Another China Trip - Part 2: Joy Ocean Park

[Gavin]

In my recent UAE report – if you haven’t read it, we have beef – I mentioned that I moved my entire Qatar and Saudi trip over to the Easter holidays. Obviously, that never happened, but I waited until Qatar Airways officially cancelled the flight about a week or two before it was scheduled, figuring that even though I had a refundable booking, the refund would be quicker and easier if it were the airline that canceled the flight. Anyway, that left me with an Easter-holiday-sized hole to fill. The boyfriend wanted to spend a few days in Shanghai, so I just did some China stuff for around week and then met him there.

None of the cities I was hitting up were new to me, so this was very much a park-focused trip. Since I was using trains, I just stayed near the high-speed train stations, which in most cases aren’t in particularly exciting areas but were massively convenient for what I was doing. First up was a train from Hong Kong to Changsha, taking around 3 hours, and then the next morning taking a short train ride out to Ningxiang.

Oriental Heritage Ningxiang

It had been raining when I arrived in Changsha, and was still raining the next morning - this will be a continuous complaint throughout this report – which is less than ideal for most Chinese parks, especially those operated by Fantawild. I was there shortly after opening and headed across to the main coaster, Celestial Gauntlet, one of four Vekoma hyper space warp models, all at Fantawild parks, knowing that it wasn’t going to be open.

Time for some indoor stuff and hope the weather clears up then. Let’s Fly is the name of most (all?) of Fantawild’s flying theatres, and some of them are excellent. This one had their fairly standard film – random computer-generated flying over Chinese landmarks – but being newer meant that the ride system itself was decent.

Magic Gallery was, I think, a new one for me. It was quite heavily screen-based, but integrated well with sets and at least there were different types/sizes of screens. It was all quite lovely. I rode another one in another park a few days later and took a video, so I might shove that in later.

I’ll just chuck in some other pictures. I skipped the Chinese opera ride (the one with the dice-looking boxes on it), but did River of Tales, a boat ride. The Lady Mengjing show was closed – a sign out front said it only ran in summer. Three or four parks I’ve been to have had this show, but only one was running. I remember it being very good though. It was a no thanks the water rides.

These pagodas at the Oriental Heritage parks house launch/drop towers. They’re the ones with the “Lanuch Tower” signage, starting with a mediocre launch, bouncing a bit, then heading to the top for a drop (actually very decent on this one) and some more bouncing before coming to a slow stop. Some of them are knackered; this one was actually ok.

There were two shows that were running, but only had one show per day and both on at the same time, which is obviously completely stupid and ridiculously poorly planned, especially given how quiet the park was. At other parks, they tend to stagger the show times to allow people to move from one to the other. The one I watched (the one with the “mountain temple” looking facade - can’t remember the name) was fine. I ended up seeing the other show at another park later anyway.

Another closed coaster. By this point, the rain had stopped and the ride op out front said it would open when the track had had chance to dry out. I took this to be bulls**t.

However, moving around the park = finally an open coaster:

By this point, I’d downloaded Fantawild’s app – there were QR codes at all the rides, most prominently on the “closed for weather” boards – and it turns out it’s excellent. It’s in Chinese, but there are pictures next to each ride, and there’s very up-to-date open/closed statuses. The map is also very good and offers GPS walking instructions. Anyway, the suspended coaster actually did open. It’s a Fantawild staple, but is the very decent Orkanen /Dragonflyer layout.

Celestial Gauntlet also opened, so that was obviously great and changed my overall mood significantly. It’s a very decent ride – I think it’s basically Formula at Energylandia but with a lift hill – but weaker than most of the other similar Chinese Vekomas. It’s a solid coaster though.

I watched (got stuck in front of) a parade – I don’t think I’ve seen one at an Oriental Heritage park before – did rerides on Celestial Gauntlet and rode Legend of Nuwa, a 4D dark ride that I’ve done at way too many other parks at this point. Along with the pagoda drop tower, I think it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll find it at any Oriental Heritage park. It’s very good, but I’d forgotten how long it was. Thinking about it, most Fantawild dark rides are very long, usually hitting around the 10-minute mark.

So yeah, it ended up being a decent day. A rainy day at a Fantawild park is never going to be as disastrous as at many others – especially if you haven’t been to one - thanks to all the dark rides, but since there was very little I hadn’t already done at other parks, it still would’ve been a very disappointing visit if the rain hadn’t stopped in the early afternoon.

I picked up some +1s on the way back to the train station, also changing my ticket back to Changsha in the meantime since I’d given myself loads of time and would have had a couple of hours still to kill.

More Nanchang in the next bit.

 

[davidm]

Drop towers inside Chinese pagodas - why I have I never seen this before? - fantastic!
I'd call it terrible cultural appropriation if it were in anywhere other than China.

 

[Gavin]

The weather was s**t again the next morning, just grey, drizzly and generally miserable. In terms of major parks in Changsha itself, I’d decided against a revisit to Colourful World (still known as Window of the World when I was there last). Technically, there were two new coasters, but one of those is an S&S launch thing - all of which were closed down in China a few years ago, but are all still standing – so I’ll look into a revisit if/when that reopens.

Joy Ocean Park – as RCDB refers to it, but labeled as Xiangjiang Ocean Kingdom on maps and ticketing apps etc. – opened around 3 years ago and is operated by Haichang. They’ve got a handful of RCDB-listed parks, but also operate a lot of aquariums around the country. This was the first park of theirs that I’d done.

Just remembering that I called into Yanghu Wetland (kind of) on the way and I haven’t uploaded any pictures. If anyone’s particularly arsed, I can add some later. I’d been before, but since then they’ve replaced their powered dragon and jungle mouse with a powered dragon and jungle mouse. The whole rides area has been totally refreshed though, and now includes a glass water slide thing (popping up everywhere now) and feels a bit more like a proper, cohesive rides area than the plonked coasters before. I seem to remember the whole park feeling quite isolated last time, definitely on the outside edge of the city, but the area around it has been developed quite a lot and it now has its own metro station, which I’m pretty sure didn’t exist last time. Anyway, the on-off drizzle and lack of guests wasn’t an issue in getting the +2. This was a Sunday though; I wouldn't have fancied my chances at that time in the morning, with crap weather, on a weekday.

Back to Ocean Kingdom then. They’ve either tired, or are trying, to make the whole area some kind of resort, including a monorail system which had stations labeled on local maps, but wasn't operating., no idea if it ever has. The rain had picked up quite a bit, and, unsurprisingly, the two coasters were closed. The forecast had it clearing up later though, so I was hoping for a similar situation to the previous day. Being more of an aquarium, at least most stuff was indoors, with this first building being a bit of a hodgepodge of different animals.

The major coaster here is a standard Beijing Shibaolai SLC. I hadn’t done one of these for ages. LIke I said though: closed.

A couple more aquarium buildings, but I can’t really remember which stuff goes with which building, not that it really matters. I’m fairly sure that the main tank either held or was supposed to hold whale sharks, based on it having little else of note in it that couldn’t have been housed in a much smaller tank and there being a whale shark information board along with the species that were actually in there.

The other coaster was a very old-school Beijing Shibaolai mine train. Considering the park was only a few years old, I was surprised that they went for such old coaster models. Just quickly looking into it, there are only 6 of these listed on RCDB, with one already removed and one SBNO. Maybe because I’d done a handful of them, I thought they were more common. Well, who gives a f**k? Closed.

I would’ve happily skipped the show, but since the rain hadn’t quite stopped, the coasters still weren’t open. As with my suspicions about the whale sharks, I think this was another case of having something else planned which never happened. It’s called Amazing Whale Show and there’s an orca on the front of it, but it just had a handful of dolphins and wasn’t any good at all.

By this point the coasters were being tested and opened, so as with the day before, the visit went from “meh, I’m here regardless so trying to make the most of it” to a sense of relief that I wouldn’t have to come back. I’ve never had much of a problem with SBL’s SLCs, and this one was fine as well. I rode it in the front since I’m not an idiot, but still. I’ll take these over the earlier Jinma “Kumali” versions at any rate.

There was an Arctic/Antarctic building with penguins, a polar bear (neither of which I seem to have uploaded pictures of) arctic foxes/wolves and a couple of beluga whales. The buildings behind the water chute belonged to another park, a Huayi Brothers movie studio affair. There are no coasters listed, but I have no idea if there are any other rides in there or if it’s just one big photo opportunity. Maybe something to check out if/when I’m back in Changsha if/when the S&S ever reopens.

This place was ok, but was already feeling a bit rundown even though it was only a few years old. It seems that there's stuff that was planned to be there and never materialised, and they went for a cheap option with a package of off-the-shelf SBL rides. I should've taken some pictures to prove my point, but a lot of Chinese parks paint their floors in bright colours, which I'm sure look great for the first year or so, but then the paint starts to fade, show dirt easily and chip, and any cracks which form in the walkways become incredibly obvious, all making the place look really tatty, which was very evident here. Fantawild are smarter about this now, and use more neutral/natural "stone" colours alongside patterned flooring that hides any cracks.

I was heading to the next city, Nanchang, that evening, having already checked out of the hotel and just left luggage there that morning, but hadn’t booked a train since there were really regular. Doing ok for time, I did another quick cred grab, which turned out to not be so quick thanks to Lelin Amusement Park being part of a much bigger botanical garden that required having to piss about with QR codes and passport registrations just to get into the place, which was free anyway. Utterly pointless yet increasingly ubiquitous Chinese QR code faff.

And then it was on to Nanchang, another revisit, arriving to more rain and getting drenched during the 5-minute walk between the train station and the hotel. F**king over the weather at this point.