Hong Kong, China – Tuesday, February 1st & Monday, March 21st, 2011
Ocean Park was China’s first modern amusement/theme park, opening all the way back in… 1977. This history has made Ocean Park the preferred hometown park among Hong Kongers. Hong Kongers love Ocean Park, whereas they hold a general antipathy towards new rival Hong Kong Disneyland, which botched the roll-out and became associated with the trend of outsider intrusion in Hong Kong’s local identity, a sensitive topic in this city. In fact, Ocean Park holds the distinction as the only park to have beaten a Disney castle park in attendance within the same city since Los Angeles’ Pacific Ocean Park in 1958. All of this is to contextualize the experience many first time theme park enthusiasts have when the compare the popularity of Hong Kong’s two major parks with the overall quality level of each. There were certainly more than a few moments where I was left scratching my head.
The positives: Ocean Park is divided between two beautiful locations, one at the foot of a mountain, the other atop the mountain with a dramatic view overlooking the South China Sea. There’s also a diverse mix of attractions that combine rides with animal exhibits and other more sedate experiences. Where most Chinese theme parks share a very typical masterplanned feel, Ocean Park feels far more organic, with layers of shiny new construction sprouting up beside long-cherished guest favorites, and attended by a vibrant and energetic audience. It’s clearly grown into its niche. You don’t get that same feeling in any other park in the region, and it’s easy to see why Hong Kongers maintain a special affinity
towards their home park.
The head-scratchers: A confusing-as-fuck topological network of paths and wayfinding that literally leaves you scratching your head. Lots of plain and weathered facilities that lack either charm, quality, or visual cohesion. A rather shrug-inducing collection of amusement rides. Generally frustrating operations throughout. And that slight uneasiness that comes with visiting a for-profit entertainment complex that makes its money off captive intelligent animals, even felt in the days before Blackfish. As a foreigner and experienced theme park traveler, it’s harder to find as many obvious downsides to the Mouse on the island across the bay.
Yet, the park has been taking great strides to expand and modernize (many coming online only after my visit), and when you focus on what makes Ocean Park unique and ignore the forgotten and underserved stuff, it’s still a pretty fascinating place worth a visit while in Hong Kong. At the very least, it’s certainly a much more different competitor to Disney than the usual Universal rivalries.
The entrance zone of the park was one of the first to get a full post-Disneyland rebuild, and was the most complete glimpse of the “new” Ocean Park as of 2011. Subtlety isn’t really their thing.
The Ocean Express was also a new-for-2011 attraction to serve as a secondary means of accessing the upper level of the park. It’s a funicular railroad dug through an underground tunnel, featuring internal media windows to simulate an ocean dive to Atlantis. The show certainly holds everyone’s attention but is a little cutesy and trite, perhaps minimizing the impact of the true engineering marvel that is building an entire underground funicular to transport you through a mountain in less than five minutes. (I failed to get photos from the inside.)
The other more traditional (and still more popular) route to the top is via the Cable Car. I’ll go back to explore the rest of the ground level later. If the Ocean Express feels like you’ve traveled 50 feet, the Cable Car makes clear just how vast the property really is.
Catching a glimpse of the new Hair Raiser floorless coaster that was still under construction. I was optimistic at the start of the year that I might get to ride it before departing in May, but it didn’t happen. This proved to be a recurring scenario for a lot of new attractions on my list that were supposed to open in early 2011.
In addition to Hair Raiser, the park was building a new terraced land atop these escalators that apparently combined an Arctic theme area and a carnival theme area. I can’t say how well the two fit next to each other, as despite the initial promise of a 2011 opening, the area in fact opened in stages between the end of 2011 and summer 2012.
The park’s observation tower provided a better vantage point of the construction.
As well as spectacular views of the rest of the park and surrounding landscape.
Due to the hilly terrain, the upper level of the park has one of the most confusing pathway networks around, with elevation changes adding a new dimension to figuring out directions (especially if you wish to avoid unnecessary uphill hikes), and dense vegetation and landscaping usually obscuring the view of the thing you want to go to.
But follow the trail for long enough and eventually you might find one of the park’s halfway decent rides, like The Eagle, an increasingly rare Huss Condor ride.
The Abyss, one of the few rides up here that awkwardly attempts to associate with the ocean theme despite its cheerily contradictory color scheme, is the park’s S&S Turbo Drop ride.
I’ll be honest, in this context I’m not sure what I’m supposed to feel when I “feel the depth”.
Then of course there’s Ocean Park’s most famous attraction for decades, The Dragon.
The Dragon is a custom terrain Arrow Dynamics looping coaster that opened in 1984 as the first large modern roller coaster to open in China. More recently, it has traded in it’s old all-white color scheme (for some reason popular among steel coasters at the time) for what it easily the most vividly multicolor paint job I’ve ever seen on a coaster. Once my retinas have processed it, it’s kind of amazing.
The Dragon features two lift hills at the beginning and end of the ride in order to take advantage of its unique hillside location. Unfortunately this means a lot of the 2,694 feet of track is spent on lifts, brakes, and various flat turns and straightaways, while the thrill portion of the layout is efficiently short and sweet. The sequence of curving drop, vertical loop, high-speed terrain turn (the best bit!), second vertical loop, and sidewinder (the world’s first) is pretty good considering the vintage. Two more ground-hugging helices quickly sap the remaining kinetic energy (with a pretty jarring transition between the two to remind you that it’s an Arrow) before it spends another minute slowly chugging its way back up the hill and into the station. A bit of a rough ride, but still my favorite in the park.
The Dragon’s original colors are referenced in this sculptural installation.
Apparently these sculptures are to allow guests with visual impairment to feel what the ride is. I’ve never seen this before, but I would have thought an audio or braille description would be enough?
Ocean Park really has a hard time picking a single aesthetic.
Another escalator on a hill. What will we find down here?
There’s a log flume I never took the opportunity to ride.
And there’s Ocean Park’s other coaster, the 1999 Zamperla-built Wild West Mine Train.
This looks like it was intended as a diorama from Back to the Future pt. III.
While The Dragon has a pretty spectacular location, this one may be even more breathtaking. Why does it need the skimpy western theme when the real-life setting is even more interesting?
Wild West Mine Train has two things going for it: the terrain setting, and the fact that it actually attempts to make some novel use of said setting. There’s a couple of unusually deep dives down the hillside that the coaster is able to save towards the end of the layout, keeping the experience new and surprising from start to finish… the biggest thing that makes the extra expense of building in such a location worth it. Compare to coasters such as the Hair Raiser across the park, which ultimately end up squandering their location on an unimaginative profile that could easily be duplicated on a flat lot. (Oddly, Wild West Mine Train is the one coaster at the park that has been duplicated for a flat lot, albeit with some rather extensive tunnel excavation that almost certainly more than offset whatever expense was saved from using recycled blueprints.)
That said, Wild West Mine Train is an odd ride with a lot of set-up and very little pay-off. There’s only three “real” drops along the entire layout, which each seem to promise more than they actually deliver. Despite the vertigo-inducing location hundreds of feet above the sea, it’s still built at the scale of a family coaster, with each momentary burst of speed and excitement almost immediately followed by another slow flat turn. A leisurely helix in the middle makes this point particularly well. This probably makes it a great addition for Ocean Park’s demographic, although coaster enthusiasts traveling some distance for the ride would do best to temper their expectations and treat it more as a brisk sightseeing tour, as I did.
My first visit to Ocean Park in February was with my cousin Caroline and a sizable coterie of classmates. Caroline was still very much scared of roller coasters, so when she agreed to come along and ride with our friend Lina I knew I had to capture her reaction. This ride was probably the right level of thrill for them.
Here was our entire group. One of the few times I’ve visited a park with more than a couple other people.
I ended up getting an Ocean Park season pass since it was less than the price of two visits and included all sorts of benefits. One of those benefits was a free bottle of wine with the purchase of at least HK$500 in food at the park’s main restaurant, a threshold that our large group could easily meet and share. Very klassy.
And of course mandatory modeling of the novelty hats without buying them. Free head lice for everyone!
While most of the rides are located on the upper level, a couple of animal exhibits can be found up here as well.
Maybe it’s just the translations, but I found a lot of the ecological conservation messaging around China to be rather clunky and a bit patronizing.
Finally, the upper level is also home to the large Ocean Theatre with the Sea Dreams dolphin and sea lion show. Our first visit was during the Lunar New Year period, and the crowds definitely reflected that fact.
If you’ve ever seen a SeaWorld production, you already know what routine of behavioral tricks to expect from each animal, only done with 50% less production value and a bit more direct audience interaction.
Time to head back down to the lower level.
While the landscape isn’t quite as spectacular down here, they made up for it with better facilities and animal exhibits. This goldfish exhibit was one of the more interesting culturally-specific exhibits I discovered at the park.
The giant panda exhibit is the biggest attraction down here. I can’t think of any other theme park in the world that’s allowed to keep giant pandas, even in mainland China. Most likely the pandas were a political gift to Hong Kong as part of the territory’s handover, and Ocean Park was simply the only facility in Hong Kong with the resources to care for them.
They also have red pandas, because red pandas are waaay cuter than giant pandas.
Plus a rare Chinese alligator, cutest crocodilian of them all.
But for ultimate cuteness, it can be none other than the Chinese giant salamander.
A carousel is one of few rides featured on the lower level.
A hot air balloon attraction takes flight over the park.
This giant blue egg is Ocean Park’s new aquarium. This is something simple but important for a marine life park that’s missing from the SeaWorld parks; a large world-class aquarium facility to observe all the cold-blooded creatures of the sea.
This could have easily been a stand-alone ticketed facility in a city center.
To finish the night, we caught Ocean Park’s newly-debuted Symbio nighttime spectacular show. Think of it like a smaller version of World of Color done in the round, featuring a circular water screen with projected imagery, colorful fountain arrays, fire effects and even fireworks. This was actually surprisingly good. The small size of the pond and viewing area proved to be its greatest asset (assuming capacity isn’t an issue), as it allowed us to stand much closer to the effects. The proximity of the fountains, flames, and fireworks made for a much more exciting and, at times, harrowing experience. The media and storytelling was pretty standard, with a CG dragon getting a little too much exposure as the show’s star. (In Chinese mythology dragons often reside in the ocean as kings.)
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