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Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 4

Gavin

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We finished this little trip over a month ago, and there’s nothing in this report that I haven’t covered before, but since Nic is clearly too busy shopping for dungarees, Birkenstocks, or whatever else lesbians keep them themselves occupied with, I thought I’d get the ball rolling. Hopefully she’ll move away from the KD Lang and Lucy Spraggan YouTube videos long enough to contribute something later.

I didn’t take many pictures since I’ve been to these places before, so hopefully Nic will add a few more – she took a fair few – before the new series of Orange is the New Black starts, otherwise we’re f**ked.

Day 1 – Knight Valley and Cred Whoring

It was kind of the second day really, since Nic arrived the previous evening. The first night we just grabbed a few cheap beers and took the short walk down to the harbour. It’s actually one of my favourite things to do here; it costs **** all and the view is pretty spectacular. Blurry picture lifted off facebook; can't be arsed to dig out a better one:

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We were up early the next day to get a bus directly to Knight Valley. There used to be a few buses a day, but they’ve been cut back, meaning that we had no choice but to get to the park for opening. It’s still a better option than taking the MTR since the border crossing that the bus uses is empty, meaning a lot less faff at immigration. Getting off a bus at the park entrance is obviously also preferable to transfers and taxis, too.

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They really need to think about taking that log flume out now. It’s clearly never opening again and they’ve just opened what I’d say is a replacement anyway. This had just started construction when I was last here. It was huge, but we didn’t ride it since these things always get you drenched.

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The Mission Space knockoff of death is still sitting there as well. There’s literally nothing else in this area, but you pretty much have to walk through it to get to anything else.

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The 4D theatre was closed when I was here last, so we gave it a go. It was ok really. I can’t remember the name of the video, but it was roller coaster based and in English, so it’s one that people would’ve probably seen elsewhere. It was a bit of a cheek to be selling the 3D glasses though. They were only 20p, but still.

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The 3D dark ride (think Spiderman style ride, though clearly nowhere near as good) was better than I remembered. Our 3D glasses from the last ride didn’t work with this one though, so it’s clearly a different system. We should’ve forked out another 20p really.

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From here it was up to the main (only) reason to come to this place: Wood Coaster. They’ve made a good effort to warn potential queue jumpers.

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To be honest, I was less impressed with the ride this time around. It starts very well, with some decent airtime, and has a great setting, but the second half is nowhere near as strong and it’s getting a bit rough in places. It’s still a great ride, but it’s a bit too much now to go for multiple rerides.

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After a couple of rides, we took the cable car up to the highest point of the park. The weather was a bit grim though, so the views weren’t as good as I’d seen before. Also, neither the boosters nor the observation tower were running.

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We were only up there about 10 minutes, then headed back down to catch the park’s stunt show. I can never remember what it’s called, but it pretty huge.

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On the way out, we decided to grab some lunch. It was the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten - or not eaten since I took a bite and left it - at a park. It was basically some soggy, microwaved burrito-looking thing (though not a burrito) that somehow took 15 minutes for them to “make”. **** ing dreadful. No pictures.

This place really needs to start sorting themselves out really. It’s in a gorgeous location and has some really nice areas, but there are two SBNO rides that have just been sitting there and rotting for years. They should’ve looked at taking those out before adding in the new water ride really. Plus, quite a lot of other things were also closed, which is clearly not ideal on a weekend, even if it was quiet.

Since it was early, we decided to grab a few coasters in the city before heading to the hotel. First up was East Lake Park, which has a common combination of powered dragon and Golden Horse spinner. It was Nic’s first Chinese knockoff coaster though, so it had to be done. The one at this place is ok actually. The brakes don’t grab, so you can get a fairly decent ride.

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After that, we headed to Children’s Park, which was walking distance to our hotel. When I’d been here before, I arrived to find this:

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I knew they were building some new stuff since then, so we had a quick look. They’re still not open yet, but they’re in the process of adding a log flume and two new coasters, a Golden Horse Space Car and a Jungle Mouse, so at least I know that next time I’m around there are a couple of extra creds to grab.

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A quick walk through the city centre got us to another small park, Cultural Palace, which was literally across the street from our hotel. There was just one coaster here, which is the exact same model as one of the ones that Children’s Park were building a ten-minute walk away. Stupid really.

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We checked into the hotel and just chilled for a bit before heading out to get dinner. We decided on an area that I’d heard about, but hadn’t been to before, called Sea World. It was pretty far away, but worth it. It’s basically just a large restaurant, bar and club area built around a converted cruise ship. It was really nice.

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We opted for a “Brazilian” buffet, which was actually more Chinese than Gok Wan, and then had a couple of waiters taking the opportunity to interrupt their work and practise their English on us. They were polite about it though and weren’t too much of a burden.

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From there it was back to the hotel.

End of day 1.
 
Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 1

Aww, that's a real shame about Wood Coaster. It's my number 1 but I'd be afraid now to try it again (we went literally a few weeks after it opened) cause I can imagine them letting it get rough.

The rest of the park is awful though.
 
Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 1

Day Two - Happy Valley Shenzhen and Window of the World

We checked out of the hotel the next morning, got the Metro over to the Window of the World station and headed to Happy Valley, leaving our bags in a left luggage place just inside the entrance.

This was the third time I’d been there, so, as with most of this trip, I didn’t take a lot of pictures. I may chuck some old ones in to pad this out a bit though. We grabbed the Golden Horse spinner – the absolute worst of all the ones I’ve done thanks to pretty much stopping on every brake and being run like crap – and the Big Apple right next to it.

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Next it was over to Bullet Coaster in the Shangri-La area.

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We’d been in the queue for about half an hour or so when it broke down. Everyone left the queue, but we decided to stick it out and see what happened. Eventually, we gave up and went to the SLC next to it, expecting a big queue, but it was walk-on.

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Even though this is pretty old now – the original Kumali model – it actually rides pretty well still. Well, it was fine in the middle of the train anyway.

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I think it was at this point that we headed back to the mine train in the Wild West area, which, again, was walk-on.

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We didn’t do either of the water rides (splashdown thing and rapids) or flat rides, though there’s actually a pretty decent selection.

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Walking back past Bullet Coaster, we noticed that something seemed to be happening, so we waited at the entrance and managed to get right at the front of the queue for a front row ride as soon as it reopened. We also did a back row ride a bit later.

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It’s such a fantastic coaster. I think I’d probably have to put it as my favourite launched coaster. The launch is amazing – compressed air, so it reaches its top speed pretty much instantly – the drop is awesome and then the rest of the layout is forceful with decent airtime.

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ORPs are cheap at the Happy Valley parks at about £2.50.
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The instructions at the urinals proved to be quite handy.

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In the evening we headed over the road to Window of the World and did two of their rides there: a Soarin’ type ripoff and a weird indoor coaster called Greenland Exploration. They had the park decorated for Christmas, but still hadn’t removed their Halloween decorations.

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After that, we headed to Shenzhen North Station to get a quick train, about 35 minutes, over to Guangzhou, just heading straight to the hotel there since it was pretty late by that point.

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Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 2

LOL, please tell me that's one of those windows which you can turn into a black screen.

Still really want to ride one of those bullet coasters, they look fantastic.
 
Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 2

^ It had a blind, meaning I wasn't turned blind.
 
Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 2

These parks always fascinate me, especially in how aggressively mediocre they can seem at times, while other times have over-the-top theming.

Great TR!
 
Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 2

Those Bullet Coasters are amazing <3 The one in Beijing is one of my favourite launch coasters, I'd love more to pop up but they're really exclusive at the moment which is fab, so I kind of hope they don't.
 
Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 2

I totally want to ditch this since Nic is being dreadful and I’ve already covered these parks before, but I can’t stand leaving things unfinished.

Day 3 – Chuanlord, Chimelong and Canton Tower

I’d booked a hotel in Guangzhou within walking distance to Chimelong, mostly because it was also really close to the train station that we used to get in and out. Being quite far south, it was also only about half an hour away by taxi to Chuanlord Holiday Manor, so I decided to head there for some Chinese knockoffs, assuming (correctly) that Chimelong would be quiet and we wouldn’t need the full day.

On my first visit, I thought that there was either something wrong with the prepaid card that I had, or that the ride ops just didn’t give a s**t, but it turns out that the £10 or so you pay actually gets you about £25 worth of credit for rides etc.

We managed to ride 7 of the ten coasters, which is fine since I’ve got them all, had a look around the zoo and **** ed off. I didn’t take a single picture.

We got to Chimelong in the early afternoon, managing to easily ride everything we wanted without having to wait for anything. Obviously, we got all the coasters done. The Vekoma motorbike had been down the last time I’d been to the park, but we managed to get it this time. I took next to no pictures – there are plenty in other reports I’ve done in the not too distant past if anyone wants to look - but here’s the dive machine, which is basically Sheikra:

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Apart from the coaster, we did the walkthrough, Forest Temple:

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I’d never seen the stunt show on either of my two previous visits here, so we gave that a go. It was the predictable “s**t blowing up” kind of show, but on a pretty impressive scale really, very much on par with similar things at Disney or Universal.

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Their new ride, Alien Attack, had also recently opened. It’s one of those 3D tram tunnel things. I don’t know who made it, but Chimelong don’t seem to do knockoffs. It was very good anyway, though if you’re sitting at the side you need to look either straight ahead or across to the other side for the effect not to be spoiled by seeing the bottom of the screens. This seems to be one of few ride types where sitting right in the middle would be the best bet.

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The safari park next door has recently had a panda triplet birth, which is extremely rare – might be the first time actually – and so has been made a pretty big deal of.

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Those are literally the only pictures I took for both parks. Nic took loads, but she’s awful.

When we left the park, we got the metro up to Canton Tower, going up to the observation deck and riding the bubble tram – kind of like a horizontal ferris wheel that goes around the edge, and the two Intamin drop towers, the highest thrill rides in the world.

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That’s it. Next up is Ocean Kingdom if I can be f**ked, which I probably won't be. Typing this thing up is actually annoying me.
 
Re: Nic's China Trip: PTR Day 3

Chimelong Ocean Kingdom

As before, this will be light on photos as I took very few. I did a fuller report after my first visit a few months prior to this one: http://forums.coasterforce.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=37900

We checked out of the Guangzhou hotel early the next morning and got a quick train down to Zhuhai, finding the shuttle bus that connected from the train station to Ocean Kingdom. I hadn’t gone this way before, having gone through Macau last time, but it was easy enough. When I’d been before a few months previously, all buses terminated at the hotel, with a separate hotel shuttle connecting to the park, so we got off at the hotel and walked through to the footpath that connects to the park along a man-made canal.

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You can also take a boat along the canal, connecting the park to the hotel, but we just walked. Anyway, it turns out that since my last visit, there’s now a small bus station at the entrance to the park, meaning that we didn’t need to get off at the hotel. No big deal since it was only a ten minute walk and Nic got to see the ridiculousness of the hotel lobby, but good to know for the future. It also meant we didn’t have to go back to the hotel to get out later.

Since my last visit, they’ve done loads of work on the newer hotel which is right next to the park entrance. Apparently, this one will be a bit more “budget” than the original 5* hotel.

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We rode Parrot Coaster twice I think, and I think both times were in the back row. The park was quiet; I think we waited about ten minutes. I still really like this coaster. It’s a really decent length and doesn’t just hammer you with inversions. It suffers from a bit of a rattle though.

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Since the park is actually quite low on rides, we spent most of the time there in the various animal exhibits. It’s all actually very impressive, with an absolute crapload of most of the animal species they keep. I think we counted 6 manatees, 10 walruses and about 10 giant salamanders for example, which is more than I’ve heard of at any other park. Mainland Chinese are still flocking to Ocean Park for some reason, even though they now have this place which is a lot better and includes the world’s largest aquarium, which also has a ride that goes through it.

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Last time I was here, they had two whale sharks, but they’ve now got three.

This was down when we got to it, and didn’t reopen while we were there. It may have reopened later, the park was open until after midnight for some New Year fireworks or something, but we wanted to get back to Hong Kong, so we left around 5 I think.

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The other water coaster was open though.

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We got a bus from right outside the park – the new bus station I mentioned earlier – to the main ferry terminal to get us back to Hong Kong. Since it was quite busy, we had to wait to get on a slightly later ferry than planned, but we didn’t have to wait too long and it’s a short trip anyway.
 
After a day off to recover from New Year's Eve, we headed to Disneyland. I've reported on this place a bunch of times already, so I'm not going to say too much and, again, I took very few pictures.

We timed this pretty badly really, but there wasn't really an option. If was a Friday, which should've been ok, but it was the busiest I've ever seen it. It was the final weekend of their Christmas event, which had previously been blocked from most annual passes, but was now open for all of them. I'm guessing that a lot of people who wanted to see the Christmas stuff, but had the cheaper passes which wouldn't get them in on the blocked-out dates, ended up there over that final weekend.

Still, we managed to get pretty much everything done. I think we skipped Winnie the Pooh and Philharmagic, but got everything else including all the coasters - with rerides on Big Grizzly Mountain and Space Mountain (craploads of fast passes for SM) - parades and shows.

The (very) few pictures I took:

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EDIT - I've just found more pictures on my camera that I took when I was at HKDL later in January. They're not from this visit, but I'll throw them in here to pad this post out a bit and because I'm not going to do trip reports every time I go to the f**king place.

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^ Just realised I forgot to include him as a show in League of Goons. Devastated.

I'd never even noticed that whole sword in the stone thing before that visit.
 
In the interests of completeness, and of finding things to do at work to distract me from the piles of marking on my desk, I’m actually going to bother finishing this off. That's me done with regards to repeated reports of places I've been to before though; I just can't be f**ked anymore when there's nothing really new to add.

The final park of the trip was Ocean Park. As a complete opposite to Disney the day before, which was the busiest I had ever seen it, Ocean Park was the quietest I’d ever seen it. We either totally misjudged which days to go, or, as I mentioned before, Disney was likely to be busy for the whole weekend due to restrictions on annual passes being lifted.

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We started off by checking out some of the animals near the entrance to the park.

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We did the Grand Aquarium at some point, which is in the same general area. It’s a weird one as it’s a really impressive aquarium – Far better than anything in the UK - with a huge main tank with manta rays and hammerhead sharks, but when you’ve just done Ocean Kingdom a couple of days beforehand it pales in comparison after that.

We got the funicular through the mountain to get some rides done.

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The entrance to Hair Raiser was getting some work done which was a bit of a shame as it’s actually pretty fab.

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I still really like this ride; it’s just a bit short really. As far as location goes though, it’s hard to beat.

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We did a bunch of other animal exhibits including the rainforest thing, Arctic and Antarctic things, Jellyfish thing, sea lions and the new Shark Mystique aquarium.

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We did the other two coasters, Dragon and Wild West Mine Train, as well as the sky tower. The mine train is brutally fab, but Dragon is just brutal.

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We got the cable car back down and finished up by going into the park’s special Christmas light thing, which was basically a mini version of the park presented in lights. It was tacky as hell. I took a fair few pictures of it seeing as it was something new that I haven’t done a hundred times before.

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This report is short due to a combination of a lack of photos and lack of giving a s**t about writing about this place yet again, but we had a full day here due to the park being massive with a lot to do. I STILL haven’t stuck around for the nighttime show here yet though. I should give it a go at some point, but the thought of piling onto the shuttle buses with everyone else leaving at the same time doesn’t appeal.

Anyway, done. Thanks for the input, Nic!
 
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