I needed a Chinese coaster weekend, and getting off work early at this time of year opens up those options. Xuzhou had been on the radar for a while thanks to a new Fantawild park. There are no direct flights from Hong Kong, but the early work finish on Friday meant I had time to get up to Shenzhen Airport, which isn’t difficult; it just adds extra layers of time and faff. The flight ended up with a two-hour delay, which is obviously crap but didn’t particularly bother me since I’d checked the flight history and it had only left on time once in the previous two weeks, so I was fully expecting it.
I’d booked a hotel based on location and price, and ended up in their “most beautiful room”. Yeah. Thanks.
I haven’t had an “Oh, China” moment for a while, but a hotel room themed to something out of The Flintstones on the 22nd floor of a skyscraper definitely did it. Onto the creds then.
Pan An Lake Paradise
This was part of a much larger wetland/scenic area about 40 minutes out of the city. I took the gamble of heading there early to free up time for a major park later. I got there a little after nine, and it was pretty much deserted and was a very quintessential crappy Chinese park.
It was all fine though. They’d only opened at nine, so were still getting stuff ready as a I did a quick circuit of the park, taking pictures of what I wanted to ride to show at the ticket office.
Jungle Mouse. Yay.
Crappy kiddy ride. Yay.
There were two more coasters here, and the next one I would ride would be my 1,900th, so I skipped the fruit worm at first in order to get the park’s main coaster as the milestone, coming back to it before I left.
My 1,900th cred ended up being a Hebei Zhongye looper with the imaginative name of “Roller Coaster”. I think I’ve done around 10 of this model/similar model, and they’re terrible.
It wasn’t ready yet though, so I had a go on the massive Ferris wheel. The views would have been nice, but the windows were so scratched up that you couldn’t see much. It was air conditioned at least; it was already really hot.
By then, the cred was testing, so I got that done, headed back to the fruit worm and f**ked off.
Getting here early had worked out ok. It ended up taking me a little over an hour to get the coasters – which could probably be knocked off in about 15 minutes - thanks to them not being ready when the park opened, so I could’ve turned up a bit later, but it was fine. It was a gamble as to whether anything would be open that early in the day anyway, so no complaints. It was great to get such a big milestone on such an great coaster at such an amazing park.
Onto the next one…
Pengzu Gargen
This was much closer to the city centre and part of a big scenic area which was one of the main tourist draws here. It was very much of a Chinese park with a rides area shoved in a corner deal, but the rides area was more substantial than most of this type.
When I’d put together a loose plan for this trip ages ago, before deciding on when to go, this place also had the same looper model as I’d just ridden, along with a Jinma spinner. Some other equally sad enthusiasts must have been there in the meantime since both of those had very recently been listed as “removed” on RCDB when I checked it as I was on the way.
Not to worry, they’d added a new Jungle Mouse.
Other stuff:
There was also a Jinma fruit worm. The pictures on RCDB look very different, but it was in the correct location, so I don’t know if this one was a complete replacement or whether it was just given a new train and repainted with some other tat added.
This was across the street, but it was 35C and I wasn’t going to walk up to it. Xuzhou looked like it had quite a lot of nice stuff in/around it (the usual parks, lakes, temples, tombs etc.), but I had neither the time nor the inclination to bother with any of it.
Back into a taxi…
Xuzhou Amusement Land
This was part of a complex which also included a substantial water park (separate gate/ticket) and was much more of a “proper” park than I’d been expecting. It was big, pretty well-themed themed and generally very pleasant to spend time in.
I’m sure this was completely accidental since it would be way too obscure a reference for a Chinese park, but any old git like me who grew up in the UK in the ’80s (or Europe in general) would see this and think “Willie Fog”. Amazing.
We’ll unfortunately get back to this later:
The Jinma mine train had a very prominent position, but no theming, which I thought was strange since the park was generally well-themed otherwise. I came back to it a bit later since I had other priorities.
Some other stuff. I intended to come back to the horror walkthrough, but then forgot about it.
The main draw here is a Mack Blue Fire model. Quite a lot of Chinese parks do this; they’ll have one coaster from a western manufacturer and then fill up with stuff from Jinma, Nanfang and other Chinese companies.
Being very close to the city centre, the park was also quite busy. This can be nice to see in China since it creates more of a buzz about the place, but can be awful for getting rides done. This was the queue for “Bravest Warrior” (Blue Fire).
Initial thoughts should be, “Oh, that’s not bad at all,” but in a lot of Chinese parks that could easily take an hour. This place actually had decent operations though! What the actual f**k?! There was, obviously, only one train, but they were running the whole thing (mostly) properly and getting the train out at decent intervals, meaning it was about a twenty-minute wait.
If you’ve read my or @HeartlineCoaster ‘s reports before, you’ll have seen that Chinese parks often keep people completely out of the station until the last riders have cleared it, meaning that the train and station sit empty for ages. Here, they actually brought the next riders up to the air gates while the train was out. Unbelievable!
Anyway, here are some pictures of the coaster. I’ve said this before, but I actually really like this model and don’t really understand the negativity it often gets. With the queue being manageable, I did another couple of rides at various points during the day.
Next door was a Jinma inverting spinner. Despite these becoming quite common, I’d only done one of them before. They’re very decent, but can hit the block brakes quite hard which isn’t too comfortable if you happen to be facing sideways since they have OTSRs. This was also being run quite well. They would only send one car onto the track at a time, but they’d at least have the sense to load up the next two. The ride ops were also making an effort to fill the cars by calling out for single riders, so I walked straight onto it.
I thought this might be an interesting dark ride, but it was just a flying theatre. I’m so unbelievably sick of them. I guess the ride system was slightly interesting. The three rows of seats were on a platform and the whole floor just tilted up and forward.
There were also two 4D theatre things, one just very standard with some DC cartoon thing (seemingly properly licensed since it had full DC branding) and another one where you could aimlessly shoot at the screen. Disappointing.
Time for the Jinma SLC. This is an upgraded version of their first model. I’d done one of this newer model before and found it to be a decent improvement, but this one was wretched and not much better, if at all, than the older ones.
There was an indoor kiddie area with a coaster and the ubiquitous splash boat thing. I did the cred, obviously, but not the ridiculous splash boat, obviously.
That just left the mine train to polish off. This had the biggest queue I’d seen all day, but they were running two trains! In a Chinese amusement park? Two trains!!!! I took these pictures within seconds of each other. They are not the same train! Incredible!
Granted, they waited for one train to get to the final brake run to dispatch the other one rather than when it was on the second lift hill, but still.
So yeah, this park was very pleasant surprise in terms of the size of the place, the overall atmosphere and decent operations. The only real disappointment was the handful of crappy screen-based attractions inside impressive buildings which promised so much more.
I had time, so decided to head over to a nearby indoor park which I was almost sure would be closed based on what little information is out there. It apparently first opened in 2020, which obviously was terrible timing, so it’s not very old at all.
Star Magic Harbour
It certainly looked closed, but turned out to be open. Pretty much nothing was running though. There’s some kiddy play equipment/trampolines that a couple of families were using, the swinging ship was running and there were a couple of snack/drink stands open but that was it. Large areas were fenced off and the whole place was covered in construction dust. I’ll just chuck some pictures in. The coaster is from Hebei Zhongye, but clearly hasn’t operated for a while.
And that was it for the first day. Pretty productive all in all, getting 11 coasters, including that 1,900th milestone, a very decent park in Xuzhou Amusement Land and a cool and unexpected look around a place I’d assumed would be closed. The Fantawild park was the next day, so I'll write that up separately later.
I’d booked a hotel based on location and price, and ended up in their “most beautiful room”. Yeah. Thanks.
I haven’t had an “Oh, China” moment for a while, but a hotel room themed to something out of The Flintstones on the 22nd floor of a skyscraper definitely did it. Onto the creds then.
Pan An Lake Paradise
This was part of a much larger wetland/scenic area about 40 minutes out of the city. I took the gamble of heading there early to free up time for a major park later. I got there a little after nine, and it was pretty much deserted and was a very quintessential crappy Chinese park.
It was all fine though. They’d only opened at nine, so were still getting stuff ready as a I did a quick circuit of the park, taking pictures of what I wanted to ride to show at the ticket office.
Jungle Mouse. Yay.
Crappy kiddy ride. Yay.
There were two more coasters here, and the next one I would ride would be my 1,900th, so I skipped the fruit worm at first in order to get the park’s main coaster as the milestone, coming back to it before I left.
My 1,900th cred ended up being a Hebei Zhongye looper with the imaginative name of “Roller Coaster”. I think I’ve done around 10 of this model/similar model, and they’re terrible.
It wasn’t ready yet though, so I had a go on the massive Ferris wheel. The views would have been nice, but the windows were so scratched up that you couldn’t see much. It was air conditioned at least; it was already really hot.
By then, the cred was testing, so I got that done, headed back to the fruit worm and f**ked off.
Getting here early had worked out ok. It ended up taking me a little over an hour to get the coasters – which could probably be knocked off in about 15 minutes - thanks to them not being ready when the park opened, so I could’ve turned up a bit later, but it was fine. It was a gamble as to whether anything would be open that early in the day anyway, so no complaints. It was great to get such a big milestone on such an great coaster at such an amazing park.
Onto the next one…
Pengzu Gargen
This was much closer to the city centre and part of a big scenic area which was one of the main tourist draws here. It was very much of a Chinese park with a rides area shoved in a corner deal, but the rides area was more substantial than most of this type.
When I’d put together a loose plan for this trip ages ago, before deciding on when to go, this place also had the same looper model as I’d just ridden, along with a Jinma spinner. Some other equally sad enthusiasts must have been there in the meantime since both of those had very recently been listed as “removed” on RCDB when I checked it as I was on the way.
Not to worry, they’d added a new Jungle Mouse.
Other stuff:
There was also a Jinma fruit worm. The pictures on RCDB look very different, but it was in the correct location, so I don’t know if this one was a complete replacement or whether it was just given a new train and repainted with some other tat added.
This was across the street, but it was 35C and I wasn’t going to walk up to it. Xuzhou looked like it had quite a lot of nice stuff in/around it (the usual parks, lakes, temples, tombs etc.), but I had neither the time nor the inclination to bother with any of it.
Back into a taxi…
Xuzhou Amusement Land
This was part of a complex which also included a substantial water park (separate gate/ticket) and was much more of a “proper” park than I’d been expecting. It was big, pretty well-themed themed and generally very pleasant to spend time in.
I’m sure this was completely accidental since it would be way too obscure a reference for a Chinese park, but any old git like me who grew up in the UK in the ’80s (or Europe in general) would see this and think “Willie Fog”. Amazing.
We’ll unfortunately get back to this later:
The Jinma mine train had a very prominent position, but no theming, which I thought was strange since the park was generally well-themed otherwise. I came back to it a bit later since I had other priorities.
Some other stuff. I intended to come back to the horror walkthrough, but then forgot about it.
The main draw here is a Mack Blue Fire model. Quite a lot of Chinese parks do this; they’ll have one coaster from a western manufacturer and then fill up with stuff from Jinma, Nanfang and other Chinese companies.
Being very close to the city centre, the park was also quite busy. This can be nice to see in China since it creates more of a buzz about the place, but can be awful for getting rides done. This was the queue for “Bravest Warrior” (Blue Fire).
Initial thoughts should be, “Oh, that’s not bad at all,” but in a lot of Chinese parks that could easily take an hour. This place actually had decent operations though! What the actual f**k?! There was, obviously, only one train, but they were running the whole thing (mostly) properly and getting the train out at decent intervals, meaning it was about a twenty-minute wait.
If you’ve read my or @HeartlineCoaster ‘s reports before, you’ll have seen that Chinese parks often keep people completely out of the station until the last riders have cleared it, meaning that the train and station sit empty for ages. Here, they actually brought the next riders up to the air gates while the train was out. Unbelievable!
Anyway, here are some pictures of the coaster. I’ve said this before, but I actually really like this model and don’t really understand the negativity it often gets. With the queue being manageable, I did another couple of rides at various points during the day.
Next door was a Jinma inverting spinner. Despite these becoming quite common, I’d only done one of them before. They’re very decent, but can hit the block brakes quite hard which isn’t too comfortable if you happen to be facing sideways since they have OTSRs. This was also being run quite well. They would only send one car onto the track at a time, but they’d at least have the sense to load up the next two. The ride ops were also making an effort to fill the cars by calling out for single riders, so I walked straight onto it.
I thought this might be an interesting dark ride, but it was just a flying theatre. I’m so unbelievably sick of them. I guess the ride system was slightly interesting. The three rows of seats were on a platform and the whole floor just tilted up and forward.
There were also two 4D theatre things, one just very standard with some DC cartoon thing (seemingly properly licensed since it had full DC branding) and another one where you could aimlessly shoot at the screen. Disappointing.
Time for the Jinma SLC. This is an upgraded version of their first model. I’d done one of this newer model before and found it to be a decent improvement, but this one was wretched and not much better, if at all, than the older ones.
There was an indoor kiddie area with a coaster and the ubiquitous splash boat thing. I did the cred, obviously, but not the ridiculous splash boat, obviously.
That just left the mine train to polish off. This had the biggest queue I’d seen all day, but they were running two trains! In a Chinese amusement park? Two trains!!!! I took these pictures within seconds of each other. They are not the same train! Incredible!
Granted, they waited for one train to get to the final brake run to dispatch the other one rather than when it was on the second lift hill, but still.
So yeah, this park was very pleasant surprise in terms of the size of the place, the overall atmosphere and decent operations. The only real disappointment was the handful of crappy screen-based attractions inside impressive buildings which promised so much more.
I had time, so decided to head over to a nearby indoor park which I was almost sure would be closed based on what little information is out there. It apparently first opened in 2020, which obviously was terrible timing, so it’s not very old at all.
Star Magic Harbour
It certainly looked closed, but turned out to be open. Pretty much nothing was running though. There’s some kiddy play equipment/trampolines that a couple of families were using, the swinging ship was running and there were a couple of snack/drink stands open but that was it. Large areas were fenced off and the whole place was covered in construction dust. I’ll just chuck some pictures in. The coaster is from Hebei Zhongye, but clearly hasn’t operated for a while.
And that was it for the first day. Pretty productive all in all, getting 11 coasters, including that 1,900th milestone, a very decent park in Xuzhou Amusement Land and a cool and unexpected look around a place I’d assumed would be closed. The Fantawild park was the next day, so I'll write that up separately later.
