Fantawild

Today we headed out of Nanjing and south towards Wuhu, the city that inspired Blur to write that "Song 2" track. This small city is home to 2 parks, one large and one much smaller.

The first was the bigger of the two, Fantawild, which has nothing to do with fizzy drink and wasn't too wild. There was a small queue that met us as we'd arrived before it opened, but nothing to worry about. Even realising there was a second entrance and seeing a similar sized crowd we weren't concerned.

When we got in the park we realised that the coasters weren't going to open straight away and the staff were pointing us to the few spin rides that were but we stood our ground and the reluctantly opened up early.

First up was a suspended mouse which made a change for this trip. It looked rougher than it rode in fact we came back to the station fairly surprised with how tame it had been. This ride suffers from really slow throughput mostly due to one train being on the track at a time, the others sitting in the station waiting their turn.

Second coaster was another junior coaster, a couple of which we'd ridden elsewhere. This one had a little bit of theming, some of which got close to us more longer limbed westerners.

From there we headed around to the SLC, the new attraction for the park but this still had another hour until opening and we were advised to go for the mine train over the other side of the park, which was now operational.

After a 40 minute nicely behaved queue line we got to the ride and it was really really good, easily the best coaster in the park. It has a double lift, just like the one in Happy Valley, but this one has much better scenery and theming and like the junior coaster a couple of near misses that made the ride more thrilling than most.

Heading back to the SLC we joined the queue line and could see some of the group riding it. However when we got close to the front the park closed the ride citing high winds, which we couldn't feel at ground level due to the shelter but we could see flags that looked quite active. So we sat it out waiting for the winds to drop, they never did and the ride was eventually closed. Our guide did do his best to get us primed for the ride re-opening but it never happened in the hour or so we had before we departed. You win some you lose some! Those that did ride it said it was roughest they'd ever ridden so perhaps it was better to lose.

The park is a rip off of Disney and Universal and lacks a real reason to visit it to be honest, other than a few credits. None of the rides are particularly unique or run particularly well; the mine train being the best of a bad bunch.