Xiamen PTR - Day 3: Not Xiamen

[Gavin]

Day 1 – Culture and Creds

I had a few days of hanging around before I could leave Hong Kong and head back to the UK thanks to some stupid 65th Anniversary Variety Show Extravaganza!!!! bull **** at work that they decided to hold a week into the summer holidays and that I HAD TO attend before I could **** off, so in the meantime I headed up the coast to Xiamen, followed by Quanzhou, for a few days.

I left straight after work and after the required border faff and transfers via the Metro at Shenzhen, it was an easy, cheap train ride up the coast for a few hours, getting me in to Xiamen in the evening.

The next morning I headed out to Gulangyu Island, which is right off the coast and just a short ferry ride to get to. Buying ferry tickets took ages, and the ferries were rammed with awful people, but once on the island, people generally dispersed. There were some nice gardens and beaches, and a load of old colonial buildings scattered around, so it was a nice place to wander around for the morning, despite the heat and humidity causing me to sweat more than a 1970s BBC presenter every time they see a yew tree.

Bunch of pictures that I’m not going to label or explain. Park pictures coming soon.

Sometime in the early afternoon, I got the ferry back across and jumped into a taxi to get to one of the area’s amusement parks. The main area of Xiamen is basically located on an island, and the park was located pretty much directly on the opposite side to where I was. I didn’t take any pictures from the taxi, but he took the coastal road around and it was absolutely lovely. There was a bunch of stuff I wanted to see, but didn’t get time to thanks to stupidly heading to Quanzhou instead (more on that later), but it’s a reason to go back at some point if I fancy a weekend away I guess.

Anyway, onto the park:

Dreamworld

The place was bigger than I was expecting. I was expecting a free to enter, pay-per-ride kind of place, but it was actually a “proper” park, with an all-inclusive entrance fee, with a large water park (separate ticket, with a combo ticket available) next to it. The water park seemed really busy, but the amusement park was completely dead.

At around £20 it was expensive for a Chinese park, especially when you consider that the Happy Valley parks are around that price, some of them less, and Chimelong Paradise is only £25. It was a bit of a **** ing liberty to be honest.

I really didn’t want to hang around for long, so I just grabbed a few rides, took a few pictures and **** ed off. The whole place was filled with Chinese knock-offs.

The location right next to the sea was nice.

I didn’t try the 4D thing as it was on a timed schedule and I would’ve had to stick around for about an hour.

The walkthrough was the predictable load of gash with crappy animatronics.

I caught the last 5 minutes or so of an acrobatics show as I was walking past.

There were just two coasters here. They were both Chinese knockoffs, but at least they were fairly substantial. The first was a Cheval D’or (in-joke; everything sounds better in French) MotoCoaster. Like the others of these I’ve done, it rode the same as the original, meaning that it was bland and dull. Waiting over 15 minutes for a full train in a dead park – clearly not possible - added insult to injury.

RCDB doesn’t have pictures of either of these coasters yet, so try to contain your excitement.

I’ve only just realised that I didn’t get any photos of the coasters running. This is because they were waiting for full(ish) trains, so they weren’t being dispatched very often. In fact, I don’t remember seeing either one of them running apart from the time I was on them.

The second coaster was a looper from Heibei Zhongye blah blah blah. This is the 4th(?) one of these I’ve done now, all of them within the last few months, and I’ve decided that they’re **** ing vile. The first time I rode one, at Chuanlord Holiday Manor, I was kind of impressed by the force of the loops, but I’ve now decided that it’s just too much, and I’ve left these rides with a headache ever since.

So yeah, even though this was a much more major park than I’d been expecting, with much more major coasters than the ubiquitous Jungle Mouse/Powered Dragon combo, as well as some big flat rides, I really didn’t like this place. To be fair, I’m putting it down to the fact that it was empty, meaning there was no atmosphere, and I was hot, knackered and sweaty from walking around in 36⁰ heat/90% humidity all day.

Since I was done fairly quickly, I got a taxi back over almost to where I’d just come from to mop up a cred that I was only going to do if I had a bit of extra time. This place was the typical tiny amusement area crammed into a public park kind of places.

Haiwan Park

This place was located on the waterfront, and had a whole row of bars/clubs lining it. It was clearly one of the nightlife areas of the city, and I thought about heading back there in the evening, but never bothered in the end.

The ride area was really small, but I was surprised to see a fairly big tower ride and top spin amongst all the kiddy crap.

There was just a jungle mouse here, currently listed as “unknown” on RCDB, which I can now exclusively reveal is called Forest Flying Squirrel. You’re welcome.

Since the weather had cooled down quite a bit, I decided to walk back to the hotel, making the same mistake as I ALWAYS do with Chinese cities and forgetting how spread out they always are, meaning it took a lot longer than I thought. It was nice though. I’ll finish off this part of the report with some pictures I took on the walk back.

Proper park next time.

 

[peep]

Re: Xiamen PTR - Day 1: Culture and Crappy Creds

Nice report, the city looks nice. That huge statue in the earlier photos is awesome. Look forward to reading more.

 

[davidm]

Re: Xiamen PTR - Day 1: Culture and Crappy Creds

I do like your reports Gavin because they make me go off and look at Google maps for quite a while just to work out exactly where it is that you have been. And so I now know where Xiamen is.

So thank you for your dedication in educating us all - you could get a job in that field.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Re: Xiamen PTR - Day 1: Culture and Crappy Creds

Dreamworld looks really smart for a Chinese park. The coasters all have nice paint jobs. Still £20 is a lot though

 

[Gavin]

Re: Xiamen PTR - Day 1: Culture and Crappy Creds

Sorry for not continuing this report sooner; I know you’ve all been logging on first thing when you wake up every morning for the last month to see some more s**ty Chinese knockoffs, and for that I sincerely apologise. By “apologise” I mean “don’t give a ****”.

I started this report right before I left Hong Kong for the summer, so it’s not particularly fresh in my memory right now, but here goes.

Xiamen Day 2

This was going to be my “proper” park day at Fantawild, a new park which only opened last year. There was an “Unknown” coaster at a park very nearby though, so I headed there first. Both places are pretty far out of the actual city; I think a taxi took me around 45-60 minutes, but I really can’t remember exactly now.

Tong’an Movie and TV City

Tong’an was a weird/cool place really. It’s basically just a bunch of reproductions of other Chinese stuff.

The main entrance:

After the main entrance you cross a small bridge to get to “The Forbidden City”:

From the “Great Wall”:

A couple of other pictures from around the place.

I didn’t go into the car museum as I have zero interest in them.

I did try out this walkthrough though.

I can’t remember the name of it now, but it was basically a long, dark walk, with a few waterfalls and stuff, where you set off sound, lighting and movement (not always working admittedly) as you walked past. It was supposed to be dinosaur themed according to the sign, but they shoved whatever they wanted in there.

They also had a reproduction of the Long Corridor from The Summer Palace, running along one side of the park, next to the river.

This one was much better than the original since it had some dodgems and a cred hidden behind it, something that the Empress Dowager Cixi missed a trick on I feel. The money embezzled from peasants to build a functionless marble boat could’ve been put to better use really.

+1 to the Jungle Mouse count. Whoopee f**ckin’ s**t.

That’s it then. Not knowing at all what this place actually was, I was pretty stunned by the sheer scale of the buildings to be honest. Why they felt the need to cram a jungle mouse in there is beyond me, but I guess I’d never have gone otherwise, so it’s all good.

Because of its remoteness, there were no taxis around, just a few tuk-tuk things. The next park was only 15 minutes away, so that was fine really. I paid about £3, which was a ripoff – the surprise in the guy’s face when I didn’t haggle him down was a dead giveaway, not that I needed one – but I wasn’t going to argue over a quid or so.

Fantawild Dreamland

I’d been to one of Fantawild’s parks before, but it wasn’t really a proper park, being different to the rest of them in that it was more of an amusement complex in one corner of a retail park – report here: http://www.coasterforce.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=37779. This place was much more substantial though.

The whole entrance area was pretty impressive, with loads of shops and restaurants around.

The first ride I came to was Space Expo.

A lot of the attractions here had very large capacities, and were run more like shows than rides, with times posted out front. Most of them were run at 30 minute intervals. This thing was just weird. It was a 4D simulator thing. It started off in one room, where you sat down on one of 4 large platforms for the preshow.

The whole thing then moved backwards into another room, where each of the four platforms kind of separated and acted as simulator bases, with three 3D screens around them. I’ve never seen anything like it before, but it just seemed like a totally unnecessary, overly-complicated way to do things.

I can’t remember now, but I think this thing was called “Ghost Love Story”:

It was very similar to a show at the other Fantawild I’d been to, which in turn is the same kind of thing as Mystery Lodge at Knott’s, which might give a frame of reference. This one had a totally different story though, a traditional Chinese love story featuring two characters, and was MUCH better since the screen for the projection effects was a much bigger, singular screen. At Knotts’s and the other park, you can kind of guess there’s a screen there since it’s three pieces with “supports” connecting them, but this screen was totally invisible. The effects were much, much more impressive, too.

Onto some coasters then! Although RCDB had it listed as open, I was kind of expecting to find the Maurer Sky Loop closed, since others in China have been due to some issue. I was, sadly, right.

Right next to it was a Vekoma Boomerang.

Being a brand new installation – one of a few for Fantawild recently - It had the newer restraints. I was really glad of this since the track work was horrible. It was pretty rough considering it’s brand new. The restraints prevented any head banging.

The Boomerang is, fittingly, called Stress Express, which meant that this was stuck in my head for most of the day:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKCW3RJNRIw[/youtube]

A couple of knock-off flats:

The kiddy area had an awesome Cheval D’or worm coaster.

The water ride here was amazingly themed. I want to say it was called “Escape from Dino Island”, but I can’t remember exactly now.

The first part of the ride is a very slow outdoor section with model dinosaurs. I don’t know if it’s supposed to move that slowly or if it was a result of having no water coming down the drop to move things along – I’m not really sure how these things work - but it was pretty unbearable given the sun/heat. The was a decent indoor drop though, with a Valhalla-style rolling spike thing going over your head just as you went down. The main drop was fantastic, but really wet. I didn’t mind since it was a hot day, but even people who bought the poncho things were drenched.

Unfortunately, it was another stupidly slow return to the station, this time going past a bunch of those exploding things, operated by people watching. The boats are practically just sitting there for about 10 minutes, with a constant barrage of water just falling on them.

Looking back to the creds:

There was one more coaster here, this time a knock-off mine train, Mount Tanggula, themed to Tibet.

It’s weird to think that a real Vekoma, the boomerang, was being built at the exact time as a Golden Horse knockoff of their mine train model was being built at the same park. Someone from Vekoma must have been on site at some point and seen this.

It was absolutely ****, really rough and dull. The other knock-off I’ve done was fine, meaning that the Golden Horse models imitate Vekoma’s mine trains exactly: some are fine (Happy Valley) and some are **** (Rainbow Magicland).

I didn’t manage to catch this show, Tales from the Jungle, which was only on twice during the course of the day. The second show was already part way through by the time I got around to this area.

This huge building was home to a basic, if huge, 4D theatre. It showed the same film as the other Fantawild park I’d been to, The Origin of Life.

Next door was Sky Sailor, I’m assuming a clone of the same ride at the other park I’d visited since that ride was closed at the time.

It’s a knock-off of Disney’s Soarin’ rides. After having now ridden a couple of these, as well as an original Disney version much more recently, I can say that these Chinese versions are actually BETTER. The transition from boarding to being in front of the screen is done much more effectively as it’s done in complete darkness, meaning that you don’t see the mechanism working; you’re just suddenly “flying”. The seats have a much better range of movement, too.

This next ride was also very impressive.

Qing Dynasty Adventure was an “Indiana Jones” style ride, one of those multi-motion dark ride type of things. While it wasn’t as good as Indiana Jones in terms of the vehicle movement, effects etc., the original theme was cool and the huge scale of the thing was a massive shock.

Wizard’s Academy was another huge dark ride.

They’re obviously going for a Harry Potter/Hogwarts kind of thing. The ride itself was a “Spiderman/Transformers” style of 3D dark ride. The other park had also had one, but themed to dinosaurs attacking a city, so it was cool to see that they hadn’t just copied and pasted it for this park.

Again, it wasn’t up to the standard of Spiderman or Transformers, but Fantawild have, again, done a pretty good job with this. Their two versions of this ride that I’ve tried have both been WAY above and beyond some of the others I’ve done now.

I seem to have not uploaded a picture of the outside of this final ride/show (uploaded them back in Hong Kong, so don’t have access right now), but it was, again incredibly impressive.

It starts off as a boat ride through a Chinese town, only this boat is HUGE, seating over 100 people. There’s a combination of projection screens inside the shops/houses, and two actors who move through the whole thing. No idea on the storyline though.

After the ride, you go into this room, one of the few that asked for no photos once the show started.

The two actors appear at opposite ends and have some sort of fight with various fire/lightning effects before a huge load of water gushes down, destroying everything. The whole thing, the boat ride followed by the show, was **** ing immense.

Overall impressions then. While this park is lacking decent coasters, it has, in my experience, the best dark ride selection outside of a Disney/Universal park. True, the quality isn’t as high, but it’s not drastically far off to be honest, and having so many of these absolutely enormous rides in one park is quite an achievement.

The park have also done what other Chinese chains haven’t: planned ahead and left themselves space for a second gate.

Fantawild have already started construction of second-gate parks at some of their other locations, which are including some decent-looking woodies. Nothing has been announced for this place yet, but the above picture clearly indicates that that’s definitely on the cards.

 

[peep]

Re: Xiamen PTR - Day 2: Fantawild Dreamland

Wow, the theming in that park is incredible. As a huge fan of dark rides I'd love to actually experience some of these attractions, especially that last boat ride.

Actually nice to see a company think ahead in terms of the future too. I'm always confused as to how so many parks open with a lack of space to expand *cough* Universal Studios Japan *cough*.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Xiamen PTR - Day 2: Fantawild Dreamland

I suppose I should finish this off before I get my arse into gear and get my California trip up. I’m looking forward to that since people have actually been there before and will be all over it like Oprah Winfrey at an all-you-can-eat buffet, delighting in telling me what I should have done, and how they “only waited 15 minutes when we went lol”.

This next place wasn’t Xiamen, but since it was part of the same trip, and was just the next city over, I’ll stick it in here rather than set up a different topic. Knowing what I know now, I wish I’d have stayed in Xiamen for the extra day/night and done some more sightseeing there, but anyway.

This city was called Quanzhou and was just a 30 minute train ride from Xiamen, on the same train line that would get me back to Shenzhen and the Hong Kong border the next day, so it was an easy enough detour. I got there in the morning, dumped a bag at the hotel and walked up to the first park, which took about 15 minutes.

East Lake Park

Yep, it’s a nice city park, just like the 3 million other “East Lake Parks” in China.

The regular concrete ride area:

I now wish I’d tried the 5D SHMKLATNR since I’ve never seen, or even heard of, one before.

Jungle Mouse cred. I can’t even be **** ed to make sarcastic comments about these anymore.

Despite saying I’d never go into one of these city park zoos again, they’ve now started to hold a morbid curiosity. This one was better kept and cleaner than most:

I’ve just realised that I forgot to take pictures of the park’s Intamin Mega-Lite and custom B&M Dive Machine, so I’ll just have to move onto the next park, which was about 20 minutes away by taxi.

Binxue Happy Valley

This place was deader than I’ve ever seen a Chinese park. And that would be because I’d finally found one that was closed. There were two small ride area here. One across a pond from the main entrance:

And another one kind of hidden away to the side. Very much closed since there wasn’t even the obligatory bored housewife manning the ticket booth.

I was gutted about not being able to get another knock-off powered dragon.

However, walking around to the front of the ride, this happened:

There was actually a family of three living under the platform of the ride. The guy saw me wandering around and said something in Chinese, no idea what, but I just waved 20RMB at him (£2) and he let me on! It would’ve only been 15 if the park was open and I had to buy an actual ticket, rather the guy pocketing the money for himself.

The other, slightly bigger, ride area was also definitely closed.

Not to worry! I just tried the same tactic with a bloke who lived in a concrete hut next to the Jungle Mouse – positively palatial compared to the family living under the station of the dragon, and managed to get a ride.

Bribing poor people for a powered dragon and a jungle mouse is probably the lowest I’ve ever sunk in my quest for creds, but I figured that I actually did them a favour too. I’m practically Melinda **** ing Gates with my philanthropy.

Another taxi ride and onto the main reason for bothering to head out to Quanzhou, an actual amusement park with a powered dragon (joy), but a decent-sized knockoff looper.

Quanzhou Amusement Park

Posters outside also showed a Golden Horse spinner, which isn’t listed on RCDB, so the extra +1 was a nice bonus. Or at least it would have been.

Despite information boards above the ticket windows saying that the park should have been open (weekdays 10am -6pm), it most definitely was not. There was nobody even behind the ticket windows, just this sign on the closed gate:

I Whatsapped it to a friend and it translates as “Power cut”.

F**k you, Mickey. F**k. You.

Since that was my day gone and was barely past lunch time, I decided to walk back to my hotel to take in some of the city. The area around Quanzhou Amusement Park was stunning.

Like a lot of Chinese cities, brand new, expensive apartment complexes are starting to take over.

Walking along the river was lovely.

The bridge I headed to in thoughts of getting across had no pedestrian access from the footpath. I thought there’d be some stairs up to it or something, but there was nothing. It was really annoying since Chinese cities are actually pretty pedestrian oriented, and I had to go all the way back the way I’d came to get back onto the road to get onto the bridge. This scenic detour took me about half an hour and the weather was gross.

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten my swimwear, which was a shame as the water looked lovely.

Apparently the one-child-only system is still in full effect here:

Anyway, the area on the other side of the river and around my hotel was a lot nicer.

I had some time to kill since I was staying there that night and getting a train back the following morning, so I just wandered for a bit and saw a couple of temples.

Bunch of pictures of Chinese crap:

#

Second temple just around the corner from the hotel:

The temples were nice, and the city wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I’ve made it out to be to be fair; it was just that one crappy area on the “wrong” side of the river, which was where the second two parks were.

Still, it was a bit of a disappointing day/evening. I knew it would just be a cred run of crap, but when that didn’t even really pan out (3 creds out of a possible 6, and two of those were very lucky), it was annoying that I’d left a really nice city with loads more stuff (non-park) to see and do just for that.

Ah well.

 

[ECG]

I'm glad that you decided to finish up this trip report with the day at Quanzhou. Sorry that the parks were closed, but really enjoyed reading your adventure and managing to get some of the credz anyway.

 

[davidm]

Re: Xiamen PTR - Day 2: Fantawild Dreamland

I’ve just realised that I forgot to take pictures of the park’s Intamin Mega-Lite and custom B&M Dive Machine, so I’ll just have to move onto the next park

Such lies.... was this a test to see if anyone reads these "not-SFMM reports" at all?

Awesome work with the "bribe the people living under the ride" trick - did it worry you at all that the thing probably had not run that day / in a while / for several months / at all, ever (delete as applicable) before you got on it? =D>

 

[vaugc002]

I don't write on here as often as I should - prefer just scrolling through with apparent indifference much as I do for Facebook - but I do enjoy these updates! It's really eye-opening seeing the growth and development of China in some areas and the utter lack of care and investment in other parts.

And the rides at least make me feel better about the assortment we have across England...

Great job

 

[Jordanovichy]

People living under the coaster. Seems legit

I love reading these reports Gavin, keep 'em coming

 

[Chris Coasters]

I love all these chinese parks. Some look absolutely beautiful and some look like absolute garbage. Another thing I love about these reports is seeing all these random kiddie creds and oddball coasters I've never seen before. Awesome report as always Gavin.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

Blimey that's ghetto. People actually living under the creds!
I do always read your reports Gavin, but usually like 6 months after you've posted them so I rarely comment. Besides, there's not much you can say about the 100th Jungle Mouse. Still, please keep them up because I love your sarcastic comments (and the fact that I can shamelessly abuse your reports to plan my own future trips).