Great comment - feel free to also post this as a review of the listing as well
Wet, Wild and Weird: The Cube Reviewed
Editor’s Note: Lauren McCarthy, our intrepid writer, went to check out the “Happy Magic Water Cube Waterpark” yesterday. Here is her take on the experience.
Earlier this month we blogged about the opening of the Magic Happy Water Cube Waterpark and we recently had a chance to check it out (and see if it’s worth the RMB 200 admission).
Our verdict? I daresay that for some, the park may not be worth the price - although we can see it being a fun experience for families with kids and people for whom money is less of an object (and, perhaps, people with a healthy appreciation of kitsch).
The tiny park is split into three main areas. There is a wave pool, one grouping of three slides that require a height of 1.4m, and a second section of slides that are much smaller, with only two that offer any height or length.
I found the slides to be mediocre. The three largest ones start from around three stories up and the rest are merely large playground slides – even the management seems to be aware that their slides aren’t quite up to snuff seeing how the images on the website depict the same model, but built on a much larger scale and in a sunny outdoor setting.
There also isn’t much space available for actual swimming. The wave pool is fine for floating, but is the busiest and most crowded part of the park. Most visitors seem content with floating, many wearing the life vests provided by the park. Side B, consisting of the playground portion, seems to be only entertaining for young kids and is circled by a rather humdrum lazy river.
Of the three larger slides the Aqua Loop – a forty foot drop that loops back up about 20 feet – is the only one that offers any excitement. At the top is something akin to a glass sarcophagus where you stand and get locked in as you wait for the bottom to literally drop out from under your feet. As an added bonus, this slide is great to watch. Dropping three stories and going back up apparently requires some momentum. Unfortunately not everyone, particularly light-weight girls, can achieve this. The highly amusing result is seeing them go down and up ... and back down the way they came, hence the presence of an emergency hole that allows the lifeguard to pull out the otherwise stuck little slider.
Perhaps the greatest charms of the park lie in some of the kitschy, “what-on-earth-is-coming-next” side attractions. Upon entering I came across a most unexpected sight (at least for a water park): As the waves died down in the wave pool, a band (and I use that term loosely) came on to a stage at the side of the pool. The two singers were obviously chosen for their looks, and the guitarists and a drummer looked completely bored and suspiciously like they were not actually playing their instruments.
The set started with some songs from the FIFA World Cup followed by a few cringe-inducing Lady Gaga covers. But I nearly rolled over when the Romanain 2004 pop-craze "Dragostea din tei", otherwise know as the “Numa Numa Song," came next – thus blurring the line between water park and tacky Euro-haus night club.
After the band left it was back to normal water park mode for an hour or so. A woman in a white tutu dress wearing wings and wielding a fuzzy wand came out into the crowd and sang and talked with the kids – it seems that surreal oddness is cyclical at this park.
Her brief appearance was followed (and absolutely eclipsed) by a line of Vegas-style showgirls dancing and sashaying away. I seemed to be the only one who considered this a strange sight – everyone else impassively took this as if they fully expected their waterpark visit to feature showgirls, fuzzy wand-wielding fairies and lip-synching cover bands.
By then it was all getting to be a bit much – like too much cotton candy or watching a Japanese game show at full volume for anything beyond a few minutes – I was more than ready for my day at the water park to end. Was it funny and enjoyable? Sure. But worth the 200-kuai and the time involved? Definitely not.
Happy Magic Water Cube Waterpark listing here.
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I took my 9 and 7 year old boys here one week after the place opened and after they had made a couple of visits to a water park in Bali which uses the same water slide supplier (a Canadian company). Unlike Bali, in Beijing you meet the classic Chinese business situation - foreign company installs high quality slides and the Chinese partner says "leave it to us to manage" resulting in a very unsafe, unattraction. I saw unfinished sharp metal railings sticking out at eye level in the stairways, safety glass held together with scotch tape and emergency exits blocked by large planters. Okay, really nothing you wouldn't see in any Chinese shopping mall. But when your kids tell you after 30 minutes that they think the place sucks and want to leave, then something is dreadfully wrong. We had a "life guard" whistle at us angrily for spraying people with water guns which were part and parcel of the slides. I realized later she was acting on behalf of her colleague who was helping kids down the water slides while dressed in his Sunday best and trying not to get wet - in the middle of a water park! We had arrived relatively early to find that most of the slides were closed. We were told they would open when more people had arrived in the park - great, thanks. What doesn't make sense is that the number of people stationed at each slide to tell you that it is closed is equivalent to the number of people required to operate the damn thing. My kids were either too small height wise or weight wise to use most of the slides leaving just the kiddie area and the wave pool. Even though my kids could swim, they had to wear life jackets for the lazy river raft although the bigger challenge was navigating all of the empty water tubes. It was cool floating down the river on your back and looking up to the ceiling of the water cube and seeing all of the footprints in the dirt on the roof. This place sucks. I'd think the place would be fun for drunk teenagers - perhaps on a school trip from North Korea. You'd have more fun with a bucket and a hose standing naked on a street corner under a cold winter rain. The bigger question: will China ever get it's sh*t together to do these things properly?
