 Shawn from the amazing travel website Miles to Memories took a trip to India a few months ago. If you were following along with Shawn's Facebook or Twitter page you'll know that it was quite an epic trip. Since Theme Parks aren't really something that he does on his site he sent us the following report from Wonder La, which is a pretty awesome looking park in Kerala. We are going to split this into two updates as there is a lot to get to. Earlier this year I traveled to Kerala, India as a guest of their tourism department along with 25 other bloggers. After the official two week tour of the state, I had a free day and was able to visit the Wonder La amusement park in Kochi. Since I was visiting as a guest of the state, the park gave me the VIP treatment with front of the line access and my own personal tour guide! It was fantastic. Wonder La was built in 2000 and has 55 rides and attractions equally split between a ride park and a water park. According to the General Manager, they rarely see any tourists and locals make up 99.9% of their clientele. The rides park has five coasters, a number of typical flat rides, two 4-D theaters and a couple of other unique attractions. On the water side, there are several slide towers, two wave pools and even a water disco! I really enjoyed the park since it had a unique style of theming and the staff was excellent. The ride selection is mostly off the shelf, however that didn't bother me at all. My favorite part of my visit was interacting with the locals. Everyone was incredibly friendly to me. Most of the other guests were teenagers who were having a great time. Every time a ride or show would start they would start making weird noises. It sounds unappealing, but it made the experience so much fun! Enjoy the tour!  Wonder La Entrance  Small crowds gathering near the ticket booths  Prices for reference. (Approx 8.3 usd for adults and 6.5 usd for children)  Just like home there is a bag check at the gate.  Park Map.  The entry plaza inside of the gate.  My first stop of the day was the park's wacky worms which are located in a rock themed open building  The inside track is a standard wacky worm and the outside is a powered oval version.  Normal WW on the left and powered on the right!  Horrible lighting, but here is an overview of the layout  Another look  As you can see the people were lining up to ride Shawn took some great POV of the Wacky Worm, nothing better than a Wacky Worm POV.  After riding the kiddie coasters it was time to see more of the park. This is a dark ride, but I wasn't allowed to go on it. Woman & Children only!  The dark ride sign.  Making our way to the next coaster we passed some more rides, each with some theming.  Frog Hopper!!  Looks like fun!  I like this!.  The next coaster is called Vintage Tornado and it is located inside of this building!  Vintage Tornado is located inside of the building underneath the ferris wheel  It is a pretty standard Galaxi coaster.    I had fun and so did the people riding with me. The semi-enclosed location was interesting.  Next it was time to head up to ride the ferris wheel!  The ferris wheel gave great views of the entire park including the drop tower and spinning coaster.  A look down at the water park.  Another great view of the park and the surrounding areas.  Since I was on a time crunch we moved quickly through the park, but there is still time for monkeying around!  The park is home to a number of standard rides.   They have quite a few children's rides as well.  This was my favorite ride. It is a typical spinner, however they blast Bollywood music and everyone screams throughout the ride. A ton of fun!   Not the best photo, but this was my riding partner. We both had a blast!.  The next stop was this unique ride.  It is called the Hang Glider and is a seated cable car ride  It pulls you back from the station slowly before returning you at high speed.  It was a lot of fun!  Another great video from Shawn, this time of the Hang Glider.  Next up was the park's spinning coaster. It is pretty unique and not too rough.  I'm not sure who built it, but they did a decent job.  The park makes sure that each car is fully loaded..  A look at the car..  Coming back in!  A better look at the layout  The drop tower is next to the spinning coaster. It is really forceful. That's going to wrap it up for part one of Shawn's Wonder La update. What do you think so far? Pretty impressed with this out of the way park in India? Do you think think a "Women and Children" only Dark Ride would work anywhere else? We'll have part two of Shawn's update later on this week.
3 Comments
Zac
10/7/2014 04:15:29 pm
I imagine the "women and children only" dark ride exists because public groping and sexual harassment is a serious problem in India. In an effort to combat the issue, there are also subway cars for women and children only, for example. It appears to be something of a walk-through dark ride and I can see why women would not feel comfortable partaking in such an attraction with men in a place where "eve teasing" (a colloquial term for the act) is such a prevalent occurrence. Even a seated dark ride could present an uncomfortable and potentially traumatic situation should a woman be seated next to a handsy man she doesn't know.
Zac
10/7/2014 04:19:26 pm
I should have also noted that it would seem the above is a correct guess with a security guard standing there. Men often try to board female-only metro trains either due to crowding or for the explicit purpose of harassing a woman traveling alone (or at least without men) and my guess is that the park experiences a similar problem with that ride. The guard is almost certainly there to keep the [male] riff-raff out, and not without good reason.
I agree there are serious issues regarding the safety of women. It is also not culturally appropriate for women and men to be in enclosed dark spaces together, hence the requirement. Leave a Reply. |
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