Victory Kingdom

Victory Kingdom (or Triumph Kingdom if you're following the road signs here) is a large amusement park north-east of Tianjin that celebrates the might of Genghis Khan; a pretty unique theme for a park you'd agree.

Some pretty cool Pegasus statues meet you at the entrance, they obviously have lots of room to run free. This park is immense, and this is just the entrance.  I know that according to the myth there was only one Pegasus so what's the plural noun for them: pegasuses or pegasi?

Inside the park the "Main Street" was deader than Genghis's victims. I know we'd gotten here early so that we could get to Happy Valley but there was nobody here. Changzhou Dinosaur park had a crowd waiting at the gate. Here the only thing gather at the gate was rust.

It makes a change from the Princess Castle I suppose. According to the internet Genghis was a dude who, 700 years ago, totally ravaged China, and, 2 hours ago, totally ravaged Oshman's Sporting Goods in San Dimas.

The first coaster was the SLC, which was being liberally sprayed with a hose as we got clear. It was hard to tell if the staff were getting the ride ready or not. Not seeing any sign of interest as we gathered by the entrance to the ride, it was then that I spotted a sign stuck on the gate that we couldn't read. I sent a photo of it to our driver who was waiting outside but it didn't get to him. In the end I managed to get the attention of member of staff and checked if the ride was open using the legendary "crossed arms" body language. It being done back indicated that the ride wasn't open. An english speaking member of staff then came over and explained that the ride was down for maintenance and that there were lots of other rides in the park that were open...but not this.

A Chinese copy of the rare Flying Circus ride. I know that one of these tours the German Fair circuit. How it's design got here I can't say. Shall I guess someone copied it? (China is notorious for doing this)

The park may have unique rides but they still have the disko

The pirate ship is ruining a great photo of the huge giant mammoth behemothic goliathific halfpipe ride. That's a ride for which there has been no evidence of it ever opening. Another club came here a months prior to our trip and it was down for them, would we be so unlucky?

We saw coaster number 3 running so decided to get that out of the way first. Unfortunately it's a water coaster which meant to get the tick we'd have to get wet. Having realised just how wet Chinese water rides can get earlier on the trip I took no chances and bought a poncho.

It didn't really protect me and I still came off pretty wet. It's worth mentioning that the people in the boat in these photos were the only other people in the park.

This is the imaginative titled U-Shaped Rollercoaster and is currently the only one in the world of this type. There are lots of half pipes but only two giant halfpipes. This is "Fly Air" the Intamin model. Rival ride manufacturer Vekoma have built the other, which they call "Big Air". That one can currently be found in Taiwan.

We weren't expecting the ride to be open, figuring if it was the other handful of people in the park would have been riding that one instead of the one that got you soaking wet. As we got close we could see that the ride was behind a concrete wall with no obvious way through. So not only was this ride not ready for opening but they'd gone to the trouble of doing some major construction to stop people reaching it. In an attempt to tease us they park had one bored member of staff walk up and down the station as if to indicate the ride may be opening....it never did. Videos can be found of it testing back in May so something must be amiss.

Elsewhere the park looked alright, just empty. I'm not sure what had happened here, whether we were just here on a bad day, or if there's something else going on. Perhaps the park is in the wrong place? You could understand it sitting like this if Happy Valley had been open for a year and stolen all the public, but that's not the case. They should have had the market mopped up. It's a shame.

The park opened in the summer of 2012 so they have been through one Halloween. The idea to do this must have come from Western Parks, and I'll guess photos of the parks. They've obviously not realised that halloween is seasonal.

The two-tier carousel is really pretty but given the lack of crowd perhaps they could have gotten away with a single tier.

There are 4 coasters in the park, the final one is another spinning mouse that a rather bored member of staff was happy to open up for us. Clearly he doesn't get many people around his ride.

Interesting take on the tea-cup ride, and two more people had shown up!

The park does have a gift-shop and for those who collect park shirts, they do actually have some. Not many theme parks in China sell proper park merchandise. It's mostly just plastic toys, craft and tatt. So fair play to this park for investing in this as given the small number of people visiting it's going to be quite an exclusive t-shirt for those that buy one. That's not to say this park doesn't sell tatt; these communist dolls were my favourite.

On exiting the park I realised that perhaps the pegasi/pegasuses were leaving the park for somewhere busier.

So a bit of a strange park that I don't think is going to be around much. They really need some good luck, and people through the gates, if they're going to be victorious. (see what I did there?)

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