roomraider
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@Cranedude I know you've been waiting for this one and i promised I'd get round to it when things reached a more substantial point. so here we are 
Now let me take you on a journey, a story of misleading concept art, long timescales and interesting rides.
For the impatient here is an RCDB link for the new park - https://rcdb.com/19049.htm
Info
Now lets get the basics out the way, Silk Road Paradise is a new park in Xi'an not that far away from the also under construction Happy Valley Xi'an, and with the established Lewa World in the city its going to face some big competition. This park can easily be said to not live up to the original promises its concept art made but despite this its become (for me at least) one of the most interesting new park builds in China and within the overly long post below I will hopefully show you why.
First up below is a satellite view of Silk Road Paradise (yellow) and the nearby Happy Valley Xi'an (red) these are both to the west of the main city of Xi'an but both are on the same metro line that you can see wiggling between them
The Danger Of Early Concept Art
As i mentioned earlier the early concept art from 2017 was rather over the top. Promising some amazing themeing and some top class western built rides.
The earliest set of concept art featured this image which many people including myself read as a B&M wing coaster (i mean look at the track bottom left). Now i'm not one to fall for early concept art but further evidence later on which will be seen below reinforced this mistake.
And as it is China maybe not all the concept art was entirely original but hey none of the original story on Journey To Atlantis works anymore so maybe this would fix that to some extent and with an added airtime hill to boot.
Below is another load of early concept art which was the original reason this park landed on nerds like me's radar.
Now things went quiet for quite a while after this original concept art dump. Which is not unusual for China but tabs were kept on construction and sure enough ground work began. And by September 2020 the park looked like this
Concept Art Round 2
Slightly before the above image of park construction was released some newer and more detailed concept art was found. To the layout nerds among you, you may recognise the coaster featured in the first image as a mirror clone of the B&M wing coaster, Parrot Coaster at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom. The ride can also be seen at the back left of the second image.
As mentioned before this further reinforced the idea this park would be getting a B&M Wing coaster.
This eventually turned out not to be true but its a hell of an accurate piece of concept art (mirror imaged too) if it was never intended.
Now maybe the park originally wanted a B&M wing coaster and budgets didnt allow it, There are even gaps in the B&M Coaster code database myself and CP6 keep where rides got far enough along to be given code designations but never happened for whatever reason, maybe this was one of them, it fits the timeline? but that is all just speculation.
The Truth?
As construction continued the park actually released monthly drone videos on construction onto Chinese Social Media, Something i wish a lot of new parks would do
and although these seemed to stop in mid 2021 it was becoming apparent that the space in the concept art showing a B&M Wing Coaster did not have space for such a big ride.
Eventually I think it was my good friends at Chinese enthusiast group Roller Coaster Master (If you don't follow them on FB please do) who uncovered this plan for the park
Now it wont take the most eagle eyed among us to notice the lack of a B&M wing coaster in there. Although several coasters are visible. And one looks suspiciously like a B&M flying coaster. Maybe they switched ride type? Well lets say if B&M were building a flyer in Xi'an I'd have been all over it and this topic would have come a lot earlier.
It was around this time i spoke to some contacts in China and got the proper ride list and its an odd one.
Golden Horse Mine Train
Unknown Spinning Coaster
Intamin Zac Spin
Golden Horse Flying Coaster
lets run through those in order while looking at the map above. There are 3 obvious coaster layouts. bottom left and top right are either the Mine Train or the Spinner. I could argue either layout is either type but at least both seem to be custom. The truth is no track is currently on site so I cant say with any confidence which is which.
Now on to the next one on the list and i can hear you ask.... An Intamin Zac Spin but no ones built a new one of those in 10 years? yes well this doesnt stop China it seems. As we have just seen a new Intamin beyond vertical coaster and a new Intamin Impulse open, China doesnt care that your rides are old hat in the west. (This coaster is bottom right on the plans and in an orange box)
So yes this park it seems is getting a new Zac Spin. We have some new shoddy concept art to back it up
Unfortunatly it seems like the smaller model. But as seen above, concept art is often rubbish.
Now onto the last one and the one im sure you all want to know about. The Golden Horse Flying Coaster.
GH have upped their game recently, their new Mk2 SLC's are a class above the original Vekoma rides they were based on, and their custom layouts in recent times, while perhaps not up to western standards have shown great promise. The new swing launch spinner at Joypolis Guangzhou and the new XGC-16B mini inverted coasters look like really solid rides. And from my personal experience the newer ZXC-4D spinning coaster model with a barrel roll is a great small Italian spinner id take over european built wild mice any day of the week.
And after their perhaps quite fairly maligned attemped at a dive machine (a 2nd one is due later this year) they havent let it bother them and have gone for their own flying coaster as well. (They also have a new wing coaster model heading to Taiyuan Zoo soon but that will get its own topic.)
GH have been hawking the new FXC-28A model flying coaster for years and it seems they've found a buyer in Silk Road Paradise. It will feature its own layout, its own track design and will oddly revert back to the old style Vekoma flying coaster system of loading with the track right side up and flipping to the flying position after the lift.
below is a chinese advert for the model
Now does it have similarities to Superman Ultimate Flight? For sure. But much much less so than Fast and Furry-ous and Ocean Adventures have to Kvasten. So yeah it's Chinese but i'd say its not a knock off.
Heres some more concept art for this ride thats been released by both the park and GH over the last year.
Again originally collated and posted by Roller Coaster Master.
The State Of The Park
Now we've seen all the coaster plans. Lets see how construction is going.
So far its going pretty well, but in an unusual break from Chinese tradition they haven't built the coasters first and built around them. Infact certain areas of the park are almost done and there are just footers for the coasters waiting for their rides.
And as is a Chinese tradition too it seems. The facades facing the roads around the park are done first. I guess to drum up interest/investment before the rest of the park is built. So here are some images from the last month showing the northern entrance to the park, a look in the background shows the rest of the park has a way to go.
So this park... its weird and its not what I personally hoped. But its for sure one of the more interesting projects going up in China at the moment.
It's due to open late 2022, will be going up against to huge parks in the area and we could get a few very interesting rides to boot.
More when it turns up.
Now let me take you on a journey, a story of misleading concept art, long timescales and interesting rides.
For the impatient here is an RCDB link for the new park - https://rcdb.com/19049.htm
Info
Now lets get the basics out the way, Silk Road Paradise is a new park in Xi'an not that far away from the also under construction Happy Valley Xi'an, and with the established Lewa World in the city its going to face some big competition. This park can easily be said to not live up to the original promises its concept art made but despite this its become (for me at least) one of the most interesting new park builds in China and within the overly long post below I will hopefully show you why.
First up below is a satellite view of Silk Road Paradise (yellow) and the nearby Happy Valley Xi'an (red) these are both to the west of the main city of Xi'an but both are on the same metro line that you can see wiggling between them
The Danger Of Early Concept Art
As i mentioned earlier the early concept art from 2017 was rather over the top. Promising some amazing themeing and some top class western built rides.
The earliest set of concept art featured this image which many people including myself read as a B&M wing coaster (i mean look at the track bottom left). Now i'm not one to fall for early concept art but further evidence later on which will be seen below reinforced this mistake.
And as it is China maybe not all the concept art was entirely original but hey none of the original story on Journey To Atlantis works anymore so maybe this would fix that to some extent and with an added airtime hill to boot.
Below is another load of early concept art which was the original reason this park landed on nerds like me's radar.
Now things went quiet for quite a while after this original concept art dump. Which is not unusual for China but tabs were kept on construction and sure enough ground work began. And by September 2020 the park looked like this
Concept Art Round 2
Slightly before the above image of park construction was released some newer and more detailed concept art was found. To the layout nerds among you, you may recognise the coaster featured in the first image as a mirror clone of the B&M wing coaster, Parrot Coaster at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom. The ride can also be seen at the back left of the second image.
As mentioned before this further reinforced the idea this park would be getting a B&M Wing coaster.
This eventually turned out not to be true but its a hell of an accurate piece of concept art (mirror imaged too) if it was never intended.
Now maybe the park originally wanted a B&M wing coaster and budgets didnt allow it, There are even gaps in the B&M Coaster code database myself and CP6 keep where rides got far enough along to be given code designations but never happened for whatever reason, maybe this was one of them, it fits the timeline? but that is all just speculation.
The Truth?
As construction continued the park actually released monthly drone videos on construction onto Chinese Social Media, Something i wish a lot of new parks would do
and although these seemed to stop in mid 2021 it was becoming apparent that the space in the concept art showing a B&M Wing Coaster did not have space for such a big ride.Eventually I think it was my good friends at Chinese enthusiast group Roller Coaster Master (If you don't follow them on FB please do) who uncovered this plan for the park
Now it wont take the most eagle eyed among us to notice the lack of a B&M wing coaster in there. Although several coasters are visible. And one looks suspiciously like a B&M flying coaster. Maybe they switched ride type? Well lets say if B&M were building a flyer in Xi'an I'd have been all over it and this topic would have come a lot earlier.
It was around this time i spoke to some contacts in China and got the proper ride list and its an odd one.
Golden Horse Mine Train
Unknown Spinning Coaster
Intamin Zac Spin
Golden Horse Flying Coaster
lets run through those in order while looking at the map above. There are 3 obvious coaster layouts. bottom left and top right are either the Mine Train or the Spinner. I could argue either layout is either type but at least both seem to be custom. The truth is no track is currently on site so I cant say with any confidence which is which.
Now on to the next one on the list and i can hear you ask.... An Intamin Zac Spin but no ones built a new one of those in 10 years? yes well this doesnt stop China it seems. As we have just seen a new Intamin beyond vertical coaster and a new Intamin Impulse open, China doesnt care that your rides are old hat in the west. (This coaster is bottom right on the plans and in an orange box)
So yes this park it seems is getting a new Zac Spin. We have some new shoddy concept art to back it up
Unfortunatly it seems like the smaller model. But as seen above, concept art is often rubbish.
Now onto the last one and the one im sure you all want to know about. The Golden Horse Flying Coaster.
GH have upped their game recently, their new Mk2 SLC's are a class above the original Vekoma rides they were based on, and their custom layouts in recent times, while perhaps not up to western standards have shown great promise. The new swing launch spinner at Joypolis Guangzhou and the new XGC-16B mini inverted coasters look like really solid rides. And from my personal experience the newer ZXC-4D spinning coaster model with a barrel roll is a great small Italian spinner id take over european built wild mice any day of the week.
And after their perhaps quite fairly maligned attemped at a dive machine (a 2nd one is due later this year) they havent let it bother them and have gone for their own flying coaster as well. (They also have a new wing coaster model heading to Taiyuan Zoo soon but that will get its own topic.)
GH have been hawking the new FXC-28A model flying coaster for years and it seems they've found a buyer in Silk Road Paradise. It will feature its own layout, its own track design and will oddly revert back to the old style Vekoma flying coaster system of loading with the track right side up and flipping to the flying position after the lift.
below is a chinese advert for the model
Now does it have similarities to Superman Ultimate Flight? For sure. But much much less so than Fast and Furry-ous and Ocean Adventures have to Kvasten. So yeah it's Chinese but i'd say its not a knock off.
Heres some more concept art for this ride thats been released by both the park and GH over the last year.
Again originally collated and posted by Roller Coaster Master.
The State Of The Park
Now we've seen all the coaster plans. Lets see how construction is going.
So far its going pretty well, but in an unusual break from Chinese tradition they haven't built the coasters first and built around them. Infact certain areas of the park are almost done and there are just footers for the coasters waiting for their rides.
And as is a Chinese tradition too it seems. The facades facing the roads around the park are done first. I guess to drum up interest/investment before the rest of the park is built. So here are some images from the last month showing the northern entrance to the park, a look in the background shows the rest of the park has a way to go.
So this park... its weird and its not what I personally hoped. But its for sure one of the more interesting projects going up in China at the moment.
It's due to open late 2022, will be going up against to huge parks in the area and we could get a few very interesting rides to boot.
More when it turns up.
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It's not like it's dangerous.
