I’ve done a report on this place before when I went shortly after it opened, but that was a while ago now and it’s definitely worth another look.
I got a package through the park’s website, which included a hotel room, 2 days at the park and a buffet lunch at the hotel. It could be possible to do this place as a day trip from Hong Kong, but the ferries back don’t run very late, so it would be a bit of a rush. Either that, or you could get back later via Macau, but that would just add a lot of extra faff since you’d have to deal with more border control.
We got the ferry across to Zhuhai on the Saturday morning, then a shuttle bus to the park. The first stop was actually the hotel we were staying in. I’d stayed at one of their hotels before – there was only one then – but they now have three. We opted for the Penguin Hotel, which is cheaper but located right at the park gate.
Our room had a view onto the park entrance.
The older hotel, where I’d stayed before, is definitely nicer, but it’s further away from the park and a lot more expensive. There’s also a third, smaller hotel which is cheaper again. Our package at Penguin Hotel had cost about 200 quid for the room, two days at the park for two people, and the buffet lunch, which we got on the second day and was excellent. At the back is a large fountain with a view over to the park.
We got into the room right away and were into the park by 11, starting with the Amazon aquarium, which has manatees along with craploads of huge fish and Chinese giant salamanders.
Right next to this is Parrot Coaster. The park was starting to get very busy, but the queue was only around 15-20 minutes. This is still, by far, my favourite wingrider, but I’ve still only done 3 of them up until now.
A quick look across the lake and back to the hotel.
From there it was into the whale shark aquarium. It has the world’s biggest tank, biggest viewing window and biggest aquarium dome, and it’s f**king stunning. The park as a whole holds the record for world’s biggest aquarium when you take all of the various tanks into consideration.
It starts with a couple of “smaller” tanks with various stuff.
Then you turn a corner and hit the main tank:
The first time I came here, they had two whale sharks. On the second visit, they had 3. This time, I counted six. I’m pretty sure that has to be the largest collection of them anywhere. The tank also has hammerhead sharks, different rays including a huge manta, turtles and loads of other fish.
As well as the main viewing window, there’s a tunnel with a large open “room” with a dome above it.
Next to the aquarium is a dark ride, Sea Odyssey. It’s part dark ride, with sets and projections, but it also goes through the whale shark tank at two different points.
I’d skipped the beluga show last time, after having watched it on my first visit. There are three animal shows here, all with space for thousands of people.
There’s a beluga whale aquarium next door, but my pictures turned out too **** since they were swimming around too quickly.
The second coaster was Polar Explorer, a Mack water coaster. Most of the coaster is hidden behind the mountain and impossible to see until you’re on the ride. It had the longest line of the day, and at any other Chinese park I probably would have skipped it since I didn’t need the cred, but we only had to wait about half an hour since this place is run really, really well and they had multiple cars/boats constantly being pushed out.
It starts off by going through a bear enclosure. From on-ride, you’re too low down to see the ditch, giving the impression that you’re right in there with them.
There’s a polar bear exhibit next to the coaster.
It also has arctic foxes and arctic wolves.
Opposite is a large penguin exhibit, with about 5 different species of penguins.
There’s a whole area that is either new, or I’d somehow missed before. It’s mostly birds, that they also had turtles, seals and some other stuff.
Just realised hat the turtles look crammed in. They weren't; they were just being fed. The pool was a decent size.
Just in case you’d managed to forget that you were in a Chinese park:
The area near the entrance has some kiddy rides and a stingray pool.
There’s a fountain show on the lake every hour or so.
Walrus Mountain is neat the main entrance, but we had gone anti-clockwise around the lake, hitting it last. Despite the park being really busy, the coaster was walk-on. It was late in the day by this point, operations were again excellent, and I have the feeling that a lot of people would be in that area earlier if they’re moving the other way around the lake.
The ride goes underwater through a sea lion pool before hitting the lift hill. There’s also a pool of walruses, about ten of them, at the base of the mountain.
The main entrance area has an enormous LED roof with constantly changing underwater scenes.
Castle 5D Theatre was new since my last visit. These things don’t impress me much, but this one was much better than most. It’s huge with over 1,000 seats, all of which move individually and in perfect sync with the action on the screen.
It currently has two Guinness world records for largest permanent projection screen and largest 3D projection.
At the end, animatronic characters fly “out” of the screen – actually over the top through some mist – and over the audience.
On both previous visits, I’d left the park in the late afternoon, so had never seen it at night.
They had a very short night parade – I’d missed the daytime one – which was really poor considering the overall quality of this place everywhere else.
Walrus Mountain looks even better at night with the fully-functioning lighthouse.
Polar Explorer also looks fab.
Since I hadn’t been here at night before, I’d obviously never seen the closing show. It was really impressive, with lasers, fire, fireworks and people on those water jet pack things.
The park closed right after this. Have a few more pictures of the LED roof and a bit of video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXOg99f-Xq4[/youtube]
We didn’t really need the second day, but since we had it anyway and had a ferry booked back to Hong Kong at 5pm (the bus from the park to the ferry terminal takes about 40 minutes), we did a couple of things we’d missed the first day and had a couple of rerides on the coasters.
One of the absolute burdens of going to parks with non-enthusiasts is when they want to stand in a 30 minute line for s**t like this rather than whore the creds:
I’ll just chuck some other pictures in:
We hadn’t seen the dolphin show. Despite not seeing it before, I would have happily not bothered. They’re all the same and I’m not really comfortable with the whole thing. It doesn't bother me enough to actually care, but I certainly don't enjoy them.
There was also a sea lion show which I’d also never seen, not because they bother me anywhere near as much as dolphins or whales, but because I’ve seen too many and they’re all the same. This one started off with a few walruses though, before the generic sea lion stuff.
After that we just got a late lunch at the hotel buffet – ramming food in for a good hour – before heading out to the ferry terminal and back to Hong Kong. The terminal – one of two in Hong Kong that serves Zhuhai – is a 5 minute walk from my house, so it’s all a piece of piss really.
Overall thoughts then. The park is amazing and is run brilliantly. It was packed on the Saturday - not so much on the Sunday but still busy - but we didn’t really have to wait for anything other than Polar Explorer, and that was only half an hour. The coasters are run with multiple trains – it’s s**t that I should feel excited by that – and without any of the bulls**t stalling tactics of other Chinese parks. As soon as one train’s out, they’re filling the air gates and loading up another one.
Even with crap like the Dolphin kiddy thing, they go down the queue and hand out cards to people waiting in line while the ride is running so that they can get the numbers right before the gates open, rather than piss about asking “how many people” with an empty ride sitting there. The shows have huge capacities which swallow up thousands of people at a time. I think I estimated the dolphin theatre to hold around 7,000 – 8,000 people.
It’s not just run well “for a Chinese park”; it’s run well by any standards. Chimelong Paradise is the same, but I’ve never seen it very busy to really know how it would run with crowds.
It was a gamble to build such a huge, expensive park in an empty area south of Zhuhai, even if it is an easy trip from Macau, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but it has clearly paid off. In the space of a couple of years, they’ve built two big new hotels on top of the already existing huge one, and are getting ridiculous numbers of people through the gates despite it being, before Shanghai Disney came along, China’s most expensive park to visit.
I’m genuinely pleased for them, and pleased for the Chinese theme park industry as a whole because it shows that people are willing to pay for quality. It also means that the second park (I can see there being even more after that) is probably coming quicker than originally planned as well.
With any luck, more people experiencing parks like this, along with Disney, will lead to people not being so accepting of the s**ty service, operations and downright ineptitude at pretty much EVERY other park in the f**king country. Fantawild, Happy Valley and numerous other individual parks need to take a long hard look at Chimelong and sort their s**t out.
I got a package through the park’s website, which included a hotel room, 2 days at the park and a buffet lunch at the hotel. It could be possible to do this place as a day trip from Hong Kong, but the ferries back don’t run very late, so it would be a bit of a rush. Either that, or you could get back later via Macau, but that would just add a lot of extra faff since you’d have to deal with more border control.
We got the ferry across to Zhuhai on the Saturday morning, then a shuttle bus to the park. The first stop was actually the hotel we were staying in. I’d stayed at one of their hotels before – there was only one then – but they now have three. We opted for the Penguin Hotel, which is cheaper but located right at the park gate.
Our room had a view onto the park entrance.
The older hotel, where I’d stayed before, is definitely nicer, but it’s further away from the park and a lot more expensive. There’s also a third, smaller hotel which is cheaper again. Our package at Penguin Hotel had cost about 200 quid for the room, two days at the park for two people, and the buffet lunch, which we got on the second day and was excellent. At the back is a large fountain with a view over to the park.
We got into the room right away and were into the park by 11, starting with the Amazon aquarium, which has manatees along with craploads of huge fish and Chinese giant salamanders.
Right next to this is Parrot Coaster. The park was starting to get very busy, but the queue was only around 15-20 minutes. This is still, by far, my favourite wingrider, but I’ve still only done 3 of them up until now.
A quick look across the lake and back to the hotel.
From there it was into the whale shark aquarium. It has the world’s biggest tank, biggest viewing window and biggest aquarium dome, and it’s f**king stunning. The park as a whole holds the record for world’s biggest aquarium when you take all of the various tanks into consideration.
It starts with a couple of “smaller” tanks with various stuff.
Then you turn a corner and hit the main tank:
The first time I came here, they had two whale sharks. On the second visit, they had 3. This time, I counted six. I’m pretty sure that has to be the largest collection of them anywhere. The tank also has hammerhead sharks, different rays including a huge manta, turtles and loads of other fish.
As well as the main viewing window, there’s a tunnel with a large open “room” with a dome above it.
Next to the aquarium is a dark ride, Sea Odyssey. It’s part dark ride, with sets and projections, but it also goes through the whale shark tank at two different points.
I’d skipped the beluga show last time, after having watched it on my first visit. There are three animal shows here, all with space for thousands of people.
There’s a beluga whale aquarium next door, but my pictures turned out too **** since they were swimming around too quickly.
The second coaster was Polar Explorer, a Mack water coaster. Most of the coaster is hidden behind the mountain and impossible to see until you’re on the ride. It had the longest line of the day, and at any other Chinese park I probably would have skipped it since I didn’t need the cred, but we only had to wait about half an hour since this place is run really, really well and they had multiple cars/boats constantly being pushed out.
It starts off by going through a bear enclosure. From on-ride, you’re too low down to see the ditch, giving the impression that you’re right in there with them.
There’s a polar bear exhibit next to the coaster.
It also has arctic foxes and arctic wolves.
Opposite is a large penguin exhibit, with about 5 different species of penguins.
There’s a whole area that is either new, or I’d somehow missed before. It’s mostly birds, that they also had turtles, seals and some other stuff.
Just realised hat the turtles look crammed in. They weren't; they were just being fed. The pool was a decent size.
Just in case you’d managed to forget that you were in a Chinese park:
The area near the entrance has some kiddy rides and a stingray pool.
There’s a fountain show on the lake every hour or so.
Walrus Mountain is neat the main entrance, but we had gone anti-clockwise around the lake, hitting it last. Despite the park being really busy, the coaster was walk-on. It was late in the day by this point, operations were again excellent, and I have the feeling that a lot of people would be in that area earlier if they’re moving the other way around the lake.
The ride goes underwater through a sea lion pool before hitting the lift hill. There’s also a pool of walruses, about ten of them, at the base of the mountain.
The main entrance area has an enormous LED roof with constantly changing underwater scenes.
Castle 5D Theatre was new since my last visit. These things don’t impress me much, but this one was much better than most. It’s huge with over 1,000 seats, all of which move individually and in perfect sync with the action on the screen.
It currently has two Guinness world records for largest permanent projection screen and largest 3D projection.
At the end, animatronic characters fly “out” of the screen – actually over the top through some mist – and over the audience.
On both previous visits, I’d left the park in the late afternoon, so had never seen it at night.
They had a very short night parade – I’d missed the daytime one – which was really poor considering the overall quality of this place everywhere else.
Walrus Mountain looks even better at night with the fully-functioning lighthouse.
Polar Explorer also looks fab.
Since I hadn’t been here at night before, I’d obviously never seen the closing show. It was really impressive, with lasers, fire, fireworks and people on those water jet pack things.
The park closed right after this. Have a few more pictures of the LED roof and a bit of video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXOg99f-Xq4[/youtube]
We didn’t really need the second day, but since we had it anyway and had a ferry booked back to Hong Kong at 5pm (the bus from the park to the ferry terminal takes about 40 minutes), we did a couple of things we’d missed the first day and had a couple of rerides on the coasters.
One of the absolute burdens of going to parks with non-enthusiasts is when they want to stand in a 30 minute line for s**t like this rather than whore the creds:
I’ll just chuck some other pictures in:
We hadn’t seen the dolphin show. Despite not seeing it before, I would have happily not bothered. They’re all the same and I’m not really comfortable with the whole thing. It doesn't bother me enough to actually care, but I certainly don't enjoy them.
There was also a sea lion show which I’d also never seen, not because they bother me anywhere near as much as dolphins or whales, but because I’ve seen too many and they’re all the same. This one started off with a few walruses though, before the generic sea lion stuff.
After that we just got a late lunch at the hotel buffet – ramming food in for a good hour – before heading out to the ferry terminal and back to Hong Kong. The terminal – one of two in Hong Kong that serves Zhuhai – is a 5 minute walk from my house, so it’s all a piece of piss really.
Overall thoughts then. The park is amazing and is run brilliantly. It was packed on the Saturday - not so much on the Sunday but still busy - but we didn’t really have to wait for anything other than Polar Explorer, and that was only half an hour. The coasters are run with multiple trains – it’s s**t that I should feel excited by that – and without any of the bulls**t stalling tactics of other Chinese parks. As soon as one train’s out, they’re filling the air gates and loading up another one.
Even with crap like the Dolphin kiddy thing, they go down the queue and hand out cards to people waiting in line while the ride is running so that they can get the numbers right before the gates open, rather than piss about asking “how many people” with an empty ride sitting there. The shows have huge capacities which swallow up thousands of people at a time. I think I estimated the dolphin theatre to hold around 7,000 – 8,000 people.
It’s not just run well “for a Chinese park”; it’s run well by any standards. Chimelong Paradise is the same, but I’ve never seen it very busy to really know how it would run with crowds.
It was a gamble to build such a huge, expensive park in an empty area south of Zhuhai, even if it is an easy trip from Macau, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but it has clearly paid off. In the space of a couple of years, they’ve built two big new hotels on top of the already existing huge one, and are getting ridiculous numbers of people through the gates despite it being, before Shanghai Disney came along, China’s most expensive park to visit.
I’m genuinely pleased for them, and pleased for the Chinese theme park industry as a whole because it shows that people are willing to pay for quality. It also means that the second park (I can see there being even more after that) is probably coming quicker than originally planned as well.
With any luck, more people experiencing parks like this, along with Disney, will lead to people not being so accepting of the s**ty service, operations and downright ineptitude at pretty much EVERY other park in the f**king country. Fantawild, Happy Valley and numerous other individual parks need to take a long hard look at Chimelong and sort their s**t out.
