The Eastern Discovery Tour
Day 1

Sadly this ride known as the Ring of Fire wasn't operating when I visited, which was a shame as I've never been able to try one of these before.

This ride, simply known as the Roller Coaster, was also not operating. I did though get to try a similar ride at another park in Beijing.

This is another ride that I did quite a few copies of called the Jungle Mouse. It's not that uncommon to see a lot of replicas of rides in China, especially at the small and mid sized parks, due to the limited number of rides locally available. This was a very fun mouse ride, that saw you tearing around the track at speed.

The next ride I did was this log flume ride.

That larger final drop was surprisingly good. It's not that steep, but it's long and drawn out, creating an out of control feeling as the boat descends.

After that I started looking for food. This can bring up a few problems in China if your used to a Western diet. The food on offer is radically different to the fried potato dominated world of Western catering. There are also fewer places selling a range of hot food, with most selling Chinese style snacks (you could well start to miss chocolate) or large pot noodle style meals. Also the portions you get were a lot smaller than you get on a Western diet. On days where I was doing a large amount of walking I usually ended up getting something for lunch, and something again mid afternoon to keep my energy levels up.

This is a great staple of Chinese parks, the Chinese version of the spinning mouse coaster, which has a different layout from most of the Western ones. They don't spin that much, but they feature some good small bunny hop style hills that give you a nice burst of air time.

These rides have created some controversy as some of the parts used are breaking international copyright laws, which aren't enforced in China. I certainly agree that some of these companies should have had restrictions placed on what they can exhibit and promote at international trade shows outside of China. I also feel in the long term if China wants to keep expanding it's amusement industry it will need to come up with more of it's own original ideas.

My favourite roller coaster at Sun Park was this mine train roller coaster. It is a well themed ride, with a fun layout. It includes a first hill which almost defies gravity, as it doesn't look like the train can clear it when you first approach it.

As you can see the whole ride is decorated with this mountain style theming.