Guangzhou, Guangdong, China – Monday, February 28th, 2011
Chimelong Paradise opened in 2006 as the first major theme park in China to challenge the Happy Valley parks. Since then, China has opened theme park chains from Wanda Sunac, Fantawild, Hot-Go, and other stand-alone parks (usually built by real estate companies), all to varying degrees of quality. While 2006 feels pretty recent by my memory, in Chinese theme park terms it makes Chimelong one of the old guard, the Six Flags Over Texas to Happy Valley’s Disneyland. Their water park, which I barely even knew existed in 2011, was already the most popular water park in Asia and has since gone on to become the most well-attended in the world. Nevertheless, it would have been hard for me to tell based on first impressions whether Chimelong Paradise was a theme park on the ascendancy or in decline. On the one hand, a major B&M coaster standing tall over the horizon is a sign that this parks means business. On the other, spotting the rusting remains of what was supposed to be one of the park’s other coasters in full view of the entry walkway doesn’t exactly send a signal that things have gone exactly to plan. Nor was the place exactly packed, although I suppose it was still a pretty healthy turnout given I was visiting on a Monday in February.
This is an impressive sight to be greeted with after exiting the Hanxi Chimelong Metro Station.
Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be riding their spinning coaster today…
Here’s a guide map:
Welcome to Chimelong Paradise. Doesn’t look very busy today.
It seems like the intent with Chimelong Paradise was to build a theme park, but they wound up accidentally building an amusement park instead. The budget was clearly set at a modest theme park level, with much more elaborate custom facades, marquees, rockwork, and other scenic elements than found at many cheaper parks that could still call themselves themed. Yet they forgot the most important element to a theme park: the theme itself. The generic ride names are an obvious tip-off, but there’s really no unifying idea behind any of the elements beyond the fact that it’s a collection of coasters and thrill rides. But it’s also not quite a high-end amusement park like Cedar Point, where the rides are presented with a fine level of mostly neutral design. Many of the facades are clearly meant to be interpreted as “themed”, as if taken straight from Islands of Adventure, but they lack all context. It’s like the amusement equivalent of double-talk: it seems recognizable at first, yet is jumbled to the point of meaninglessness.
That croc head belongs to the vaguely Mesoamerican theme of the 10 Inversion Roller Coaster, the headlining attraction when Chimelong Paradise opened in 2006.
Not to be confused with the 1-Inversion Roller Coaster on the other side of the park. (I’ll get to that one later.)
As the name suggests, 10 Inversion Roller Coaster is an exact clone of Colossus at Thorpe Park, the first such Intamin looping coaster to break the record for most inversions, primarily thanks to the series of heartline rolls all stacked at the end of the layout.
The queue is fairly heavily themed, although to what I can’t really say. And this was probably the most cohesively themed attraction in the park.
Unfortunately the vehicles have the same awful ergonomic design found on Colossus with almost no leg room.
With the unfortunate selection of rolling stock, there was only so much that the rest of the 98 foot tall ride could make up for.
After this coaster, Intamin began selling more 10 Inversion Roller Coasters with the same layout but the profile of the first drop completely changed, along with a much improved train design. While I kind of like the aerial turn around, I would have happily swapped it for the newer trains.
Straight into inversion #1, the quintessential, indispensable vertical loop. Gotta start with the classics.
After a brief airtime hump, it’s up into the utterly inessential, dispensable cobra roll. (Just kidding, this is probably the best part of the ride.)
While there was some attempt to theme the ride area, it wasn’t nearly as elaborate as Colossus’ ruins.
Then it’s into a pair of corkscrews. (Only one pictured.) Thus reaching five inversions using the “traditional” method.
With a top speed of only about 50 mph, by this point the kinetic energy starts to run low, so Intamin kind of cheated to get the second five inversions by hitting Ctrl+C on a flat inline roll a bunch of times to conserve their speed.
If you’re counting, we’re still only up to 9 inversions. That’s because you’ve got to take this leisurely stroll around the shrubberies…
And finish with the 10th inversion immediately before sliding into the brakes.
While I didn’t loath the ride, I wouldn’t be surprised if 10 Inversion Roller Coasters rates as the worst of the Intamin 10 looping coasters produced, lacking both the setting and presentation of Colossus and the improved design of the later models. While the ten inversions might be a gimmick to get to a (no longer relevant) world record, the fact is that’s still a lot of different elements to pack into a modestly sized coaster, and there are certainly worse production model designs to choose from. Such as a few of these next ones…
Just like in RollerCoaster Tycoon.
Nearby was the Family Gravity Coaster, a Zamperla coaster of the same model name.
Curiously, this coaster was removed from the park sometime later that year, and eight years later there have been no other kiddie coasters to replace it in this park. It appeared to be in perfectly fine working order to me, only five years old.
Be careful of the collision.
Here’s a POV video of this defunct coaster for posterity’s sake.
This way to the Screaming Zone, one of Chimelong Paradise’s most distinguishable thematic zones, only by virtue of having a sign.
Their Top Spin was also out of commission.
And, much as I suspected from the evidence during walk into the park, their spinning coaster was in a partial state of getting torn down. (Or, “temporarily closed for maintenance”.)
While the park is apparently among the top performing in Asia, it would be hard to guess with the number of attractions already decommissioned just five years after it was built.
At least the weird side-by-side shuttle ride at every Chinese FEC was open.
Also open, Motorbike Launch Coaster, yet another ride name taken from the manufacturer catalogue.
I would only ride this one once, both because the capacity was such that it was one of the few attractions with a bit of a line that day, and because it’s a terrible ride.
Still, mobile personal storage bins within reaching distance of the seats is a good idea.
Here’s the launch. The sign wants you to grin and bear it.
Motorbike Launch Coaster is a very rough, uncomfortable ride made all the worse by the fact that you’re restrained in a position you have little ability to brace against. That Vekoma was able to return to China and build another one of these for Disney that was actually enjoyable to ride is possibly the coaster comeback of the century. Still, like the much more expensive Shanghai version, this one has a very short, uninteresting layout. (At least on this one there’s a bit more variety between random curves and straight hills.)
And returning to the station.
Here comes more trouble…
This would be my first Intamin Half Pipe coaster. (Any surprise what Chimelong Paradise named it?)
The track is arranged as a giant U-shape as you sit on a giant skateboard in one of these seating rings that can free spin. Why exactly this counts as a coaster while a Zamperla Disk’O does not, I’m not confident in.
The beginning is a little rough, especially if you’re positioned sideways on the seating ring like I was, since the sudden launch slammed my head hard against the restraint. Once it got up to speed it was a somewhat novel experience, although more similar to an extreme flat ride than a coaster experience. I actually ended up riding it twice during the day, against my better judgement.
One thing I’ll credit the park for is being very green with plenty of full, mature trees lining the midway. Very rare to see for a new-build Chinese park.
And they were hard at work making the park even greener.
Hmm, wonder where these people came from?
Probably from this ride.
The park also has a Huss Giant Frisbee (named Giant Frisbee) that’s a close color clone of maXair at Cedar Point.
Where to next?
Young Star Coaster from Mack Rides is the one family coaster that’s survived in this park.
Clearly it was built expecting huge crowds. At the capacity this ride gets, if this queue ever filled you’d be waiting the entire day in it.
The vehicles are clones of the cars used on Pegasus at Europa-Park, with a ridiculously large horse figurehead that blocks the view for first row riders.
Okay, here’s the most bizarre part of this ride. Instead of directly cloning the layout, for some reason they had the first drop raised by 20 feet so there’s this long straightaway in the air. What was the purpose of this? At first I thought they had to build over something, but there was nothing but grass directly under it. Was there some regulation where they needed to intentionally neuter the max speed or drop length in order to retain “family classification”? Regardless, it makes for a weaker ride experience.
The rest of the layout still features the standard sequence of high-speed helices.
The first time I rode Young Star Coaster, as I was exiting, a young Chinese couple approached me with their camera asking “photo?” I assumed they wanted me to take a photo of them and agreed, but instead the guy held up the camera to suddenly take a photo of me with his girlfriend. They quickly acknowledged me and immediately moved on. As I took a second trying to figure out what just happened, another couple who watched also approached me for a quick photo. Maybe they thought I was a celebrity? While Guangzhou is a fairly metropolitan city, I suppose that tourist attractions like Chimelong Paradise still attract enough people for whom the sight of a foreigner is a novelty, and people feel more permitted to ask for photos in a stimulating environment like a theme park. This was far from the last time this would happen to me during my travels.
Okay, final ride… Dive Coaster!
This 2008 B&M Dive Machine (similar but not identical in layout to SheiKra) is unquestionably the #1 reason to include a visit to Chimelong Paradise in a Chinese coaster tour. Utilizing the 10-abreast seating, the ride is smooth and eminiently re-rideable.
In fact, with no line, that’s exactly what I did this day, going around some 15 times before I had to catch my train back to Hong Kong.
After a few rides, the station attendant recognized me and realized I was riding it over and over. He eventually offered in limited English that I could stay on the platform, and even insisted that I take my seat and let oncoming guests find their seats around me. I felt this re-ride policy was perhaps a little too generous, and would make the excuse of getting a sip from my water bottle between rides to allow the next load to choose their own seats first before filling an empty seat. Even leaving the ride to go do something else for a while, the attendant seemed slightly disappointed that I would choose to go elsewhere.
The ride begins with a 200 foot climb and slow panoramic turn.
Then there’s the dramatic pause over the edge before free-falling 90 degrees at 70mph. (Having later tried the 8-abreast trains with vest restraints, I can definitely say the wider configuration with looser-fitting restraints is 100% the way to go with these designs. Save the vest for the twisty-turny layouts.)
Then a single giant Immelmann inversion.
And up into the midcourse block brake for the second near-vertical drop, this time into an underwater tunnel.
The ride forgoes the second Immelmann found on Griffon for the simple turn-around as on SheiKra.
The water splashdown is still there, with an extra element of thrill because you don’t know what microbes might live in it! For some reason it’s located a ways away from the major guest thoroughfares and viewing areas.
Then a low-to-the-ground helix finale. This is probably the one maneuver that’s more effective here than on either of the Busch Gardens installations thanks to some nearby vegetation and trench for the left wing of the train to skim through. (I also believe that the 10-abreast Dive Coaster trains have more overhang than the Wing Coaster design, which makes a moment like this extra effective.)
They even have all the necessary amenities at the exit.
So, how does Dive Coaster compare to the other B&M Dive Coasters? On the whole, it rates pretty much the same. Perhaps because I was able to marathon this ride under more unique circumstances I’m most personally fond of Chimelong’s Dive Coaster, but there’s fairly little I can objectively point to that makes this one a must-visit destination if you’ve tried the others. The same weaknesses are there, including the fact that, while technically not a one-trick pony, it’s still feels kind of like a four-trick pony, with too much emphasis placed on the set-up for each trick and not enough on a fluid choreography of elements. But among the anchor attractions at Chinese parks, I wouldn’t find much more enjoyable a coaster than this.
After becoming pals with the station attendant, on one of my last rides that evening I decided to see if he’d let me take my camera on. Seeing the strap tightly wrapped around my wrist, he agreed by simply noting “Carefully”.
On the whole I enjoyed Chimelong Paradise; there were no major frustrations to be had throughout the day compared to most of the other mainland Chinese parks I’d try, and an open re-ride policy on their best attraction certainly proved to make the weekend trip to Guangzhou well worth the effort. While I wish the park would commit to a stronger identity either as an adventure theme park or something else, it’s still one of the cleaner and more nicely operated parks in China. They’ve since added a Premier Sky Rocket coaster (named… “Sky Rocket”!), and given the success of their Chimelong Ocean Kingdom park in nearby Zhuhai I can’t imagine they have no further expansion plans for the original.
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