A couple of weeks ago I had a long weekend – well, almost; I got to leave work around 12 – so decided to get out and do something. The first thought was to perhaps head to the new Ocean Kingdom park, but I realised I’d left it too late to get a Chinese Visa, and I don’t think everything is ready yet anyway, so thought it better to hold off for a bit.
Instead I decided on Taiwan since they’re far more civilised than the mainland and recognise the superiority of my British passport, thus allowing visa-free entry. I’d already been to Taipei, admittedly ages ago, so I wanted to try somewhere new. Kaohsiung is Taiwan’s second biggest city, has craploads of flights every day from Hong Kong and only takes just over an hour to fly to. It’s also home to the Taiwanese park with the biggest number of creds, with a whopping FOUR coasters to choose from.
Getting into the city was easy as the Metro system has a station at the airport, which is only about 20-30 minutes outside the city centre. The station I got off at for my hotel was FIERCE:
I made it to the hotel for around 6, with the intention of maybe going out to grab some food, having an early night and getting up to do stuff the next day, but a quick internet search revealed that there was actually a decent bar/club right at the end of the street, literally a 30 second walk, so that happened. I’m guessing that Kaohsiung gay bars don’t see too many foreigners, which meant that thanks to curiosity and/or the opportunity for some free English practice, I only paid for one drink the whole night.
Anyway, I woke up sometime after eleven and thought I should probably head straight out to the park. Getting information beforehand was slightly annoying. I knew that there were shuttle buses from one of the train stations, so I just headed there and hoped for the best. It turned out to be easy, with the bus signposted and people at the bus stop selling tickets. It took about half an hour to get to E-DA World (pronounced Eeda, like one word, rather than E.D.A), which turned out to be a huge resort with some massive hotels, a huge outlet mall, a huge theatre, a university and the theme park. It was a bit confusing trying to find the park entrance; you had to go in through here:
Which brings you out here:
It was about quarter past one, and tickets were a few quid cheaper after two, but I didn’t want to hang around, so just paid the full price, which was only around £15 anyway.
The drop tower was closed all day.
The park is (poorly) themed to Greece. This is Santorini apparently. I’ve never been, so I’ll take their word that this is what it looks like:
The first coaster was my first ever Golden Horse water coaster. It’s slightly shaky to call it a coaster really – not enough to make me totally question it, otherwise I wouldn’t count it - but it has some small uphill sections, and RCDB labels it as such, so that’ll do.
People were coming off drenched, so I bought a poncho thing, which was definitely a good idea, and had a couple of rides. Because it was quiet, they were loading and unloading from the same side, meaning that the exit bridge, which would’ve been great for photos of the drop and splashdown, wasn’t accessible. You’ll have to make do with these.
The final drop was pretty huge and really good.
The main attraction here is the world’s first/only Vekoma Big Air.
It was closed when I arrived, but with people working on it and a sign out the front saying that it would open at three, which it thankfully did. More on that later.
The splash battle was weird in that it didn’t run on tracks.
Some theming:
The park had a few different indoor sections, the main one of which had four floors, mostly filled with kids’ stuff. To be fair, if you were there with small kids there’d be a lot to keep them occupied with.
I’m not going to bore you with more pictures of random kiddy stuff, but there was loads of it. There was also a “Soarin’” style ride which seemed to have two different films. I only caught one of them though – not sure if it even alternated throughout the day; it didn’t seem to – which was filmed over Taiwan. It was pretty decent really.
I was a little hungover and not really very hungry, which was lucky considering the food on offer:
The indoor section also has “Dark Ride”, which isn’t actually a dark ride; it’s an indoor Vekoma family coaster.
The lifthill is actually right at the end of the ride, which makes for a nice surprise as it drops straight out of the station.
It was short, but decent for what it was with some cool lighting. They sell it as “Taiwan’s only dark coaster”, despite the fact that it’s not very dark, and obviously forgetting about Space Mountain not too far away at Formosan Aboriginal Culture village.
On the roof of the same building is a crappy Fabbri spinner, Roof Junior Coaster.
You can see the looks of anticipation on these thrillseekers’ faces as they try to contain their excitement immediately prior to dispatch.
By this time, Big Air was running, so I headed back down to that.
Operations were crap. They’ve obviously been told to try not to run it too much. It was walk-on, with never more than a train full of people in the station at a time, but they were waiting around 10 minutes after getting people off (snigger) before getting the next batch on. While we were waiting some twat ride op stood at the gate and shouted incessantly through a megaphone.
It was also knackered, meaning that the cars don’t rotate as they’re supposed to. I don’t know if this was just on the day I was there, or whether it’s a permanent thing now, but here’s what, I think, is supposed to happen:
1. The car gets pulled forwards up the first spike.
2. At the top, the cars rotate to face the ground before dropping and coasting up the opposite spike.
3. The goes back up the first spike, is caught by the catch car and pulled backwards up the first spike
4. The cars rotate back to the original position before dropping again, this time backwards.
Instead, the car is pulled forwards both times up the first spike, dropping backwards, meaning that you get exactly the same ride twice in a row. It was all just a bit crap really. I imagine that being rotated at the top to look vertically face downwards at 200 feet could be pretty amazing. As is stands, it now doesn’t do very much.
It was worth a couple of rerides, mostly because it was dead with not much else to do, but if there would’ve been a queue, I wouldn’t have bothered.
Another indoor section had 3D Ship of Souls, which I knew wasn’t open. Apparently it only runs until 1pm, which seems stupid since most people come in after 2 when the tickets get cheaper. Posters make it look like a horror walkthrough with live actors and 3D effects.
On the floor above was Mermaid Aquarium, labelled as a show but which was basically just a bunch of screens with various sea creatures appearing on them as people trigger sensors.
The booster was decent and really fast, with a long cycle and running in both directions.
On the way out I caught a show called “The Water Tamer”. You couldn’t take pictures inside, not that I would’ve been able to anyway since the room was darker than the one Jennifer Aniston locks herself inside whenever she sees a picture of Brangelina.
It was basically just some bint arsing around in a bunch of fountains; Amanda Thompson wouldn’t have been able to contain herself.
That was pretty much it for the park. I spent about 3 hours there and got a bus back into the city.
The next day I woke up late again thanks to heading back out to the same club, and headed out to Lotus Lake. It’s very close to the station where you take the E-Da bus from, and I’d intended to spend the previous morning there before heading to the park, which obviously didn’t happen.
It was really nice, with a bunch of temples and pagodas and **** scattered around it. I’m just going to throw a bunch of pictures in here. The theme park bit’s over, so feel free to just hit the “back” button.
From there I just got the metro back to the airport for my flight home. Although the park wasn’t up to much, I had a really decent weekend considering it was very last-minute. Kaohsiung itself doesn’t have a lot going for it in terms of tourism, but I had a good time there anyway. I’ve got no reason to rush back anytime soon, but I’m glad I tried it out.
Instead I decided on Taiwan since they’re far more civilised than the mainland and recognise the superiority of my British passport, thus allowing visa-free entry. I’d already been to Taipei, admittedly ages ago, so I wanted to try somewhere new. Kaohsiung is Taiwan’s second biggest city, has craploads of flights every day from Hong Kong and only takes just over an hour to fly to. It’s also home to the Taiwanese park with the biggest number of creds, with a whopping FOUR coasters to choose from.
Getting into the city was easy as the Metro system has a station at the airport, which is only about 20-30 minutes outside the city centre. The station I got off at for my hotel was FIERCE:
I made it to the hotel for around 6, with the intention of maybe going out to grab some food, having an early night and getting up to do stuff the next day, but a quick internet search revealed that there was actually a decent bar/club right at the end of the street, literally a 30 second walk, so that happened. I’m guessing that Kaohsiung gay bars don’t see too many foreigners, which meant that thanks to curiosity and/or the opportunity for some free English practice, I only paid for one drink the whole night.
Anyway, I woke up sometime after eleven and thought I should probably head straight out to the park. Getting information beforehand was slightly annoying. I knew that there were shuttle buses from one of the train stations, so I just headed there and hoped for the best. It turned out to be easy, with the bus signposted and people at the bus stop selling tickets. It took about half an hour to get to E-DA World (pronounced Eeda, like one word, rather than E.D.A), which turned out to be a huge resort with some massive hotels, a huge outlet mall, a huge theatre, a university and the theme park. It was a bit confusing trying to find the park entrance; you had to go in through here:
Which brings you out here:
It was about quarter past one, and tickets were a few quid cheaper after two, but I didn’t want to hang around, so just paid the full price, which was only around £15 anyway.
The drop tower was closed all day.
The park is (poorly) themed to Greece. This is Santorini apparently. I’ve never been, so I’ll take their word that this is what it looks like:
The first coaster was my first ever Golden Horse water coaster. It’s slightly shaky to call it a coaster really – not enough to make me totally question it, otherwise I wouldn’t count it - but it has some small uphill sections, and RCDB labels it as such, so that’ll do.
People were coming off drenched, so I bought a poncho thing, which was definitely a good idea, and had a couple of rides. Because it was quiet, they were loading and unloading from the same side, meaning that the exit bridge, which would’ve been great for photos of the drop and splashdown, wasn’t accessible. You’ll have to make do with these.
The final drop was pretty huge and really good.
The main attraction here is the world’s first/only Vekoma Big Air.
It was closed when I arrived, but with people working on it and a sign out the front saying that it would open at three, which it thankfully did. More on that later.
The splash battle was weird in that it didn’t run on tracks.
Some theming:
The park had a few different indoor sections, the main one of which had four floors, mostly filled with kids’ stuff. To be fair, if you were there with small kids there’d be a lot to keep them occupied with.
I’m not going to bore you with more pictures of random kiddy stuff, but there was loads of it. There was also a “Soarin’” style ride which seemed to have two different films. I only caught one of them though – not sure if it even alternated throughout the day; it didn’t seem to – which was filmed over Taiwan. It was pretty decent really.
I was a little hungover and not really very hungry, which was lucky considering the food on offer:
The indoor section also has “Dark Ride”, which isn’t actually a dark ride; it’s an indoor Vekoma family coaster.
The lifthill is actually right at the end of the ride, which makes for a nice surprise as it drops straight out of the station.
It was short, but decent for what it was with some cool lighting. They sell it as “Taiwan’s only dark coaster”, despite the fact that it’s not very dark, and obviously forgetting about Space Mountain not too far away at Formosan Aboriginal Culture village.
On the roof of the same building is a crappy Fabbri spinner, Roof Junior Coaster.
You can see the looks of anticipation on these thrillseekers’ faces as they try to contain their excitement immediately prior to dispatch.
By this time, Big Air was running, so I headed back down to that.
Operations were crap. They’ve obviously been told to try not to run it too much. It was walk-on, with never more than a train full of people in the station at a time, but they were waiting around 10 minutes after getting people off (snigger) before getting the next batch on. While we were waiting some twat ride op stood at the gate and shouted incessantly through a megaphone.
It was also knackered, meaning that the cars don’t rotate as they’re supposed to. I don’t know if this was just on the day I was there, or whether it’s a permanent thing now, but here’s what, I think, is supposed to happen:
1. The car gets pulled forwards up the first spike.
2. At the top, the cars rotate to face the ground before dropping and coasting up the opposite spike.
3. The goes back up the first spike, is caught by the catch car and pulled backwards up the first spike
4. The cars rotate back to the original position before dropping again, this time backwards.
Instead, the car is pulled forwards both times up the first spike, dropping backwards, meaning that you get exactly the same ride twice in a row. It was all just a bit crap really. I imagine that being rotated at the top to look vertically face downwards at 200 feet could be pretty amazing. As is stands, it now doesn’t do very much.
It was worth a couple of rerides, mostly because it was dead with not much else to do, but if there would’ve been a queue, I wouldn’t have bothered.
Another indoor section had 3D Ship of Souls, which I knew wasn’t open. Apparently it only runs until 1pm, which seems stupid since most people come in after 2 when the tickets get cheaper. Posters make it look like a horror walkthrough with live actors and 3D effects.
On the floor above was Mermaid Aquarium, labelled as a show but which was basically just a bunch of screens with various sea creatures appearing on them as people trigger sensors.
The booster was decent and really fast, with a long cycle and running in both directions.
On the way out I caught a show called “The Water Tamer”. You couldn’t take pictures inside, not that I would’ve been able to anyway since the room was darker than the one Jennifer Aniston locks herself inside whenever she sees a picture of Brangelina.
It was basically just some bint arsing around in a bunch of fountains; Amanda Thompson wouldn’t have been able to contain herself.
That was pretty much it for the park. I spent about 3 hours there and got a bus back into the city.
The next day I woke up late again thanks to heading back out to the same club, and headed out to Lotus Lake. It’s very close to the station where you take the E-Da bus from, and I’d intended to spend the previous morning there before heading to the park, which obviously didn’t happen.
It was really nice, with a bunch of temples and pagodas and **** scattered around it. I’m just going to throw a bunch of pictures in here. The theme park bit’s over, so feel free to just hit the “back” button.
From there I just got the metro back to the airport for my flight home. Although the park wasn’t up to much, I had a really decent weekend considering it was very last-minute. Kaohsiung itself doesn’t have a lot going for it in terms of tourism, but I had a good time there anyway. I’ve got no reason to rush back anytime soon, but I’m glad I tried it out.
