Amusement park review – Chimelong Paradise
Yesterday I decided to indulge myself in one of my favourite things – going on roller coasters! After 3 months in Asia, I was going to my first park on this trip (well, 3rd, but the rides weren’t working at the park in Saigon or Tokyo). My destination – Chimelong Paradise in Guangzhou, which is supposedly the biggest park in China. Compared to other parks I’ve been to, Chimelong was pretty small, probably around the same size as La Ronde, or a bit smaller. Still, I had a great time.
Coasters I went on were:
Dive Coaster (the park has a lack of creativity when it comes to names) – This is apparently a clone of Shreika at the Busch Gardens parks. Still, I’d never been on either of them. I’d been on Oblivion at Alton Towers, which is the “original” dive coaster. For those of you who aren’t familiar with coaster lingo (which is probably the bulk of people reading this), dive coaster have 2 distinguishing features. First, the cars are short and wide. Oblivion’s cars are 2 rows of 8 seats I think, and DC has 3 rows of 10. The rows are also staggered, giving the feel of sitting in the front row in all rows. Kind of. The other unique feature is the first drop is a near-vertical plummet. DC actually has 2 straight-down drops, one at the beginning and one a bit later on. And unlike Oblivion, this one has a loop. Not a lot of airtime, but a fun ride.
10 inversion roller coaster – A copy of Thrope Park’s Colossus. It has 10 inversions. Not a particularly smooth ride. I came off with a wicked headache. Not impressed.
Motorbike Launch coater – Now this was something new, at least for me. Not a particularly high ride, or a fast one. What I find makes this not so much the launch (meaning there’s no lift hill, a motor makes the train go) but how you ride it. Instead of sitting down like a normal roller coaster, you straddle a motorbike “seat”, with your hands on handlebars. The back of the seat presses into your back and there are restraints around your legs too. Fun ride.
Half-Pipe – Probably my favourite ride. A U-shaped track with 2 circles of seats that spin on a platform made to look like a snowboard. The board is propelled up and down the track by linear induction magnets. Lots of airtime. It’s kind of like the frisbee ride at La Ronde but on a track.
Spinning coater – Wild mouse with spinning cars. Generic.
Other cool bits – A ride that was just a loop that you kept going around and around. More fun than I make it sound.
Now, the amusing part. It appeared to have been school field trip day at the park. Kids in school uniforms everywhere. As one maybe 6 white people visiting the park, I got a fair share of stares and “HELLOOOOOOOO!”’s from the kids. That was fun for the first hour. I tried to not be too goofy when I said hello back. What I most amused about was when I got off the 10 inversion coaster a little boy pointed his camera in my direction. I looked over my shoulder and there was no one there. He wanted a picture of me 
Later that day, I was getting into line for the Dive coaster and saw a couple (probably early 20′s) taking pictures of each other. When I walked by the guy wanted a picture. I thought he wanted me to take a picture of his and the girl he was with. Nope, he wanted one of me and him.
At the end of the day I got my picture taken with one of the clowns on stilts. Just because
Categories: Robin's Travel blog
2 Comments »
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May 18th, 2010 at 07:55
I can hardly wait to see the pictures of you and the clown. Did you get pics of the coasters too?
Warren
May 19th, 2010 at 05:09
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