TR: Asia: TPR best of China Tour overview

[David H.--REMOVE "STOPSPAM" to reply]

I've gotten way behind in writing these TR's. And I've also forgotten to
post links to the updates here, as well.

The original version of this photo trip report, along with 27 pictures and
additional commentary, can be found at:
http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1285420#p1285420


TPR Best of China Tour overview.

This is going to be a different type of update. Candice Fu of the Chinese
Roller Coaster Dream club asked me to write up an article for their online
newsletter about the TPR China trip. I wrote an overview that touched on
the highlights of the trip. I think it makes a nice preview of the trip, so
I decided to post it here, along with some pictures of the best parks and
coasters of the trip. This should give you a good idea of some of the
awesomeness that was this trip. Read the rest of my updates as they come in
for a more detailed look at the trip and the parks. It's gonna be epic!


Last September, I visited China with Theme Park Review for a crazy tour to
much of the country to visit the best amusement parks and roller coasters
China had to offer. It was a wild, crazy, exhausting trip, but I am very
glad I went. We really got a sample of the best that Chinese parks had to
offer. In addition to all of the big parks, we also visited a large number
of small parks, just so that we could add the roller coasters to our lists
of ones that we had ridden, a process we tactlessly call �credit whoring,�
if you�ll pardon the crude language. While those weren�t really the
highlights of the trip for me, I did find it fascinating how many small
amusement parks China has, often tucked away in city parks or zoos, or
similar places.

The first leg of the trip was Beijing. I was glad that we got the chance to
visit historic sights like the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square, the
Forbidden City, and the Olympic Bird�s Nest and Water Cube. We did some
�credit whoring� at Shijingshan and Sun Parks, which had a surprising
number of coasters, several of which I was too fat to ride! That was the
first time I had ever been denied a coaster ride due to weight, and it was
depressing. But our main goal in Beijing was to get to Happy Valley.
Crystal Wing may be typical B&M flying coaster, and a clone of the
Superman: Ultimate Flight coasters in the US, but we all agreed that the
very extensive theming really made it a much better ride, especially with
all the near-misses with the scenery! Unfortunately, Extreme Rusher was
broken down, so we missed the first S&S launched coaster of the trip.
Victory Kingdom was also a highlight, mainly due to its nice theming and
it�s really good flat rides. Most of them may have been what we jokingly
call �Chinese knockoffs�, but the flat rides were a lot better than the
�Chinese knockoff� roller coasters!

Our next leg was in Chengdu. Probably the most fun ride of the entire trip
(and probably my life!) was our rides on the Tagada ride at Floraland. The
ride operator clearly was having a lot of fun giving these crazy Americans
a wild ride, unlike any that we�d ever get to ride in the US, with our
overzealous lawyers! Check out Robb�s video on youtube to see the
craziness! Chengdu�s Happy Valley had what I thought was the best of the
four Intamin Mega-Lite�s with its Fly Over Mediterranean coaster. I�m not
sure why, but I felt that it was the most powerful of them all, and I rode
three of them on my Asian trip. The middle section of the coaster with its
ejector airtime and fast directional changes was intense. Our last stop in
Chengdu was to the panda sanctuary, where most of us paid to briefly hold a
panda, which was an amazing experience!

From there, we went to Wuhan, which has quickly become famous among coaster
enthusiasts worldwide for Happy Valley�s misspelled Gravity Group Dauling
Dragons coasters, with the first ever high-five element, which lets riders
of both coasters almost touch hands over their heads as the trains turn
sideways. It may be a gimmick, but it�s an impressive and fun one. And the
coasters themselves were as crazy and intense as you�d expect from the
Gravity Group. Unfortunately, OCT Thrust wasn�t yet finished, so we missed
yet another S&S launched coaster!

Shanghai was probably my favorite city in China. Luckily, we got to explore
the city, visiting the China Pearl Tower (and its coaster inside!) and with
a boat cruise on the river, which let us see the gorgeous skyline at night.
Many of us would also explore the city at night, especially since our hotel
was so close to the Nanjing Road shopping area. Jin Jiang Park surprised us
with a nice coaster assortment, including Mountain Peak, which was a
standard Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerang, but was somehow much smoother
than any of others in the world, all of which I�ve ridden. Most of us
thought that it was the best GIB anywhere, and not just because some of us
got a rollback on it. Shanghai�s Happy Valley probably had the best
collection of coasters in the country, with the Intamin Mega-Lite, the B&M
Diving Coaster, and the awesome Gravity Group wooden coaster Fireball.
Plus, I got to meet kindred coaster spirit Roller Coaster Dream�s president
Candice Fu, who I spent some time with at the park, getting in one last
ride on Fireball, as we rushed back to meet the group to leave the park. We
just had time to get in a ride on the great compact Vekoma flying coaster
Stingray, which the park was nice enough to let use rid just before the
park was exclusively for a group that had paid to have the park to
themselves.

We only visited two parks in one day in Changzhou, but both of them were
excellent, with extremely good theming. World Joyland is known around the
world for having knockoff World of Warcraft theming. And while the theming
is amazing, the B&M flying coaster that seems to have two different names �
Starry Sky Ripper and Sky Scrapper � was even more amazing. I thought it
was the most intense coaster B&M has built in years, with a unique and
creative design, and absolutely full of the positive G forces I love. It
was easily my favorite steel coaster of the whole trip! Later, we met up
with Candice again at China Dinosaur Park, a park I wish we�d had more time
at. And not just because Dinoconda is one of the world�s only S&S 4D
coasters, but because of all of the great theming, too. But we had to rush
out to catch a flight that ironically ended up being cancelled!

Once we got a rescheduled flight to Guangzhou the next day, we visited the
huge Chimelong Paradise park, home to two big cloned coasters in the
accurately named Dive Coaster and 10 Inversion Coaster (which we all
counted out as we went through them!) and the surprisingly good Motobike
Launch Coaster. The park also has a Half Pipe coaster named Half Pipe and a
Young Star coaster called YoungStar. Clearly the park spent a lot of time
coming up with original names! Later that day, we headed to the very
strange, but also very charming Chuanlord Holiday Manor park. Their
coasters may not have been all that special, but their Ghost Ship
Gothenburg was excellent, and the people in the ride were very effective
and genuinely scaring this group of jaded park enthusiasts, often with
nothing more than a t-shirt on a stick!

In Shenzhen, we started at Knight Valley, which was this huge, sprawling
park on the mountainside, on multiple levels, with stairways and escalators
between the levels. It seemed like a really nice park, but unfortunately a
large number of the rides weren�t open when we tried to ride them (although
some people said that some of them opened later.) Luckily, they had the
excellent Wood Coaster by GCI, which was one of their best. And the view
from the top of the mountain was spectacular. Ironically, our last Happy
Valley of the trip in Shenzhen was the company�s first While none of the
other coasters were all that great, we finally got on an S&S launched
coaster, the excellent � if a little rough -- Bullet Coaster.

We crossed the border into Hong Kong, where we stayed on Disney property at
Disney�s awesome Hollywood Hotel. But first, we went to Ocean Park, which
has what has to be one of the most spectacular settings of any park, on the
mountainsides of Hong Kong, which you take an underground train or an
amazing cable car ride to get up to. It also had a great new B&M floorless
coaster called Hair Raiser, appropriately named because of the several
moments of unexpected airtime. I ended up liking the park so much that I
would go back two nights later after the TPR trip was over to check out
their Halloween event, which was absolutely world-class, with a bunch of
uniquely themed mazes and monsters roaming the entire huge, sprawling park.
But in between, we first did some sightseeing up to Victoria Peak and on a
sampan on the harbor, and checked out the nighttime laser show. Then we
enjoyed Hong Kong Disneyland, with its great new Big Grizzly Mountain
Runaway Mine Cars coaster (a cross between the Big Thunder Mountain
Railroad coasters and Expedition Everest) and Space Mountain, which had
Halloween theming in it!

And that was it for the official trip. I stayed in Hong Kong for an extra
two days, doing some more sightseeing, going back to Ocean Park, hitting
the nightclubs, and taking a day trip to Macau to see the amazing House of
Dancing Waters show and to take the terrifying Skyjump off the Macau Tower.

Overall, it was an incredible trip. To be honest, I wasn�t expecting to
enjoy China as much as I did. I was planning this trip as a sort of
�checkoff� so that I could say that I�ve been there and to its coasters and
parks and not need to go back. But I really enjoyed myself and am sure I�ll
return some day.

The parks certainly weren�t perfect. Ride operations were often horribly
slow. Rides were closed for seemingly no reason, even when the parks were
busy. (They opened Golden Wings in Snowfield for our filming session at
Happy Valley Beijing, then closed it and never opened it again that day to
the public, even though Extreme Rusher was broken down!) And there were
certainly a lot of cloned and knockoff coasters, where I would have liked
to have seen a lot more creativity. The knockoff coasters were often even
rougher than the originals, although I actually enjoyed a lot of the
knockoff flat rides. And a lot of the parks, particularly the Happy Valley
parks deserve a lot of credit for some really nice theming that was usually
better than most of the theming at US parks, outside of Disney or
Universal. They definitely had theming that was a lot better than anything
you�d find at any Six Flags or Cedar Fair park. And I�ll give credit to
Chinese parks for really embracing creative dark rides and haunted houses,
rides that we don�t see as often in the US.

It was also nice to see that even with all the knockoff coasters, there
were also a bunch of really creative new coaster designs going into Chinese
parks. All of the wooden coasters were great, especially the Gravity Group
ones. Sky Scrapper was one of the most intense and creative B&M coasters
ever. Dinoconda was rough, but exciting. Stingray was a surprisingly
intense, yet compact design. Disney even tried something new with Big
Grizzly Mountain. And some of the clones they did have were among the best
of their clones, like Crystal Wings, Mountain Peak and absolutely the two
Intamin mega-lites, not to mention the various B&M dive coasters.

That said, what made the trip unforgettable was being able to do it with a
bunch of great people from Theme Park Review. Robb and Elissa Alvey�s
incredible planning made everything go as smoothly as possible. And there�s
no question that we would never have gotten as many rides as we did without
Robb getting the parks to do filming sessions with us on the rides. And
it�s always great to travel with a group of crazy coaster nuts to keep up
the energy and enthusiasm, seeing old friends and making new ones,
including a new friend in Roller Coaster Dream China!


<waiting for the inevitable flamewar crap and hate posts....>



"With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured,
the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us
all irrevocably." -Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
"The Drumhead", _Star Trek: The Next Generation_