Harbin Amusement Park

The whole group of foreigners went outside today to enjoy the warm weather and the May holiday. Everyone strolled (we had 3 strollers) across campus to the Harbin Amusement Park. With 12 adults and 7 children, we were quite the display.

We navigated the crowds to the ticket booth and walked into the park. We're amazed to be less then 20 minutes from a roller coaster, Ferris wheel, and other carnival rides. (And this is the first time we've been to the park!) Everything was new to us and we did a bit of exploring to find what we wanted to do.

The park is much like a travel carnival or fair. We paid 3 RMB to enter the park, then paid different amounts for each of the rides inside the park. Here's a list of the prices:

Roller Coaster: 50 RMB
Ferris Wheel: 20 RMB
Bumper Cars: 10 RMB
Bumper Boats: 10 RMB
Go carts: 10 RMB
Happy-go-pukey: 10 RMB
4D Theater: 25 RMB
Etc.

The park has crafts, fake tattoos, cartoon character statues, carnival games (shoot the balloons and win a prize), and a few snacks. The snacks included ice cream, drinks, and assortment of meats on a stick. While we didn't try them, the squid-on-a-stick was the most popular.

We came to the park to ride the Ferris wheel and purchased our adult tickets. We thought children under 1.4 meters were free. They're not! We only found out we had to purchase Kanyon a ticket when we got to the front of the line. (FYI, a child's ticket was 10 RMB.)

Kanyon enjoyed the ride around pretending to be Superman as we went up-up-up. It was an amazingly new view of Harbin as we rode to the top of the Ferris wheel. We saw a bird's eye view of our campus, the river, and a Confucian temple/park we'll check out next time. At times M'Lynn was a little nervous by the sounds coming from outside our compartment, but was unable to express her feelings because she didn't want to alarm Kanyon. The ride down was much better after we settled into our compartment and opened our popcorn.

We finished the Ferris wheel and then looked at the rest of the rides. The lines were long, about 40 minutes long to ride merry-go-round swings, and much longer for the 'real' rides. It was getting close to lunch and even closer to nap time, so we left the park, grabbed some McDonald's lunch, and then strolled home for naps.