Re: Xi'an PTR - Part 1: Lewa Adventure
The last park was an “if I’ve got time” option since it wasn’t really near anything else and my priorities for the trip were Lewa Adventure and the general sightseeing crap. Since I’d managed to squeeze a lot into the first couple of days though, I had most of the final day free before I had to head to the airport, so got a taxi down to this place after checking out of the hotel.
Qinling Happy World
I f**ked up a bit with this place since RCDB had it listed as Qinling Wildlife Park.
I bought the wildlife park ticket, but the ticket booths are pretty far from the main entrance. Happy World is actually separate, the entrance being opposite the wildlife park, and requiring a different ticket. It was only a few quid, but I needn’t have bought a wildlife park ticket at all.
Anyway, since I’d paid for the wildlife park, I popped in there first. There’s a big safari park section, where guests board caged buses, but because of time, I decided not to bother with that and just had a quick walk around. I say quick, but the place was actually pretty big.
It was in a nice location, but was a bit grim in places, notably with the big cats, which seems to be a common issue with Chinese zoos. They tend to breed loads of them, but since most are solitary animals, they end up keeping them in rows of concrete boxes.
Slightly different from other vultures I’ve seen before:
They had a pair of ligers, which is kind of cool to see, but also depressing since they obviously don’t occur naturally.
They had a small, very run-down amusement park area with most stuff being closed.
This was annoying as it would have been a surprise +5 - definitely creds despite RCDB not listing them - but it was totally rotting away and clearly hasn’t run for ages and likely never will again.
The panda exhibit was depressing, just one mangy-looking panda in a small box.
I thought that maybe this little box was just one area, but I walked around the whole thing and there wasn’t anything else.
Anyway, onto the actual park. Like I said, this was actually separate from the wildlife park. If I’d know I would have bypassed the main ticket booths, skipped the awful zoo and just come straight here.
RCDB doesn’t have any pictures of this place, so I was extremely excited to discover the three B&M coasters on the park map! First up:
Oh.
Never mind, onto the next one:
Surprise!
The final B&M looked a lot more substantial on the map:
As I got closer though, I realised that this, again, wasn’t going to be a B&M. It was an Intamin Mega Lite!
Oh…
One of my (least) favourite coaster types is the Heibei Zhongye 4-looper, so I was ecstatic.
I can’t say I’m glad I made the effort, but hey it was a +3 and I hadn’t had to sacrifice doing/seeing anything else to get here.
From there it was a taxi up to the airport. It was a decent weekend trip, with Lewa being well worth the effort and the city itself having decent tourist stuff to do with the walls and Terracotta Army, despite being mostly quite nondescript.
The end.
The last park was an “if I’ve got time” option since it wasn’t really near anything else and my priorities for the trip were Lewa Adventure and the general sightseeing crap. Since I’d managed to squeeze a lot into the first couple of days though, I had most of the final day free before I had to head to the airport, so got a taxi down to this place after checking out of the hotel.
Qinling Happy World
I f**ked up a bit with this place since RCDB had it listed as Qinling Wildlife Park.
I bought the wildlife park ticket, but the ticket booths are pretty far from the main entrance. Happy World is actually separate, the entrance being opposite the wildlife park, and requiring a different ticket. It was only a few quid, but I needn’t have bought a wildlife park ticket at all.
Anyway, since I’d paid for the wildlife park, I popped in there first. There’s a big safari park section, where guests board caged buses, but because of time, I decided not to bother with that and just had a quick walk around. I say quick, but the place was actually pretty big.
It was in a nice location, but was a bit grim in places, notably with the big cats, which seems to be a common issue with Chinese zoos. They tend to breed loads of them, but since most are solitary animals, they end up keeping them in rows of concrete boxes.
Slightly different from other vultures I’ve seen before:
They had a pair of ligers, which is kind of cool to see, but also depressing since they obviously don’t occur naturally.
They had a small, very run-down amusement park area with most stuff being closed.
This was annoying as it would have been a surprise +5 - definitely creds despite RCDB not listing them - but it was totally rotting away and clearly hasn’t run for ages and likely never will again.
The panda exhibit was depressing, just one mangy-looking panda in a small box.
I thought that maybe this little box was just one area, but I walked around the whole thing and there wasn’t anything else.
Anyway, onto the actual park. Like I said, this was actually separate from the wildlife park. If I’d know I would have bypassed the main ticket booths, skipped the awful zoo and just come straight here.
RCDB doesn’t have any pictures of this place, so I was extremely excited to discover the three B&M coasters on the park map! First up:
Oh.
Never mind, onto the next one:
Surprise!
The final B&M looked a lot more substantial on the map:
As I got closer though, I realised that this, again, wasn’t going to be a B&M. It was an Intamin Mega Lite!
Oh…
One of my (least) favourite coaster types is the Heibei Zhongye 4-looper, so I was ecstatic.
I can’t say I’m glad I made the effort, but hey it was a +3 and I hadn’t had to sacrifice doing/seeing anything else to get here.
From there it was a taxi up to the airport. It was a decent weekend trip, with Lewa being well worth the effort and the city itself having decent tourist stuff to do with the walls and Terracotta Army, despite being mostly quite nondescript.
The end.
