What's up with park operations (staggered opening's, running single trains)? Seems to be a theme with asian theme parks (sans Disney). Anyway beautiful theming, and I love that pick axe entrance, very cool.
^ I don't really understand coasters/rides inside a mall - I mean you go to a mall to shop and people who shop a lot in malls are women and they don't traditionally go on coasters, they would rather shop lol! If you're doing a big girly shop you don't take your kids so I don't see where the audience is... maybe thats why they are always empty?
Obviously kids go on them but that would only be the weekend - are these mall rides cost effective? Am I missing a huge point here?
I've cut my carbon emissions so that Button, Hamilton and Kobayashi don't have to!
I just got back from 8 days of riding camels and staying with nomadic families in the Mongolian countryside. (Fantastic BTW!) I apologize for the lack of recent updates. Today I bring to you three small parks in Southern China.
Park #1: Honey Lake Amusement Park located in Shenzhen, China is home to two coasters. One of the two coasters (The one over the lake) has been known to be SBNO for several years, but for some strange reason the second coaster was also not operating both of the times we visited. Because of this I didn't bother to pay admission to enter the park.
Park #2: Donghu Park in Shenzhen, China is a small amusement park located within a green area that houses the cities large reservoir. In addition to several flats and two coasters, a few minutes away from the amusement section is an alpine slide. On the day I visited, the kiddie coaster was not operating and the employee told me it had been broken for a long time.
Park #3: Jing Ying Amusement Park in Guangzhou, China is a place I stumbled upon on accident. It is located in a very famous park in the city and wasn't even listed on RCDB until I submitted it. Since we didn't know it existed, we visited on a rainy day and I wasn't able to ride it because of the weather.
So to recap, I will show you five coasters in this update, but I was only able to ride one of them and it was a crappy Golden Horse rip off spinning mouse!
The next update will be from Chimelong Paradise in Guangzhou, China. Thanks for the great comments! Keep 'em coming!
The first stop on our tour is Honey Lake Amusement Park. It is located about ten minutes by foot from the subway in Shenzhen.
Actually this is the real park name, but for some reason all of the coaster sites have adopted the other, so pick your favorite.
Here is a park map. For some reason I didn't get a picture of the SBNO coaster over the water, but there is another thread on TPR with it if you are really interested.
This is the coaster that is supposed to be operating. It is a pretty standard coaster with two loops.
You can see it from the very drab park entrance.
And from across the street.
Next up we have Donghu Park. The park itself is large, but the amusement section is quite small. We thought this was it originally, but it turned out to be a wacked out zoo.
But we finally did find it along with this Chinese Amusement Park staple ride.
Oh yes and they have the exact same rip off spinning wild mouse as all of the others. Oh joy!
Sexy.......NOT!
The other coaster in the park is a junior dragon coaster. As you can see it was broken and the car was sitting in the middle of the track.
While the park is really small and didn't have much to contain us, it was clean and pretty well maintained.
To get a better look we hopped on the ferris wheel.
They also had a roller skating rink, but I couldn't wait to get to the alpine slide.
Take me up!
Its a long way to the top!
The only thing that stunk was they had the employee ride down in front of me so I couldn't get very fast.
But it was still a lot of fun!
Next up we have Jing Ying Amusement Park which is located in a beautiful large public park in Guangzhou.
The park's one coaster is a mouse called Speed Slide.
Unfortunately the coaster wasn't operating because of the rain. (No matter how hard I tried to convince them to let me ride!)
Just like Donghu, this park is really nice and well maintained, but small.
None of the rides were operating due to weather.
This track is for a self powered monorail type ride. These are also very popular in Chinese theme parks.
When leaving the park we stumbled upon a few hiking trails that had animal figurines along them.
Some were nice
and others need work
But the whole area is quite beautiful! I hope you enjoyed the update.
I write about how to travel the world for pennies on the dollar at Miles To Memories!
Thanks for the continued updates! I find your travels quite amazing!
Under one of your pictures you wrote:
"Unfortunately the coaster wasn't operating because of the rain. (No matter how hard I tried to convince them to let me ride!)"
I'm assuming that you don't speak Chinese. (I could be wrong!) Do many of the Chinese people you've encountered speak English? Or do you end up making begging gestures like I probably would (only to still be denied)?
Big Mike: Thanks for gracing my thread with your holy presence. Seriously though, after visiting these parks and being disappointed, my wife put a new rule that we couldn't visit any other parks in China that had less than three coasters. So far I have followed the rule, because it takes so much time and energy to get to some of these smaller places when you are traveling independently.
JJ: English in China is very rare. In fact, the few people who know anything speak just a few words usually. For the most part we use hand signals and rely on pictures and getting things written down ahead of time, but the Chinese are also very poor at non verbal communication as well. I guess after traveling for as long as we have, you learn to adjust and the situation of not being able to communicate is less stressful.
As for in that specific circumstance with the coaster, another employee was trying to help me convince the ride op to run the coaster but failed. All I did was show enthusiasm and say please with my hands, but the ride op just smiled and shook his head. It was raining hard and we were literally the only ones in the park, so I think they just chalked me up to being crazy!
Thanks for the great comments guys!
I write about how to travel the world for pennies on the dollar at Miles To Memories!
Chimelong Paradise is located in Guangzhou, China which sits about an hour north of Hong Kong. The park itself is perhaps China's best example of a typical western style amusement park. It opened in 2006 with five coasters and recently added a B&M dive machine.
While Chimelong Paradise has a small amount of theming, it doesn't go over the top like Happy Valley. What the park does do is provide a lot of rides and a nice pleasant atmosphere in which to enjoy them. They do have staggered ride operating hours which I don't like, but have so many rides that the lines hardly ever get out of hand.
With all of that said Chimelong Paradise is by far my favorite theme park in mainland China and only second to Hong Kong Disneyland to the parks I have shown in this thread. In short, it rocks! Enjoy the trip report.
P.S. The day we visited was very grey, so some of the pictures didn't turn out well. I hope you enjoy the rather large update.
Chimelong Paradise is part of a large tourist resort that is conveniently located off of the Guangzhou Metro.
This advertisement in the subway gets me excited for the day.
The subway stop actually brings you to the back entrance of the park. (Where the dive machine is located!) This proved to be quite beneficial.
Chimelong back entrance. Shawn Reece is excited until I tell him that he can't ride the dive machine! =-(
The brand new "Dive Coaster" as it is called really dominates the back of the park. Here is the turn around into the splashdown.
This was my first dive machine experience and I was excited!
Where is the entrance? Oh that way!
Oh here it is! I couldn't have said it any better myself!
Just inside the queue.
Here is a look at the train.
And now for some random photos of the ride in action.
Going through the Immelmann.
The second drop goes into a tunnel before emerging and making a turnaround into the splashdown.
Did I say splashdown?
Ok last picture of Dive Coaster. IMO the ride was fun but not life altering. I had high hopes with this being my first dive machine, but left a bit disappointed.
The park's other major coasters is aptly named the 10 Inversion Coaster.
As its name implies the coaster goes upside down ten times. It is a clone of Colossus at Thorpe Park.
The coaster does five heartline rolls which IMO is too much!
This is before my first ride. (Jasmine wouldn't go back on it!)
Just to give you an idea of how intense this ride is, here is a sign directly outside of the exit. (And plenty of people were using this area)
Not my favorite coaster.
After 10 inversion we headed to the only coaster in the park we could handle.
Not bad for a kiddie ride.
Well if kiddie coasters aren't your thing then they also have an Intamin Halfpipe!
The Chinese girls just love it!
And they play this interview with Walter Bolliger in the queue for all you nerds out there!
They also have one of those horrible Golden Horse spinning mouse coasters. One picture is enough!
The park's last coaster is named Motorbike Coaster.
This Vekoma motorbike is much much much better than the Intamin version I rode at Dreamworld in Australia.
This ride actually has a little speed and is a good family ride. (Of course with the 1.3m height requirements families really can't ride it!)
Here is a picture of the bikes if you have never seen this type of coaster before!
Ok now its time to see some more of the park.
The park has a ton of kiddie rides.
They also have the Chinese staple fire truck team work ride.
Like I said pleasant but not overdone.
Unfortunately with horrible height requirements, Shawn Reece was stuck on kiddie rides for most of the day.
Chimelong also has plenty of rides that go in circles.
Jasmine was glad to see Mexico was represented.
Here are a few more rides.
This frisbee was top notch. It is the best one I have been on!
They wouldn't let Shawn Reece do the sub ride by himself so I brought an umbrella.
Before closing I have to talk about Chimelong's shows. We saw three and they were all very good. The first one was a lumberjack show.
It was USA vs. Canada. This is the USA team.
And here are the Canadians!?!? They don't look like Canadians to me.
The whole thing was a lot of fun and the Chinese seemed to eat it up!
They also had a second show that we stumbled upon on accident. It had aerobics.
and this. Also a lot of fun!
But there big show is a rip off of Water World at Universal Studios. (Only better!)
I spy a credit!
The show has jetskis, boats, hovercrafts, submarines and more. It is high budget and high energy!
What can I say? I liked it!
Now I leave you with a few random shots of Chimelong Paradise!
Alright then. I think that is it. Anyone who is going to Southern China needs to go to Chimelong Paradise.
I write about how to travel the world for pennies on the dollar at Miles To Memories!
Nice update. Chimelong Paradise seems like a cool park with a nice selection of rides. Even the shows seemed like they were really good. Oh and I liked the shot of you with the umbrella, had me laughing .
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