It's Time We Visited a Theme Park

It's Time We Visited a Theme Park

Ocean Park is one of the more famous and preferred theme parks in Hong Kong.

And for good reason.

When a theme park picks a certain theme to go with for a period of time, you expect some effort. Not the case with Ocean Park. Not only was a lot of fun to go during the day, but with O'Hallows Eve (or just Halloween) creeping up, the park went all out.

Just to help explain things, I'm going to start from the beginning.

Out of the multiple theme parks including Disneyland, that can be found in Hong Kong, the preferred park is Ocean Park - it may be because they have these things called Pandas!

The park itself is host to many animals, such as walruses and seals; penguins; red pandas and big pandas, although they are quite old now, so they sleep a lot through out the day; dolphins and sharks; and what look like just about every different type of goldfish ever to exist! 

So for those animal lovers, it is definitely a place to go aww, and admire the playfulness of some of the animals (weirdly enough, one of the walruses was one of the more playful animals!).

A little playful seal

Park of The Summit

Next on to rides - well it is an actual theme park, therefore rides are mandatory. 

The park is actually separated into two sections - The Waterfront and The Summit.

 

Over the mountain in the Cable Car

To reach either you can ride the Cable Car up and over the mountain (its like that both ways), or you experience the submarine affect given by going via the train.

The Summit is overall bigger than the Waterfront, so it has the majority of the rides, particularly the roller-coasters.

Just a bit of a heads up. 

I have avoided going on theme park or show rides ever since I managed to throw up on the spinning cups ride a few years ago. Turns out I get motion sickness, particularly when spinning around fast, or when I am on any type of sea vessel for up to an hour.

So when the very first ride, my friend and I actually went on turned out to be a rotating device swinging upside down, imagine my nightmare. Problem was, when we figured out what it did, we were actually already on it! Oh the thrill! The Flash, as it is so named, was actually an enjoyable ride, especially when the main people screaming where my friend and I.

(Plus side for me, none of the rides at the park actually go on for too long)

And of course, i felt queasy afterwards, and I didn't make it better by going Whirly Bird ride, I got so dizzy, I had a knot in my stomach for the rest of the day. But that didn't stop me from proceeding to on the multiple rides afterwards.

As luck would have it, just getting to the park, and getting on the rides, meant little waiting for us, as we went on a Friday around midday. Around 4pm, because of the Halloween event occurring, it began to get very busy, so the waiting lines began to grow. I can't bear to imagine what that park is like on a weekend!

So with that, we managed to ride the Hair Raiser,

Hair Raiser

Mine Train (we went on twice!); Raging River; and the Arctic Blast roller-coaster, all with very little waiting time.

It wasn't until we got to the Rapids, that we came into any trouble. By then the crowds had grown, and the line was quite big. The worst part, is that people here do not understand the concept of queuing and waiting patiently here. Imagine my surprise at being constantly pushed by middle aged ladies, and yet we couldn't actually move! It was uncomfortable, crowded and irritating. 

However the ride itself was good fun, and I especially enjoyed their warning about it.

"You will get wet.

You may get soaked"

It was a water ride, ended up being very refreshing after the humidity and heat of the day.

Now finally, the event.

It was actually amazing to see how the park had managed to go so far with the Halloween themed event. They had haunted houses, scary rides, and even a Walking with the Dead section. I am actually glad that I didn't go in that. I can not handle zombies.

But one of the best parts was the sheer amount of people dressed up in these amazing costumes! They had what looked like everything, witches, fairies, zombies, a giant eye guy, a warrior, a crazy man with a chainsaw, aliens and scary scarecrows! The park had also incorporated both western and Chinese monsters, and fairy tales. Which meant that there were some characters I recognised and others I did not. All the more entertaining!

Character Dance!

The Pumpkin King

Chinese Mime

 The whole day was really very enjoyable and successfully, especially as we got the luck of seeing one of the most amazing water feature light shows. The main story of the show was about the Chinese mythology of two fighting dragons (fire and water), which was projected on to the main fountain in the park. That itself was amazing to watch. But the show went further. By adding fire to the mix. 

To keep with the intensity of the story, there would be bursts of flames, so hot, we could actually feel the heat from where we were standing. 

The Lights. The Story. The Water. And the Fire.

All made such a wonderful experience. And a great end to our day at Ocean Park.