Photo TR: Chongqing Happy Valley/Foreigner Street (1/22/18)

[The Angry Darren Mullins]

January 22, 2018: Happy Valley and Foreigner Street in Chongqing

 

Happy Valley: This is the newest of the Happy Valley parks. It opened in 2017. It is a large park with four coasters. My first coaster of the day was Family Coaster. This was my first family boomerang coaster from Vekoma. I would love to see more of them built. Mine Train Coaster was next. This uses a new track design and it is a big improvement over the previous Golden Horse built rides. Flying Wing Coaster from B&M was closed. I was told it was due to the cooler weather. With that being said, the rapids ride and shoot the chutes were both open.

 

Jungle Dragon is a GCI wooden coaster and is located on a hill in the park. This became wooden coaster #104 for me to ride and coaster #1122 for me to ride in total. It is easily one of the best wooden coasters I have ever ridden. It is well worth the trip to Chongqing. One downside to my visit to Happy Valley was....the crappy operations. This painfully slow operations caused me to go ahead and leave after a couple of rides on Jungle Dragon and that leads me to part 2 of this TR.

 

Foreigner Street: This is more of an area with a bunch of stand alone attractions and a few small, gated parks. The park makes me think of what Coney Island in New York used to be as it is exactly that. A mix of parks and stand alone rides and attractions. a person could easily spend a small fortune here riding the numerous rides. It was also very busy here. It was nice to see this after visiting an empty Happy Valley earlier in the day and visiting an empty Fantawild park the day before.

 

This would finish my visit to Chongqing. I have now ridden 1127 different coasters.

I will start the day at Happy Valley. It is the newest Happy Valley park.

The Eye of Chongqing is just inside the gate.

The mine train from Golden Horse is also near the entrance.

Notice that the track is different on this one. It actually is an improvement.

This would be my first Vekoma Family Boomerang. It is called Family Coaster.

It is an interesting ride.

It would be neat to see more of these.

Here is the carousel shot for the park.

The rapids ride looks great, but it was too cold to ride it.

It was also too cold for this thing too.

Here is the Wing Coaster for Happy Valley Chongqing.

It looks like a great coaster, but I was told they will not open it in the cooler weather...but they opened the water rides.

It is called Flying Wing Coaster. It is too bad it was closed today.

The thrill is on the hill...

Meet Jungle Dragon.

It is a great ride.

It is one of the best wooden coasters I have ever ridden.

I have arrived at Foreigner Street.

They have a powered dragon with a custom layout. It circles a flume ride.

There is also a space car coaster. They gave me 8 circuits on this one.

Here is Foreigner Street's biggest carousel.

This is clearly a knockoff ride.

A Golden Horse Moto Coaster is here. They let us ride twice.

I rode this Spinning Coaster. I was afraid it would fall apart.

I like this design, but I think the Golden Horse spinners are better.

I have not seen a coaster like this one before. It is a Chinese made mine train. I wonder if there are anymore like it.

The bottom of that drop is painful. My back bounced of the back of the seat. This will finish the TR.

[Nrthwnd]

Loved the report! And how many Happy Valley parks is this now, in the franchise?

 

And what the heck is going on with that "Caousel"? (See below)

Maybe you didn't see it, but... look below the middle upper carousel horse.

I swear that the horse below it.....is it facing the other way?

[The Angry Darren Mullins]

I think the top and bottom levels of the carousel spin in opposite directions. This is Happy Valley park # 7 and park # 11 for OCT. An 8th Happy Valley is being built, which will bring OCT's park count to 12 parks. I have been 8 of the 11 parks.

[Nrthwnd]

^ I would like more carousels to do that, lol! I remember there was the one in Toshimaen in Tokyo, (TPR 2007 Japan Tour)

that had three wheels, two running the same direction, the middle one, not. And it was an old merry-go-round, too.

 

Thanks for all the HV info!

[djcoastermark]

It looks like Space Car Coaster is going to be on many peoples' bucket list.

[wee.meng]

This is the 7th Happy Valley to open in China and this is the first and only Happy Valley which is built in a valley!

 

Chong Qing is called the “mountain city’ because it is mountain everywhere (even the airport is in the mountains); so naturally, this theme park is built in the mountains as well.

 

This newest additional was opened only in July so everything is relatively new! (I went in Oct 2017)

 

In order to get to where 80% of the rides are, you have go through 1 flight of stairs, and 2 long escalators.

 

Here are some of the must-dos at Chongqing Happy Valley:

 

Eye of Chongqing

 

One of the highlights of Chong Qing Happy Valley has to be the ferris wheel or affectionately, The Eye of Chongqing. Chongqing is famous of it’s night sky so that is why Chongqing is the only Happy Valley you can find a BIG ferris wheel. It reaches up to 120 meters (400 feet) high, equivalent to a 40-story building. View from the Ferris Wheel; worth the 30min right?

Go on the Eye of Chongqing to plan your journey in Happy Valley!

 

As the Ferris wheel turns to the top slowly, you can enjoy the beauty of the Jialing River and see the overall view of the theme park. I suggest you go there in the day (avoid a smoggy day) as well as night to experience different scenery of Chongqing.

 

Soaring Wings.

 

The ride goes as fast as 90km/hr… lots of twists and turns….

 

Roller coaster fans will love this! It is 1 kilometer long so the track spans a big area of the park! It has a 3 minutes running time so one of the longest I have seen in China for a ride like this. It is one of only two wide-wing roller coasters in China.

 

Wooden Coaster

 

Wooden Coaster is like the signature of all the Happy Valleys around China but what makes this so unique is that this ride is built on a plateau. So to get to the ride, you have to take a lift. You get a wonderful view of the area because of the elevation (if you are still in the mood to look around!)

 

The first drop was really scary! The ride is long as well; it seems in China, they build everything bigger and longer!

 

Wildwater

Another signature of Happy Valley; I find this no different from the other Happy Valley though. Still fun….

 

Other Highlights

Like other Happy Valleys, there is always something unique in each one. For this, there is this area call Old Chongqing which showcase the scenery of Chongqing long time ago. There is also usually a stunt show telling the story of a famous person from the city. However, when I was there in October, the show is not ready yet.

 

Night Parade

 

Their day and night parade is nothing to shout about (especially you have seen Disney’s) BUT has improved a lot over the years (from other happy valleys, that is)!

 

In the past, you can see copyright characters like minions or angry bird in the parade. This time, I see that they used mostly original characters so this is a big step forward in making Happy Valley an international theme park.

 

My pet peeves

The ride with identity crisis: Is it Typhoon Turbo, Rotating Disco or Jungie Spin?

 

Unfortunately, there are still spelling mistakes on signs and rides! (Is it so difficult for them to get an English speaking person to vet before making the signs?) I guess this doesn’t affect the experience of guests visiting the theme park so maybe they are giving this a low priority to fix it.

 

Kids and family friendliness

The theme park has a very big children area with rides like carousel.

 

I asked a staff member if there are lifts to get from entrance down to the main areas and the answer is NO! So keep your baby prams at home. In other words, this theme park (and in fact this city) is not suitable for those on wheelchair.

 

Lots of play areas for the children like “Happy Bubbles”.

 

Like other place of interest, senior citizen gets discounted entrance (bring your passport) and folks above 70 go in free! (I think it is a brilliant idea which Singapore should adopt too!)

 

How to Get to Chongqing Happy Valley?

It is pretty convenient to get there. You can take subway line 6 to Pingchang Station, use exit 3A and walk eastward for about 800 meters. (Walk towards the big ferris wheel, you can’t go wrong.)

 

Tickets are 200RMB for adults and 130 for children.

 

Summary

Because this theme park is so new, a number of the indoor rides are not opened yet. Having said that, the theme park is REALLY big so you may not finish ALL the rides even in 1 day!

 

But from what I can see, a lot of the theatre shows and rides are very very similar to other Happy Valleys. They probably will get new content, but essentially, the experience are not very different. (Eg. The ride “Leaping over Chongqing” which boast rising seats and giant dome-screen will give you an overall view of the city. N.B. This ride is not opened yet when I was there. This is similar to the one in Shanghai.)

 

I was too hoping for newer technology to be showcased in this new Happy Valley; like rides related to VR but this was not the case.

 

Because they are still new, so the queues are relatively short.

 

My take is that some of the unique rides makes this park worth the time, but go only if there is a deal on the tickets (check their wechat page for promotions) or when there is an event like Halloween or their International Magic Festival!

 

Until then, maybe wait for more rides to be opened!