Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 3: Whoring + Happy Valley

[Gavin]

Last weekend was a three-day weekend thanks to Monday being a public holiday, so I decided to go over the border to Shenzhen to grab a few credz.

I’d managed to find out that there’s a bus directly to Knight Valley from Hong Kong, and it turns out that it goes from the bus station right near my school, which was convenient as I was able to pop in a couple of days earlier to find out the times and buy a ticket. There was a bus first thing in the morning, which I didn’t really fancy, or the next one was at 11:30, which would get me to the park a little after one. An afternoon in the park seemed like it would be enough, so I opted for that. The ticket was only $75 as well, about £6.

The bus ride, including the border crossing, was easy. Since the road it took isn’t open to normal traffic, the only people going through immigration were the 30 odd people on the bus, which made it stupidly quick and easy.

Here’s the entrance/ticket counter to OCT East, which is actually a huge resort, of which Knight Valley is just one part.

I was only interested in Knight Valley, which cost about £18 to get in, so left my luggage at the check-in thing next to the ticket windows and headed in.

There’s a water park, which looks a bit crap, right inside the entrance.

Slightly further in you get to a couple of waterfalls, one of which is right on the main path:

And another, much bigger one off to one side.

Which turns out to house an SBNO log flume.

It was a shame that it wasn’t running since I don’t think I’ve seen a log flume with a more epic setting, but it seems like it’s been sitting and rotting for years.

I’ve forgotten the name of the pleasant “village” area slightly further into the park and with a bunch of shops and restaurants, including what is easily the most attractive Pizza Hut I’ve ever seen.

Right next to this area there’s a construction site for a new ride,

Which turns out to be one of these:

It’s a great addition since no other Chinese park has one, except for all of them, including (at least) two already in the same city.

Anyway, from here you get to see the back end of the log flume, which definitely doesn’t seem to be reopening anytime soon. The whole area is actually really nice.

I ignored the kiddy area with the Disc-O,

But decided to check out a big flamingo, walk-through aviary thing and the powered bobcart ride.

Oh, and there was this funicular thing, which I never saw running, which looked absolutely immense, traveling right up a very steep hill to the very top of the park.

The bobcart was easily the best of the three I’ve done, mostly thanks to being mostly set within a load of trees rather than plonked on concrete like the others. I think I remember reading that it’s also the longest in the world.

What was weird was being shoved together with some random Chinese guy, even though we were the only people there. Surely he could have just waited for 30 seconds. Anyway, I made sure I got the back so that I could control the speed, which of course was left at full whack the entire way, eliciting a few cried of terror from the random Chinese bloke.

Continuing up the hill – the whole park is on a massive hill, but with escalators to take you up – I came to this area

Which I’m sure is home to the Mission Space ripoff of death.

Further up again was “Dark Ride” as it was labeled on sign posts around the park, which was actually called 4000 Miles to Earth Center.

It’s a ripoff of the Spiderman style ride system, with 3D screens mixed with real sets. It should have been good, but it was **** ing dreadful. Just so terribly, terribly piss poor.

Not to worry, as just slightly further up the hill was the sole reason for coming here.

I’d been really looking forward to riding this ever since seeing the construction. It was the first ride I’d come to with any queue, and they were operating it really stupidly. The park was quiet, so I can understand only having one train on, but they were keeping people outside the station until the train was almost back in, then letting people in. the train was going out every 5 minutes or so, which just seemed stupid. The whole effect of the station fly-through was lost since there was no bastard in the station at the time.

I think I’d just got slightly unlucky with timing though, since after I got off the first ride, the queue was never more than one train long, meaning there was plenty of opportunity to whore the coaster.

Ok, so some thoughts. I LOVED it, but there’s a big but that I’ll get to in a minute. The layout is fantastic; it’s really unexpected, with loads of out-of-control moments, some great airtime and a great setting. The triple drop kind of thing at the beginning is just phenomenal as well.

However, it kind of dies a bit near the end, and it is also pretty rattly. I’m not going to use the word rough, because it’s not, but it certainly wasn’t a smooth ride, at least not compared to all the other modern GCIs I’ve ridden. I can only put it down to **** ty maintenance really, and it’s a bit of a shame.

It’s still a fantastic ride, and I’d probably put it around number 4 or 5 of my top wooden coasters (behind Boulder Dash, T-Express, El Toro and possibly Ravine Flyer II), but I can see this ride going downhill pretty fast if they don’t start taking more care of it.

I rode it 8 times (4 when I first got to it, and 4 on the way back down the hill later), and managed to ride front and back row a couple of times each. I think I preferred the back since the initial “three-drop” section was better there, but it’s also an excellent front row ride with some great airtime moments from there as well. I could’ve ridden it more, but it’s that intense that it’s not really a coaster you can whore.

The final section of the park is at the top of a huge hill. The funicular I saw earlier supposedly goes up there, but I hadn’t seen it running and was much closer to the cable car anyway.

You’re not allowed to ride if you suffer from dottiness unfortunately.

The cable car took over 5 minutes and had some great views.

At the top, there’s a bridge that leads across to the area's only rides, an observation tower and a pair of boosters.

Again, the views from the bridge are awesome.

Only one of the boosters was operating when I first got there, but mechanics were operating on the second one and had it up and running just as I was leaving the area. There was only a short queue as the people around the area just wouldn’t go near it. I don’t blame them to be honest. I rode it because it’s a “must-do” kind of thing, but it was terrifying.

Obviously, the fact that it was over the side of a mountain doesn’t make it any more dangerous, but it was still pretty horrendous.

There’s also a glass floor observation deck, which wasn’t half as freaky as it looks since the glass was mostly opaque.

I had a quick go on the observation tower, which was again great for the views.

Then I headed back to the cable car to try make it in time for the final performance of the the big show, which I think was called Raging Flood. It’s a bit like a rip off WaterWorld kind of thing, but with a **** load of water crashing down at the end.

And, for some reason, Jerry.

There was a big jellyfish aquarium right next to it, so I had a quick look.

I had my last couple of rides on Wood Coaster, then headed back down to the main entrance,

picked up my bag and got a taxi to my hotel in the city centre, which cost about 6 quid for a half-hour ride.

I had a quick look around the area, which was full of shops and restaurants, grabbed some food and had an early night after discovering a gas mask next to the bed.

Luckily, it's suitable for all kinds of adult faces. In case of fire or gas attack, Kids are f**ked though.

Next up: Cred whoring a bunch of crappy little city parks.

 

[nadroJ]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 1: Knight Valley

The park is strange, it's like it COULD be gorgeous if it tried, but they've left it to rot so it's pretty in an overgrown forest kind of way? Reminds me of the abandoned theme park in Spirited Away.

Shame about the woodie, at least you got to ride it when it whilst it's still good

 

[furie]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 1: Knight Valley

I can see this ride going downhill pretty fast if they don’t start taking more care of it.

Har de har har!

Did you try the gas mask on?

 

[Gavin]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 1: Knight Valley

^No, simply because it seemed like somebody else already had.

Shame about the woodie, at least you got to ride it when it whilst it's still good

Yeah, I don't want people getting the wrong idea really. It is an amazing coaster, but there's just a bit of a rattle to it that I haven't felt on other GCIs, which leads me to think that it hasn't really been maintained very well. It's only a little over two years old as well, so no idea what it'll be like further down the line.

 

[Jake]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 1: Knight Valley

^ Weird, it was fine in 2011. That's not good really.

Looks like Storm Force 11 hasn't operated since then either. Dunno why, it looks fab <///3.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

Considering the thunderous response to the first part of this report, featuring one of the world’s best wooden coasters, I’m not holding out much hope of any s**ts being given to the next part, but here goes.

To give you an idea of how much cred whoring is actually available in the area, here’s a map. Knight Valley, where I had been the previous day, is in red, with Hong Kong to the south of it.

For this trip, I decided to focus on the parks in the following area, but missing out a safari park as if I went there, I’d actually want to do more than just grab the cred, and I didn’t have time.

My first full day in Shenzhen, a Sunday, presented me with a slight dilemma. My thoughts were that Happy Valley would easily be the busiest park of the trip, and since the next day would be a public holiday, would it be better to go there on the Sunday – Sunday being a busy day anyway, plus the day before a holiday – or on the holiday itself, which I always try to avoid.

Since the actual holiday was “grave-cleaning day”, I figured that people would actually be busy doing that rather than using the day as a real holiday, so decided to risk it and put off Happy Valley until the next day, figuring that the Sunday would be stupidly busy regardless.

Anyway, the Sunday was then used for some cred whoring to a bunch of smaller parks in and around the city.

Cultural Palace Amusement Park

This place was literally a 3 minute walk from my hotel. I showed up at 10am, but it was clear that it had actually been open for a while already as there were quite a few people around for such a crappy park so early in the day.

Tagagas are great rides that would cause no end of legal problems for a UK park.

They had a goldfish fishing game; it’s the first time I’ve actually seen one of these, though apparently they are quite popular.

The far end of the park had some nice views over a boating lake across to the city.

The only coaster here is a kiddy coaster, which cost 50p to ride. Clearly just a +1.

After spending all of 10 minutes at the place, I took a 15 minute walk up the street to the next park.

Children’s Park

The entrance I used had a load of construction boards around it, so at first I thought it was closed. There was a little tunnel type thing which led around the construction and into the park though, where I was greeted by a no doubt fully-licensed Daisy Duck.

The park was quite nice really. It was bigger than the previous slab of concrete and had a few playground areas and various rides for young kids.

I didn’t want to pay to go into this hedge maze, despite it being an official Disney attraction.

Time for another kiddy cred.

SPITE!!!!!!

So yeah, another five-minute park, sans cred this time, before heading out of the park’s main entrance.

The next park was further away, so I grabbed a taxi from Children’s Park. It took about 15 minutes and cost about two quid.

East Lake Park

This place is actually a really big city park with a small amusement park section in one area, which is very common for a lot of Chinese city parks.

There were a lot of people around the area, going into the park. At this stage I figured I’d made a good choice not to go to Happy Valley, as if a normal city park was getting a lot of people visiting, a major theme park would likely be horrendous.

Just inside were some god-awful traditional Chinese musicians, with some old bint warbling and screeching.

Separate from the amusement park area was a decent bobsled thing.

I absolutely don’t count these as credits, but rode it anyway just in case at some later date it somehow becomes accepted to do so.

There was also a small, gross zoo section where the animals were tormenting the monkeys.

Slightly further on and I hit the amusement park, which, while small, actually had a lot of stuff crammed into it, including another tagada.

People were riding this one though. By people, I mean hysterically-screaming, terrified five year olds, one of which was wearing a helmet for protection.

These things are basically everywhere:

Here’s a bunch of pictures of other random, crappy stuff:

The pirate ship was “themed” to a film I’d never heard of before, so I’ve just done a quick search.

Yep, it’s a porno.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_(2005_film)

There were two coasters at this park, none of which was particularly exciting. First up was a powered dragon thing which are basically everywhere all over China (I’ve done a couple in Vietnam as well). The park has used the space well tough. They have a kiddy train ride thing using the same area. As well as a monorail type ride going above it.

The second coaster was an uber-exciting, and incredibly rare, Golden Horse spinner.

They’re crap, but I didn’t remember them being quite this crap until this trip. A few more of these will pop up later, and none of them seemed to give any kind of a decent spin, not that that particularly bothered me.

At least this one had some kind of special offer on that day, meaning that it only cost a quid instead of 1.50.

And that was it for East Lake Park. I headed back out the way I’d came, and took a taxi to the next place, which was another 15 minutes or so away. The area outside East Lake was really crowded, and it took a while to get a taxi. The driver didn’t seem to know at first where the next park was, but got it after a couple of minutes.

Qiushuishan Park

Qiushuishan Park (not typing that out again) is located next to a fairly major hotel of the same name.

This place was the surprise of the trip, as I was expecting another tiny amusement area crammed into a bigger park, but this was actually quite a “major” place. This was the first of the parks that charged an entrance fee. It was only 50p, so clearly didn’t include any rides.

Another park; another tagada:

There was a waterpark here, a roller rink and the same mororail kind of ride that East Lake had had, which seems to again be basically everywhere.

There were also a couple of quite major, though clearly knock-off, flat rides.

These included a knockoff Chinese star flyer, which I hadn’t seen before.

These dodgems were quite fab. You had to shoot the other riders, and if you got hit, a hammer would drop from behind and whack you on the head.

There was a crappy kiddy coaster. +1.

And a pretty big watersplash thing, which I didn’t ride as these things just get you totally drenched through and I wasn’t in the mood for that at all.

The other coaster was the most substantial one of the day, a Hebei Zhongye Metallurgical Equipment Manufacturing Co.,Ltd loopscrew. There are a few different Chinese companies building this model now. I think Beijing Shibaolai started it, so this one was essentially a knock off of a knock off. Fab.

Let’s break up the report with a picture of a massive cock.

There was a section that had large models representing each sign of the Chinese zodiac. Right behind these was a mini “Great Wall” that you could walk up.

I didn’t continue past this first section, partly due to time and partly due to the fact that I was hot, sunburned, sweaty and gross already.

The absolute BEST part of this amusement park though, was a themed area that ran along the inside wall of one side of the park. The models were all life-sized and the whole thing was pretty huge. I’ll just shove a load of pictures in for you to judge for yourselves, but Disneyland it certainly wasn’t.

Qiushuishan was quite far north from the city centre, and away from a main road, so it was difficult to get a taxi out of there since there were quite a lot people trying to do the same thing. I walked away from the park and hotel to a more residential area, but it was still a bit of a nightmare.

I wanted to go to the parks on the north of the map I posted earlier, which were about half an hour outside the city. The plan was to head to the park furthest west on the map, then work around east, as the final park was close(ish) to a metro station that would get me back into the city.

Taxi 1: I don’t know. I don’t know.

Taxi 2: No know. No know.

I was waiting about 10 minutes between being able to grab taxis at this point, and getting a bit pissed off. I should add that I had the names of all the parks printed in Chinese, with a map next to each one, which also had Chinese on it, making sure to include some other landmark, like a hotel, golf course etc. If they didn’t know the first park, I tried another one, hoping that they’d recognize something, and that once I was at one of the parks, the taxis in the more northern area would know the other places.

Taxi 3: Don’t know

At this point I just decided to **** it off and go back to the hotel, but the taxi driver wasn’t allowed to go back into the city since he was a green taxi and I needed a red taxi. There were no red taxis.

With taxi number four I tried the first park again. Big surprise, he didn’t know. This one however wasn’t a total **** ing idiot, and had the common sense to get his phone out and ask someone. The other “someone” didn’t know, but must’ve checked it out because half an hour later we were at the next park. The trip cost about 7 quid, but I let the guy keep the change of a tenner since he’d really gone out of his way and actually made an effort to do his **** ing job properly.

Shanshui Countryside

So, the taxi pulled up to the entrance here:

There was a rather steep, by Chinese standards, 3 quid entrance fee. Once I got in I was actually quite shocked.

The place was quite clearly a rather major resort built around a lake, with a large hotel and loads of lakeside cabins. How the hell none of the taxi drivers knew it was here was beyond me. I started to think that maybe they just didn’t want to drive this far out, but that made no sense as taxi drivers usually prefer a longer distance as they make more money from it. There were always people around the entrance waiting for a taxi as well, so it’s not like they’d be coming out to the middle of nowhere and driving back with an empty car.

So yeah, the original judgement still stands; they’re just **** ing idiots.

The amusement park was across the lake.

On the way I passed through the area with the hotel, restaurants etc.

There was a huge goldfish fishing thing near here.

Near the entrance to the amusement park area was a construction site for a water park.

The amusement park was very small, but also seemed very new.

The only coaster here was another Golden Horse spinner. Oh joy.

There was also a knock off booster-type ride with 8 seats at the end of each arm.

I was going to give it a go, but after watching it, decided not to bother. It goes around much too slowly to actually make it all the way upside-down at the top. It was just stupid and pointless.

On the way out, these guys were coming in, so there must be some kind of paintball thing there. I also saw a poster with a white-water rafting thing on it, but I didn’t see where this actually was.

There was a taxi waiting at the entrance, but, yet again, he had no idea where the next park was, despite having the name in Chinese, a map (with Chinese and a big hotel right next to it), and the fact that it was only ten minutes away.

Because the place was quite remote there were some unofficial “taxi drivers” hanging around to drive people. They didn’t speak any English, and also seemed confused by the map, but they had something that no taxi had had so far: sat navs. I got in the car with the youngest, slightly less hideous one, figuring that if I was going to get raped and murdered it would be slightly less awful. That and he undercut the other two by a couple of quid. I ended up paying five for what would’ve been a three pound ride. No big deal.

Yanhu Park

Again, this was a large park with a small amusement park shoved into a far corner. The main park was actually really nice. It was right on a busy main road and next to a big hotel, so again I have no idea how a taxi driver 10-15 minutes away had no idea where it was.

They had what I think was some kind of pay to enter zoo, though zoo is a strong word.

Now, I’m hardly a member of PETA, but even I wasn’t going to give those people money judging by the size of the “facility”.

From a distance, I thought that this was also an animal exhibit.

But it was just a cage for middle-aged women to dance in.

The amusement park section was vile, but there were two creds. First up, a knockoff (at least I assume it was) Zamerla Dragon:

The other coaster was a jungle mouse. These, again are everywhere in China, but it had been a while since I’d been on one. They’re not actually that bad.

By the time I got out of here, it was coming up to 5pm. I had two other parks that I had planned to try and hit, but they only had a knockoff Zamperla dragon and a jungle mouse between them, and I just couldn’t be **** ed with the hassle any more. I just got a taxi to drop me off at the nearest Metro station, which was half an hour away, and headed back to the hotel.

I might try and mop up the other two another time. Like I said earlier, one of them is near a Metro station, so I’ll head there first and taxi it to the other place from there, which should be ten minutes away.

Anyway, I managed to hit 6 parks in the same day, managed to get an extra seven coasters done, and got to see plenty of weird s**t, so all in all, despite the frustrations, it was a pretty good day.

Next up: More cred whoring and Happy Valley

 

[furie]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

What's with the seatless Tagadas? Whenever I've done them here, they've had hard plastic seats that rape your spine.

Loved the goldfish fishing game thing with the clearly dead fish there too :lol:

I'm afraid I did laugh hard at the empty space where the cred used to be

Pirates looks great, and it's got good reviews. I'll have to ask Darren B to lend me his copy

Those hammer dodgems too, what a brilliant idea, and I love that the one guy getting hit looks like a well know enthusiast

Do you reckon they just hire random people each morning as taxi drivers? I know if we're short here of people to move boxes of **** from one place to another, we phone up an agency and they send us people who are armless or have the balancing skills of a pissed up single mum on a hen night in Blackpool. Utterly useless, but we have to take them anyway. So maybe it's something like that?

I also love the little boats with the car tops, they're fab.

Sorry I didn't want to discuss the woody, but I trust your view completely and I don't have enough experience to really challenge it

 

[Darren B]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

Pirates looks great, and it's got good reviews. I'll have to ask Darren B to lend me his copy

I'll bring it to GF for you, and I'd appreciate it if I could have my copy of In Diana Jones - Temple of Poon DVD back. Thanks

Gavin, loving the trip reports, and I admire your whoring credentials, 6 parks and 7 creds in a day is no small feat! Oh and how was the knock off of the knock off? I'd imagine the original Arrow or Vekoma was vile enough, never mind it's adopted, bastard grandchild!

 

[Gavin]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

^ It was actually fine. I think it's relatively new though. It was better than the older Vekoma and Arrow versions I've ridden at least.

^^ Thank you for addressing so many points and feigning an interest.

I think the taxi thing is a case of peasants moving in from the provinces and grabbing taxi jobs even though they can't tell their arse from their elbow.

 

[Mike]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

Brilliant trip reports as ever!

I LOLed at several captions, but the missing cred picture was fantastic!

I was such a useless mong when I visited Shenzhen (or, the three main parks, at least). Wood Coaster had about an hour queue, and none of the escalators were working up the hill, so I was pretty much dead when I got there. I just couldn't be arsed to look around the rest of the park, and didn't even know most of the stuff you've posted about was even there!

I thought the coaster itself was very good. I sat right at the front, but only rode it once, though.

I then had to get one of those "unofficial" taxis to get to Happy Valley, and pretty much though I was going to be taken somewhere and murdered. I then tried paying in jiao, and was confused why the driver wasn't accepting it!

 

[ATTACKHAMMER]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

Awesome reports! I love the hammer dodgems they look so awesome! All the parks look very interesting.

 

[davidm]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

I see several 5Ds and one 6D so far... can we get any higher?

--

Great report obviously... "you're so lucky" etc ;-)

 

[Nic]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

Oh Gavin! Your PTRs never fail to make me actually guffaw! <3

Loving the motorbike Disk'o. So pointless, yet so fab <3

 

[Lofty]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

I love these reports you do of these strange little places, they always have me in absolute tears.

 

[caffeine_demon]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

Sounds an utterly bonkers day - Shanshui Countryside actually looks quite nice in places.

 

[rtotheizzo17]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

It actually looks like its themed to the whole series, the original Pirates and the sequel! Thanks for the pics, always entertaining.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

On my final day in the area, I wanted to get to Happy Valley. I’d been there before, but at the time there were only two coasters there: a Vekoma mine train and an SLC, actually the original of the “Kumali” type layout. Since then, there have been three other coasters added, including an S&S air launch.

Before Happy Valley though, I decided to do a little more cred whoring in a couple of parks that were fairly close, starting with Children’s Paradise. This place was conveniently located between two Metro stations, so was easy to get to without having to rely on idiot taxi drivers.

Shenzhen Children’s Paradise

As the name suggests, it’s a park aimed at families with young kids. However, it was actually pretty big and a lot nicer than Children’s Park from the previous day. I got there at half nine, but the rides weren’t opening until ten, which was a bit annoying. I spent the time just taking a few pictures and no doubt looking like a creepy old paedo.

Compared to the small parks the previous day, the place was really quiet. I took this to be a good sign; I was basically right that this “holiday” isn’t really much of a holiday at all for most people as they need to respect dead relatives and s**t.

I’m not sure how old the park is, but it felt very new. There was also lots of information in English, possibly due to the fact that it’s close to Happy Valley and Window of the World. They were building what I’m guessing to be a water play area.

The only coaster here is, predictably, a crappy little kiddy coaster.

With safety tips officially endorsed by Disney:

I was particularly looking forward to the feeling of being tossed high, fast and slow:

The rides opened at ten, but I realised that since the park was so quiet, the only place to get a ride ticket for the cred was back at the main entrance, which actually wasn’t particularly close. Ten minutes later I got the coaster done. Alone. Luckily there weren’t too many people around.

Nobody else looked like they were about to ride, so I didn’t hang around waiting to get some action shots of this high-octane thrill machine. I’d already been here longer than I’d planned due to the rides opening later than I expected and the hassle of walking to the front of the park and back for a ticket.

I got back on the Metro to get to the next place, but opted for a taxi at the other end rather than the twenty-minute walk up to the park. This would’ve been fine apart from the fact that another car, being chased by the police, crashed into us.

Ok, so it wasn’t quite as dramatic as “crashed”, more “scraped” as he tried to squeeze between us and another car at some traffic lights, before being cut off in front by a police car and slammed face first onto the bonnet as his girlfriend was handcuffed and led away.

The driver just gave his details to the police, got some kind of receipt thing, I’m guessing to use as proof to his bosses that the car damage wasn’t his fault, and I was at the park ten minutes later than if I would’ve just walked.

Zhongshan Park

Again, this was a regular park with an amusement section in one area. It was Shenzhen’s first public park, and is actually massive. It took me about 20 minutes to find the amusement park area since I’d entered from completely the opposite side.

This gate leads to the amusement park:

It was very similar to the other smaller parks I’d been to, especially East Lake Park, with a basically identical collection of rides.

Again, the place was dead except for about fifteen people milling around. I imagine that the previous day would’ve been much, much busier – basically on a par with East Lake Park since they’re essentially the same thing, but on opposite sides of the city.

Even the two coasters here were identical. A powered dragon thing:

And yet another Golden Horse Spinner:

After grabbing the creds, I headed back out of the park, this time through a smaller side entrance right next to the amusement park area, and straight into a taxi for Happy Valley.

Happy Valley

I ended up getting to the park at around 12, and luckily my predictions about the crowds had been right; there weren’t too many people around at all. There were plenty of people there, but nowhere near the number you’d expect to see on a public holiday. I was just glad I hadn’t gone the day before as I’m sure it would’ve been heaving.

They had a bunch of Halloween stuff up.

Annoyingly, only one ticket window was open, meaning that despite the fact there weren’t many people waiting to get in, it still took close to twenty minutes. The Happy Valley chain’s operations are notoriously sh**ty, and today would be no exception.

There was a considerable list of ride closures posted at the ticket window, but all in Chinese. I asked about Bullet Coaster, but was met with a blank stare. I decided to risk it anyway since there were still two other new coasters since my last visit.

The entire area with these two “new” coasters (actually about six years old by this point) was completely new to me and had been under construction during my last visit.

Baby Coaster, located on top of a building, was a complete walk on. The ride op seemed really chuffed to have someone to practise her English spiel on – “Are you ready? Three, two, one, GO!”

I never usually take a camera onto rides, but since I was rushed onto the train as soon as I had arrived, camera in hand and no time to put it away before the over-excited ride op dispatched me, I managed to get an awesome POV shot.

From there it was onto the next new coaster: a Golden Horse spinner. Oh joy of joys. Crappy operations turned what could’ve been a walk on ride to a twenty minute wait. They had three cars on the track, but wouldn’t dispatch a car until the previous one had returned to the final break run, despite the numerous block brakes these things have. It was easily the worst of this already crap ride type that I’ve been on, simply due to the fact that it pretty much stopped dead on every block break and they had the actual nerve to operate it so shoddily. S**te!

I was actually looking forward to this dark ride shooter, where you get to shoot Santa and his elves, but it was closed:

The splash battle in this area was really well themed, and was the most interactive one I’ve seen as non-riders can climb up and around the whole structure.

I walked past the S&S tower without riding. Come to think of it, I didn’t see or hear it going at all, so it was probably one of the rides listed as closed.

The park map is absolutely full of total lies. Apparently, this is the tallest tower ride in Asia. It’s probably not even in the top ten. I thought that maybe it was the tallest when it was installed 15 years ago when the park opened, or maybe they’re trying to include the hill in that description, but I came to the conclusion that they’re just dirty, evil liars.

I didn’t ride the rapids this time. I can’t really remember if they were any good or not, so I probably should’ve given them another go.

From here I was into the Gold Mine area.

You can see the water park from here. It was closed, but looked decent enough. They’ve added some racing slides and an aqua loop amongst other things since I was last here.

This wasn’t open until the evening. It’s one of those weird headphone things which make things sound like they’re right next to your face. I’ve done a few similar ones, and while they’re good, they become very pointless when they’re in a language you don’t understand.

The entrance to the Gold Mine area is pretty cool. It also gives you your first view of Bullet Coaster if you’re heading in from that direction.

Nothing going over that top hat though.

At this point I’d resigned myself to the fact that it wouldn’t be opening. I was going to have a quick go on the Vekoma mine train, but the queue looked to be about half an hour and I’d ridden it a couple of times before. I still think it’s one of the best-themed mine trains out there though.

I thought about coming back to ride it later, after going to at least take a few pictures of my disappointment. However, this happened:

A quick walk through the Shangri La Forest area, which also looks really nice, and I got to the queue for Bullet Coaster, which has a much more imaginative Chinese name of Tibetan Eagle.

Here’s where Happy Valley’s **** operations kick in again. There was just a one-train operation. Admittedly, the park wasn’t busy, so this could’ve been ok. They were running the whole thing stupidly slowly though. Have some not-so great pictures of the coaster from the queue line before I continue moaning.

The reason I hadn’t seen it running is because they were dispatching the train once every seven minutes. I actually timed it. There were only about 250-300 people in front of me, and it took over an hour and a half to get on the **** ing thing. I thought maybe they were just running it slowly because it was a quiet day, but a sign in the final area of the queue would suggest otherwise. There was a permanent “45 minutes from this point” sign, which was 100% accurate, meaning that they must be permanently running it deliberately slowly.

Let’s just get this right. They’re permanently running this thing, their signature coaster, at a 192 people per hour capacity! It’s **** ing appalling. Christ knows how long people have to wait on even mildly busy days.

They don’t let people into the station until the train hits the final break run. Then, they wait until everyone has completely cleared the station. Next, and this is the best bit, they make everyone waiting to get on the train do **** ing stretching exercises. I managed to just catch the end of it, but there was quite a bit more before this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jsNo3DIzgY[/youtube]

A. They could’ve been doing this while the train was out, rather than having guests standing in front of an empty train.
B. It’s **** ing stupid, pointless and ridiculous anyway.

It’s typical Asian bulls**t. Someone in some office somewhere has spent days coming up with this wonderful suggestion, it’s been taken as gospel that this is the way things have to be done, and nobody questions the absolute stupidity of it.

Anyway, I managed to get front row which was nice. After flatly refusing to take part in the absolute charade disguised as “safety”, I was finally on the train.

It’s amazing; absolutely brilliant. The launch, for me, is second only to Dodonpa’s, which isn’t surprising given that it uses the same launch system. The top speed is 83mph, which puts it as slightly faster than Stealth at Thorpe. There’s no data for the actual acceleration, but it definitely feels like it reaches its top speed quite a bit quicker though, which again would make sense given the ride system.

The following 225ft drop into the tunnel is fantastic, as is the rest of the layout. I’ll be honest, it rattles a bit, but not enough to really spoil the ride in any way. I never normally buy on-ride photos, but it was only about £2.50, and I had to get it just for the looks on the faces of the couple next to me. No idea where on the layout the camera was though.

Sitting on the break run, I felt a couple of microscopic spots of rain, which meant the coaster immediately closed. It was sooooooooooooo lucky considering that I almost spent some time taking pictures of the coaster before I joined the queue.

It does mean that I didn’t manage any rerides, or to get any decent pictures of the coaster actually running though. Still, you can get the idea:

Again, the park map is filled with absolute, shameless lies:

The speed, height, length and ride time seemed right, which makes me think that the price (the equivalent of £20 million) and G Forces are correct; the actual statistics seem accurate. However, the other claims certainly are not. I’d question whether it’s actually the most expensive coaster in China given that there’s a 4D up north – though I guess they could be similar - but it sure as hell isn’t by any stretch of the imagination the tallest, longest or fastest coaster in Asia.

I hadn’t done any of the horror walkthroughs before, and since there was only a short queue, I tried out the one that’s themed to a Himalayan research station.

There was just one (I think) live “actor” inside, the rest being some crappy sound and lighting effects and animatronics. I didn’t take any photos inside, though I guess I could have since you’re left to basically walk through at your own pace.

There was another walkthrough right next to this one, but I’m guessing that the entire queue from Bullet Coaster had now headed to these walkthroughs due to the closure and the enormous downpour – actually just spitting a bit – of rain.

Every coaster was now closed, so I didn’t have any chance, or really any inclination anyway, to ride the Vekoma SLC again.

Have a picture of the almost infamous ride sign:

I had a walk around the lake, taking a few pictures as I went. Have some.

I had ridden this before, and although it’s excellent for what it is, I didn’t feel like getting totally drenched.

Not even Happy Valley are stupid enough to close a water ride in a bit of rain.

Especially since it’s the tallest water ride in the world!

The crappy flat ride area at the front of the park had nothing operating, so I’m guessing these were the rides, along with the shooter and the shot tower, that were mentioned as closed at the entrance. It’s a decent selection actually, all from Zamperla and including a Discovery ride on the roof of a building, but nothing new since my last visit. The area itself is also really horrible and just doesn’t gel well with the rest of the park, which, for the most part is actually pretty nice.

So yeah, there were about six fairly major rides down for the day, but work was actually being done to the ones I could see, which suggests that the park knew it wasn’t going to be a particularly busy day. Then again, that almost sounds like common sense, and Happy Valley is completely devoid of that.

At this point, it was around 3pm. I had intended to stick around for their Halloween stuff which was due to kick off at half six, but with pretty much nothing running, and a “no re-entry” policy, I was left with pretty much no choice but to bugger off to the park across the road instead. This had always been an “if I’ve got time” park, and now, since the people who run Happy Valley are complete f**ktards, I had some time.

Window of the World

This place is literally right across the road from Happy Valley, but I hadn’t bothered with it on my last visit.

It’s basically just a bunch of models of famous landmarks from around the world, but since the Chinese are now making craploads of money, allowed out of their country and descending on the real places like plagues of locusts, it all seems a bit silly. It still seems really popular though.

Some of the models were really small and crappy, while others were absolutely huge and you could walk around inside them. I can’t be arsed to explain what each thing is, so feel free to turn it into a fun game, for which the winner will receive f**k all.

They were all organized into rough geographical areas by continent.

The Saint Mark’s Square area was the most bizarre to me, as you could actually walk around it and take pretty much the exact same photos that you would in the real place. Oh, I should just point out that all of the pictures from this park were taken from my eyeline. I didn’t squat down to try and force the perspective. In that respect, some of the park is actually quite impressive.

More stuff:

The centerpiece of the park is a 1/3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower at 108m tall. It’s actually pretty impressive, and you can take a lift up to the top for some great views over the park. You can also see Happy Valley’s “biggest in Asia” tower ride and the top hat of the “tallest, longest and fastest” coaster in Asia poking up over the buildings.

Buckingham Palace: Soviet Edition:

The Athens Acropolis area was on a steep hill, with no fencing and these warning signs:

Florence’s Uffizzi Gallery and Piazza della Signoria area was another large-scale, walkable area.

In “Egypt” you can have your picture taken on a camel. I imagine this would actually look quite good with the angles right.

The “Grand Canyon” was decked out with Halloween stuff; I’m assuming it was for a walkthrough in the evening. There was a also a log flume here, but it was closed.

There was an outdoor show that looked good – the “rain” effect is really quite realistic - but didn’t have any story to it.

It was getting dark by the time I reached the coaster, Greenland Exploration; I had basically gone the “wrong” way around the park before I got to it. It was walk on, and I didn’t get any pictures inside as I was basically ushered straight on and off it. It was a weird little thing, but not really any good.

Continuing on:

May need updating:

I think this ride was basically a rip-off of Disney’s Soarin’ ride, though I haven’t ridden Disney’s version to actually know. Anyone who’s done both care to enlighten me?

A lot of the paths between areas were lit up for Halloween.

I found an outdoor dinosaur walkthrough that was pretty decent. I imagine it would be **** during the daytime, but at night, with nobody else around, it was actually quite creepy. The animatronics and sound were motion activated.

A pair of T-Rexes were very well done, though it may not look like it with the flash from my camera. They were moving too much to get a decent picture without it.

The park looks much better at night. The exhibits are well-lit, even if some of the paths are pretty lethally dark, and it hides the crappy quality of a lot of it.

At this point they were playing some creepy music over the speaker systems which had previously been playing music appropriate to each area of the “world” along with information, in both Chinese and English, about each site. I also saw a bunch of “actors” getting ready to start work, I’m assuming in that Grand Canyon area, perhaps in others, but the costumes and makeup were pretty poor. They were just basically white robes with white face paint and a bit of blood. I was knackered at this point – the park is actually huge – and just couldn’t be arsed.

I also skipped the main show that was about to start in the large arena at the entrance and just decided to head back to my hotel to pick up my luggage and then head back to Hong Kong from there. The area outside the parks looks really good at night.

And that was pretty much it. Getting home was easy enough since my hotel was two metro stops from the border that connects to Hong Kong’s MTR, but really busy as lots of people were heading back over the border at the same time; I guess that’s to be expected as it was last day of a three-day weekend.

So, two and a half days, eleven parks, sixteen coasters (two of which were absolutely fantastic) including four Golden Horse spinners. Not a bad effort.

Shenzhen has plenty of opportunity for coaster whoring – Happy Valley could be a decent park if it weren’t for the retarded, crappy operations, as could Knight Valley if they added a bit more stuff to do – but as a city it’s a total **** hole with nothing else going for it.

Thanks for reading.

 

[furie]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 2: Filthy Whore

By Asia, do you think they mean "China"? And by China, they mean "Shenzhen"? Might explain things, lost in translation

I like the POV shot, good work. I've honestly never heard of Bullet Eagle thingy coaster, so that was a surprise to read about. Though I'm sure it'll be ignored when anyone goes on about how crap S&S are

Window of the World looks really good actually, but I imagine it's one of those quite depressing places to do on your own?

 

[Gavin]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 3: Whoring + Happy Valle

^Yeah, there's a mirror clone of Bullet Coaster which has just opened in another Happy Valley park - Wuhan I think - and another, slightly different version at the Beijing park that Ben and Jake managed to rides They're really good rides; we'll just have to wait and see how they age I guess.

Having said that, it opened about a year later than it should have, and had to have quite a bit of track work done to it. I'm presuming that means that any problems have been ironed out for the clone that has recently/is about due to open.

 

[Darren B]

Re: Shenzhen Cred Whoring PTR - Day 3: Whoring + Happy Valle

I can honestly say I didn't even know there was a 200ft+ Coaster in China (apart from the DM), and I'm shocked it was decent, S&S have a reputation of building crap coasters but seem to do ok with launched ones.

And I love how they use complete and utter lies to promote and boast their rides, I kind of get that they want to promote the S&S as the tallest in Asia, without looking on RCDB I'm guessing it's the tallest in mainland Asia, but the shot tower and the flume? It's actually quite funny tbh.

Anyways, fab report as always, keep them coming!