world, there was no planning involved beyond pre-booking a ticket online for an 'offpeak' visit. The technique has yet to fail us and from previous experience in Shanghai the park was totally manageable. Not today. Arrival on resort resulted in several miles more walking than I recall from before, all for the benefit of easing traffic, batching queues and lining you up for some slow security checks, followed by some even slower ticket checks.
I should have known from the website warnings back at Christmas time stating that guests were not allowed to queue overnight to get into the park that something was amiss. It was naive to think that the initial rush would have died down by now. Alas, on this 'offpeak' day it took 2 hours to first lay eyes on the castle I didn't even bother to take another picture of.
Things went from bad to worse as we headed to the new Zootopia area, which had opened about a month prior. A sign outside of a rabble of guests no doubt arguing with staff about how their day was about to be ruined declared that there would be a 2 hour queue to get into the new land, followed by another 2 hour queue should you wish to ride the new ride.
Well, that's what we came for. Cattlepen for days currently fills out the extensive pathway that leads up to the area in question, of which you get a teasing glimpse into before chucking a hard right through a service gate and into a highly temporary looking marquee.
Thousands and thousands of bodies all lined up and miserable in this queue that's crudely styled as waiting in line for the Gazelle concert marked the next couple of hours of our lives. It moved with a degree of pace to be fair to it, just the scale of the operation was ridiculous. I wasn't sure exactly how it worked, whether they were counting people out of the area before letting more in, or using simple guesswork and pacing the numbers every few minutes. A more worrying thought struck me that perhaps once you had finished the ride, you were booted straight out with no opportunity to explore or reride, but this wasnt the case, fortunately, I guess.
Eventually we were batched in. Whether the wait or the mood affected things in any way I can't vouch for, but it lacked the 'wow, I've arrived' moment of the more spectacular Disney locations out there. I'm a fan of the film and it's cool that this is a thing now, plus the detail is there in spades for sure if you take the time to look hard enough, but I suppose having queued just to exist in this part of the park, there was no real striking visual akin to say Pandora.
The station window had silhouettes and trains to give it some bustle.
This giraffe is gymming it up.
Why is this one icy?
These tubes contain moving hamsters. That I like.
The perfect commentary on Chinese life.
See.
Impatience to just get on the ride at this point, along with the fact that it's still rather crowded and hard to move around, with nothing else to do but look and take pictures of people getting in the way of other people's pictures, we dived into the next queue pretty quickly. This starts out pleasant enough, with winding outdoor pathway and the same Gazelle concert posters repeated a few more hundred times. Spoiler averse, I was guessing this was the setup to the plot, but it's not.
Around halfway through the wait you enter into the lobby of the police department, where things get a lot more fun. The Clawhauser animatronic at the desk has a few different sequences and tales to tell as you zigzag in front of him for a bit, then head into the depths of the police station.
Posters on the wall, bulletin boards, officer's offices, there's good detail again here - they pay particular attention to the scale of things a lot, so doors and equipment being different sizes for different species, but it doesn't quite feel lived in. I get the feeling of this inherent disconnect between the world in which animals are people and this theme park world where you can't actually see or interact with the animals as people, so it's not quite all there, somehow. Overthinking? Probably.
The corridors lead further into a tour of the prison cells. All vacant, but full of various artifacts.
The story almost plays out in real time as you continue on to see Bellwether's cell (villain of the film, with the events of the ride being set after it), with obsessed drawings on the walls, past that to a ventilation shaft through which he has supposedly escaped. Sirens begin to blare and announcements are made and finally you get rushed into a briefing room with the legendary Chief Bogo.
He gives you the lowdown - don't tell me, we're new recruits and we're being put on a high-tech all-terrain vehicle in order to help with this latest mission.
Well yes, of course.
Excitement builds as you move through to the station and finally see vehicles in motion, there is a ride at the end of the tunnel. PPE is available on the walls in all shapes and sizes and repetetive safety announcements are played as you get batched.
And then it ceases operation.
Don't worry, it's a new ride, it'll happen a lot, I'm sure it's only temporary.
No, we're being evacuated.
Well God damn.
Had this been Cedar Point, this would have been game over, but thankfully it's Disney, so we immediately received a fast track for both the land and the ride, tied to our ticket.
Nevertheless it was now approximately halfway through the operating day and we hadn't experienced a single attraction. Best check on some queue times.
Well God damn.
The park was gone. Nothing but the stupid Flying Theatre got over an hour when I was here last, at pretty much the same time of year. They've also added other areas and attractions since then, in a somewhat poor attempt (the worst of Toy Story Land) to ease the load.
Today saw 3 hours for Tron and the Dwarves. 3 hours for the stupid Flying Theatre. Glad I didn't need or care about those.
I only had 4 things on the hit list and we'd just failed the first.
RC Racer would be a spurious +1. 2 hours. Not happening.
The rapids which was closed before. Closed again. Guess I'm never seeing that dinosaur up close.
Voyage to the Crystal Grotto - is it a dark ride? Well it's 'only' 30 minutes so I guess we'll find out.
There's a few versions of these things around. Paris for example, the boat ride with the various fairytale dioramas. This one is the same concept, with some of them dialled up a bit, a bit larger. You waft around and see a few effects, hear a few songs before heading into a cave. I was hoping it would be a bit more Jungle Cruisey and actor led with some spectacle, but alas no.
The flight schedule had not been kind to us and sitting down for the first time in half a day suddenly got the better of me. I was essentially drifting in and out of consciousness for the indoor portion of the ride and honestly couldn't tell you what went on in there. We answered the question though. Yes.
By the time that was done and dusted, Zootopia was back in operation. We skipped past two even more vast queues than they had been before and got put straight into the Bogo preshow section. Given the scale of the evacuation and how many people must have been compensated, I'm surprised it was so smooth. Guess they were all stuck in some other ridiculous queue for the time being.
20 years service life on a dark ride too? Maybe it's not just coasters.
So, the ride then. Is good. Perhaps I had expectations set a little too high, what with the ride system being what it is and what's been done with it in a galaxy far, far away. I went in knowing nothing for that reason and thought maybe there'd be another new trick up their sleeve, but at best it does the same beats, and less with them.
What it does do very well is the noticeable changes in environments. They make full use of all the different climates and locations from the film to take you from arctic to desert (with good use of temperature differences), from city to rainforest.
The sequence in the middle with the nudist llama guy and his fellow animals is great fun with the lighting setup and 'scares'. There's quite a significant emphasis on screen based action, high speed chases and the like, unusually for Disney, but the styling feels rather fresh. I'm not so sold on the cable car bit because the range of movement inside doesn't go full simulator enough to do it justice.
Flash, Flash, 100 yard dash. Delivers some pun-based comedy in the local tongue.
This screen looks great.
The animatronics when used are amazing of course and it all ends with an uplifting rendition of Try Everything, straight into the gift shop. Four and a half thumbs up or thereabouts.
The queue situation remained just as dire, if not worse, as darkness descended on the park. The single one we could bear to stomach was a posted 50 mins for Pirates, which moved very well and went even quicker because it's a beast. It remains my favourite dark ride on park, this thing is next level with the scaling on some of the sets. It just floats from wow moment to wow moment and I love a dark and brooding atmosphere, a lack of preshow, a lack of needing to be recruited, a lack of high tech all terrain vehicles. Gorgeous.
And with that being the best queue on park for the best attraction, it was decided to call it a day. 3 attractions experienced. 13 hours of operation. A new low for Disney. It's a good thing I'm pretty immune to bad park visits these days. Yay.
Up next - spite
