Jurassic Park

Whenever I am traveling around Eastern China and mention that I am from Changzhou, most people know it for one thing and one thing only: The China Dinosaur Park or Kong Long Yuan. Embarrassingly it took me months to finally go there.

When I did finally go with a local friend (who had been four times) it was sort of a letdown. The place had been hyped for me for so long that I had high expectations of it--basically everything but real dinosaurs. It didn't help that we went on a rainy day so the normal throngs of Chinese were absent, so there wasn't as much spectacle as I had hoped. Apparently Halloween is a lot different. Really it was just a small scale dinosaur-themed amusement park.

But at least it wasn't one of those lame places that advertise "living dinosaurs" and show you a couple of alligators and komodo dragons cooped up in glass cages and not eating people. In fact I don't think there was a single living animal that I saw. Instead the dinos were mostly cheap animatronics and cartoon characters, but even they were upstaged by the non-reptilian more popular Chinese cartoon figure, the Lazy Sheep. The only factual area was the museum which we used as a shortcut from one end to the other.

Fortunately the rides were actually pretty good, and thanks to more lenient (lax) standards of comfort and safety, they were quite torturous. The best example was a 3D Movie ride which constantly sprayed water in your face and prodded you in the back. There was also a flume ride which was a total knock-off of space mountain, except instead of traveling through the galaxy at the speed of light, you rode slowly down a river through plastic forests and foam volcanoes. Though you do get pretty wet at the end. There weren't any real roller coasters, but the smaller rides were adequately dizzying, and sickening for quite a few. But unlike the easier-to-please Changzhouren, I don't plan on getting a season pass.