Why I love China: Changzhou Dinosaur Theme Park

Yes you read that right. There is a whole theme park for dinosaurs.

And the theme park is actually good.

Good as in AMAZING. I never enjoyed a theme park as much as this one.

Before I went to China, I started looking up things to do close to Shanghai. One of the things I found was this theme park, and as I love dinosaurs a lot~ of course I decided I had to go. So I skipped one day of my Chinese classes to go there with Jenny . I'm such a good student, aren't I? xD

This will be a really long post, so here's the rest:

Directions on how to get there from Shanghai:
First, take the Metro to Shanghai Railway Station. Depending on where in Shanghai you are, this might take a while (and maybe Hongqiao Railway station is closer to you then). Metro tickets cost no more than 5RMB. Bring your passport with you, you will need it to buy a train ticket.
When you arrive at the Railway station, look for the ticket counters. There are automatic ticket machines there, but as far as I know, they won't work without a Chinese ID.
There will probably be a line when you arrive there, but don't worry. Usually you get to the counter really quickly. Decide on which ticket to buy: one-way or roundtrip. One good thing about buying the ticket for the train back to Shanghai is that you won't have to wait in Changzhou for too long. But if you're not sure yet about how long you will stay there, just buy a one-way ticket. There's no price difference between them, when you buy roundtrip you get two seperate tickets.

For buying a one-way ticket, just tell them "Chángzhōu zhàn" (常州站) and they will book the earliest available train for you. (Prepare to run to the train if they give you a ticket for a train that leaves in 20 minutes. Railway stations in China are huge).
The train to Changzhou takes about 45 minutes (if you get a fast train) and will cost about 50RMB. Don't be fooled by the short time it takes, Changzhou is still about 200km away from Shanghai. Fast train in China means abut 300km/h :D

After arriving in Changzhou, you have two different options on how to get to the theme park: Either try and find the right bus (we didn't) or take a taxi.
The signs in the train station are all bilingual, so you won't have any problem finding the taxi stand. Just be prepared to queue for 20-40 minutes, most people take the taxi.
Tell the taxi driver to go to "Chángzhōu Kǒnglóng Yuán", or if your Chinese is not that good (or you just want to be on the safe side), copy this onto your phone and show it to him:

常州恐龙园

The taxi ride takes about 30 minutes, so remember that when planning your trip. All in all it takes at least 2hours to get to the park, including metro, train, waiting and the taxi ride. Go early, because the park already closes at 5pm (meaning most attractions close at 4.30 at latest)
Also the ticket costs 200Yuan, which is about 30 Dollars(?) or 24€. When you stay in China for too~ long you will gasp when seeing that price, but compared to amusement parks in Germany it's actually quite alright considering that the park really is awesome ^^

Now onto the fun part:

You will be greeted by this.

For size comparison:

That's me, posing awkwardly.

Those dinosours are so huge~

Dinosaurs everywhere.

And I really mean everywhere.

After entering the park, we first took a look at the map to see where we were and where we wanted to go.

It doesn't look that small, but the park is actually huge~ and there's barely any shade, so maybe bring an umbrella with you if you go on a sunny summer day.

The pink part right behind the entrance (bottom of the map) is the dinosaur village, which unfortunately was not built yet when we arrived there T^T it should be finished until next year though.

The upper left part actually includes a real waterpark where you can go swimming in summer :D We went during the middle of May, so it was not opened yet even though it was burning hot...we didn't bring any swimsuits anyways xD

They also have wifi and you can download the map into your phone so you won't get lost.

Part of the soon-to-be-finished part of the park.

This is how the exit looks like~

Those are the two extremely adorable mascots of the park :D

The dinosaur museum. We didn't go in there, but I'm impressed by the fact that they even made the buildings look like dinosaurs :D

Palm trees and dinosaurs~

This is what most of the pathways look like.

Even the toilets don't disturb the picture. Whoever designed this park did really good work~

Also, we rode one of the very few 4th dimension rollercoasters in the world and it was AWESOME.

This is seriously the best rollercoaster I ever went on. We had to wait less than 30 minutes for it, and the ride was so exciting and fun :D

The seats are able to spin 360°, and the tracks are partly upside down.

And my head didn't hurt after it, which it usually does after almost all rollercoasters I have ever went on.

Here's a video if you're curious about how the ride actually looks like (not taken by me):

Yes we went on that. And it was amazing :D

Another area of the park

The cute mascots~

This ride was nice to, you basically lay down on the seats and it goes up and moves through the air, which is really relaxing and cooling during summer ^^

Even the lamps fit into the theme :D

That's the exit of some kind of...haunted house? We went in there even though I get scared really~ quickly but hey, how scary can something dinosaur-themed get?

Wrong thought.

It was completely dark in there, you couldn't see anything. Also, they had a woman dressed up like Sadako from The Ring jumping out of a corner ;_;

It was still fun though, mainly because shortly after we entered, a group of Chinese guys followed us, turning on their cellphones to light the way, laughing when we got scared and saying funny things in their broken English. They also kept trying to scare us...and they succeeded most of the time ;_;