It was my 236th birthday last month, so I was taken to Chimelong Resort for the weekend. I hadn’t been in a massive rush to get back since there’s just a Sky Rocket II that’s been added since my list visit ages ago, so it wasn’t on the cards for when I finally pull my finger out and do the Guangzhou cred-polishing weekend I keep meaning to do. Since it was all getting paid for and I’d be with someone who had never been, it was a decent idea.
We used the high-speed train from the station next to my place, which is really convenient, but you still need a bit of time since you’re dealing with immigration. It’s been a massive bone of contention in Hong Kong, but part of the station, which is physically under the Jordan area of Hong Kong, is officially Mainland Chinese territory. It makes a huge amount of sense for the ease of travel since you’re officially entering China when you get on the train, meaning that the Chinese stations don’t have to have immigration checks, but the locals have seen it as conceding land to China.
Anyway, we showed up an hour before our train and only had about 10 minutes to spare before we got on. That included collecting tickets though, which took a while. I would have collected them a day or two earlier to avoid the faff. Just saying. The train took 45 minutes (compared to the 2 hours for the old, regular train) and Chimelong is only a 10-minute taxi from the high-speed station in Guangzhou, which is obviously really convenient. It’s on the same metro line too if you’re poor.
In the past, I’d only ever been to Chimelong Paradise, the last few times just using the south entrance near the metro station, so hadn’t seen anything else of the resort, which is actually f**king huge (theme park, safari park, water park, bird park, circus, 3 hotels…). We quickly checked into the hotel and headed over to the park, getting in for around 11ish.
I hadn’t used the main north gate since my very first visit about 12 years ago, before the metro was open there, so did the park “backwards” to the usual way, starting with Motorbike Launch Coaster:
Meh. Whatever. Nothing wrong with it, and certainly hasn’t deteriorated since the last time I did it, but it’s obviously nothing special. Waited around 20 minutes I think.
10 Inversion Roller Coaster next. I’ve seen recent reports with complaints of roughness, but I still think it’s mostly fine. Did back row, and yeah it rattles a bit, but it’s bearable. Half an hour to wait this time.
I mentioned that it was a weekend. We decided that the Saturday should be slightly quieter than the Sunday (a lot of people work Saturdays, some schools still have classes etc.), but it was still the busiest I’ve ever seen this place.
Most reports get comments of “it looks dead … how do they stay open?” etc., but that’s because traveling enthusiasts will always try to go on weekdays away from holidays. The place clearly is getting plenty of people in. It got 4.18 million last year, putting it just outside the world’s top 25. That’s more than Port Aventura, and more than double what Alton Towers got.
Which leads me to the biggest pain in the arse of the day:
Sky Rocket was relatively new (opened in late 2017), so I needed the cred. We ended up waiting an hour for it, but it got even worse shortly after we joined the queue since a nearby show emptied out and people filed in.
Ugh.
They were running it as well as they could have been – no faff between dispatches - but it’s a poor choice of ride for a busy park. They’ve even been stupid enough to go with the 2-car train rather than 3. If a tiny park like Bosque Magico can install one of these with a dual-loading platform, Chimelong has no excuse. Anyway, the ride was fine. No stupid collars at least.
There was a new Circus area since I’d been last. Skipped the Air Race. The first time I did one of these I somehow really liked it, but every time since, I’ve just felt sick.
We did the drop tower at the end of the day since it was pretty busy when we were first around there. I’m not sure who makes this - it seems quite "Intamin" apart from the seats feeling a lot less substantial - but it was very good.
Dive Coaster was the only thing running two trains, so we only waited around 15 minutes for it on the first ride. I love these. Don’t care.
We skipped the halfpipe (it’s vile) and the Mack Youngstar coaster (VR making ridiculous queues).
I remember quite liking their big stunt show before, but it was s**t this time. Don’t know why.
Did the immersive tunnel thing – still one of the better ones out there – and the Forest Temple walkthrough.
Didn’t eat here:
The park had quietened down a lot towards the end of the day. There’s a huge circus next to it that has the show quite soon after the park closes, so I think anyone who’s going to that (part of a bunch of different resort packages, but we weren’t bothered), are probably heading back to the hotels for dinner before that starts, leaving the park very quiet for the last hour or two. The hotel restaurants were quiet later on as well – we thought there might be a load of people heading in after the circus, but it didn’t happen - which pretty much supports that idea.
Anyway, the 4D cinema was new for me since I’d always skipped it. They used to have an Ice Age film in it, but now it’s some thing with animals in a pet shop. I think it’s new since they had quite a few posters up around the park for it.
It would have been after that that we polished off the drop tower (one-cycle wait) Giant Frisbee (walk on, but no photos for some reason) and got a couple of rerides in on Dive Coaster (walk on) before grabbing a reride on Motorbike Launch Coaster on the way out (not my choice).
Unlike every other Chinese park, including the major chains, Chimelong aren’t too bad with their merch. It’s mostly based around characters that they’ve developed for the parks, or a lot of stuffed animals. Why anyone would forgo any of that for one of these, then, is beyond me.
Back to the hotel then. We hadn’t really had a proper look at first since we wanted to get into the park. In the shopping/restaurant area, they’ve got flamingos and white tigers.
Turns out we had a decent view from the room:
We hadn’t noticed the previous day, but near the lounge/bar area of the lobby was another tiger exhibit. This time with stripeless white tigers.
We were spending the second day in the safari park, deciding to take out stuff with us and leave it at the entrance rather than head back to the hotel. There was a free shuttle bus, but there were loads of people waiting and the first one that showed up was already packed (maybe 4 people managed to get on), so we sacked that off and did the 20-minute walk.
I had no idea how big the place was; it’s f**king enormous. We started off with the cable car. You can use it to get from one end of the park to the other, or there’s a circular route (more like a triangle) which does the whole thing and drops you off where you started, so we just went for that one.
There were a couple of areas with rides, but no surprise kiddy cred. They’ve had one in the past though – just a Golden Horse worm I think.
What was great about this place is that everything was very “open”. There were absolutely no old-school cages/bars. Even large birds like hornbills were out in the open, very close to guests, but always with a keeper nearby.
There were also a lot of “free range” animals. You can’t see from this picture, but this area was for a pair of sloths, which were sleeping in the box.
There were similar setups with gibbons and some monkeys. Obviously, there must be something in place to prevent them from getting out of the designated area, but the effect is that the animals are freely moving around you.
The panda area was amazing. A few years ago, Chimelong were the first place in the world to breed panda triplets. Never ones to miss a marketing opportunity, they very quickly became the mascots of the resort. Even though they’re now sub-adults, and therefore separated from each other, they’re still a big deal.
There were a couple of different museum-type setups about them in different areas. Anyway, pandas. Not sure how many the park actually have, but I think we saw around 8 of them. Most of them were in this one area, but they even had another “Panda Hill”, which the cable car passed very close to, with a couple of others.
All of the enclosures had these ice things. Such a good idea.
All very impressive then. I was a bit “over” pandas since they’re EVERYWHERE over here, but this was easily the best place to see them other than the breeding centre I went to in Chegdu a few years ago.
Other stuff:
They also had an absolute s**t ton of koalas, around 50 of the things.
Quite a few of the animals here could be fed, which I think is a good idea since it’s supervised and prevents people throwing random, unsuitable crap at them.
Still…
Before the pandas and koalas were a thing, this place were going apes**t with white tigers. It’s why you see the white tiger statues/fountain at Chimelong Paradise, and explains why they’re in the hotel as well. They also have golden tigers, which are just another unnatural, selectively-bred colour variant. I don’t like it to be honest.
There’s another white tiger enclosure nearby, plus another one in the actual safari section. They’ve also got “normal” tigers nearby, plus a nursery area for the cubs they keep churning out.
These things are fab:
A new addition is a small group of proboscis monkeys. Apparently, China traded a couple of pandas with Indonesia to get them. No doubt they’ll now manage to breed dozens of the endangered little bastards.
I didn’t take a huge number of pictures of the drive-through safari section. There’s an option to drive your own car though, but most people take a land train thing. The train is completely open, so a lot of bigger/dangerous animals are in separated enclosures, but it’s done in a way to make them seem very close. Those included lions, tigers, cheetahs, bears, elephants, hippos, white rhino (a big herd of at least ten).
The more open areas had kangaroos, emus, loads of different deer/antelope species, camels… The final section is a large African area, with zebras, ostriches, wildebeest and s**tload of giraffes, all looking very impressive since the cable car comes over the top as well.
The dinosaur walkthrough was quite impressive, ending with a pretty scary “fight” between two huge animatronics. I’m fairly sure that given their artificial breeding programs with other difficult species, this will likely be the first place to go all-out Jurassic Park.
The snake house was fab. They had glass floors with snakes underneath, plus glass ceilings so that you had some huge pythons above you. This also ended in a room full of giant animatronic snakes, which was a bit weird and unnecessary.
I haven’t posted pictures of everything here because there’s loads, but it really was one of the best animal parks I’ve been to in terms of the size of the place and the collection, the rare species, the quality of the enclosures etc. It more than holds itself up among the best of the Western zoos I’ve been to.
However, there were a few different shows, none of which we went to because of time, so I’m not sure if any of those would make me less enthusiastic about the place. I don’t know what they entailed, so can’t comment there. Also, there’s a very theme-park feel to it. After almost every animal exhibit, you exit into a gift shop filled with tat based around those animals.
We had an earlyish train back, so were out of there by around 4pm. If I’d have known how big it was, I probably would have made an effort to get there earlier than we did, and would have left a bit later; it’s definitely a full-day place.
We used the high-speed train from the station next to my place, which is really convenient, but you still need a bit of time since you’re dealing with immigration. It’s been a massive bone of contention in Hong Kong, but part of the station, which is physically under the Jordan area of Hong Kong, is officially Mainland Chinese territory. It makes a huge amount of sense for the ease of travel since you’re officially entering China when you get on the train, meaning that the Chinese stations don’t have to have immigration checks, but the locals have seen it as conceding land to China.
Anyway, we showed up an hour before our train and only had about 10 minutes to spare before we got on. That included collecting tickets though, which took a while. I would have collected them a day or two earlier to avoid the faff. Just saying. The train took 45 minutes (compared to the 2 hours for the old, regular train) and Chimelong is only a 10-minute taxi from the high-speed station in Guangzhou, which is obviously really convenient. It’s on the same metro line too if you’re poor.
In the past, I’d only ever been to Chimelong Paradise, the last few times just using the south entrance near the metro station, so hadn’t seen anything else of the resort, which is actually f**king huge (theme park, safari park, water park, bird park, circus, 3 hotels…). We quickly checked into the hotel and headed over to the park, getting in for around 11ish.
I hadn’t used the main north gate since my very first visit about 12 years ago, before the metro was open there, so did the park “backwards” to the usual way, starting with Motorbike Launch Coaster:
Meh. Whatever. Nothing wrong with it, and certainly hasn’t deteriorated since the last time I did it, but it’s obviously nothing special. Waited around 20 minutes I think.
10 Inversion Roller Coaster next. I’ve seen recent reports with complaints of roughness, but I still think it’s mostly fine. Did back row, and yeah it rattles a bit, but it’s bearable. Half an hour to wait this time.
I mentioned that it was a weekend. We decided that the Saturday should be slightly quieter than the Sunday (a lot of people work Saturdays, some schools still have classes etc.), but it was still the busiest I’ve ever seen this place.
Most reports get comments of “it looks dead … how do they stay open?” etc., but that’s because traveling enthusiasts will always try to go on weekdays away from holidays. The place clearly is getting plenty of people in. It got 4.18 million last year, putting it just outside the world’s top 25. That’s more than Port Aventura, and more than double what Alton Towers got.
Which leads me to the biggest pain in the arse of the day:
Sky Rocket was relatively new (opened in late 2017), so I needed the cred. We ended up waiting an hour for it, but it got even worse shortly after we joined the queue since a nearby show emptied out and people filed in.
Ugh.
They were running it as well as they could have been – no faff between dispatches - but it’s a poor choice of ride for a busy park. They’ve even been stupid enough to go with the 2-car train rather than 3. If a tiny park like Bosque Magico can install one of these with a dual-loading platform, Chimelong has no excuse. Anyway, the ride was fine. No stupid collars at least.
There was a new Circus area since I’d been last. Skipped the Air Race. The first time I did one of these I somehow really liked it, but every time since, I’ve just felt sick.
We did the drop tower at the end of the day since it was pretty busy when we were first around there. I’m not sure who makes this - it seems quite "Intamin" apart from the seats feeling a lot less substantial - but it was very good.
Dive Coaster was the only thing running two trains, so we only waited around 15 minutes for it on the first ride. I love these. Don’t care.
We skipped the halfpipe (it’s vile) and the Mack Youngstar coaster (VR making ridiculous queues).
I remember quite liking their big stunt show before, but it was s**t this time. Don’t know why.
Did the immersive tunnel thing – still one of the better ones out there – and the Forest Temple walkthrough.
Didn’t eat here:
The park had quietened down a lot towards the end of the day. There’s a huge circus next to it that has the show quite soon after the park closes, so I think anyone who’s going to that (part of a bunch of different resort packages, but we weren’t bothered), are probably heading back to the hotels for dinner before that starts, leaving the park very quiet for the last hour or two. The hotel restaurants were quiet later on as well – we thought there might be a load of people heading in after the circus, but it didn’t happen - which pretty much supports that idea.
Anyway, the 4D cinema was new for me since I’d always skipped it. They used to have an Ice Age film in it, but now it’s some thing with animals in a pet shop. I think it’s new since they had quite a few posters up around the park for it.
It would have been after that that we polished off the drop tower (one-cycle wait) Giant Frisbee (walk on, but no photos for some reason) and got a couple of rerides in on Dive Coaster (walk on) before grabbing a reride on Motorbike Launch Coaster on the way out (not my choice).
Unlike every other Chinese park, including the major chains, Chimelong aren’t too bad with their merch. It’s mostly based around characters that they’ve developed for the parks, or a lot of stuffed animals. Why anyone would forgo any of that for one of these, then, is beyond me.
Back to the hotel then. We hadn’t really had a proper look at first since we wanted to get into the park. In the shopping/restaurant area, they’ve got flamingos and white tigers.
Turns out we had a decent view from the room:
We hadn’t noticed the previous day, but near the lounge/bar area of the lobby was another tiger exhibit. This time with stripeless white tigers.
We were spending the second day in the safari park, deciding to take out stuff with us and leave it at the entrance rather than head back to the hotel. There was a free shuttle bus, but there were loads of people waiting and the first one that showed up was already packed (maybe 4 people managed to get on), so we sacked that off and did the 20-minute walk.
I had no idea how big the place was; it’s f**king enormous. We started off with the cable car. You can use it to get from one end of the park to the other, or there’s a circular route (more like a triangle) which does the whole thing and drops you off where you started, so we just went for that one.
There were a couple of areas with rides, but no surprise kiddy cred. They’ve had one in the past though – just a Golden Horse worm I think.
What was great about this place is that everything was very “open”. There were absolutely no old-school cages/bars. Even large birds like hornbills were out in the open, very close to guests, but always with a keeper nearby.
There were also a lot of “free range” animals. You can’t see from this picture, but this area was for a pair of sloths, which were sleeping in the box.
There were similar setups with gibbons and some monkeys. Obviously, there must be something in place to prevent them from getting out of the designated area, but the effect is that the animals are freely moving around you.
The panda area was amazing. A few years ago, Chimelong were the first place in the world to breed panda triplets. Never ones to miss a marketing opportunity, they very quickly became the mascots of the resort. Even though they’re now sub-adults, and therefore separated from each other, they’re still a big deal.
There were a couple of different museum-type setups about them in different areas. Anyway, pandas. Not sure how many the park actually have, but I think we saw around 8 of them. Most of them were in this one area, but they even had another “Panda Hill”, which the cable car passed very close to, with a couple of others.
All of the enclosures had these ice things. Such a good idea.
All very impressive then. I was a bit “over” pandas since they’re EVERYWHERE over here, but this was easily the best place to see them other than the breeding centre I went to in Chegdu a few years ago.
Other stuff:
They also had an absolute s**t ton of koalas, around 50 of the things.
Quite a few of the animals here could be fed, which I think is a good idea since it’s supervised and prevents people throwing random, unsuitable crap at them.
Still…
Before the pandas and koalas were a thing, this place were going apes**t with white tigers. It’s why you see the white tiger statues/fountain at Chimelong Paradise, and explains why they’re in the hotel as well. They also have golden tigers, which are just another unnatural, selectively-bred colour variant. I don’t like it to be honest.
There’s another white tiger enclosure nearby, plus another one in the actual safari section. They’ve also got “normal” tigers nearby, plus a nursery area for the cubs they keep churning out.
These things are fab:
A new addition is a small group of proboscis monkeys. Apparently, China traded a couple of pandas with Indonesia to get them. No doubt they’ll now manage to breed dozens of the endangered little bastards.
I didn’t take a huge number of pictures of the drive-through safari section. There’s an option to drive your own car though, but most people take a land train thing. The train is completely open, so a lot of bigger/dangerous animals are in separated enclosures, but it’s done in a way to make them seem very close. Those included lions, tigers, cheetahs, bears, elephants, hippos, white rhino (a big herd of at least ten).
The more open areas had kangaroos, emus, loads of different deer/antelope species, camels… The final section is a large African area, with zebras, ostriches, wildebeest and s**tload of giraffes, all looking very impressive since the cable car comes over the top as well.
The dinosaur walkthrough was quite impressive, ending with a pretty scary “fight” between two huge animatronics. I’m fairly sure that given their artificial breeding programs with other difficult species, this will likely be the first place to go all-out Jurassic Park.
The snake house was fab. They had glass floors with snakes underneath, plus glass ceilings so that you had some huge pythons above you. This also ended in a room full of giant animatronic snakes, which was a bit weird and unnecessary.
I haven’t posted pictures of everything here because there’s loads, but it really was one of the best animal parks I’ve been to in terms of the size of the place and the collection, the rare species, the quality of the enclosures etc. It more than holds itself up among the best of the Western zoos I’ve been to.
However, there were a few different shows, none of which we went to because of time, so I’m not sure if any of those would make me less enthusiastic about the place. I don’t know what they entailed, so can’t comment there. Also, there’s a very theme-park feel to it. After almost every animal exhibit, you exit into a gift shop filled with tat based around those animals.
We had an earlyish train back, so were out of there by around 4pm. If I’d have known how big it was, I probably would have made an effort to get there earlier than we did, and would have left a bit later; it’s definitely a full-day place.
