This is going back to around May, a long weekend where I had a Monday off work. I got the train from Hong Kong to Shantou sometime on the Friday evening, taking about 2 hours. I’d done a similar weekend trip back in, I think, 2015, but there was some other stuff to check out and it was an easy option for a weekend trip.
There were some parks quite far out of the city which I was in two minds about. Well, in a different city entirely: Chaozhou. I usually plan too much time for crappy +1 parks where, more often than not, I’m in and out within half an hour, so I knew that realistically they were very doable if I got my arse in gear early enough.
Fenghuangzhou Park
Just a jungle mouse here, but there’s always a chance of discovering something new in these places. Nothing new would be discovered, and the jungle mouse would not be ridden. The amusement park area was completely closed, and by the looks of it is now SBNO. The surrounding park and temple were nice enough, so I could at least kid myself that this hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Here are too many pictures of a spiteful park:
Taxi to the next place then, which had two coasters listed, but no pictures at all on RCDB. They’re on there now, so massive apologies that my tardiness in getting this report done has resulted in the loss of exclusivity.
Green Sun Amusement Park
I shouldn’t be surprised at the size of some these places anymore. I always see a +1/+2 park and assume something tiny, but quite often they turn out to be a lot more substantial. Only a small section of it was open though, or at least it seemed that way. If you look at the map in one of the coming pictures, just the section in the bottom right corner was open. The bridge leading to the other areas being blocked off. I’ve got no idea if this was permanent, or a time-of-day thing since it was still quite early. It was a Saturday though.
Luckily, the rides area was in the open section. I’d got a cheap entry ticket, so paid individually for the two coasters, the guy in the ticket booth having to then walk over to operate them since there was literally nobody else there. I’d been given a couple of coupons for random crap as well, and one of those was a free ice house ticket. I wouldn’t have bothered with it otherwise.
There was also a small zoo section, which really wasn’t all too pleasant, but far better than a couple of others I’d see later (and probably won’t share to be honest – they were vile). Finding the bridge closed, I obviously didn’t check out that side of the park. I’m assuming/hoping there were no surprise creds over there, but having to walk around the whole thing to check would’ve been quite time consuming. Anyway, it was closed so wasn't an option.
Next! We were moving away from Chaozhou towards another town (Jieyang), still quite far north of Shantou.
Wanzhuyuan Amusement Park
This place had three listed coasters, and there were actually some people here, consisting of a handful of school groups. The park itself was quite nice, but one of the creds was closed – just a powered dragon, so whatever. There was also a small zoo section (didn’t have to pay for it; I won’t pay for those places), but it was one of the grossest things I’ve seen, so we’ll just park that there.
The next place was roughly halfway between this one and Shantou – maybe closer to Shatou – so I pretty much had to go past on the way back into the city.
Shantou Green Dream Wetland Ecological Park
There were three creds listed here, but one of them was just one of those kiddy pedal-powered things, which I don’t ride for numerous reasons and was hidden away inside a paid-entry kiddy playground area. The park had a small cover charge and then pay-per-ride options. Perfect. Again, it was pretty big. This place also had a zoo, which was closed but looked semi-decent; there were a couple of areas where you could see some of the animals. In terms of coasters, there was a jungle mouse (shocking) and a chicken coop.
I’m assuming that this was an old rides area at some point. It’s becoming increasingly common to see this kind of thing now; new ride areas being developed and the old ones left empty rather than reused. If I had to guess, it’s so that they still have rides operational while old stuff is being removed rather than having weeks/months of no rides, which sort of makes sense when it’s a pay-per-ride system.
The original plan had been to hit up this next place the following day, but I just decided to get it done. This place was close to the city centre and new since I was last in Shantou
Children’s Park
The name would usually imply a handful of kiddy rides, but this place was quite a bit more substantial. It was free entry and pay-per-ride, with three coasters to be had. There was a bit of construction happening around the main entrance, which basically cut the park in two. Weirdly, there were people around the looper and Ferris wheel area, but not around the area with the two other coasters. I was worried that they were closed, but they weren’t. It just seemed that people were confused by the construction and didn’t follow the path around it.
Swinging around to the left, around the construction that was confusing everyone, to two of the coasters, both from Jinma. One is a fairly standard family coaster, but the other is a bit rarer, one of their newer, compact invert models. I’d done one of these before and really liked it. Jinma’s older SLCs – direct clones of Vekoma’s “Kumali” layout - are absolutely vile, the worst of the Chinese SLCs honestly despite them being the bigger company. These smaller, newer models are decent though.
Literally no people in this side of the park though. I even waited around for a bit to try and get some action shots, but nobody was coming through at all.
There was, however, a somewhat steady number of riders for the Hebei Zhongye looper at the opposite end of the park (the part that felt actually open), though it was often sent with just a couple of people on it. I got a solo ride on it, taking a seat near the middle. It was f**king vile. I’ve done way too many of these things now, not hating them at first, but I can’t stand them anymore. This one was particularly offensive, and I think I did actual damage since my neck was hurting for the rest of the day. It was the vertical loops that caused the problems here rather than the corkscrews (though they were also not great), snapping my head back and forth. It’s at the point where if I see more of these, they might be getting skipped.
Did the Ferris wheel because I usually tend to do them, especially the rather massive ones that China is shoving everywhere these days.
From there, you can also see another park, which I’d been to on my last visit to Shantou: one of the older Fantawild Adventure parks, which now isn’t a Fantwaild park and had a couple of new creds. It was early evening by this point though, and I’d already done one more park than planned, so I called it a day here.
Another day of this stuff to come.
There were some parks quite far out of the city which I was in two minds about. Well, in a different city entirely: Chaozhou. I usually plan too much time for crappy +1 parks where, more often than not, I’m in and out within half an hour, so I knew that realistically they were very doable if I got my arse in gear early enough.
Fenghuangzhou Park
Just a jungle mouse here, but there’s always a chance of discovering something new in these places. Nothing new would be discovered, and the jungle mouse would not be ridden. The amusement park area was completely closed, and by the looks of it is now SBNO. The surrounding park and temple were nice enough, so I could at least kid myself that this hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Here are too many pictures of a spiteful park:
Taxi to the next place then, which had two coasters listed, but no pictures at all on RCDB. They’re on there now, so massive apologies that my tardiness in getting this report done has resulted in the loss of exclusivity.
Green Sun Amusement Park
I shouldn’t be surprised at the size of some these places anymore. I always see a +1/+2 park and assume something tiny, but quite often they turn out to be a lot more substantial. Only a small section of it was open though, or at least it seemed that way. If you look at the map in one of the coming pictures, just the section in the bottom right corner was open. The bridge leading to the other areas being blocked off. I’ve got no idea if this was permanent, or a time-of-day thing since it was still quite early. It was a Saturday though.
Luckily, the rides area was in the open section. I’d got a cheap entry ticket, so paid individually for the two coasters, the guy in the ticket booth having to then walk over to operate them since there was literally nobody else there. I’d been given a couple of coupons for random crap as well, and one of those was a free ice house ticket. I wouldn’t have bothered with it otherwise.
There was also a small zoo section, which really wasn’t all too pleasant, but far better than a couple of others I’d see later (and probably won’t share to be honest – they were vile). Finding the bridge closed, I obviously didn’t check out that side of the park. I’m assuming/hoping there were no surprise creds over there, but having to walk around the whole thing to check would’ve been quite time consuming. Anyway, it was closed so wasn't an option.
Next! We were moving away from Chaozhou towards another town (Jieyang), still quite far north of Shantou.
Wanzhuyuan Amusement Park
This place had three listed coasters, and there were actually some people here, consisting of a handful of school groups. The park itself was quite nice, but one of the creds was closed – just a powered dragon, so whatever. There was also a small zoo section (didn’t have to pay for it; I won’t pay for those places), but it was one of the grossest things I’ve seen, so we’ll just park that there.
The next place was roughly halfway between this one and Shantou – maybe closer to Shatou – so I pretty much had to go past on the way back into the city.
Shantou Green Dream Wetland Ecological Park
There were three creds listed here, but one of them was just one of those kiddy pedal-powered things, which I don’t ride for numerous reasons and was hidden away inside a paid-entry kiddy playground area. The park had a small cover charge and then pay-per-ride options. Perfect. Again, it was pretty big. This place also had a zoo, which was closed but looked semi-decent; there were a couple of areas where you could see some of the animals. In terms of coasters, there was a jungle mouse (shocking) and a chicken coop.
I’m assuming that this was an old rides area at some point. It’s becoming increasingly common to see this kind of thing now; new ride areas being developed and the old ones left empty rather than reused. If I had to guess, it’s so that they still have rides operational while old stuff is being removed rather than having weeks/months of no rides, which sort of makes sense when it’s a pay-per-ride system.
The original plan had been to hit up this next place the following day, but I just decided to get it done. This place was close to the city centre and new since I was last in Shantou
Children’s Park
The name would usually imply a handful of kiddy rides, but this place was quite a bit more substantial. It was free entry and pay-per-ride, with three coasters to be had. There was a bit of construction happening around the main entrance, which basically cut the park in two. Weirdly, there were people around the looper and Ferris wheel area, but not around the area with the two other coasters. I was worried that they were closed, but they weren’t. It just seemed that people were confused by the construction and didn’t follow the path around it.
Swinging around to the left, around the construction that was confusing everyone, to two of the coasters, both from Jinma. One is a fairly standard family coaster, but the other is a bit rarer, one of their newer, compact invert models. I’d done one of these before and really liked it. Jinma’s older SLCs – direct clones of Vekoma’s “Kumali” layout - are absolutely vile, the worst of the Chinese SLCs honestly despite them being the bigger company. These smaller, newer models are decent though.
Literally no people in this side of the park though. I even waited around for a bit to try and get some action shots, but nobody was coming through at all.
There was, however, a somewhat steady number of riders for the Hebei Zhongye looper at the opposite end of the park (the part that felt actually open), though it was often sent with just a couple of people on it. I got a solo ride on it, taking a seat near the middle. It was f**king vile. I’ve done way too many of these things now, not hating them at first, but I can’t stand them anymore. This one was particularly offensive, and I think I did actual damage since my neck was hurting for the rest of the day. It was the vertical loops that caused the problems here rather than the corkscrews (though they were also not great), snapping my head back and forth. It’s at the point where if I see more of these, they might be getting skipped.
Did the Ferris wheel because I usually tend to do them, especially the rather massive ones that China is shoving everywhere these days.
From there, you can also see another park, which I’d been to on my last visit to Shantou: one of the older Fantawild Adventure parks, which now isn’t a Fantwaild park and had a couple of new creds. It was early evening by this point though, and I’d already done one more park than planned, so I called it a day here.
Another day of this stuff to come.