Schwarzkopf Posted November 12, 2011 Author Share Posted November 12, 2011 Forbidden City I'm not going to tell you what this is, because you should know. If you don't, shame on you! There's a moat around it. One of the main entrances, opposite Tiananmen Square. We used this one... It's huge, but we found it rather repetitive. Every time you walk into a new section, it's a the same as the previous one. It's huge, but we found it rather repetitive. Every time you walk into a new section, it's a the same as the previous one. It's huge, but we found it rather repetitive. Every time you walk into a new section, it's a the same as the previous one. But, it was very pretty. Me sashaying... Ben shanteing... On the way to the gardens... The gardens were cute <3 We then left at the other end, doing a circuit of the Raoul... This got us back to Tiananmen Square. There were no tanks unfortunately, just babies being lifted in the air to piss in bins. Looking back to FC... Yeah, that's the square. It was pretty dull to be honest! We quickly minced to Beijing Zoo, cus Ben wanted another Panda fix... Aww <3. People were throwing VARIOUS projectiles at the bears... By this point it was time for dinner, and after seeing an advert on the metro for duck necks; ... we wanted some duck. Yeah. This is the biggest duck restaurant in the world or something... it was excessive! We had a whole duck, head included. 'Can we have the BILL please?' It was well nice <3. Oh, and the woman insisted that we have some bone soup. It, was, grotesque. Thanks for reading! Next part... Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park, home of the Chinese knockoff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfc Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I found this part of your trip report repetitive. But the duck looks good. Seriously, I am looking forward to seeing the Forbidden City next year. Thanks for the sneak peek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DenDen Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Amazing pics and report, thanks for sharing!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwarzkopf Posted November 13, 2011 Author Share Posted November 13, 2011 ^ Thanks! Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park With 10 coasters, this was the park with the most amount of credits on the whole trip. It was a pretty huge park actually. As usual, it was about £2 to get in, then it was pay per ride. It wasn't cheap by any means, costing us more than £30 to get all our credits. When compared to the general cost of living in China, it's VERY expensive. Knockoff Disney castle <3 The first credit we stumbled upon was the mine train, which was a clone of the one at Sun Park (but in a much worse condition)... To get to the main section of the park you have to go over a bridge, which gives pretty good views of the other rides: The SLC hadn't opened yet, so we jumped on the Big Apple next to it... It was rather overgrown... A Chinese park wouldn't be complete without a Golden Horse! Next up was the Knockoff loopscrew... If I remember correctly, this was the smoothest one on the trip and was ALMOST good! The Knockoff Batflyer was closed. Shame, it looked amazing //3. It might be SBNO, as we returned a few days later and it was still dead. I'm sure I saw a PTR from a couple of months before we went and it was closed then too... Oppsite the Batflyer was 'Jurassic Adventure' or something. For an enclosed coaster it was pretty huge and had some amazing theming, if a bit ghetto. For some reason this park has two 'Jungle Mouse' coasters, one being larger and newer than the other. We did the newer one first, which wasn't too bad... The smaller one was GROSS though. I did get a video of it but can't find it... By this point the Knockoff SLC had opened. Goliath (Walibi) anyone? I don't really know what to say about this coaster... The shape of that twist... It nearly stalled on several elements... This video shows how slow it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfiXwsypeHI The last (open) credit was the shuttle loop, 'Coaster'... There were loads of Knockoff flats, loads. The most interesting ride for me was 'Adventure of Jones' aka 'Ghetto Knockoff Stormforce'. It was FAB <3 It had the backwards drop and everything <3 Spite Gardaland... Another view of the castle... 'Some cheesy show... Ugh //3 Health and safety? So RCT... The last ride we did was a Soarin knockoff, which actually used some of the scenes from the real one, mixed with some other Chinese stuff. So ghetto, but better . Thanks for reading! Next part: Happy Valley Beijing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netdvn Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 (edited) How is the knockoff SLC ride? From the video, it looks pretty rough (and the pacing is awful). I'm not surprised that more of those things don't stall very often (and if they do, we don't really hear about it much). The layout itself doesn't look that bad though. How did the knockoff flats fare compared to the real flat ride models? The park overall looks nicely themed in some places and not so well-themed in other places. Thanks for posting these. Edited November 14, 2011 by netdvn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.J. Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Whoever built that park must know how to play RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. I don't know of ANYWHERE ELSE where someone would come up with "hand sticking out of ground holding trident". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddytheviper Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 That coaster video is just... wow. Chinese parks are just so fascinating to me, so much wrong yet, awesome about them, especially the blatant copyright infringement Also those bricks just being strewn across the walkways... also wow. The Disney'esk castle and the IOA style Poseidens fury are a highlight of mine personally Great TRs, I look forward to the next update!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharkTums Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Getting caught up here... Yeah Forbidden City is like a bad trip. You go through the gates, and you see the same thing. So you trudge through keep walking, get to the next area, go through the doors, and yes, it's exactly the same again. I remember by the end we were wondering how many more doors we had to walk through to make it to the end! Shenzhou Coaster (rip off SLC) is one of the worst coasters on the planet. Some of our group didn't even fit on it as it has weird awful restraints. Rich (SFNE2005) and I sat in the front seat and basically felt like we were getting into car accident after car accident as the rest of the train would come and hit us from behind after nearly stalling in all the inversions. It was terrifying and painful. Not surprised about Bat Coaster not running. I know it's had a lot of issues and apparently we were pretty lucky to get on it in 2008. We saw one of the other cars that was designed for it sitting on a piece of storage track and that looked like it would have worked better but who knows. Just terrible Chinese contraptions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwarzkopf Posted November 13, 2011 Author Share Posted November 13, 2011 Pretty much what Elissa said really. The restraints were HORRIBLE, and they pinned me to the point that I had trouble breathing for the whole ride (they were pushing right against my collar bones and I couldn't inhale fully it was so tight). It was SO rough too, but I think that was mainly due to the amount of shuffling which occurs as it struggles through the inversions. The main problem with Chinese manufactured coasters is that they're designed for shorter people. If you're over about 5ft 10 you'll find a lot of them very uncomfortable (we're both over 6ft and there were a few coasters we only just got on). The shuttle loop coasters were particularly painful on my shoulders. Regarding flat rides, to be honest, we didn't really do any on the whole trip (except the Giant Frisbees). I'm not the biggest fan of flats anyway, and simply wouldn't trust a lot of the rides in China. I'll go on the coasters, but even on quite a few of them I was genuinely scared. Flats though? Nah. Besides, they were pretty generic, and most parks were pay per ride so that was another deterrent. Thanks for the comments again! I'll try and get Happy Valley up tomorrow, then it's just the Great Wall and the report is finished! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MayTheGForceBeWithYou Posted November 14, 2011 Share Posted November 14, 2011 What scenes from Soarin got ripped off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwarzkopf Posted November 14, 2011 Author Share Posted November 14, 2011 Happy Valley Beijing It was quite surreal going to this park because as a teenager I admired the theming, and to be honest, couldn't see myself going here for a while (if ever)... The operations here were a lot better than the other two Happy Valleys, but they still did the irritating opening times. Crystal Wings and Extreme Rusher didn’t open till a bit later so we started at the back of the park. The Mine Train was up first… We were a bit sick of these by this point, but it looked pretty. We then got the SLC over and done with, which only took about half an hour thank GOD. Yeah, it was worse than the one in Shenzhen… (still better than Kumali <3) The other burdenous cred was the Golden Horse, which took a rather venomous, spiteful hour 3. This area to me was the only part of the park which felt run down… ... it did spite Bugs Life / Antz though <3 (and you can see them GORPING //3) By this point Crystal Wings had opened and had a short queue… … guess why? TWO TRAINS No word of a lie, this was the first and last park in China we saw coasters running two trains. Crystal Wings is fab. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Superman (SFGadv) so wasn’t expecting much, but the setting of Crystal Wings made it for me. <3. The Disko totes ruins this 3 The last coaster was the new S&S, Extreme Rusher. The queue was excessive, but they were running two trains (<3) so they can be forgiven. They were running it really well actually, but I guess new rides are always spiteful… It was about 2 hours... Eventually it was our turn. I’ll post a little review after the photos… This hill was OBSCENE. It was like, a turn, with ejector airtime, banked the wrong way... The trains <3 I thought it was really good. The launch was amazing, and the layout is so random and RCT-esque that it feels out of control. The only issue I had was that a couple of the transitions were REALLY brutal, especially when you enter the brakes. Hopefully it doesn’t become painful in a few years… Another ride I remember thinking looked fab was the Frisbee, but for some reason they’ve removed the snakes from the supports… maintenance issues perhaps? Never seen a stand up Rockin’ Tug before, AND it had a bump in the middle… The Splashdown looked fab, but we couldn’t be bothered to queue over an hour for it... OK, we didn’t ride anything else so I’m just going to post the rest as general park photos: Absolutely gorgeous park, helped even more by having decent operations. Happy Valley Shanghai had slightly better coasters, but I’d rather spend a day here I think. Thanks for reading! Next (and final) part: The Great Wall of China Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schotcher Posted November 14, 2011 Share Posted November 14, 2011 Extreme Rusher looks amazing. Is there a POV of this thing floating around anywhere? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwarzkopf Posted November 14, 2011 Author Share Posted November 14, 2011 This is the only one I can find... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharkTums Posted November 14, 2011 Share Posted November 14, 2011 I love how you say you've been drooling on this park since you were a 'teenager'! What was that, like last week? There were two schools of thought on this park when we went back in 2008. Some of us loved it and thought it was up to IOA Quality, but some of us (me included) thought there was something very fake and Chinese about the theming and it wasn't as impressive as it looks in pictures once you saw it up close. Thanks for sharing. Can't believe we're going to have three of those S&S Extreme Rush things to ride next year! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
packfanlv Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 I agree with Elissa that this park seemed cheaply built to me back in 2008. Your pictures do look like they have kept it up though. The new coaster looks nice, but did they theme it at all or did they just give up on that? Thanks for the trip report. I have really enjoyed reading it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fry Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 What scenes from Soarin got ripped off? I can't remember exactly which ones mainly because it's been a few years since I did Soarin and I don't really like it anyway, but, most of them were there if I remember. There was certainly the bit with the Golden Gate Bridge, the orange groves, the skiers on the mountain, the river and some others I'm forgetting. There was then also some bits of China thrown in as well. It was... bizarre. What was also weird is the ride system was a bit different in that you climbed to the very top of this building to load, and then the ride itself lowered down, so the screen was beneath you when you started. Very odd. Directly below was the 3D cinema and the Soarin knock-off operated on a rotational basis with that, so I thought they were probably just the same screen. Which is kinda cool actually, quite clever if not very... Chinese. The new coaster looks nice, but did they theme it at all or did they just give up on that? It is pretty much a generic "racing" theme that you'd just find at an amusement park. It looks good, and fits in nicely, but, it's very generic and not really a "theme" like some of the other rides in the park have. The coaster itself is REALLY fun though, so I forgive it! I really liked Happy Valley Beijing, and thought some of the areas were totally gorgeous, like near Crystal Wings. Up close some of it had been abused or was obviously quite cheap, thinking of the Crystal Wings queue for example, but, overall I thought it was a lot nicer than most other Chinese parks. I think the fact that the last park with "themeing" we'd been to being World Joyland helped, which Elissa, I've gotta say, you're going to have a field day at. It's just wrong and horrible on so many levels. And to say it rips off Islands of Adventure is an understatement. It's... yeah. It's one to really, really look forward to in a "it'll be a day you WON'T forget" way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwarzkopf Posted November 16, 2011 Author Share Posted November 16, 2011 The Great Wall of China There are various sections of the wall you can visit. The closest one to Beijing is Badaling, but it's also the most touristy (and a lot of it has been rebuilt) so we spited it and went to Jinshanling. It was a bit of a pain to get to because you have to get a bus to a town 'nearby', then hire a driver to take you the rest of the way, then take you back. It was a bit overwhelming when we got off the bus and were getting harassed by all the drivers. It was pretty vile 3. However, when we got to the wall it was worth the spite. The condition of the wall changes every time you turn a corner... Some of it was really steep, worse than Brighton & Hove /3 Shoot <3 The next day we had a HORRID journey home... Beijing - Shanghai (2 hours) 2 hour layover Shanghai - Hong Kong (2 hours) 12 hour layover Hong Kong - Doha, Qatar (8 hours) 3 hour layover Doha, Qatar - London (7 hours) ///3. All in all, I can't make my mind up about China. It's an amazing place, but for all the wrong reasons. I don't like seeing one side of a road full of luxury apartments, with people on the other side sitting in the gutter with rags on who have absolutely nothing. But, I guess it's only recently discovered how fab capitalism is... it'll level out eventually. Oh, and I don't miss the food. Ugh. Or people spitting on the floor //3. That's it. Thanks for reading! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharkTums Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 ^You forgot the awesomeness of Chinese babies with their private parts hanging out and peeing everywhere. That even offended Kristen! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwarzkopf Posted November 16, 2011 Author Share Posted November 16, 2011 Ughhhh that was VILE. I did mention it earlier (scroll back to Tiananmen Square, haha)! Gross. I still think the spitting is worse because it happens so often, and the NOISE they make just before //3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vacoaster09 Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 If you are able to recall.... at Suzhou Giant Wheel Park... Did the sting ray train recline in the station or on the lift? Also at the end of the ride did it raise back up in the brake run or in the station? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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