Peet
Giga Poster
I am currently enjoying my first visit to the bewildering, challenging and wonderful country that is China. Thanks to @gavin and @HeartlineCoaster whose previous trip reports and info have helped me know what to expect here and plan accordingly.
This isn't really a cred run; I'm here with my fiancée Sarah and we worked out which bits of China we needed to visit, and I found a manageable number of parks near our route to get some creds in; so there are just 2 Happy Valleys and a Disneyland to tell you about.
Initial note - getting the visas was an enormous pain, not to mention very expensive (£175 each).
I'll keep the non-coaster stuff short; I'm no travel blogger. On Sunday we took an organised bus trip to an off-the-beaten-track part of the Great Wall at Gubeikou, and hiked along it for about 3 hours, which was wonderful. The wall here is unrestored so it is fully authentic and crumbling away in places but still magnificent.
Now, onto the coasters!
First up was Happy Valley Beijing on Monday. This park is within the city and easily acessible on the Metro with its own station at the entrance. It was a sunny morning, not many people around, and the long list of rides "paused" for the day didn't include any of the creds - a promising start to the day!
The predominant payment method everywhere in Beijing is "WeChat Pay" which is inacessible to foreigners, and seems to have made credit cards redundant in many places including the Happy Valley front gate, so we had to hand over about £60 in cash for our 2 tickes. Annoying.
Once inside you can't miss Extreme Rusher which dominates the entrance area. I saw this as the most exciting cred of the whole trip as I hadn't done an S&S compressed air launch coaster before and it's completely unlike anything in Europe (except the SBNO Ring Racer). So we were straight into the queue and after a handful of test runs the ride opened and we bagged a front row seat.
The launch is mighty, probably the highest acceleration rate I've experiened (and I've done Formula Rossa). It makes a great noise too! Then it shoots up, over the top, and down a 200 foot drop into a tunnel. This drop should be brilliant but it's neutered by some noticeable trim brakes half way down. From there the ride is good fun, with a few pops of ejector airtime, in particular on the outward banked corner near the end. The concrete trough on which the ride is built is clearly designed to be full of water but it didn't look like this had been the case for some years. The result is a rather bleak expanse of concrete over the whole footprint.
Next up, Crystal Wing. It's a Superman clone B&M flyer, but with some good theming and a smart new paint job making it a really nice coaster. Similarly to Tatsu, the petzel loop is by far the most intense part of the ride, with the rest being rather tame.
Lunch at the authentic Chinese KFC, (cash or WeChat Pay only of course), then on to the B&M family inverted coaster named "Family Inverted Coaster". I was excited to re-complete my set of B&M ride types, and this is an interesting addition to their catalogue. There is no swinging motion like there is on the similar Vekomas, which means that on the back row you get a fair old jerk when the track starts to roll on the first drop, the final helix is quite dizzying too. I can't help feeling they have made this ride more intense than intended, without actually offering much enjoyable thrill.
Next we headed round the back of the park towards Golden Wings in Snowfield which was suspiciously quiet. Sure enough, it was clearly closed off for the construction of the new area, which I hadn't realised before. At least it saved us that SLC headache.
After some peeking over the fence at Himalayan Eagle Music Roller Coaster (not testing today), we carried on round to the mine train "Jungle Racing" which was a nicely themed standard Vekoma mine train.
There was time for a bunch of re-rides on ER and CW before heading back to the metro. Overall an excellent day at a surprisingly attractive and scenic park with very little queuing. From what I've read, 1 spite out of 5 is pretty good going for off-peak time in China, especially as it was only the SLC.
I was slightly disappointed not to experince any of the pre-ride stretches/exercises that I've heard about. Something I did encounter though was the policy of making you wait until everybody had collected their bags before letting anyone exit the station. This was inefficient for sure but it did make me feel safer leaving things, knowing that nobody could grab it and run at the end of the ride.
Next up will be Happy Valley Chengdu next week. Thanks for reading!
This isn't really a cred run; I'm here with my fiancée Sarah and we worked out which bits of China we needed to visit, and I found a manageable number of parks near our route to get some creds in; so there are just 2 Happy Valleys and a Disneyland to tell you about.
Initial note - getting the visas was an enormous pain, not to mention very expensive (£175 each).
I'll keep the non-coaster stuff short; I'm no travel blogger. On Sunday we took an organised bus trip to an off-the-beaten-track part of the Great Wall at Gubeikou, and hiked along it for about 3 hours, which was wonderful. The wall here is unrestored so it is fully authentic and crumbling away in places but still magnificent.
Now, onto the coasters!
First up was Happy Valley Beijing on Monday. This park is within the city and easily acessible on the Metro with its own station at the entrance. It was a sunny morning, not many people around, and the long list of rides "paused" for the day didn't include any of the creds - a promising start to the day!
The predominant payment method everywhere in Beijing is "WeChat Pay" which is inacessible to foreigners, and seems to have made credit cards redundant in many places including the Happy Valley front gate, so we had to hand over about £60 in cash for our 2 tickes. Annoying.
Once inside you can't miss Extreme Rusher which dominates the entrance area. I saw this as the most exciting cred of the whole trip as I hadn't done an S&S compressed air launch coaster before and it's completely unlike anything in Europe (except the SBNO Ring Racer). So we were straight into the queue and after a handful of test runs the ride opened and we bagged a front row seat.
The launch is mighty, probably the highest acceleration rate I've experiened (and I've done Formula Rossa). It makes a great noise too! Then it shoots up, over the top, and down a 200 foot drop into a tunnel. This drop should be brilliant but it's neutered by some noticeable trim brakes half way down. From there the ride is good fun, with a few pops of ejector airtime, in particular on the outward banked corner near the end. The concrete trough on which the ride is built is clearly designed to be full of water but it didn't look like this had been the case for some years. The result is a rather bleak expanse of concrete over the whole footprint.
Next up, Crystal Wing. It's a Superman clone B&M flyer, but with some good theming and a smart new paint job making it a really nice coaster. Similarly to Tatsu, the petzel loop is by far the most intense part of the ride, with the rest being rather tame.
Lunch at the authentic Chinese KFC, (cash or WeChat Pay only of course), then on to the B&M family inverted coaster named "Family Inverted Coaster". I was excited to re-complete my set of B&M ride types, and this is an interesting addition to their catalogue. There is no swinging motion like there is on the similar Vekomas, which means that on the back row you get a fair old jerk when the track starts to roll on the first drop, the final helix is quite dizzying too. I can't help feeling they have made this ride more intense than intended, without actually offering much enjoyable thrill.
Next we headed round the back of the park towards Golden Wings in Snowfield which was suspiciously quiet. Sure enough, it was clearly closed off for the construction of the new area, which I hadn't realised before. At least it saved us that SLC headache.
After some peeking over the fence at Himalayan Eagle Music Roller Coaster (not testing today), we carried on round to the mine train "Jungle Racing" which was a nicely themed standard Vekoma mine train.
There was time for a bunch of re-rides on ER and CW before heading back to the metro. Overall an excellent day at a surprisingly attractive and scenic park with very little queuing. From what I've read, 1 spite out of 5 is pretty good going for off-peak time in China, especially as it was only the SLC.
I was slightly disappointed not to experince any of the pre-ride stretches/exercises that I've heard about. Something I did encounter though was the policy of making you wait until everybody had collected their bags before letting anyone exit the station. This was inefficient for sure but it did make me feel safer leaving things, knowing that nobody could grab it and run at the end of the ride.
Next up will be Happy Valley Chengdu next week. Thanks for reading!