A couple of weekends ago I decided to head to Ocean Park, partly because there were two new coasters since I’d last been, and partly because it was the last weekend of their Halloween stuff, and since it’s supposed to be decent, I thought I’d take a look.
Getting there was a piece of piss: two stops on the MTR and then a bus from right outside the station. Door to door was about half an hour. Last time I went, the park’s shuttle buses dropped off at a small entrance down the hill from the mine train, but now there’s a much bigger and busier transport hub at the main entrance.
I got here for opening, and it was already pretty busy. I think I ended up waiting about 20 minutes to buy a ticket and get in. You can get a combination bus and park ticket before you get on the shuttle bus, but Hong Kong residents get discounted tickets – about £5 cheaper – which are stupidly only available from the main ticket kiosks when you get to the park.
The whole entrance area was completely different to the last time I was there, when it was basically just a huge construction site with, what is now, the smaller of the two panda houses. The Grand Aquarium was completely new, but I decided to leave that for a bit.
My initial instinct was to head straight for the cable car and start at the back of the park, but everyone seemed to have the same idea, so I stayed around the main entrance, which was pretty much empty. First up, pandas!
There’s still some construction going on here. I’ve no idea what for though.
Near here was the first of the Halloween things I tried, a weird pumpkin carving thing. I didn’t realise it at the time, but just behind it was one of the more major walkthroughs. I wish I’d have known, and done it then, as I ended up queuing for ages for it later in the day.
There was also the newer, bigger, second panda house, which was a bit better for seeing the pandas as there was no glass in the way. They also had red pandas and some giant Chinese salamanders, which were fab.
The stupid goldfish thing behind it was stupid, and felt like a glorified pet shop.
The cable cars here are kind of iconic, but I never ended up riding them this time.
There’s a kiddy area here which includes a sealion show, which I didn’t see since they’re all the **** ing same.
There was also a pointless, yet attractive walking area with a swinging bridge. I thought it might lead to something , but it didn’t, other than annoyance.
I thought it was about time to getsumcredz, so took the new (for me) funicular that travels up thought the hill to the new Thrill Mountain area. It’s all very impressive really, done in a steampunk style and with screens in the roof and lighting effects. Taking into consideration they had to bore through a mountain to install it, it must’ve cost s**tloads.
The station at the top is where you get the first views of the impressive setting, if you haven’t taken the cable car anyway.
Right next to the station is the escalator to take you to the most major new development since my last visit: Thrill Mountain.
At this point, it was relatively quiet. The area’s been designed to feel like an old school “Luna Park” kind of place, and it actually works really well.
They had one of the Halloween walkthroughs here, Crash the Monster Party, which was just weird and confusing and sponsored by M&Ms. The park had rated each attraction by intensity, and this one fell in the middle. It reminded a bit of the Disney style of walkthrough in that the sets were actually pretty good – not as good as Disney’s – but it was tame enough to not be too scary.
The big draw for me here though was Hairaiser, the B&M floorless.
The view from the queueline is stunning.
It had about a half hour wait, which I was fine with. Operations were a bit **** though to be honest. They were running two trains, but it was almost pointless since there was always a train sitting in the brake run for 2-3 minutes since they were so slow at dispatching.
I’m sure you’re dying to hear my opinion on the ride, and if you’re not, you should be, so here it is. I honestly can’t make up my mind about it. What I liked is that you can’t see the first drop and loop until you’re actually on the lift hill. It was great hearing the gasps of “what the ****” from people who hadn’t realised what the coaster fully entailed. However, the drop and loop had a horrible rattle to them that was equally unexpected. After that, it was fine though. The airtime hill and zero G roll were both fantastic, and the setting on the edge of the cliff was amazing.
Overall, I’d rate it somewhere near the middle of all the floorless coasters I’ve done. I wanted to ride it again, but by the time I got off, the queue was up to an hour. Fifteen minutes later, it was up to 90 minutes, and soon after that it was up to at least two hours for the rest of the day, so I never got to ride it again. I’ve got a school trip there next month though, and it should be dead, so I’ll try and whore it a bit more then.
The second new coaster since my last visit was in the same area. It had a queue of almost an hour, but I stuck it out anyway.
Arctic Blast is just a Mack powered coaster, but it’s one of the better ones I’ve been on.
Right in front of it were two animal exhibits, one with animals from the Arctic - mainly seals with a couple of walruses – and one representing the Antarctic; penguins then basically. My camera’s totally **** at taking pictures of stuff under water. The lighting is too dim and stuff’s moving, so despite a few different attempts nothing really came out. Anyway, whatever.
The penguin pool was actually really cool. There are a few different species sharing the enclosure, with an “ice” floor (glass, clearly) that you walk over with them swimming underneath you.
The area between Thrill Mountain and the older area of the park has been filled in with a rainforest area. The only ride is a rapids ride, but there are more animal exhibits including a pretty large reptile house and a walkthrough aviary.
Although I haven’t been on the rapids before, and the queue wasn’t too bad, I decided to skip it due to the fact that everyone was coming off soggier than a 13 year old’s knickers after a One Direction concert, and I wasn’t in the mood for that at all.
Have another Hair Raiser picture:
At the bottom of the hill after the rainforest area, I ended up at the “top” end of the old section of the park. Nothing much had changed here apart from some Halloween decorations. You get a great view from there though, back down onto the older rides area.
Before heading down to that area though, I went off to the area with the mine train coaster. It only had a 20 minute queue, so I gave it a go.
On top of the amazing location, it’s actually a decent coaster. It’s by far the best effort from Zamperla that I’ve ridden. The big drop after the ridiculous helix has some decent airtime towards the back of the train.
I still haven’t ridden this log flume. On both visits now it’s had queues of around 90 minutes.
Skipped the Enterprise as well.
Going from this area to the other older ride area, you have to go past the observation tower. The queue wasn’t long, though it was full of horrendous coachloads (coach trips drop off at this end of the park remember) of gross, ill-mannered locusts. It’s definitely worth it for the views though.
Continuing on, I popped into the jellyfish exhibit, which I love. There was also an aquarium with Chinese sturgeon. No pictures, but they’re **** ing massive.
The second Halloween walkthrough I tried was here, called K-Pop Madness, themed to Korean pop music. It was basically a series of recording studios, offices, dressing rooms etc.
Despite being labelled as one of the more intense attractions, it was gash. It might have partly been the time of day – parts of it were outside and it was still light – but it was just really piss poor and the “actors” just seemed like they couldn’t be arsed. One guy was just sitting there, bored, with his lunchbox out. Not in a good way, but as in eating his lunch from a box. S**te.
The Murder Factory was just around the corner. It had a massive queue, but since I wasn’t bothered about riding anything in this area, I just sucked it up.
I didn’t ride Dragon this time around, as it’s crap. By the time I got to the front of the queue, about an hour and a half later, it was dark.
Murder Factory was the best of the three so far, but was a bit generic and obvious. After this, I thought I’d try Thrill Mountain again to see if the queue for Hair Raiser had gone down. Getting there was ridiculous. I’m assuming it was just crappy timing, but the path between the two areas was totally jammed.
It was definitely partly down to bad management as further down there was a crappy stage show blocking part of the path, leading to a bottleneck for those coming down, and the extended queue for K-Pop Madness blocked off part of the path further up. It was **** ing horrendous. I’m six feet tall, and a bigger built than the vast majority of the locals, and I felt claustrophobic and a bit panicked. There was one ineffectual security guard doing basically **** all. After not being able to move for ages, I eventually climbed over a fence to the side of the path and scambled up that way.
**** ing retarded.
Thrill Mountain was still heaving, with Hair Raiser still at a 2 hour queue, so I quickly sacked that off.
I just took the fab train thing back through the mountain to the main entrance of the park since, by this point, I was enjoying it about as much as a choirboy at a Catholic priests’ convention. I decided to just stick out one more ridiculous queue for the final horror walkthrough, Law Lan’s Possessed Possessions.
This one was actually very, very good. It was themed to a Chinese antique/curiosity shop, with loads of different rooms and some “back alley” areas. It was easily the best-themed of the lot, and actually felt really authentic for the most part.
The Grand Aquarium was still open, and dead, so I had a quick look.
It’s pretty decent really, with a **** load of hammerhead sharks – well, until half of them died a week later – and a massive manta ray. I’d only seen one of them before, in Lisbon, but it must have only been a young one as it was pretty small, so to see a more full-sized version was pretty impressive.
I’d missed the fountain show earlier in the evening, but the area still looks lovely at night anyway.
And that’s it. I’d been at the park for 11 hours. I’ve never seen a park so busy in my entire life. I honestly don’t know if I’d want to bother with Ocean Park for Halloween again to be honest. Maybe the fact that it was the final weekend had a lot to do with it, but it’s not worth those kinds of crowds.
Having said that, I guess that now I’ve ridden pretty much everything there, and will no doubt go again on much quieter days, I could perhaps do an evening during the week after work specifically for any Halloween stuff.
To be honest though, I’m just not all that arsed.
Getting there was a piece of piss: two stops on the MTR and then a bus from right outside the station. Door to door was about half an hour. Last time I went, the park’s shuttle buses dropped off at a small entrance down the hill from the mine train, but now there’s a much bigger and busier transport hub at the main entrance.
I got here for opening, and it was already pretty busy. I think I ended up waiting about 20 minutes to buy a ticket and get in. You can get a combination bus and park ticket before you get on the shuttle bus, but Hong Kong residents get discounted tickets – about £5 cheaper – which are stupidly only available from the main ticket kiosks when you get to the park.
The whole entrance area was completely different to the last time I was there, when it was basically just a huge construction site with, what is now, the smaller of the two panda houses. The Grand Aquarium was completely new, but I decided to leave that for a bit.
My initial instinct was to head straight for the cable car and start at the back of the park, but everyone seemed to have the same idea, so I stayed around the main entrance, which was pretty much empty. First up, pandas!
There’s still some construction going on here. I’ve no idea what for though.
Near here was the first of the Halloween things I tried, a weird pumpkin carving thing. I didn’t realise it at the time, but just behind it was one of the more major walkthroughs. I wish I’d have known, and done it then, as I ended up queuing for ages for it later in the day.
There was also the newer, bigger, second panda house, which was a bit better for seeing the pandas as there was no glass in the way. They also had red pandas and some giant Chinese salamanders, which were fab.
The stupid goldfish thing behind it was stupid, and felt like a glorified pet shop.
The cable cars here are kind of iconic, but I never ended up riding them this time.
There’s a kiddy area here which includes a sealion show, which I didn’t see since they’re all the **** ing same.
There was also a pointless, yet attractive walking area with a swinging bridge. I thought it might lead to something , but it didn’t, other than annoyance.
I thought it was about time to getsumcredz, so took the new (for me) funicular that travels up thought the hill to the new Thrill Mountain area. It’s all very impressive really, done in a steampunk style and with screens in the roof and lighting effects. Taking into consideration they had to bore through a mountain to install it, it must’ve cost s**tloads.
The station at the top is where you get the first views of the impressive setting, if you haven’t taken the cable car anyway.
Right next to the station is the escalator to take you to the most major new development since my last visit: Thrill Mountain.
At this point, it was relatively quiet. The area’s been designed to feel like an old school “Luna Park” kind of place, and it actually works really well.
They had one of the Halloween walkthroughs here, Crash the Monster Party, which was just weird and confusing and sponsored by M&Ms. The park had rated each attraction by intensity, and this one fell in the middle. It reminded a bit of the Disney style of walkthrough in that the sets were actually pretty good – not as good as Disney’s – but it was tame enough to not be too scary.
The big draw for me here though was Hairaiser, the B&M floorless.
The view from the queueline is stunning.
It had about a half hour wait, which I was fine with. Operations were a bit **** though to be honest. They were running two trains, but it was almost pointless since there was always a train sitting in the brake run for 2-3 minutes since they were so slow at dispatching.
I’m sure you’re dying to hear my opinion on the ride, and if you’re not, you should be, so here it is. I honestly can’t make up my mind about it. What I liked is that you can’t see the first drop and loop until you’re actually on the lift hill. It was great hearing the gasps of “what the ****” from people who hadn’t realised what the coaster fully entailed. However, the drop and loop had a horrible rattle to them that was equally unexpected. After that, it was fine though. The airtime hill and zero G roll were both fantastic, and the setting on the edge of the cliff was amazing.
Overall, I’d rate it somewhere near the middle of all the floorless coasters I’ve done. I wanted to ride it again, but by the time I got off, the queue was up to an hour. Fifteen minutes later, it was up to 90 minutes, and soon after that it was up to at least two hours for the rest of the day, so I never got to ride it again. I’ve got a school trip there next month though, and it should be dead, so I’ll try and whore it a bit more then.
The second new coaster since my last visit was in the same area. It had a queue of almost an hour, but I stuck it out anyway.
Arctic Blast is just a Mack powered coaster, but it’s one of the better ones I’ve been on.
Right in front of it were two animal exhibits, one with animals from the Arctic - mainly seals with a couple of walruses – and one representing the Antarctic; penguins then basically. My camera’s totally **** at taking pictures of stuff under water. The lighting is too dim and stuff’s moving, so despite a few different attempts nothing really came out. Anyway, whatever.
The penguin pool was actually really cool. There are a few different species sharing the enclosure, with an “ice” floor (glass, clearly) that you walk over with them swimming underneath you.
The area between Thrill Mountain and the older area of the park has been filled in with a rainforest area. The only ride is a rapids ride, but there are more animal exhibits including a pretty large reptile house and a walkthrough aviary.
Although I haven’t been on the rapids before, and the queue wasn’t too bad, I decided to skip it due to the fact that everyone was coming off soggier than a 13 year old’s knickers after a One Direction concert, and I wasn’t in the mood for that at all.
Have another Hair Raiser picture:
At the bottom of the hill after the rainforest area, I ended up at the “top” end of the old section of the park. Nothing much had changed here apart from some Halloween decorations. You get a great view from there though, back down onto the older rides area.
Before heading down to that area though, I went off to the area with the mine train coaster. It only had a 20 minute queue, so I gave it a go.
On top of the amazing location, it’s actually a decent coaster. It’s by far the best effort from Zamperla that I’ve ridden. The big drop after the ridiculous helix has some decent airtime towards the back of the train.
I still haven’t ridden this log flume. On both visits now it’s had queues of around 90 minutes.
Skipped the Enterprise as well.
Going from this area to the other older ride area, you have to go past the observation tower. The queue wasn’t long, though it was full of horrendous coachloads (coach trips drop off at this end of the park remember) of gross, ill-mannered locusts. It’s definitely worth it for the views though.
Continuing on, I popped into the jellyfish exhibit, which I love. There was also an aquarium with Chinese sturgeon. No pictures, but they’re **** ing massive.
The second Halloween walkthrough I tried was here, called K-Pop Madness, themed to Korean pop music. It was basically a series of recording studios, offices, dressing rooms etc.
Despite being labelled as one of the more intense attractions, it was gash. It might have partly been the time of day – parts of it were outside and it was still light – but it was just really piss poor and the “actors” just seemed like they couldn’t be arsed. One guy was just sitting there, bored, with his lunchbox out. Not in a good way, but as in eating his lunch from a box. S**te.
The Murder Factory was just around the corner. It had a massive queue, but since I wasn’t bothered about riding anything in this area, I just sucked it up.
I didn’t ride Dragon this time around, as it’s crap. By the time I got to the front of the queue, about an hour and a half later, it was dark.
Murder Factory was the best of the three so far, but was a bit generic and obvious. After this, I thought I’d try Thrill Mountain again to see if the queue for Hair Raiser had gone down. Getting there was ridiculous. I’m assuming it was just crappy timing, but the path between the two areas was totally jammed.
It was definitely partly down to bad management as further down there was a crappy stage show blocking part of the path, leading to a bottleneck for those coming down, and the extended queue for K-Pop Madness blocked off part of the path further up. It was **** ing horrendous. I’m six feet tall, and a bigger built than the vast majority of the locals, and I felt claustrophobic and a bit panicked. There was one ineffectual security guard doing basically **** all. After not being able to move for ages, I eventually climbed over a fence to the side of the path and scambled up that way.
**** ing retarded.
Thrill Mountain was still heaving, with Hair Raiser still at a 2 hour queue, so I quickly sacked that off.
I just took the fab train thing back through the mountain to the main entrance of the park since, by this point, I was enjoying it about as much as a choirboy at a Catholic priests’ convention. I decided to just stick out one more ridiculous queue for the final horror walkthrough, Law Lan’s Possessed Possessions.
This one was actually very, very good. It was themed to a Chinese antique/curiosity shop, with loads of different rooms and some “back alley” areas. It was easily the best-themed of the lot, and actually felt really authentic for the most part.
The Grand Aquarium was still open, and dead, so I had a quick look.
It’s pretty decent really, with a **** load of hammerhead sharks – well, until half of them died a week later – and a massive manta ray. I’d only seen one of them before, in Lisbon, but it must have only been a young one as it was pretty small, so to see a more full-sized version was pretty impressive.
I’d missed the fountain show earlier in the evening, but the area still looks lovely at night anyway.
And that’s it. I’d been at the park for 11 hours. I’ve never seen a park so busy in my entire life. I honestly don’t know if I’d want to bother with Ocean Park for Halloween again to be honest. Maybe the fact that it was the final weekend had a lot to do with it, but it’s not worth those kinds of crowds.
Having said that, I guess that now I’ve ridden pretty much everything there, and will no doubt go again on much quieter days, I could perhaps do an evening during the week after work specifically for any Halloween stuff.
To be honest though, I’m just not all that arsed.
