Chimelong Paradise

Okay, it's been a while (about 3 weeks) since we went to Chimelong, but I haven't had a chance to post about it.

I love amusement parks! They are one of my favorite things. Since we arrived here, everyone has told us what a fun park Chimelong is. So, we finally just decided to take a day off of work and go. Jason and I were just going to go by ourselves, but then Mel and Shane had the great idea of taking our Aiee with us so that we could take our kids, but also go on rides together. When we were at Disneyland and Ocean Park last month, we had to take turns going on the "big" rides by ourselves while the other one stayed with the kids. It was the perfect idea because it was so much fun to surprise our kids and to see them enjoy the rides. It was also really fun to see our Aiee's reaction to everything. She is so funny anyway, but I don't think she's ever been to an amusement park before, so it was really fun. Plus she takes her job very seriously so she insisted on carrying Haley when she was tired, taking her to the bathroom, carrying our bag of stuff around all day, etc. And around 3:00 when the kids were tired, she took them home and put Haley down for a nap while Jason and I stayed for a few more hours.

Probably the funniest thing about the day was the hoards of crowds of Chinese people following us around all day. There were tons of school groups there for field trips and the kids were seriously more interested in us than in the rides. I'm not exaggerating at all either. When we first walked into the park, we got mauled by a massive crowd like we were the main attraction of the park. We're kind of used to this kind of attention, but it was funny to watch our Aiee. She was holding Haley and a swarm of people gathered around her, taking pictures and trying to touch Haley. Haley hates the attention, but she did pretty well. There were several groups of kids that came up and asked if they could take their picture with me or with Jason. I just find it so funny. I wonder what they say to people when they show them the pictures. "Here's a picture of the day that I saw a white person." It just seems so funny to me. After we got away from the initial crowds, we just started ignoring everyone and going on rides. There was always a crowd following us though. Every line we were in or ride that we were on, people would take pictures. After a while, Britton and Haley stopped being bugged by it and Britton started "hamming it up". He danced and sang everywhere we went and crowds of people would watch. He loves to make people laugh. There were several different rides that had bubble machines that would blow out bubbles while they were running. So, Haley and Britton would chase the bubbles and try to pop them. It was really cute and it drew a huge crowd. People even got our their video cameras. It's kind of funny to get so much attention everywhere we go, but here it was definitely over the top. And I don't think in the Chinese culture they have any rules about staring or personal space. So, that makes it quite interesting. In every line we would have people, inches away from us, staring into our eyes. Then they would say, "very beautiful". I guess blue eyes aren't something they see everyday (or at all) here. I guess this year in China will be the closest we'll ever come to being celebrities.

I didn't get too many pictures at Chimelong which is amazing since there were so many taken of us all day long. Maybe I didn't realize that only a handful of them were taken from my camera. But, I will post a few. (I just tried to post my pictures and after waiting about 10 minutes for them to upload, I got an error, so I'll have to do it later--posting pictures here is not nearly as easy as at home.)

There were several rides that are worthy of mentioning just because they are different than anything I have ever been on. It definitely is a fun amusement park, and great for kids. There is a 4D theater with a movie about a dinosaur and some aliens. It didn't seem as nice as the similar ones at Disneyland but the effects were definitley enjoyable. The chairs rocked a lot and at one point it felt like a snake was crawling right across your seat. Also something juts out in the back of your seat and pokes you in the back. There were lots of fun effects like that. But, the greatest part was watching our Aiee. She had no clue what to expect or what she was getting into. And she would squeal everytime her chair would move or something else like that. Plus I think it was probably the first time she had seen a 3D movie. So, she was fascinated (and a little scared).

My favorites ride of the park were the flying frisbee, the motorcycle roller coaster, and the 10-inversion rollercoaster.