Harbin, Heilongjiang, China – Sunday, September 4th, 2016
EonTime World is a small indoor theme park located just outside of Harbin in a new mall development quite a ways outside the city, home to a semi-customized spinning roller coaster, an interactive dark ride, and a handful of other attraction. Although I had no involvement in the design of this park, I do have connections with people who do. Whatever “inside baseball” I might be able to discuss here would be fairly limited anyway, so I’d rather keep those relationships separate and approach the park (and this photo review) with a completely fresh set of eyes as just a regular visitor, free to make and share all the nitty gritty observations I want. There’s a lot to take in. So with that out of the way, let’s get started.
EonTime World is located in the Yongtai Mall, a bit of a drive outside of Harbin. Like many developments in China, this one appeared to be undertaken with little in the way of true feasibility studies. The mall and surrounding multistory residential developments are quite literally in the middle of a field, and is a long enough drive outside the city proper that everyone in my wife’s family agreed that they didn’t consider it part of Harbin. I’m not sure if the mall had parking; we (and many others) parked along a dirt curb on the road leading to the mall as we approached. We visited on a Sunday in early September; not peak time, but not the low season either. If attendance levels on this day’s visit were any indication, the park and mall may be struggling to find an audience. Too bad, because by regional standards this is likely one of the best themed attractions you can find.
The world’s sketchiest looking go-kart track was set up on the pavers of the front plaza. Nearby were a handful of street food vendors whom I’m guessing were not approved by the Yongtai Mall, nor the local health inspectors. They appeared to be capturing better business than the food vendors inside the theme park.
The theme park is located on the upper level, with an open atrium space at one end looking down into the mall. Looking down is a giant ball pit with lots of Christmasy-looking decorations despite it being early September.
The park itself has a separate admission gate, with both all-day ride wristbands as well as spectator passes with individual ride tickets available.
The park’s mascots and setting are inspired by the Chinese myth of the moon bunnies. Sort of like how in the west you see the “man in the moon”, in China and other east Asian countries you see a rabbit. While there’s plenty of existing mythology surrounding the moon bunny, the characters and setting at EonTime World are entirely original creations with their own names and backstories.
Here’s a map of the park. It’s divided into two zones: Cloudcastle Kingdom and Galaxy Wonderland, although honestly it’s a bit hard to tell them apart.
The entry ticket booths. I’m not sure whose birthday they’re celebrating.
Let’s have a look around the park. While there were some nice ideas here in terms of art direction, the biggest challenge is that the park is much too spread out, with the theming stretched thin (and flat) as a result, trying to create an immersive cosmic dream world but never getting the immersive part right. Much of this space is underutilized; most of the big rides are hidden in boxes and the rides that are visible don’t nearly fill the space with enough kinetic energy, leaving a sense of lifelessness and plenty of room for merchandise carts and other temporary visual gak to occupy the void. There’s a much, much nicer version of this park somewhere that could have opened on the same or even smaller budget if the mall developer simply shrunk this box by 50%.
One of the first rides encountered is the Stardust Spinner, a Zamperla Disk’O.
Okay, quiz time. Look at the photo below. Can you guess where the entrance to the ride’s queue is?
If you guessed, “Um, the fenced pathway underneath that giant marquee sign”, you’re wrong! Zoom way into this photo and notice the tiny sign next to it indicating that this path is actually the ride exit! The real entrance is to the right of the marquee all the way down the sketchy Emergency Exit Corridor of Doom in a little gap at the far end of the orange railings. It’s okay if you got this wrong because so did everyone else, as the ride host had clearly long given up trying to enforce proper ingress and egress to his ride and let it be a free-for-all. Good thing the park was dead and there were no actual queues. I’m don’t know who was responsible for this queue layout (and don’t want to know), but one thing I noticed is that EonTime World has a couple (yes, more than just this one) of the worst designed queues I’ve ever encountered at any theme park in the world.
Along with the Stardust Spinner, the nearby Royal Armada swinging ship offers about all of the kinetic activation you’ll see down the main midway.
TRON Lightcycles are among one of the mini buggy cars that kids can ride around the park.
Kids can also rent their own Mech Warrior.
Cute customized gift cart.
Melody Maker’s Toy Shop offers some free musical interactives.
Unfortunately for the projection interactive, Windows needed some attention.
But totally making it for it are these hands-on musical games. Instead of just leaving kids to bang on it randomly, they actually offer easy instructions on how to play a short melody. I can’t count the number of musical interactives I’ve seen that needed something simple like this.
Dragon Flight is the park’s largest attraction, a semi-customized enclosed Maurer spinning coaster.
This ride is somewhat unusual in that it takes the standard Maurer spinning coaster layout and adds a custom section of track to it, much like Crush’s Coaster at the Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris. However, different from that ride, which simply adds a small custom “preshow” section before the main lift, is that the custom addition here comes in the middle of the ride layout, branching away from where it normally does the “trick-track” section, and necessitating the addition of a second lift hill. I can’t think of any other coaster that takes an off-the-shelf layout and adds to the middle of the ride. Most of the addition consists of a small “dark ride” section, nothing too thrilling, although there’s also this large turnaround that wraps above the queue entrance, presumably to show off better what the ride does.
Recalling the terrible queues in this park, here’s the other major offender. At first glance it doesn’t look so bad; it actually has some pretty charming themed elements.
However, upon walking through it, I quickly discovered two major problems:
1) It’s a branching layout with multiple switchback extensions that can be closed off to extend the queue length on busy days, much like any other large queue. However, they apparently never installed the chains or ropes to close off these paths. With the theming concealing where many of these branching switchbacks lead to, it quickly became less of a queue and more of a labyrinth in which we couldn’t figure out how to get to the ride platform. At one point we ended up back at the front entrance.
2) These netted railing are deceptively lower than they look; only a little above knee-height, and the uniform tan/brown color palate in the queue and repeating textures made them a walking hazard that would be easy to stumble over if you’re not looking. Given that you’re busy trying to find the route to the ride platform, that’s a very real possibility. This was the very first time I ever felt unsafe just to walk through a queue. All around this was a major design failure.
The box containing the coaster can be glimpsed up above the queue in areas.
Arriving at the platform after some wandering, with more glimpses at the ride that awaits.
The ride vehicles are the standard Maurer design with an attractive cloud pattern.
Away you go…
The ride is obviously better than a standard spinning coaster, since the middle portion (mostly handled at a slow speed) really increases the overall ride time to make it feel more like a full experience, although it also kills the pacing somewhat by front-loading all the high-speed thrill segments that are part of the standard layout. There’s enough lighting on the inside that you never get the Space Mountain effect of loosing perspective and feeling like you’re flying through space, yet the theming isn’t quite enough to make up for it. The dark ride portion is okay if a little random; I’m not sure exactly what story it’s trying to tell apart from “Here be dragons”. Choosing a spinning coaster as the ride system is probably not a great idea, since it makes focusing on the scenery hard to do when it’s spinning fast, and when it’s not spinning invariably you’re not going to be pointing in the direction the designers want you to be facing. (Inertia tends to have the effect of keeping the vehicle pointing in the same direction during the dark ride portion.)
But despite being based on a production model it’s still far out of the ordinary, and if you’re going to travel this far out of the way to hunt down a single coaster, that’s the most important thing that a coaster enthusiast should ask for. Here’s my POV video of the ride, to my knowledge the only video that exists of it on the web. (Apologies that my auto-focus got screwy due to a too-close wall.)
Just beyond Dragon Flight at one end of the park is the other sole “thrill” level ride, the flipping Catapult.
Despite the official name being “Catapult”, the ride still says “Super Spin”, the generic name that Zamperla gives to these types of rides. It’s basically an inverse Top Spin with two oppositely rotating arms at the center of the ride mechanism. Unlike a full-size Top Spin, this on is not particularly big or intense.
Traversing to the other end of the park, you may notice unexpected elements such as this fan art booth, home to an diverse collection of both licensed and unlicensed characters.
Approaching the opposite end of EonTime World is the park’s other signature attraction: Moon Bunny Rescue, an interactive dark ride. The lighting kind of blew out the marquee sign from afar, although on closer inspection it’s not much better.
Outside of the live show and parade, this is the only attraction in the park where the story makes much sense. This cat-queen is the antagonist, and we’re supposed to rescue the Moon Bunny characters from her palace. There’s also some blue dog-like creatures involved that I couldn’t entirely tell if they’re good or bad; in this ride they seemed to be obstacles, but in the show they appeared to be helpful. I guess it’s the Mario approach to characterization.
The queue was a bit overlong and had some repetitive themed elements (including way too many exact copies of the above portrait), but otherwise served its purpose much better than the other queues encountered.
The ride vehicles are the same style as found on Toy Story Mania, and are actually pretty adorable with their bright orange carrot shooters. Unfortunately they move quite a bit slower than the Toy Story ride vehicles, which led to a few issues of lackadaisical pacing.
Let’s rescue those Moon Bunnies!
Although the ride has a great deal of promise with the custom theme and media, there was difficulty in maintaining everything in proper working order. Carrot shooters had targeting issues (especially in the hard set portions), audio was a jumbled mess, and the 3D media was often broken. (Those moments appear fine in this video, except for once when the entire screen was out of alignment, but with 3D glasses on it was like getting blindfolded over one eye. Very disorienting.) It seems every Chinese theme park wants to have “high tech” as a selling point for their attractions, but if they’re not able to maintain their technology, it can often prove a much worse experience than if they had gone with a simple “low tech” traditional experience.
Accuracy was also a challenge, although I’m not sure how much of that might have been on the user end.
Also, a reminder that parks with interactive dark rides really shouldn’t put all-time high score boards at the end of the attractions. Daily or weekly is sufficient. “All-Time” usually ends up more sad than aspirational.
Super-long hall back out of the cat-queen’s castle.
Fantastic Voyages is directly adjacent to Moon Bunny Rescue, and judging from the entrances it’s hard to tell that one is a pretty elaborate dark ride and the other is a simple simulator hardly fit for an FEC.
The immersive queue certainly holds some promise and mystery.
But then the ride itself turns out to be an off-the-shelf “Wild River” simulator with terrible late-90’s CGI ride film that shouldn’t be anywhere near a park that opened in 2015. Worse, it only seats eight people, and they were holding a good 15-20 minutes between cycles, which made this by far the longest wait in the park, despite there only being about twelve people ahead of us.
Also nearby was an attraction called Galaxy Heroes, which I believe is one of those XD Motion Theater attractions. After the experience with Fantastic Voyages, we gave it a miss.
Although we’ve completed most of the big attractions on the main floor, there’s still a few things to be found on the upper levels at either end.
Bobby’s Dream Machine is (I think) a Turtle Talk with Crush style interactive theater with a digital puppet. I’ve heard this is one of the more charming attractions in the park. Despite the entrance being open to walk through, it didn’t look like there was anyone in there today (being at the far end of the upper level probably doesn’t help with circulation), and there was no indication if it would be running later that day.
There was also this adorable Magic Mushrooms kiddie bounce tower. This is now the second park (after Hard Rock Park) where I’ve encountered a flat ride themed to psychotropic fungus.
Moon Bunny Hollow at the end of this path is a themed kid’s soft play area.
Down on the other end is the Palace of Romance. This walk-through fun house requiring no operator or admission was at once charming and problematic.
Despite being obviously customized, was a bit mysterious as to how it integrated with the Moon Bunny theme. Renaissance human paintings in an otherwise whimsical moon palace?
Then we wander through this somewhat disorienting hall of mirrors…
And discover everything is upside down! Kinda…
Now there’s street lamps inside! Because it’s sorta surreal, like a half-attempted LACMA Urban Lights installation.
Rotating tunnel illusions are always a must do!
But if it’s a must not do for you, there’s this convenient ADA bypass. (What happens if you push the button?)
Look, disability rights are a wonderful thing. But someone’s gotten too overzealous when an amusement park fun house has all the warmth and width of a hospital hallway.
Is this walkway of nailed-in-place planks set a full 3/4 inch apart too challenging for you? Then we have a fully accessible bypass for you to take. As you can see, anything fun in this fun house is 100% voluntary.
As the grand finale, it’s time for the CHEAP INFINITY MIRROR ROOM! Yayoi Kusama can’t copyright an idea as awesome as this!
Finally, please remember that if you’re going to install floor-level lighting, it shouldn’t break if you step on it.
Exit the Palace of Romance into the Mystery Hall of Emergency Egresses!
Elsewhere on this level is an off-the-shelf climbing structure tucked into a random corner.
An arcade full of out-of-date games that nevertheless was still one of the more popular things on this floor.
And Dreamspinner’s Home, the park’s signature large-scale eatery that was closed due to there being absolutely no one venturing to this far corner of the park just for an oversized themed cafeteria. There’s street cart vendors hawking fried squid for 1/4 the price downstairs, dontchaknow?
Time to head back downstairs.
Now let’s look at the one part of the park that fully exceeded my expectations, the Dream Theatre show.
It’s actually located in the open along the main floor, and as such it was the one place where a decently full-sized crowd showed up.
It’s got crazy sparkling costumes, a few giant puppets, ear-worm music, and a giant LED video screen backdrop that occasionally does fantastical flying animations. The story is incomprehensible (afterwards I asked everyone else I was with if they could tell me what I might have missed in Chinese, and they had even less of a clue than I did) but it hits all the beats you’d expect, including the obligatory “Darkness & Spiders Reign Fear Upon Thee” segment that’s popular in theme parks ever since Disney did it in Fantasmic.
It’s most definitely for kids, but it’s surprisingly well done given the state of so much else in this park. It seems probable the difference is that the live performance requires that humans actually invest their efforts and talents in maintaining the show’s quality day after day, whereas the mechanical attractions are allowed to deteriorate because no one has a direct and immediate responsibility for it.
It’s also long, clocking it at just over a half hour. I recorded some of it, and edited together a few key scenes in the video below.
Okay, I know from all the hearts that this is supposed to be the “Everyone Celebrates Their Resolved Differences and Newfound Friendship” segment, but that’s still a pretty dang terrifying arachnid from the “Darkness & Spiders” segment lurking in the background…
Likewise, the parade featured at the end of the day (which makes use of many of the same costumes and performers as the live show) was also above expectations, with some very attractive floats and lighting that work well at this smaller, up-close scale. The only problem was that saving it for the end of the day meant that few people had lingered long enough to see it.
Before leaving, I picked up my own Dreamspinner plushie, the gregarious drunken wizard character who’s always seen concocting his own home brew, and (rumor has it) whose visage may have been inspired by a certain theme park designer also responsible for the Men in Black attraction.
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