TPR's Taiwan Trip - Mini Updates!

[VegasCoasterGirl]

I have never been to Taiwan but these pictures really make me want to go!

[azza29]

Great POV Robb - Gravity Max is definitely on my ride bucket list now!

[robbalvey]

Today was our final day of parks in Taiwan. Ended up being one park that I really *wanted* to like, but just couldn't, and one park that was a nice surprise!

 

Leofoo Village was probably the "nicest" park of the trip in terms of theming and unique attractions, and staying at their "Mini-Animal Kingdom Lodge" hotel had so much promise, but the park itself reminded me a LOT of the Chinese Happy Valley parks - Nice looking park, decent attractions, but awful, AWFUL operations, and when you got up close, you realized that the theming wasn't *quite* as nice as it looked from further away.

 

It was a decent park, don't get me wrong, but the horrible operations turned what could have been a B+ park into a C-

 

Here are some photos. No video today... I honestly don't feel I can top that Gravity Max video!

Here's another look at Leofoo Village Resort. It was REALLY nice!

Any place with 8 Sulcuta tortoises is awesome to me! (They had more than pictured here!)

It was seriously a nice place. Well run, great theming, was really looking forward to this park...

Like I said above, I *really* wanted to like this park. And while it did have some nice rides and "ok" theming, the park operations were just terrible. It was such a disappointment.

We came in early to check out the coasters and the dark ride, but they were HELL BENT on us riding the Ring of Fire! lol

Anth and Neil were our "victims" and you can see what it did to them!

Having fun up there guys?

Next up was the highlight of our visit - we got a backstage walk-through of "Sultan's Adventure", which is an Indy-style dark ride. (Anyone know if this uses Intamin's system? It looked like it, but we weren't sure.)

Here we are inside the dark ride! Oh, BTW, they told us not to touch the yellow rail! It was fully live and would be quite *shocking* if any of touched it! lol

This is the "Indiana Jones" of this ride.

Here is a look at the ride vehicle.

"Don't touch the yellow rail!!!!"

"Don't shoot! I swear I'm not a Disney lawyer!!!"

The whole theming of the ride was really bizarre! It went from being under attack to dragons! I guess the Sultan was on quite the adventure!

Elissa really shouldn't keep using those low-budget airlines for TPR trips.

"If you feel something poking you in the behind...it's just my... camera..."

I'm not sure how the ride goes from a war zone to this, but whatever! lol

"Just hanging out with skulls and fruit...you know... a typical Saturday..."

The sets and props were "ok" - it was a decent ride. Not as good as the Indy-style ride at Lotte World, but still good.

The final room had this strange creatures with lack of audio! It was really strange!

When we finally got to ride, they put us in a broken ride vehicle that was "in test" and none of the motion base was working. For one, I'm not even sure why the would have this vehicle cycling, let alone loading it. On top of that, they were totally confused as to why we wanted to ride again, in a working vehicle, and almost didn't let us! We certainly weren't asking for anything out of the ordinary, but when we were all "Do you guys think we could ride, you know, in a vehicle that actually works so we can see the show as it was designed?" it was like pulling teeth to get them to understand why we wanted to do this. Weird.

They had one of those Intamin spinning coasters. Kidtums loved it. Elissa not so much!

We also did some credit whoring on the Roller Skater.

KidTums got two credits today!

We knew the Intamin Impulse was going to be closed well before our visit. It honestly wasn't that big of a deal. Of all the credits to miss, better to be one we can ride of clone of in several other places, rather than something unique like Gravity Max or Insane Speed.

Can someone please explain to me how it takes 10+ minutes to load a pirate ship? Even the Six Flags Magic Mountain crew would be making fun of how pathetic the ride operations were at this park!

The park itself *looked* really nice. Easily the nicest themed park we visited in Taiwan. I will say though, that the theming was like Happy Valley. Really nice from further away, but when you got closer, you can tell it was kind of done on the "cheap." Still...it looks nicer than 90% of any of the parks in the USA.

You can tell they were going after some sort of "Disney Knock-Off" though. It wasn't obviously ripped off or anything, but the similarities were there.

The park had three different themed areas.

The "USA - Wild West" section was one of them.

There was also a "South Pacific" section. Again, looked nice.

This really does look nicer than most parks in America, doesn't it?

They were running ONE side of the Intamin Drop Tower...poorly. Wouldn't even bother to look for parties to fill up the empty seats. So if you had a party of two, and then a party of four, they'd run the ride with just two people. Awful.

The "Arabian Nights" section did actually play the soundtrack from Aladdin, though!

Ok, story time - the "Pony Ride" at the park was awesome! We walked up to it and thought it was going to be one of those "Carousel Pony Rides" like you see at the fair (see the upper right hand pic), but when KidTums went up to ride, they unhooked the pony, put her on it, and started walking them around the park!!! It was awesome!!!

After riding the pony, she wanted to go feed them...

The ponies were seriously like scary and insane!!!

RUN AWAY!!!!

We tried to ride the train that took you through the safari animals, but it was PAINFUL how long it took to load the train. We got there when the train was half loaded and it still took another fifteen minutes. We ended up not getting on the train because we were too afraid this "20 minute" train ride would end up taking 40-50 minutes and it just wasn't worth it. Again, I really wanted to like this park, but OMG, please someone help them operate the park!

If you ever wanted a meal that's shaped like a Llama, this is the place to get it! lol

The park actually had numbers on the ground in front of each ride/shop/restaurant that matched the ones on the map! It was so funny because I don't think I've ever seen any other park do this!

Yes. That game is called "Kung-Fu Hamburger."

Has anyone ever seen this flat ride before? It was seriously screwed up and I don't think I've ever seen one like it before!

We ended up taking more pictures with static objects around the park because this was far less frustrating than trying to ride anything.

"Thanks for a great day at Leofoo....as long you don't want to ride anything...you can have a frustration free day!"

Our next park was Window On China, which was only about 10 minutes away from Leofoo. A VERY different type of park than Leofoo, but was a nice surprise this place was!

It had a REALLY NICE "mini land", like Legoland, but without Legos.

You have to take a train ride from the Mini-land part of the park to the amusement rides. The train was actually insanely fast!

First credit of the day!

This was the smallest of the Vekoma Roller Skater models (like the one at Fiesta Texas), but it was fun, and it was a credit! (And it also didn't take us forever to get on, even with a line, so it was nice to see a park with decent operations after Leofoo!)

The next coaster was an indoor, and it was actually quite nice!

It was supposed to be all space themed, but it felt more like Christmas! lol

The amusement park area had an indoor and outdoor section. I really don't understand why we don't have more indoor parks like this in the USA.

"Which roast squid would you like?"

"This is one of the best things I ever put in my mouth!"

Oh, no! KidTums is driving already?!?!?

KidTums proves she is STRONG enough to do the Hercules ride!

It was a human-powered cart ride where you had to push and pull your way around. This was actually a lot of fun!

It's just like being an Epcot!

The Mini-Land section was really cool. Lots of Asian-themed buildings and really gave Legoland some competition in this kind of thing.

Yay! Mini-Amusement park! All the ride models spun and moved. It really was quite impressive.

This reminds me... tomorrow we fly out of Taiwan and onto Japan!

And the awesome toilet sign of the day! lol

[robbalvey]

And I'm just going to post the Gravity Max video again, because that's how awesome it is! It was easily the best thing we rode on this trip.

Edited June 22, 2013 by robbalvey

[Garet]

Nice to see one of those intamin spinning coasters, I tried the one at Lotte World with just myself and although I can normally handle spinning rides with it unbalanced I think it's the closest i've ever come to puking on a coaster.

[Erik Johnson]

Just curious, was the dark ride still there inside the ride building at Window On China? It honestly was not very special, I think it was themed to trolls or something similar.

[robbalvey]

Just curious, was the dark ride still there inside the ride building at Window On China? It honestly was not very special, I think it was themed to trolls or something similar.

Didn't see it, but we did see that there was some construction going on in what looked like a giant space inside the building. Could this have been the dark ride?

[Erik Johnson]

Yep! That was it. At least those looked like the ride vehicles. Honestly it was not very good so no great loss.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Erik Johnson

[robbalvey]

^ Yeah, looking at the picture more, that certainly looks like dark ride track rails sitting next to the cars.

[sspaz1000]

Great update! Those pony's at lefoo look kind of crazy.

[Hurricane]

That unidentified flat ride is a SBF Visa Super Loop

 

http://www.sbfrides.com/product/en/61/SUPER-LOOP/

 

Also Gravity Max just looks damn insane!!!

[Philrad71]

Wow...Gravity Max just looks really, really cool. What a concept!

[Guy T. Koepp]

Here are some photos. No video today... I honestly don't feel I can top that Gravity Max video!

 

Don't even try man. You blew your load with that one. You need some downtime and a ton of vitamin-B12. You deserve it!

[kailisun98]

Will there be a Taiwan Tour next year Robb? Every time I see this TR, I want to see Taiwan's parks even more.

[KBrylczyk]

Here are some photos. No video today... I honestly don't feel I can top that Gravity Max video!

 

Don't even try man. You blew your load with that one. You need some downtime and a ton of vitamin-B12. You deserve it!

 

Don't forget the Gatorade.

[robbalvey]

Will there be a Taiwan Tour next year Robb? Every time I see this TR, I want to see Taiwan's parks even more.

It won't be next year, but we will do it in the near future!

[ernierocker]

Definitely would love to visit these parks in the future! Excited to be seeing Japan updates soon!

[rcdude]

Taiwan looks like a neat place with some very unique attractions. I definitely would be interested in a TPR trip here in the future, possibly combined with an add-on to Hong Kong for Ocean Park and Hong Kong Disneyland. It seems like Taiwan would make a shorter, cheaper Asia trip than Japan or South Korea at the expense of no real major parks and only a handful of large coasters.

 

Looking forward to the Japan updates. I haven't seen much coverage of the Northern Japan parks, so that should prove interesting.

[Nrthwnd]

<>

 

Neil and Anth, you look like you're not having any kind of fun, there.

 

(And YES to a Taiwan tour!)

[Geauga Dog]

Just watched the Gravity Max video, which is fantastic footage. For a short ride it looks pretty intense in spots. Too bad Vekoma doesn't make Tilt Coasters anymore as I think they would give the B&M Dive Machines a run for their money.

 

Thanks for all the updates and continue having a safe trip in Japan.

[GigaG]

Just watched the Gravity Max video, which is fantastic footage. For a short ride it looks pretty intense in spots. Too bad Vekoma doesn't make Tilt Coasters anymore as I think they would give the B&M Dive Machines a run for their money.

 

Thanks for all the updates and continue having a safe trip in Japan.

 

Do they still make tilt coasters or not? Could they maybe be integrated into their looper category?

 

This would probably destroy the website and turn away anybody who read it, but what if the filter replaced "tilt" with "S@!T" and "drop" with "OH S@!T".

[Garet]

Just watched the Gravity Max video, which is fantastic footage. For a short ride it looks pretty intense in spots. Too bad Vekoma doesn't make Tilt Coasters anymore as I think they would give the B&M Dive Machines a run for their money.

 

Thanks for all the updates and continue having a safe trip in Japan.

 

Do they still make tilt coasters or not? Could they maybe be integrated into their looper category?

 

This would probably destroy the website and turn away anybody who read it, but what if the filter replaced "tilt" with "S@!T" and "drop" with "OH S@!T".

 

[TPDave]

I'm loving the act that the tilt coaster is getting a ton of praise! I always saw it and just assumed at was a crappy gimmick ride but it looks like I was wrong, you can probably get a decent one of those on a small footprint so it's surprising they haven't sprung up elsewhere.

[GigaG]

Just watched the Gravity Max video, which is fantastic footage. For a short ride it looks pretty intense in spots. Too bad Vekoma doesn't make Tilt Coasters anymore as I think they would give the B&M Dive Machines a run for their money.

 

Thanks for all the updates and continue having a safe trip in Japan.

 

Do they still make tilt coasters or not? Could they maybe be integrated into their looper category?

 

This would probably destroy the website and turn away anybody who read it, but what if the filter replaced "tilt" with "S@!T" and "drop" with "OH S@!T".

 

 

It sounds like they are open to more tilters but nobody knows about it.

[KBrylczyk]

^ Parks are more keen to spend their money on tried and true crowd pleasers (Boomerang and SLC, unfortunately) than on something that hardly has any exposure.