The Monkey Kings 美猴王

苏州乐园很好玩！

The Monkey Kings, Monkey Queen and Monkey Friend Shelley went to Suzhou Amusement Park and had a great time. Here were the notable things we did. (*** is excellent, ** means fun and * was not really worth it.)

* 4D Cinema: Boring. A show (in Chinese) about the future, with some 3D effects. We thought, at 2kuai, it can’t be that bad. We were wrong.

* Video Tele-Combat: Disappointing. I usually never have expectations but the name made me think this would be some kind of sci fi fantasy video game, like laser tag, or light sabers, or the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios. It’s a good amusement park, but it’s Suzhou, not Los Angeles. It is really just small spaceships that fly around that can supposedly kill each other on these really cheap video game screens. Don’t worry too much about this one unless you are with preschool children.

* Merry-go-round: The ladies enjoyed it but the Kings were only really there for the ladies. No surprises: it’s a merry-go-round.

* Small World: A copy of the It’s a Small World attraction at Disney World, minus the singing (which is a good thing) and minus the quality of craftsmanship, animation and size of Disney World. Again, it’s Suzhou, not Orlando, but I’m not sure what children would think of this ride because some of the dolls looked like vampires. And the dolls were a bit jumbled: there were Transformers next to Snow White and the dwarfs on one side, and ancient Chinese legends on the other.

** Cable Cars: Nice view, slow meander over the lake and forest up the hill. Not really worth it if you are not going to take the Gliders down (see below).

** Sky Shuttle: Like the cable cars, the Sky Shuttle rises really high over everything and you get a great view of the park and a lot of Suzhou, too. Too slow to be a ride but still worth it.

*** Bumper Cars: Bumper cars! I could have rode on them a hundred times (so we rode on them twice).

*** Flying Carousel: Better than I expected. You sit on swings that rise ten or twenty metres and go around pretty fast. You fly over a building and the lake, and I kept thinking I could leap off, James Bond style, and onto the roof.

*** Top Secret: You walk into a big, round room and stand in the middle. When the show starts, you see tv screens all around you–a video captured with a 360 degree camera plays for 10 minutes. The show was partly Imaxesque (slow pans over mountain tops) but mostly following the Tour de France in a car, all around the country. You could really get into the action, especially since the floor was moving with the camera. Fun and exciting.

*** Space Adventure: Like Space Mountain, just not as long. In case you have never been on Space Mountain, it is an indoor roller coaster, where everything is dark and you can’t see much in front of you, you just get scared.

*** Suspended Looping Coaster: The three stars is taking into account the 40kuai it cost us each to ride. This is what amusement parks are all about–the crazy, looping, flying, freaky rides like this. If you like roller coasters, take this one, and ride right in the front like we did. Watch your feet!

*** Gliders: We finished off the day with a ride on the hang gliders. It really did feel like we were flying. It was scary at first, but once you are past the forest and over the lake, you just glide like a falcon. Exhilarating.

We went on a sunny day when there were hardly any others there. It would have been fun even if there were big crowds, and there were almost no line ups. Great, great time had by all.

Tags: amusement park, Suzhou

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Suzhou. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.