Please Vomiting Here

I went with David and Lynn, who is a CIEE person visiting Changzhou, to Dinosaur Park on Saturday. When I heard that there was a place in Changzhou called Dinosaur Park what I imagined was somewhere in between the old kids show Barney and a broken down carnival, but Dinosaur Park is really something. It's not exactly Disney, but it's pretty close to on par with Six Flags. The cost of admission was 120 RMB, or about $18. That doesn't seem like a ton of money compared with the Six Flags and Disney's gorging prices, but for the Chinese that's the equivalent of about 15 dinners in the cafeteria or 24 hair cuts around campus. The Dinosaur theme started right from the front gate which had a big arch like something out of the Flintstones. Inside the first thing you see is a big pond in the middle of the park with gigantic Brontosaurus, the dinosaur with the long neck, standing in the middle of the water. You can't see the whole park clearly from any vantage but they provide Disney like maps to show you where to go. The sections of the park all have poorly translated names such as the main entrance, Happy Street, the carnival like section of the part, Funny Dinosaur Town, or the section with the bigger rides, simply called Lubura.

We went to the section closest to us which looked like a recreation of a jungle, with trees made out of what seemed to be concrete, and some Styrofoam dinosaurs. Some had simple animatronics and moved around a little. The first ride like thing was a climbing wall with hand and foot holds. We waited in what was less like a line and more like a big funnel of people, until we could climb on it. The holds were actually much tougher then they looked and I fell off into a net and had to walk around. Even though I wasn't nearly the only one to fall the guy running the section seemed angry when I did and said something I didn't understand. Next we went over to a big ride that spun you around while dropping you in sort of a pendulum motion. I didn't want ot go on it but Dave and Lynn did. While I waited for them some more kids at the park came over and wanted to get their picture taken with me. Dave told me that at the edge of the seats there was this little plastic bin with the words "Please Vomiting Here" written on it.

After that it was close to the time the park was supposed to close but we wanted to go on one more ride so we waited maybe one and a half hours for a big flume ride. Even though it was pretty cool out and the big water park section of Dino Park was closed the flume was still open. What they did was provide little cheap parkas that you could buy for 2 RMB. I got stuck in the front of the flume, ie the part that gets most wet. First the ride took us through these sort of pretend dinosaur caves with animatronics dinosaurs then up to a big section that looked like primordial earth with a big volcano and lightning. I still don't like rides that drop so I closed my eyes right when we got to the top of the final lift, but Dave said that there was a big T-rex head right before the drop. I got pretty wet as the little poncho didn't really do much and mine sort of ripped. Lynn thought it was funny that I pretty much complained the whole time on the flume.

The park was clearly made by some one familiar with how theme parks are run in America. Every big ride ends in a gift shop and all the prices are about double what you would find anywhere else in China. I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't get any pictures but I'll get some from Dave for another post. I did buy the little unlicensed version on Yoshi that you see at the top of this post. The park was still in Halloween mode also and I think I saw more things relating to Halloween there then the rest of China combined. They had fake pumpkins all over the place and were selling a ton of costumes and even had on Halloween music.