It’s been almost 3 weeks since I was here, but I had to finish off that other report first, knowing that people would be enormously disappointed not to see a few more pictures of jungle mouse and powered dragon coasters.
The first Monday of this month was a public holiday, meaning that I had a long weekend. This obviously meant that everywhere was rammed, so I probably wouldn’t try it again. I usually just look at our school calendar, see that we have a day off without really looking why – we have a bunch of random days off over the year that are school-specific - and plan something accordingly. Ah well.
Because I wanted to get as much time as possible, and flight times from Hong Kong didn’t work out, I ended up going to Shenzhen Airport straight after work. It takes a while, and isn’t difficult, but in future I’d go home first and get a direct bus from there to avoid the faff.
Anyway, I got to the hotel around midnight on the Friday night, getting up early the next day for creds.
Xi’an Weiyanghu
I f**ked up with my camera at this place, deleting a bunch of pictures by accidentally formatting the memory card. Luckily, this was the first place I went to and there was nothing else stored on the camera anyway.
The place is pretty big and, annoyingly, the rides are totally spread out all around the lake rather than being concentrated in one area.
I deleted the pictures when I was most of the way around the lake, and wasn’t going to walk all the way back around since I had a much better park to get to, but there was a crappy dragon coaster in there somewhere.
The second cred was a jungle mouse.
And the third was a wave shuttle. These things usually come in pairs, but this place, rather spitefully, only had one.
It doesn’t seem like it, but I was in this place for close to an hour thanks to having to walk for bloody ages around the lake.
It’s a s**thole. Next!
Lewa Adventure
This place was the main reason, in terms of parks, for heading to Xi’an.
It just opened at the end of last year and is, apart from one amazing coaster, filled with crap.
It was pretty busy, especially later on, so I didn’t ride anything apart from the coasters. I could’ve done more, but by the time I’d got the creds done, I couldn’t be arsed waiting in any more lines – operations were predictably s**t - and I wanted to try and see some of the city itself.
I’m just going to shove stuff in as the pictures come up, rather than try to put anything in the actual order I rode.
First up was a boomerang, Sky Swirl. I’d forgotten until later that it’s a knockoff from Beijing Shibaolai. It’s the first one I’ve done, and it rode about the same as any other.
Crappy looper, Scream Valley Train, again from Beijing Shibaolai, which I rode much later in the day:
The knockoff SLC, Dinosaur’s Spine, was the Golden Horse model, which uses Vekoma’s Happy Valley/Kumali layout.
I caught a bit of the parade, but didn’t spend too much time bothering with it since there was too much to get done.
There was big splashboat ride, which I didn’t do, with something much more interesting behind it.
Flash was the main reason for coming here. It’s currently Mack’s biggest coaster, at 200 feet, with the world’s biggest loop – not including those non-inverting things.
There are also a bunch of airtime hills and a zero-g roll.
It was absolutely amazing. Loads of airtime and the zero-g is excellent as well. I think I still prefer Helix due to the overall setting, but there’s not much in it and, actually, they’re very different coasters anyway.
Unsurprisingly, they’re running it like s**t though. I rode it as soon as I got to the park and waited around 40 minutes, which is fine, but my second ride, immediately after the first, was up to an hour. I didn’t even bother trying again since the queue, while not too bad, would’ve taken much too long.
It was a busy day, and they were running one train. They were also pulling all kinds of other crap, like keeping people outside the station and doing those ridiculous warm-up exercises that some of the Happy Valley parks get people to do.
I’m used to this f**kwittery by now, but it still infuriates me to see it happening. The “big” queue I saw later was something that would’ve taken half an hour at a semi-decent park. At this place, it would’ve been closer to two.
People just don’t care though. They’re so used to generally s**ty service that it’s not even questioned. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that guests at Chinese parks will just push and shove, and won’t queue up properly, but that’s bollocks. Apart from the occasional “letting a friend through” thing, it’s fine.
In terms of flat rides, the park seemed to have most of Nanfang’s catalogue of knockoffs.
Some show:
This was closed. I’m guessing it’s a walkthrough.
The best thing was the gravestones. All good so far:
But clearly no idea what RIP actually stands for or means since the rest of them just had random letters on them. Idiots.
There was a Golden Horse mine train, Crazy Mining Cart. Sick of these.
Horse Coaster, from Beijing Jiuhua, and Happy Chew Chew Train, a Golden Horse worm coaster (no adults; spite) were in the kiddy area of the park.
There was also a Nanfang knockoff of those Mack Twist ‘n’ Splash things.
Utter ridiculousness. Why even bother?
The final coaster here was a Golden Horse moto coaster. They’re the same as the Zamperla originals: crap.
I’ll finish off the park with more pictures of Flash because it’s fab and s**ts all over everything else at this place.
\
I know I’ve sounded quite negative about the place, but that’s mostly because I’d ridden most of the coaster types so many times before and it was just too busy. It’s actually a very decent park with a lot of effort put into it and a massive ride selection. On a quieter day, I would’ve whored Flash a bit, but nothing else there, for me, would warrant a reride after ticking it off. I probably would’ve given a few of the flat rides a go too, like the drop tower and screaming swing at least. Still, it’s a +7 (spiteful worm coaster) and one absolutely excellent coaster, so definitely worth the effort.
As I said, I could’ve stayed longer, but I ended up getting out of there around 3 o’clock after spending around 5 hours there, getting a taxi to a city park for a quick +2 before taking a walk from there and seeing other stuff.
Geming Park
They had an amazing powered dragon/jungle mouse combo. Yay.
Look, Lewa Adventure, even a craphole like this can get more than one car out!
This thing was such a cred (no I haven’t counted it):
See there’s even an elevation change!
From here, I walked through part of the city.
Xi’an Bell Tower, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, was quite impressive.
If you ignore the roundabout and tacky shopping mall.
Close by was the Drum Tower. You could go inside both of these, but it was packed and I didn’t want to spend the time to be honest.
Instead, I walked down to the south gates of the old city wall. The whole city centre – well, the old area - is surrounded by a wall and moat, with access onto the wall at the four gates.
I’d planned to walk around the whole thing, but hadn’t realised how big it actually was. It’s 14km to do the whole circuit, so I just did half and got off it at the north gate. You can hire bikes at various spots, which I probably should have done.
My hotel was just inside the wall at the south east corner, so I had a quick look around there and called it a day.
The first Monday of this month was a public holiday, meaning that I had a long weekend. This obviously meant that everywhere was rammed, so I probably wouldn’t try it again. I usually just look at our school calendar, see that we have a day off without really looking why – we have a bunch of random days off over the year that are school-specific - and plan something accordingly. Ah well.
Because I wanted to get as much time as possible, and flight times from Hong Kong didn’t work out, I ended up going to Shenzhen Airport straight after work. It takes a while, and isn’t difficult, but in future I’d go home first and get a direct bus from there to avoid the faff.
Anyway, I got to the hotel around midnight on the Friday night, getting up early the next day for creds.
Xi’an Weiyanghu
I f**ked up with my camera at this place, deleting a bunch of pictures by accidentally formatting the memory card. Luckily, this was the first place I went to and there was nothing else stored on the camera anyway.
The place is pretty big and, annoyingly, the rides are totally spread out all around the lake rather than being concentrated in one area.
I deleted the pictures when I was most of the way around the lake, and wasn’t going to walk all the way back around since I had a much better park to get to, but there was a crappy dragon coaster in there somewhere.
The second cred was a jungle mouse.
And the third was a wave shuttle. These things usually come in pairs, but this place, rather spitefully, only had one.
It doesn’t seem like it, but I was in this place for close to an hour thanks to having to walk for bloody ages around the lake.
It’s a s**thole. Next!
Lewa Adventure
This place was the main reason, in terms of parks, for heading to Xi’an.
It just opened at the end of last year and is, apart from one amazing coaster, filled with crap.
It was pretty busy, especially later on, so I didn’t ride anything apart from the coasters. I could’ve done more, but by the time I’d got the creds done, I couldn’t be arsed waiting in any more lines – operations were predictably s**t - and I wanted to try and see some of the city itself.
I’m just going to shove stuff in as the pictures come up, rather than try to put anything in the actual order I rode.
First up was a boomerang, Sky Swirl. I’d forgotten until later that it’s a knockoff from Beijing Shibaolai. It’s the first one I’ve done, and it rode about the same as any other.
Crappy looper, Scream Valley Train, again from Beijing Shibaolai, which I rode much later in the day:
The knockoff SLC, Dinosaur’s Spine, was the Golden Horse model, which uses Vekoma’s Happy Valley/Kumali layout.
I caught a bit of the parade, but didn’t spend too much time bothering with it since there was too much to get done.
There was big splashboat ride, which I didn’t do, with something much more interesting behind it.
Flash was the main reason for coming here. It’s currently Mack’s biggest coaster, at 200 feet, with the world’s biggest loop – not including those non-inverting things.
There are also a bunch of airtime hills and a zero-g roll.
It was absolutely amazing. Loads of airtime and the zero-g is excellent as well. I think I still prefer Helix due to the overall setting, but there’s not much in it and, actually, they’re very different coasters anyway.
Unsurprisingly, they’re running it like s**t though. I rode it as soon as I got to the park and waited around 40 minutes, which is fine, but my second ride, immediately after the first, was up to an hour. I didn’t even bother trying again since the queue, while not too bad, would’ve taken much too long.
It was a busy day, and they were running one train. They were also pulling all kinds of other crap, like keeping people outside the station and doing those ridiculous warm-up exercises that some of the Happy Valley parks get people to do.
I’m used to this f**kwittery by now, but it still infuriates me to see it happening. The “big” queue I saw later was something that would’ve taken half an hour at a semi-decent park. At this place, it would’ve been closer to two.
People just don’t care though. They’re so used to generally s**ty service that it’s not even questioned. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that guests at Chinese parks will just push and shove, and won’t queue up properly, but that’s bollocks. Apart from the occasional “letting a friend through” thing, it’s fine.
In terms of flat rides, the park seemed to have most of Nanfang’s catalogue of knockoffs.
Some show:
This was closed. I’m guessing it’s a walkthrough.
The best thing was the gravestones. All good so far:
But clearly no idea what RIP actually stands for or means since the rest of them just had random letters on them. Idiots.
There was a Golden Horse mine train, Crazy Mining Cart. Sick of these.
Horse Coaster, from Beijing Jiuhua, and Happy Chew Chew Train, a Golden Horse worm coaster (no adults; spite) were in the kiddy area of the park.
There was also a Nanfang knockoff of those Mack Twist ‘n’ Splash things.
Utter ridiculousness. Why even bother?
The final coaster here was a Golden Horse moto coaster. They’re the same as the Zamperla originals: crap.
I’ll finish off the park with more pictures of Flash because it’s fab and s**ts all over everything else at this place.
I know I’ve sounded quite negative about the place, but that’s mostly because I’d ridden most of the coaster types so many times before and it was just too busy. It’s actually a very decent park with a lot of effort put into it and a massive ride selection. On a quieter day, I would’ve whored Flash a bit, but nothing else there, for me, would warrant a reride after ticking it off. I probably would’ve given a few of the flat rides a go too, like the drop tower and screaming swing at least. Still, it’s a +7 (spiteful worm coaster) and one absolutely excellent coaster, so definitely worth the effort.
As I said, I could’ve stayed longer, but I ended up getting out of there around 3 o’clock after spending around 5 hours there, getting a taxi to a city park for a quick +2 before taking a walk from there and seeing other stuff.
Geming Park
They had an amazing powered dragon/jungle mouse combo. Yay.
Look, Lewa Adventure, even a craphole like this can get more than one car out!
This thing was such a cred (no I haven’t counted it):
See there’s even an elevation change!
From here, I walked through part of the city.
Xi’an Bell Tower, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, was quite impressive.
If you ignore the roundabout and tacky shopping mall.
Close by was the Drum Tower. You could go inside both of these, but it was packed and I didn’t want to spend the time to be honest.
Instead, I walked down to the south gates of the old city wall. The whole city centre – well, the old area - is surrounded by a wall and moat, with access onto the wall at the four gates.
I’d planned to walk around the whole thing, but hadn’t realised how big it actually was. It’s 14km to do the whole circuit, so I just did half and got off it at the north gate. You can hire bikes at various spots, which I probably should have done.
My hotel was just inside the wall at the south east corner, so I had a quick look around there and called it a day.
