Wenzhou/Taizhou PTR - Part 3: Fanta Wild Land

[Gavin]

Here’s a weekend trip I did back in August. I got off work around lunchtime on the Friday which worked well for a direct Hong Kong – Wenzhou flight. I also had the Monday off, so was originally planning to take the full day doing stuff and get a flight back to Shenzhen (loads more flight options), but instead decided to squeeze stuff into a shorter time frame and get the only direct Hong Kong flight back earlier in the day.

Anyway, once I landed, I just headed to a hotel near the first stop of the trip and took a short taxi ride the next morning, getting there for opening.

Wenzhou Zoo

The zoo seemed pretty big, but since I was rushing, I just got the cred and left without having a proper look around. It turns out I would’ve had a bit of time, but I didn’t want to risk it. Just the one kiddy coaster.

From there it was a taxi to the only proper park in the city. It’s labelled as Wenzhou Paradise on RCDB, but on maps and stuff it’s just Wenzhou Amusement Park.

Wenzhou Paradise

Because the zoo had opened about an hour before this place, I made it there for just after opening. The plan was to just hit the coasters quickly and then head to the train station to get to the next city, but I ended up having to hang around a bit, but it was all fine.

First up, I hit the Jinma inverting spinner, figuring a low capacity. They were running it pretty well though, with multiple cars and even getting some of them out onto the track at the same time. These are decent. The last one I’d done of these was hitting the MCBRs pretty hard, but that wasn’t a problem with this one. If any smaller Western parks were to venture into Jinma territory, one of these things would be a decent start.

The skyloop and boomerang looked worryingly quiet, but I hit up another Jinma coaster – just a kiddie thing – on the way over.

The skyloop – an awful Beijing Shibaolai thing – was annoyingly opening a bit later. I’d been hoping to f**k off out of the place before then, but decided to stick it out, quickly grabbing the first train of the day and heading straight out after that. Horrible things.

There was no such “luck” with the boomerang though. This was annoying since it’s the only one built by Nanfang, who usually only do flat rides. The only other coaster of theirs that I’ve seen was also closed, seemingly permanently, so I guess they’re not doing a great job with them.

I’ll just chuck in a bunch of other pictures. The Ferris wheel was, annoyingly, not opening until 12 and I didn’t want to hang around that late. I’m pretty sure the water ride wasn’t a secret cred, but I didn’t ride it to find out. I went through a walkthrough aviary which looked nice enough but was decidedly empty bar a few peacocks. There was some ice house thing which was also closed.

I’m guessing this is for some kind of evening show; it was mildly disturbing.

The horror walkthrough was an upcharge, so I didn’t bother. It’s not like it was expensive, but upcharge attractions annoy me, so I won’t do them on principal. I did go inside the Temu Vogel Rok building however, which housed the absolute crappest simulator I’ve ever been on.

By the time I’d faffed around a bit, the skyloop was about to open, so that was had and then I got a Didi to the train station, booking the train ticket on the way. They were running every 15 minutes or so, so while I’d have liked to get out a bit earlier, there wasn’t a particular train I was rushing for at least.

I’ll end this bit with the single most amazing piece of park theming I’ve ever seen.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

This was annoying since it’s the only one built by Nanfang, who usually only do flat rides. The only other coaster of theirs that I’ve seen was also closed, seemingly permanently, so I guess they’re not doing a great job with them.

Interesting that they've tried their hand at such different types already - boomerangs, spinners and water coasters. I've done the latter two, apparently, and they're highly indistinguishable and inoffensive (other than water coaster wetness). I'm guessing there's a good few more out there already than RCDB is giving them credit for, particularly in the water category as I've seen a few 'not-a-cred' versions of those too.

Tengmu Vogel Rok - love it.

 

[Gavin]

^Yeah, looking at that water coaster at Oriental Heritage, I wouldn't be surprised if some others have slipped through the listings as Jinma.

When I’d started planning this little jaunt, the idea was to stay overnight in Wenzhou, but since I’d decided to get that earlier flight back on the Monday, this meant heading to the next city, Taizhou, in the afternoon of that first day. This was easy in terms of planning since the cities are fairly close together and have train connections running every 15 minutes or so, meaning it didn’t require any precise planning.

Anyway, there were two smaller parks in Taizhou that I wanted to knock off, the first one not being too far from the train station.

Jiufeng Park

This place was in an absolutely gorgeous area, but was completely dead despite it being a Saturday afternoon. I should point out that the weather was extremely uncomfortable though, so hiking in the mountains was unlikely to be on anyone’s list of things to do that weekend.

RCDB had three coasters listed here, but the biggest one as SBNO. The location for it was gorgeous.

It was definitely SBNO unfortunately. The station was being used to store a bunch of crap. This thing really interested me though. It’s a unique suspended coaster from a very small company called Qin Long, who have otherwise only built a handful of family coasters. It had two trains (very optimistic for this park) with 3-across seating.

There were another 2 creds to be had, the first being one of the aforementioned Qin Long family coasters.

There was also a very old-school powered dragon. I haven’t seen one with this layout for a very long time. I felt quite bad about having to wake up the ride op. The staff here were pretty much all just napping since there was nobody here. I say “all”; I think there were only about 4 or 5 of them anyway.

But what is this? Unlisted bonus cred! The best kind of cred. I have no idea how this wasn’t listed since it’s clearly not new. Whoever had visited this park before either missed it (it’s in a slightly different kiddy area, but still within spitting distance of the dragon) or deemed it unworthy of cred status (wrong!) and so didn't report it.

I’ll finish up with this park with more pictures of the SLC in an attempt to cover the shame of the +3 kiddy creds.

Onto the next place then.

Luqiao Paradise

This place had two creds listed - the extremely common jungle mouse and powered dragon combo – but would I discover more? Kind of, but no. It turns out that the place is in the process of a complete ground-up overhaul and will reopen as Squirrel Kingdom, including a new cred.

Annoyingly, no creds for me, but now that I’ve unveiled Squirrel Kingdom to the world, you can all start planning your trips to Taizhou. You’re welcome!

 

[Gavin]

The main reason for heading up to this area was a fairly new Fantawild park. RCDB lists it as Fantawild Land, but it would be more accurately labeled as Fanta Wildland or Fanta Wild Land. This is a bit of an anomaly with Fantawild as it doesn’t fall under one of their usual brands (Adventure, Dreamland, Oriental Heritage, Glorious Orient…). Instead, the theme is just “theme park”. I got there for opening and it was pretty busy. Granted, it was a Sunday, but that’s not necessarily an indication of crowd levels for Fantawild.

The main coaster was at the back of the park, so I headed up in that direction and bypassed stuff to come back to. The vast majority of Chinese theme park visitors haven’t figured that strategy out yet, so while the area near the entrance was quite crowded, there was almost nobody on the other side of the central lake where the coaster was.

Invincible Warriors is the only Vekoma Renegade model. Most (all?) of the newer Vekomas I’ve done have been launched models rather than the lift hill that this one has, so I’m not really sure which other Vekoma it’s most similar to.

It was very good, but probably on the lower end of the new Vekomas for me. At least it had 3-car trains though, unlike the 2-car model that has been appearing at the Glorious Orient parks, which is a much better coaster but a capacity nightmare. There was no queue whatsoever, so I got a few rides in (still had to wait for queue faff) before moving on.

This was a 4D dark ride with a theme I hadn’t seen before, Realm of Warriors. I don’t know whether I’d say the thing as a whole was an upgrade from the “Nuwa” rides – itself the 3rd iteration of this ride type – but it was very good.

Say it quickly. Yes, I’m actually a grown up.

The place was actually huge, probably one of the biggest Fantawild’s I’ve been to though the heat might have made it feel that way. As is common with Fantawild parks, there were a few pointlessly meandering paths connecting various areas and a couple of opportunities to miss stuff entirely if you didn’t check the map now and then.

Forest Drifting was a “sit-on-a-boat-and-look-at-stuff” ride, which I’m quite a fan of in general. I can’t remember now what the general theme was, but it was all very pleasant and had some decent sets/lighting effects.

Let’s Fly was a flying theatre – they all have the same name – but with a very different theme to the others. Essentially, they’ve massively ripped off Flight of Passage. Well, the film at least, not the ride system. The thing is though, it was really good! I’m not a huge fan of flying theatres, especially the copy/paste jobs across the Fantawild parks, but this one was so much better than most. I’m guessing they’re using a newer ride system since it seemed to do more / was synched better than their usual rides.

What I also liked about this park, which you can see from the ride entrances for the two rides above, is more of an attempt to hide ride buildings than they usually make. Often, Let’s Fly, as one example, will just be a huge box with a plane stuck to the front of it. Here, in most cases, the ride buildings are more heavily themed, or they’ve been set back away from the entrances and aren’t visible from the ride paths.

Having said that, this is what I ended up doing next:

It was a show called To the Sky, and it turns out I’d seen the same thing many years ago at one of their much older parks in Wuhu, under the name Bubble Ballet, but never again since. @HeartlineCoaster had mentioned this in one of his reports, but I’d forgotten that it was this park specifically.

I filmed it. Skip ahead to roughly the 10-minute mark to see the cool s**t happening.

There are two family coasters here, the same stuff as can be found at countless other Fantawilds these days: a Vekoma family boomerang, which I’ve just realized I took next to no pictures of, and a Beijing Shiboalai family thing.

Bullseye was a shooting dark ride and had a bit of a queue. I was expecting the worst, but this actually moved quite quickly and I could see from the control panel as I was about to get on that they had 4 trains on the circuit. I did a video for this as well. I don’t do them often, so you’ll see I’m not really concerned about the production quality. Or, more likely, you won’t see that at all since you won’t watch it, and I wouldn’t blame you.

Myths was another large-scale show, this time one of those things with a large glass screen in front of the stage with a mix of live actors and projection. I mentioned in a previous report about these things. There’s a lot they could do with this – which they’ve achieved successfully with some of their much smaller shows using similar tech – but these big ones are just boring unfortunately.

Origin of Life is a just a 3D theatre and has been copied across numerous parks. I still did it anyway since it’s a nice, air-conditioned break for twenty minutes or so.

It was surprising to see Conch Bay here. This is one of Fantawild’s oldest attractions, appearing at a bunch of their “Adventure” parks, and I hadn’t seen one in years. It’s their version of Tough to be a Bug, and it surprisingly still holds up despite its age. The animatronics and in-theatre effects aren’t as strong as Tough to be a Bug, but the 3D work is some of the best anywhere and just works to excellent effect across the three screens. It’s been a while, so there’s a strong chance there have been some upgrades somewhere, but the highlight has always been the 3D element and that doesn’t seem to have changed.

Finding Merlion is a ride I knew I’d done before at their Asian Legend park - another of their “one-off” parks - but I couldn’t remember exactly what it was until I got on it. It’s just a simulator ride, but here it all felt very small. It seemed that there were only a couple of simulator cars in front of quite small screens, and they were only running one of them; I ended up waiting about half an hour for it. I seem to remember the Asian Legend ride being a lot bigger, more of a “Back to the Future / Simpsons” sized attraction.

Onto the Ferris wheel for some pictures. A bit of a wait for this as well since they weren’t filling the cars, but I was grateful for this when I got a car to myself. The sun was on the “wrong” side by that point in the day though, so the pictures are s**te.

I’d had a pretty full day here, but the park was open for a while longer. What I’ve noticed on recent Chinese park visits, including some (but not all – f**king Ningbo) Fantawilds is that they’re open until 8 or 9pm, with the rides staying open until closing as well. The standard in the past has usually been around the 5pm mark. I’ve never stayed that late, but I might do in the future at some point to see what these places look like at night. I liked this park a lot though. As someone who's been to a bunch of Fantawild parks, it was interesting to see such a mix of old and new rides, but having them all feeling new somehow. The park itself was lovely as well, just presented very nicely and feeling fresh and vibrant. Operations also seemed better than the usual.

A few more pictures I must’ve taken as I was leaving:

I didn’t have a hotel booked for that night, so I decided that instead of staying in Taizhou, I’d get a train back to Wenzhou that evening and get a hotel near the airport, meaning a bit of a lie-in and a lazy morning before my flight back to Hong Kong around lunch time.

So yeah, not a bad little weekend, but it felt like I’d slightly wasted the opportunity of having that Monday off by getting an early flight back to Hong Kong and really not seeing anything of either city when I could’ve flown back from either place on an evening flight to Shenzhen. That would’ve just been an extra layer of faff though, and I was grateful to be home by a decent time on Monday afternoon when the Shenzhen alternative would’ve been a getting-in-at-midnight job.

Anyway, who gives a s**t about that? The end.

 

[JamesB]

I'm kinda fascinated by that suspended coaster at Jiufeng Park. It seems the park decided to repaint in the last few years but leave it SBNO. I've tried scouring Google for a POV but can't find one, would like to see one if anyone finds one?

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

It was a show called To the Sky, and it turns out I’d seen the same thing many years ago at one of their much older parks in Wuhu, under the name Bubble Ballet, but never again since. @HeartlineCoaster had mentioned this in one of his reports, but I’d forgotten that it was this park specifically.

Just more words and names to confuse everything further but that show wasn't running in Taizhou for me as it was too quiet, I did it at the Dino Kingdom park (Zigong) instead, which has a bit of an overlap with this park. That's where the dino themed flying theatre originated too.