It’s been awhile. The Disney project is finished now, so hopefully there will be some news about that coming up. And it always figures that college classes all like to assign things at the same time, so that’s been a pain. I had started writing this entry back when the Olympics were on TV. So here’s something to think about: it would be much cooler if the Mack bobsleds were like real bobsleds… i.e. huge and with speeds pushing 90mph. That said, I really can’t complain about the current Mack bobsleds… Avalanche at Kings Dominion was pretty fantastic.
Today we’re going to visit the land of semi communism. China has been experiencing the coaster boom everybody else wishes they had. If you haven’t paid attention to what’s been going on over there, you’re really missing out on some fantastic stuff. We’re gonna back up 4 years and see what’s opened. I’ll say that again… 4 years.
2006
Coasters Opened: 19 over 11 parks
Notables (i.e. stuff bigger than a family coaster)
4 Ring Roller Coaster- Daguan Park, Yunnan
If you go back through time, you’ll find this type of coaster appear over and over in some form or another. China loves these things. The most common layout is a loop and two corkscrews, although you’ll find anything from two corks, one loop, two loops, or even a helix before the drop. But this sort of layout is what you’ll see the most of when you travel through China. And if you think these types by Arrow or Vekoma or bad, go try these manufacturers.
Flight of the Phoenix, Harborland Theme Park
This is the 3rd copy of Intamin’s 8 inversion coaster layout. Oddly enough, one has opened every 4 years since 1998. The layouts of these rides aren’t terribly creative, but the fact that it can shove 8 inversions in 100ft. of lift height is pretty impressive. Of course, the ride pretty much has it all when it comes to inversions—loop, cobra roll, double corkscrews, and inline twists. In fact, there’s enough inline twists to make it look like they just ran out of ideas, although unlike a certain coaster we’ll see later, this ride only has 3 inlines in a row.
Screaming Squirrel, Mysterious Island, Guangdong
The second and last of the stock S&S Screamin’ Squirrel models gives Mysterious Island a cool looking, yet altogether pretty dull attraction. We all know Stan Checketts is crazy, but the novelty of being suspended upside down for long periods at a time gets old pretty fast. He should stick to trying to launch stuff with face flattening acceleration.
Although it didn’t get as much immediate recognition as did Happy Valley Beijing, Chimelong was one of the first parks where we all wondered “how can you afford these things!?” The park opened with 5 coasters. Although the first two were nothing more than a kiddie and a spinner from Golden Horse (a ride you’d wish upon no park), the last 3 were slightly larger rides. An Intamin halfpipe, Vekoma motorbike, and only the 2nd ever Intamin 10 inversion coaster completed the starting lineup. The 10 inversion coaster was a big ‘up yours’ to Harborland, by throwing in another 2 inline twists to make the ride even less imaginative. Speaking of less imaginative, we have the English names for these rides. I hope more than anything else the Chinese names are more creative, but in terms of English we have: 10 Inversion Roller Coaster, Family Gravity Coaster, Half Pipe, Motorbike Launch Coaster, and Twister Coaster. Take a guess as to which is which. It’s pretty tough.
Beijing’s version of Happy Valley became the 2nd of this chain of parks and soon became the park everybody pointed to when looking at the China coaster boom. While it doesn’t look like the park is in a valley (disappointing in its own right),it does at least look happy… or well themed. If you haven’t looked up some pictures from here, they’re worth checking out. The theming is great, although pretty varied. Happy Valley opened with 4 coasters, each with a rather curious name. Harvest Time harkens back to the days of… working in a field? That doesn’t sound terribly thrilling, which is a good fit for this Golden Horse spinner, which is probably also not so much fun. Jungle Racing ups the theming a bit with a double lift Vekoma mine train through some pretty massive ruins and pretty thin jungle. Golden Wings in Snowfield sounds awfully peaceful for a coaster that probably hurts like crap. This custom SLC more or less copied the layout seen at the first Happy Valley park which was subsequently reproduced at Flamingoland with Kumali. Thankfully (or maybe not), this coaster throws in an extra helix at the end. Layout-wise, it makes it slightly less awful than the other similar ones, which is always a plus. The final coaster is probably the most famous Chinese coaster in the enthusiast community (considering the most famous Chinese coaster outside the enthusiast community is probably none of them…). Sticking with the wings theme, we have Crystal Wings, a B&M flying coaster. Although it’s a Superman clone (or at least very similar), China got their first B&M as well as first flying coaster. Unlike what Six Flags did with their flying coasters, the Happy Valley team got together and decided this coaster needed an f-ing huge city to around. What looks to be about 175ft. worth of giant lost city offers a pretty darn cool setting to go flying through some canyons of fake brick and stucco. I’ve not found out if you can go up into the city, but if not then it’s pretty disappointing. Still, Crystal Wings is one of the coolest looking coasters out there.
Mad Cobra, Discoveryland, Liaoning
The last noteable coaster takes us to Discoveryland, yet another big new park to open this year. Mad Cobra kind of cheats as it’s not a new coaster, but a relocated one from the Suzuka Circuit race track park in Japan. Mad Cobra is what a hairball might look like as a coaster. Suzuka got on the Premier launched coaster train back in the mid 90s when they were all the rage (a rage big enough to sell a whole 5). But for the space, they got a pretty huge amount of coaster packed in there. This may also be the first launched coaster in China, if it opened before Chimelong’s motorbike.
2007
Coasters Opened: 7 over 5 parks
Sadly not themed to the soda brand, FantaWild was the biggest (and maybe only) new park to open in China in 2007. This park was a great place for Golden Horse to practice ripping off real companies. There’s only one picture of the fantastically named Space Vehicle on rcdb, but looking at the track, you can already see some misshapen stuff in the first helix. Not a good start. Hanging Pulley is a rip off of the suspended wild mice you might find on fair circuits back in Europe. I think Zamperla makes them, which might actually not be any better than Golden Horse, which is kind of concerning. Still, with the wild mouse corners, the ride looks like a recipe for unpleasantness. The next ripoff is of the Vekoma inverted coaster layout we saw at Happy Valley Beijing. Why anyone would want to ripoff Vekoma of all companies is beyond me, but this looks deceivingly like it might actually be good. I’d hazard a pretty good guess to say it’s not.
2008
Coasters Opened: 10 over 8 parks
Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park
This park is notable for the one fact that their website used to be b-samusementpark.com, which is pretty hilarious. Sadly someone must have noticed as they’ve changed it now. This park was also ripping off Disney mascots until somebody posted some pics up on the web. That stopped pretty quickly. As for these coasters, the first drops a layout with such exciting elements as flat track, few drops, and even a helix! Thankfully, Jurassic Adventure puts the whole thing in a building and adds some pretty ok theming to make the ride itself bearable. The 2nd coaster is called Spinning Batman, which neither spins nor is related to Batman. The ride is an odd single rail suspended coaster, the kind you really don’t see any more over here. For a ride of this type, it’s on a pretty big scale… a tall vertical lift and a decent size layout. The supports are cool in that they’ve been themed to look like trees. Surprisingly enough, it’s actually pretty convincing as a thematic element. If this park knows one thing, it’s how to make what are likely crappy coasters seem passable with nice theming.
Dive Coaster, Chimelong Paradise, Guangdong
Opening a year after the park, Dive Coaster continues Chimelong’s practice of giving coasters really obvious names. Thankfully, the coaster more than makes up for the lack of creativity on the naming front. At almost 200ft, the ride became the tallest coaster in China as well as the one with the more ridiculous looking trains. Using nearly the same elements as SheiKra, Dive Coaster puts them together just a little different to create a custom layout. This was the first B&M installation of the B&M dive coaster in China (although not the first in Asia with Taiwan’s G5). At its opening Chimelong had the strongest coaster lineup in China, although 2009 would bring some stiff competition.
Unknown, Discoveryland, Liaoning
Apparently, this park isn’t visited so often as the name of this coaster is still listed as unknown. Opening 2 years after the park, this coaster is an inverted coaster from Beijing Shibaolai Amusement Equipment. As it turns out, there’s more than one company in China good at ripping off European rides. This SLC ripoff is an unfortunate 137ft. tall, making it far larger than necessary to inflict a lot of pain. There’s no other information about the layout, although if we look over at our friends from the BS Amusement Park, we find their very own inverted coaster from this company. 4 inversions are dropped into a rather awful looking layout including impressively bad transitions and even an airtime hill. If Discoveryland’s coaster is any bit similar, I’d recommend staying away.
Vesuvius Volcano, FantaWild Adventure, Anhui
1 year after the other 3, Golden Horse gets another opportunity to rip off Vekoma at FantaWild Adventure (which still has nothing to do with the soda). This mine train design at least looks really fantastic. There’s no telling how good it runs, though. You have to wonder how hard it is to screw up a mine train coaster, but you might be surprised. By theming alone, the ride is easily the coolest looking in the park and potentially the most redeemable. Hopefully it rides as good as it looks.
2009
Coasters Opened: 20 over 12 parks
Moto Coaster, Jin Jiang Action Park, Shanghai
Zamperla jumps in on the moto coaster action, opening their first one outside the U.S. Although it’s the same layout as the OCC MotoCoaster at Darien Lake, this version gets launched faster and quicker. This can only be a good thing since all OCC was lacking was a little more speed. Unfortunately they still seems to be letting colorblind people take on the painting as the supports change from yellow to white all throughout the ride. Aside from looking ridiculous, the coaster… well… just looks ridiculous.
Hand Roller Coaster, Harbin Amusement Park, Heilongjiang
Sometimes you just have to wonder if the Chinese pick the American versions of coaster names just to screw with us. If you translate the Chinese name, it comes out Steel Dragon Inverted Coaster. This is passable for the oddly specific generic Chinese coaster name. However, the sign clearly has Hand Roller Coaster, so we’ll just assume they’re retarded. This is another inverted coaster from Beijing Shibaolai Amusement Equipment with the same layout we looked at earlier. The green and gray look kind of nice on the ride, but unfortunately pain can’t make a ride good.
With the Chinese finally discovering what good amusement parks are like, 2 more Happy Valley parks opened in 2009, upping the coaster quality in the process. The first 3 coaster are pretty standard for these parks, a Golden Horse spinning coaster (Madrats), a Vekoma double lift mine train (Dragon in Snowfield), and the standard Vekoma inverted coaster seen at the other Happy Valleys (Dragon in Clouds). As you can see, we continue the propensity for strange names. Thankfully, Happy Valley decided it was time to bring in the big guns for their final coaster. Fly over Mediterranean is an Intamin mega-lite (according to Intamin’s website, they’re “mega-good”). Although under 110ft. tall, this coaster produces tons of airtime in a great layout.
Happy Valley Shanghai, Shanghai
After Happy Valley Chengdu, the board of directors must’ve sat around and thought up how they could make the park more awesome. The current coaster lineup just wasn’t cutting it, so it was time to build the best park in China. The park has 6 coasters, and some very impressive ones at that. LeLe’s Chariot is the obligatory kids coaster from Golden Horse, but things get better from there. With Spinning Coaster, the park decided it’d had enough of Golden Horse and mercifully opened a Zamperla model instead. They won’t know what to do with a spinning coaster that’s semi-passible as a quality ride. For Mine Train coaster, Happy Valley decided to go with Intamin instead of Vekoma. In the process, they made a coaster infinitely cooler than any of the Vekoma mine train models and then proceeded to put it in a big fake mountain. Dive Coaster became the biggest B&M Dive Machine in the world, although the layout is very similar to Sheikra. Going back to Intamin, Happy Valley bought its 2nd Mega-Lite, the park’s next large and awesome coaster. But the most interesting ride in the park is Fireball, China’s first wooden coaster. A Gravity Group design, the coaster throws twists in with airtime to create one heck of a layout. The only question now is how well can a country with no experience in wooden coasters take care of this ride? Gravity Group coasters are not kind to their equipment, so Happy Valley better be ready to take care of the ride if it’s to stay smooth. But regardless of the future quality, Happy Valley’s coaster lineup makes it the strongest in China.
Giant Wheel Park of Suzhou, Suzhou
As if all these other parks weren’t enough, another park opened in 2009 with one of the more interesting coasters in the country. Giant Wheel Park of Suzhou is based around a really big Ferris Wheel as I really hope you could guess. The Chinese like their giant wheels for some reason, so it’s pretty natural to have a whole park based around one. But for the coaster crowd, there’s Stingray: the return of the Vekoma flying coaster. We saw 3 of their ‘Flying Dutchman’ model in the US backat the turn of the century and then nothing. But the Stingray is different. Packed into a tight little layout, the coaster features a vertical lift flipping backwards into the flying position. Stingray has a pretty short layout, but throws in a few helixes and the first outwards half loop on a flying coaster. The footprint is so tight that the brakes are actually located in an inversion as the train gets back to a station. There hasn’t been much in the way of reports since this coaster has gone up, so hopefully this Vekoma hasn’t been met with the downtime some of their other ventures have experienced.
Nanjing East China Mall, Nanjing
We move to malls now. Because shopping isn’t interesting enough, sticking a coaster in there helps things along. Here in Nanjing, Vekoma is adding a custom motorbike coaster to the mall. The size and speed are pretty average for the ride, but the layout is certainly going to be interesting as mall’s don’t usually have a big flat open space to stick a coaster. Hopefully they’ll get creative. Although this falls in with the 2009 listing, the ride is still listed as under construction. Hopefully it’ll be opening soon.
The 2nd of the mall coasters promises to be one of the more interesting Vekoma junior coaster layouts ever built. Shell’s Shuttle winds down the mall corridors and curves around two plaza areas. The ride is part of a larger amusement area within the mall and wraps around some of the other rides. While it’s not as big or as fast as some of the other coasters this ride shows just how much can be done with the Vekoma junior coaster and makes us wish more malls in America decided to add coasters.
2010
Coasters: 12 over 7 parks
Dragon Rider, Floraland, Chengdu
As we make it to 2010, apparently Floraland didn’t get the memo that inverted coasters from Chinese companies are awful. Unfortunately they’ve opened yet another instance of the inverted coaster we’ve seen in several parks over the last few years. In one of those things you never think you’ll ever say: ‘won’t somebody buy an SLC!?’
Unknown, Tianjin Water Park, Tianjin
For some reason, water parks are getting in on the coaster boom too. Unfortunately, this park is also building an inverted coaster. While we hope for an SLC or even a B&M (in our wildest dreams), it’s likely to come from a Chinese company and be yet another instance of things you’d really rather not ride.
Flying Horse Family Coaster, Chimelong Paradise, Guangdong
Chimelong continues to add coasters with this entry, a Mack YoungSTAR family coaster. These coasters are small, but have a good variety of dips and turns that they look fun anyway. The 4 instances of this coaster have been of the same layout model. But for some reason, this coaster is slightly different in the fact that they took away the first drop. Yes, in another ‘wtf, China!?’ moment, the ride’s first drop levels out less than halfway down to the ground and continues along flat until the first corner. If anybody can explain why anyone would do this, please do. For now, we’ll just assume this family coaster was too darn intense.
Unknown, China Dinosaur Park, Jiangsu
If you’re wanting to check out the major coasters on this list, skip to next year and this park. For now, we’ll take a look at the two coasters this park intends to open this year. First we have an unknown steel coaster, which is noted as looping. Judging by previous experience we could hazard a guess to say that this will probably be something similar to a loopscrew design by Arrow and Vekoma, just poorly made and with over the shoulder restraints (fun fact: this describes like 50% of the coasters in China). The other coaster will be a Zamperla Motocoaster with a (thankfully) custom design. The stats are currently listed at 70ft. tall and 30mph, making it the tallest of the Zamperla designs out there. One would hope they’ll do more than some nice meandering corners dropping slowly. We’ll come back to this park in a year for maybe the most significant entry on this list.
Another new park, Knight Valley is actually part of a much larger resort area, developed by the same people that are involved with the Happy Valley parks. This coasters at this park suddenly popped up on everyone’s radar a few weeks ago as GCI posted designs of their wooden coaster for the park, making everyone wish they lived there. At 147ft., this will be GCI’s largest creation to date, and at 4,817ft. it’ll be their longest (by over 1,200ft.). The ride is pretty much what you might envision looking at a big hill and thinking ‘a coaster down the side of that would be really darn cool.’ The ride starts with a triple down, keeping close to the ground the entire time. As the trees turn into a blur, the coaster hits various turns and bumps all designed to produce the usual awesome GCI airtime. The ride features a station fly-by and a fully underground tunnel, showing that when you give somebody enough money, they can make one of the best looking coasters out there. Thankfully, the ride uses GCI’s amazing Millennium Flyer trains, meaning this ride should stay pretty smooth no matter how clueless these people are taking care of it. Much less interesting, but just as notable is a Maurer Sohne X-Car coaster. We still have yet to see the full layout of the Sky Loop design exhibited by the company. Sadly, this is just the single sky loop design as seen at Skyline Park and Magic Springs. While the restraints are hit or miss it seems, the ride should be pretty exciting, especially for a region of the world that hasn’t seen anything like it.
I guess by now we should stop being surprised by new parks opening. Hopefully, though, this park will be as cool as the concept art, which shows some really crazy abstract theming with a few cool coasters mixed in. The first ride is unknown, yet lists two lift hills, which leads us to believe it’s probably the usual mine train design. The next is another Maurer X-Coaster with the sky loop design we say at Knight Valley. 2 in 1 year might be a surprise if it were anywhere else besides here. The most interesting coaster is a custom B&M flying coaster that has what could potentially be the coolest layout of the type. I talked about this ride in my very first post on this blog, so if you feel like reading even more than you already have (I’m impressed you’ve made it this far. We’re almost done!), go check that out. The ride lists the inversion order as being an inline twist, loop, and double corkscrew. The layout has not been published, but with a listing like that, you know it’s going to be interesting. The main question is whether the loop will be outside or inside, a design concept debated for years by forumgoers everywhere. Regardless of which design type, it’s never been done before by B&M, so what we’re seeing here will be completely new.
2011
Coasters: 2 over 2 parks
Unknown, Knight Valley, Guangdong
Apparently Knight Valley really likes Maurer Sohne because they’re getting another X-car for 2011. Not as stupid as getting an inverted coaster from two different companies (calling you out again, La Ronde), this type is a launched version of the style, the same kind as seen at Drievliet. While the layout isn’t terrible impressive, it manages to sneak in 2 inversions and some weird shaped angles we’ve come to expect from X-car coasters.
Unknown, China Dinosaur Park, Jiangsu
It’s fun to study Chinese parks because there’s so little news coming over to the US or European enthusiast community. News tends to come suddenly, no rumors, just suddenly a big announcement. This happened earlier this year when S&S showed a concept art drawing of a new 4-D coaster for the park. We’ve only seen 2 of this type of coaster, and only one of those from S&S. A lot of this is due to these coasters being so incredibly expensive, that very few can afford them, let alone the maintenance. It’s actually a wonder that anyone would buy another one of these after all the maintenance issues that X went through. But nevertheless, the 3rd 4-D coaster will hopefully open in 2011. The layout hasn’t been shown yet, but we can take a guess that it’ll probably be similar to Eejanaika. It’d be nice to see some new things tried, but that might be a little bit much to hope for on a coaster that’ll likely be broken down anyway.
2012
Coasters: 3 over 1 park
Chimelong Hengqin Island, Guangdong
This project is by the same folks that did the Chimelong Project in Guangzhou. Like that park, this will be a resort with a bunch of other over the top stuff along with the park. RCDB lists a marine park, a safari, and a hotel. So once again, here’s people not afraid to spend their money. Right now there’s 3 coaster listed, although that number is almost certainly going to change with the park still being 2 years out. The first two coasters are listed as Mack water coasters, a SuperSplash and a regular water coaster. Neither of these are too exciting, although they have the potential to be pretty nicely themed as we’ve sort of come to expect from Chinese parks. The last coaster is still unknown and was just recently listed on the coaster database. So far, there’s nothing listed for the ride aside from the length, which is listed at a huge 6,561ft. With the current worldwide stats, this would be the 6th longest coaster in the world, just short of Millennium Force’s mark. Hopefully this will be a good coaster and not another Daidarasaurus. I’m sure time will tell as some more information surfaces about the park.
A Summary
So those are the notable from the past few years and looking forward to the next couple. Of course, there’s likely much more on the way for 2011, 2012, and probably even 2010 as the year progresses. China is certainly the forefront of coaster construction and even development as we’re seeing some different types of layouts. And it’s not just coasters; these parks are getting great themes to go along with everything. It’s clear they have more money than they know what to do with. Thankfully they’re introducing China to the world of coasters; a region which has traditionally been lacking in the amusement industry.
Of listed coasters on the coaster database, we’ve seen 73 coasters built in China since 2006.
To compare, coasters since 2006, by continent:
- Africa: 1
- Asia: 156
- Australia: 2
- Europe: 206
- North America: 151
- South America: 14
Europe is still the leader, although I hazard I guess that per large coasters, Asia is about in par. That said, China is just one country, producing 73 coasters themselves. Only the United States has more coasters since 2006 and most of those are smaller coaster for smaller family parks. When you look at the scale and general quality of rides, China is right up there with the best.
For one final study, here’s a map of China with all the parks we looked at in this entry. You can see the development is happening all over, not just one area of the country. [Click to enlarge]
Well.. that’s it! If you made it this far, then I’m impressed. Hopefully the next entry will be sooner than it took to put this one up. Coming up next week is a trip to Texas to visit Six Flags over Texas, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and Kemah Boardwalk. I’ll put up some pictures and maybe a report or two once I get home. I’ll also be off to Intimidator at Carowinds media day, so we’ll have some coverage of that. Hope you enjoyed today’s entry!
On A Rail 