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Fantastic old coaster footage/pics

Great video of one of Taiwan's first ever amusement parks Datong Water Park.

The water park itself opened in 1971 while the dry park followed a year later in 1972.

This video shows off the park between opening in 1972 all the way up to the 1980s.

it includes great footage of the jet coaster that opened with the park as well as Taiwan's first looping coaster which opened much later. This Meisho built corkscrew coaster has a unique if uninspiring layout and was a bit of phenomenon in Taiwan at the time appearing in several music videos of the era.

The park eventually shut down in 1991 and the corkscrew coaster gained new life at Asian Paradise https://rcdb.com/13710.htm
where it ran until 2010 and was eventually scrapped.
It's not known if the ride went elsewhere between the 2 parks but it's possible.

 
That thing slams.

ESarr4e.gif
 
roomraider said:
The park eventually shut down in 1991 and the corkscrew coaster gained new life at Asian Paradise https://rcdb.com/13710.htm
where it ran until 2010 and was eventually scrapped.
It's not known if the ride went elsewhere between the 2 parks but it's possible.
Click to expand...
That's not the same ride. The one in Asian Paradise descended straight into the corkscrew, while the Datong corkscrew coaster had a flat turn after the lift hil and thus traversed the corkscrew in different direction compared to the Asian paradise one.

From what I can gather, the ride at Asian Paradise opened in the early 1980s, judging by these construction photos from 1980.

PhotoWeb%2f198007%2f19800705%2f19800705005201%2f198007050052010009M.jpg

PhotoWeb%2f198007%2f19800705%2f19800705005201%2f198007050052010010M.jpg


www.phototaiwan.com

全國第一座螺旋飛車遊樂設施在石門水庫亞洲樂園裝設完成| 生活 | 中央社影像空間

全國第一座螺旋飛車遊樂設施在石門水庫亞洲樂園裝設
www.phototaiwan.com www.phototaiwan.com

Here's an excerpt from a blog that I could find online as to when Asian Paradise operated:

Asia Paradise is located on the right bank downstream of the spillway of Shimen Reservoir, covering an area of more than 50 hectares, including two areas for land activities and water activities. It was a well-known amusement park in the 1980s and was known as the first large-scale mechanical amusement park in Asia. (It opened on February 5, 1978, and it was a moment of beauty. After 1989, the business gradually declined, and the park was closed in 1998.)
Click to expand...
blog.udn.com

當年，我們家一起去旅行(17)~日月潭.關子嶺.石門水庫龍珠灣.拉拉山神木區 - jordan的部落格 - udn部落格

老大去年暑假後上國中，生活步調緊了點，可我們也沒給他額外壓力，家人一起去旅行的習慣其實沒多大改變，依然利用76年元旦、春節、春假等假期安排行程，陸續走訪阿里山、苗栗明德水庫、火炎山、日月潭、關...
blog.udn.com blog.udn.com

According to this Facebook post, the park sat abandoned for a few years before they finally removed it in 2005. Rcdb also says that the park looked to be in an abandoned state in 2004 satellite imagery and was gone by 2010, so I'm guessing the dates on rcdb are purely speculation based solely on the available imagery on Google Earth.

https://www.facebook.com/ZhangZheSheng/posts/10156767411154531
 
TilenB said:
That's not the same ride. The one in Asian Paradise descended straight into the corkscrew, while the Datong corkscrew coaster had a flat turn after the lift hil and thus traversed the corkscrew in different direction compared to the Asian paradise one.

From what I can gather, the ride at Asian Paradise opened in the early 1980s, judging by these construction photos from 1980.

PhotoWeb%2f198007%2f19800705%2f19800705005201%2f198007050052010009M.jpg

PhotoWeb%2f198007%2f19800705%2f19800705005201%2f198007050052010010M.jpg


www.phototaiwan.com

全國第一座螺旋飛車遊樂設施在石門水庫亞洲樂園裝設完成| 生活 | 中央社影像空間

全國第一座螺旋飛車遊樂設施在石門水庫亞洲樂園裝設
www.phototaiwan.com www.phototaiwan.com

Here's an excerpt from a blog that I could find online as to when Asian Paradise operated:


blog.udn.com

當年，我們家一起去旅行(17)~日月潭.關子嶺.石門水庫龍珠灣.拉拉山神木區 - jordan的部落格 - udn部落格

老大去年暑假後上國中，生活步調緊了點，可我們也沒給他額外壓力，家人一起去旅行的習慣其實沒多大改變，依然利用76年元旦、春節、春假等假期安排行程，陸續走訪阿里山、苗栗明德水庫、火炎山、日月潭、關...
blog.udn.com blog.udn.com

According to this Facebook post, the park sat abandoned for a few years before they finally removed it in 2005. Rcdb also says that the park looked to be in an abandoned state in 2004 satellite imagery and was gone by 2010, so I'm guessing the dates on rcdb are purely speculation based solely on the available imagery on Google Earth.

https://www.facebook.com/ZhangZheSheng/posts/10156767411154531
Click to expand...
Huh good work. I know I've seen this corkscrew elsewhere however. It's a unique layout so it's stuck in my mind. I jumped to the assumption it was this one on the rcdb as I swear i have sent the second location to Duane before and it's the only one that fit.

Time for some more research.
 
roomraider said:
Huh good work. I know I've seen this corkscrew elsewhere however. It's a unique layout so it's stuck in my mind. I jumped to the assumption it was this one on the rcdb as I swear i have sent the second location to Duane before and it's the only one that fit.

Time for some more research.
Click to expand...
Are you sure it wasn't this ride from Datong Water Park and it ended up in Duane's 'rainy day folder'? We've previously discussed it in 2018 in this topic (I haven't send the info about the ride to rcdb, as I've given up trying to submit info about long defunct coasters).

Fantastic old coaster footage/pics

Man the Music really makes that video. Must admit its a new one to me. The corkscrew coaster at the park is really unusual too. A unique layout as far as i can tell. Link NOW THIS is possibly the best thing ive ever seen :P Some arful music video featuring footage of said corkscrew coaster...
coasterforce.com coasterforce.com
 
TilenB said:
Are you sure it wasn't this ride from Datong Water Park and it ended up in Duane's 'rainy day folder'? We've previously discussed it in 2018 in this topic (I haven't send the info about the ride to rcdb, as I've given up trying to submit info about long defunct coasters).

Fantastic old coaster footage/pics

Man the Music really makes that video. Must admit its a new one to me. The corkscrew coaster at the park is really unusual too. A unique layout as far as i can tell. Link NOW THIS is possibly the best thing ive ever seen :P Some arful music video featuring footage of said corkscrew coaster...
coasterforce.com coasterforce.com
Click to expand...
You know it may well have been it was clearly painted at some point and maybe it's thrown me off. Sigh. Cheers for clearing that up.

Part of me is still convinced I've seen it elsewhere but I can't find where if I did.

Sent it off to Duane anyhow so may pop up soon. Sent him a long email full of those new peddle powered coasters in China the other day 😂 might be waiting until a rainy day before those show up, for obvious reasons they aren't top of the to-do pile.
 
I recently found a short video about Dragon Khan testing in late 1994 / early 1995 (just some months before park officially opened) with students from local schools.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1351552495626162179

Man, did the ride look shiny and great back then. And it looked massive without Shambhala next door. Those were the good times. If you look closely, you can even spot trains without seatbelts (DK operated like this until 1999/2000) and there were no gates in the station!
 
I didn’t know it was even possible to have the old B&M OTSRs without seatbelts… I guess you really do learn something new every day!
 
Matt N said:
I didn’t know it was even possible to have the old B&M OTSRs without seatbelts… I guess you really do learn something new every day!
Click to expand...
In the old footage below (from the news on opening day) you can see that having no belts greatly helped operations. It was very common to see a train going up the lift as the previous one was clearing the MCBR, with almost no stacking and often rolling trains. Queues really flew back then!

 
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