Fantawild (Fangte (方特) in Chinese) has become one of the largest theme park chains on the planet. The theme park operator has a very rich portfolio when it comes to dark rides and show rides, though not much has been written about it in the western world. In this multi-part series, we will take a look at this fascinating and exciting theme park chain. We hope to uncover many of the secrets which it may hold when it comes to dark rides. Along the way this should provide an in-depth guide and insight into which attractions are on offer and where, throughout the vastness of the Chinese theme park landscape.
For the last 20 years, the amusement industry in China has been booming. The world of Chinese themed entertainment has discovered and embraced theme parks on a huge scale. Many Western theme park operators, like Disney, Universal and Merlin Entertainments have found their way into this lucrative market. But the landscape here is far from dominated by western companies. Chinese theme park chains like the OCT Group (owning the Happy Valleys, Visionlands and other parks) and Fantawild are attracting a significant portion of domestic visitors. The latter is even responsible for opening the largest amount of new dark rides out of any company worldwide during the last 10 years.
The Fantawild Group was founded somewhere in the early 2000s by Shenzhen Huaqiang Holdings Limited, a Chinese investment group, in turn founded in 1979. The new company would focus on the entertainment sector, mainly by delving into theme parks as well as the animation and film industry. With Hong Kong Disneyland opening in 2005, Fantawild may well have seen the potential for creating immersive theme park experiences for the domestic Chinese audience.
Fantawild decided to follow in Walt Disney’s footsteps by creating their own version of Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI): Fantawild Imagineering. This department is tasked with the master planning of the parks and the design of the rides that they contain. While WDI keeps its focus to their own parks, Fantawild Imagineering actually goes a little further by also offering its design services to other parks. The core business of the department however, is developing parks and rides for their own chain.
From their website: ‘The English name of “Fantawild” is originated from the words “fantasy” and “wild”. The Chinese brand name of “Fang Te” means the company’s mission is to produce unique products to create happiness. Fantawild has always endeavored to become a “world-class joy creator” with original creative designs and innovative technology.’
Now, almost 20 years later, there is one thing that Fantawild is famous for: theme park mass production. Starting from the opening of Fantawild’s first theme park, the chain opened up 18 more in less than a decade, throughout China and one in Iran. They now operate more than any other theme park operator in the world. Fantawild has not only been the fastest growing theme park operator in terms of parks, but also in visitor numbers, raising guest numbers from 9.2 million in 2012 to 50.4 million in 2019.
As of 2025, Fantawild has constructed, opened, and even closed over 40 theme parks under 12 different branded names.
1. Fantawild Adventure parks
2. Fantawild Dreamland parks
3. Oriental Heritage parks
4. Fantawild Asian Legend
5. Silk Road Dreamland
6. Oriental Legend
7. Glorious Orient parks
8. Fantawild Dino Kingdom
9. FT Wild Land
10. Fantawild Wonderland
11. Boonie Bears Bay parks
12. Boonie Bears Land
In this series we will look at each and every one of the types of theme parks they have created. From the first Fantawild Adventure parks, that focus on science-fiction and interaction, to the iconic Oriental Heritage parks that focus on traditional Chinese culture, to the Glorious Orient parks with their take on recent history, war and conflict.
Fantawild’s first park
Before we look at the various Fantawild Adventure parks that defined and contained the first generation of dark rides created by the chain, it’s worth looking at where this all began, and the origin of some of those rides.
On 30 April 2006, the first Fantawild opened its gates under the name Fantawild Sci-Fi Theme Park. This relatively small park no longer exists today and was located in the city of Chongqing, Sichuan province, in a district that would mainly be considered a large retail area.
The 2.4 hectare (6 acre) park included several shows, two rollercoasters, one dark ride and two show rides. While most of the outdoor attractions, such as the roller coasters, were bought from other suppliers, the company decided to create the more immersive rides by their own hands. Not only did Fantawild Imagineering design these attractions, they also developed their ride systems.
The company always aimed for high-quality experiences, as evidenced by even the first rides that they created. The dark ride Dino Rampage received a themed queue-line for an 8-seater motion-based car ride system and featured 3D multimedia. Visitors of the attraction were taken on a dangerous journey across the city, while it was under attack by dinosaurs.
Perhaps even more impressive was the opening of Sky Sailor, the first known flying theatre outside of a Disney theme park. Just like its Disney counterpart Soarin’ (over California), the flight simulator showed aerial images of local landmarks and sightseeing highlights.
The final show ride of Fantawild’s first theme park was Space Station (or Space Mountain as the Chinese name more accurately translates to). Space Station was a simulator that took its riders on a journey between the stars and outer space.
Sadly, the park was destined to close in 2020, after just 14 years of operation. By as early as 2014, reports indicate that footfall to the park was insignificant enough for the guest experience to be altered. On quiet days, visitors would be escorted around in groups by a dedicated staff member, ensuring that the attractions only operate as and when necessary for a significant number of people.
Future Fantawild parks would go on to adopt similar strategies during off-peak times. As most parks in China operate year-round, aside from in the most northern regions, visitor numbers can vary wildly. Often the larger rides and attractions at Fantawild parks limit their operations to set timeslots, though guests are still left to explore freely.
The ground that was once the pioneering space of China’s youngest themed entertainment company is now no longer a theme park. Recent satellite images show that the buildings still remain but that all outdoor rides have been removed.
However, when you visit one of the other Fantawild theme parks today, you might find one or two elements of Fantawild’s debut theme park. All three of the immersive dark and show rides have been copied into other parks within the Fantawild chain, and were also later developed into something more.
Fantawild’s next Adventure
Though Fantawild Sci-Fi Theme Park contained many elements that would later shape the Fantawild Adventure parks, it would soon prove to be a misfit in the Fantawild chain. The park was by far the smallest in the chain and may well have been hampered by its location in the centre of such a major city as Chongqing. Fantawild had larger ambitions than this small city park could realise. To achieve this, the new parks needed more space, with potential seen on the outskirts of the now 100+ cities in China that are each home to over 1 million people.
In fact, to this day you won’t yet find a Fantawild park inside any of the most major cities in the country. It would appear that the experience with the Sci-Fi Theme Park had proved to the Fantawild team that the ‘city park’ business model was less suited to their style, along with a possible fear of competition from the other well established theme park chains of the time. Instead the early focus shifted to a more ‘out of town resort’ style of attraction, most likely as land is cheaper and less restricted.
In 2007, only 18 months after the opening of the first park, the company opened a second theme park and the first to gain the ‘Fantawild Adventure’-name. This park was located in the city of Wuhu, roughly 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) to the east of Fantawild Sci-Fi Park in Chongqing.
With a size of approximately 30 hectares (74 acres), Fantawild Adventure Wuhu is much larger than its predecessor and of course contains many more rides, such as four rollercoasters, water rides and flat rides. Upon opening, the park did not contain many new dark and show rides yet, as clones of Dino Rampage, Sky Sailor and Space Station (now called Space Journey)* make up most of its lineup. The park did however contain a third show ride with the Space Expo simulator.
*The Chinese to English translation of many ride names within the parks or on media such as websites, park maps and ride signs can vary amongst cloned attractions. For the sake of consistency, we will generally refer to the most commonly used translation and give mention to any other notable alternatives.
The theme of the Fantawild Adventure parks are however comparable to that of Fantawild Sci-Fi Theme Park, as both parks revolve around many of the same attractions, stories and concepts.
Cloning attractions and early IP branding
Being based within such a large and populous country, the Fantawild theme park brand of course had to expand beyond its humble beginnings in Chongqing. The approach was soon established that many of the subsequent parks under construction would play host to copies or ‘clones’ of attractions found at each other. Each mid-sized city location could easily serve a local population exceeding ten million, therefore the likelihood of visitor overlap was deemed to be very small. The technique is also a great money saver of course, with a huge reduction in continuous design and development costs.
Along with these cloned attractions, the mascot Duludubi became the face of all the Fantawild parks of this early era. The blue dinosaur character had a level of popularity at the time, starring in animated shows from Hyvision Digital Film Inc., Manhua (Chinese Manga) and even the ‘Duludubi Star’ video game in 2008.
Duludubi received his own show at Fantawild Sci-Fi Theme Park, in which children and adults could interact with the character via on-screen animation and a voice actor. Along with Duluduni (his pink companion), he is featured prominently on park maps, in merchandising and was the star of Space Warrior, Fantawild’s first interactive dark ride.
It was around this time however that their own branch of animation was founded and work began on establishing and expanding into other media, which would come into play in later versions of their theme parks. Over time, Duludubi would eventually be phased out and replaced by other Fantawild specific IPs, the most famous of which would become the Boonie Bears, the soon to be mascots of almost all of Fantawild’s parks. We’ll be seeing a lot more of them over the coming specials.
The Adventure Parks
As their theme park foothold became more established, Fantawild began to work towards a ‘trilogy’ of styles that they have since grown beyond. The adventure parks were the first of these, generally featuring a light fantasy theme including a centrepiece castle structure and the mascots described above. The themed areas were mostly based on commonly seen theme park lands such as space, dinosaurs, jungles, temples, the deep sea and volcanoes.
After Fantawild Sci-Fi Park in Chongqing, 10 more parks under the Fantawild Adventure name were constructed in total over the space of 8 years, with the first being at Wuhu in 2007 and the most recent being Jiayuguan and Datong in 2015.
1. Fantawild Sci-Fi Park Chongqing – opened 2006, closed 2020.
2. Fantawild Adventure Wuhu – opened 2007, now closed.
3. Fantawild Adventure Shantou – opened 2010, now closed.
4. Fantawild Adventure Tai’an – opened 2010.
5. Fantawild Adventure Zhuzhou – opened 2011.
6. Fantawild Adventure Shenyang – opened 2011.
7. Fantawild Adventure Zhengzhou – opened 2012.
8. Fantawild Adventure Nantong – opened 2013, now closed.
9. Fantawild Adventure Tianjin – opened 2014.
10. Fantawild Adventure Jiayuguan – opened 2015.
11. Fantawild Adventure Datong – opened 2015.
Such ambition was not always sustainable as the chain began to develop and innovate further, with three of these parks having since closed down. With Wuhu, this is likely because Fantawild themselves built another two parks in a separate resort within the city, offering a superior experience.
In the case of Shantou and Nantong, it is possible that location or competition from other park chains greatly limited the visitor numbers, especially for Nantong with the multitude of major parks in the greater Shanghai area and Jiangsu province.
Nevertheless, the innovations continued on and the adventure parks eventually played host to all the following dark and show ride attractions, which we will take a closer look at now.
The Dark Rides
Dino Rampage / Jurassic Attack
Known installations: 11
The first generation of Fantawild’s 4D motion-based dark ride, with a striking outward appearance that implies a museum-based setting (albeit upside-down) for the ride. In fact, the museum appears to be the origin of the resurrected dinosaurs, and the video sequences take place in a mostly other urban environments where the attacking dinosaurs meet some heavy military resistance.
This signature attraction was the one we saw first prototyped at Fantawild Sci-Fi Theme Park, with the car design later being improved upon for better sightlines and range of motion.
The attractions stayed true to their roots with extensive and elaborate queueline theming.
Some versions feature a pre-show, in which guests are introduced to the military support team and their high-tech vehicles that will be assisting you and escorting you to safety.
Once on board, visitors witness a number of thrilling and dangerous dinosaur encounters, with military intervention. Many of these are strikingly graphic and gory when compared to most western theme park attraction counterparts.
The ride also uses a number of physical effects and sets to contrast the 3D multimedia and make the transitions more interesting. Though Fantawild have become synonymous with cloned attractions, it can be seen throughout the more minor details of future installations that a certain level of creative freedom, change and improvement is used from location to location.
Dino Rampage is so far the only known Fantawild attraction to have been exported to a park not owned by Fantawild. Long Gu Wan Dinosaur park in Guangxi province purchased the attraction where it operates under the name Dinosaur Crisis, opening in 2017.
It seems the attraction has also become a beloved favourite of the design team, as it received a complete redesign when installed at the Fantawild Dino Kingdom park in 2022. With their latest and greatest 8-seater motion-based ride system of the time, a new pre-show and storyline, fresh media and a big bad ‘main villain’ dinosaur, almost every aspect of the original was upgraded. It’s exciting to see that the legacy can live on and we’ll take a closer look at this version later in this series.
Overall, Dino Rampage is one of the highlights of Fantawild Adventure parks, being one of the most technologically advanced and impressive of their designs at the time, as well as one of the most thrilling. While the storytelling is not the most innovative and the violent content can be a little difficult to digest in the context of the average theme park experience, it paved the way for an absolute staple of ride hardware for almost every future Fantawild park.
Space Warrior / Boonie Bears Adventure
Known installations: 8
Space Warrior is a screen-based interactive dark ride that originally featured the inherited mascot character Duludubi in a variety of fun, fantasy scenes.
Trains with 4-car vehicles move between various walls of screens, where they stop for significant amounts of time while each interactive sequence plays out for riders to score points, much in the same manner as attractions like Toy Story Mania at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
In later years several of the Space Warrior installations were adapted to replace Duludubi with Fantawild’s own Boonie Bears, after their significant commercial success first on TV and then with feature films, beginning with Boonie Bears Homeward Journey in January 2013.
This also led to newer installations of the same ride system receiving the Boonie Bears-theme as Boonie Bears Adventure, as well as several of the existing Space Warrior rides receiving a rename or light retheme. The media on the screens also featured the titular characters, while the core mechanics of the attraction remained the same.
Space Warrior was Fantawild’s first interactive shooting dark ride and a popular choice with guests, offering that extra level of gamification and competition with family, friends and strangers alike. The transition between the screens is rather basic though, leaving the overall experience feeling a little disjointed, without much narrative. But as with almost all of the Adventure attractions, it led to several more superior styles of interactive dark ride being designed and built by Fantawild over the years.
Sky Sailor
Known installations: 11
Sky Sailor is a flying theatre attraction with the commonly found theme of local sightseeing. Flying theatres have become ubiquitous the world over throughout the last decade, but nowhere else is this more prevalent than within China, where almost every major park contains an attraction of this nature. Fantawild is no exception to this and developed their own ride system, at a time when local competition would have been importing the technology from elsewhere.
Flying theatres have gone on to become a staple of almost every Fantawild park constructed since, almost always focusing on flight over local scenery, as is common within the industry. This is even the case in some parks where it does not really fit the theme of the other attractions, most likely because it is viewed as being so generally popular. Within the context of Fantawild specifically, this makes Sky Sailor one of the more generic theme park attractions they have to offer to what has become a rather saturated market, though they have since developed some fresh media with a fantasy theme to tie into a number of newer park concepts.
Space Journey / Space Station
Known installations: 9
The last of the original attractions from Fantawild Sci-Fi Park also made it out into the wider country. Space Journey is a simulator attraction that puts guests in the midst of a futuristic celebration of humanity’s achievements in space. The festivities are interrupted by a terrorist plot however, and guests board their vehicle in an attempt to stop an impending disaster.
The ride system itself consists of a number of simulator pods that rise up out of a loading area into a larger media screen for a communal experience, much like Back to the Future / The Simpsons at various Universal Studios.
Space Journey is a solid entry to a Fantawild Adventure lineup, perhaps their most accomplished attraction at tying in the space theme and narrative to its respective area of the park. The hardware itself is simple, effective and, perhaps most importantly, easy to overlay. Newer themes and storylines were created for installations in some of the newer parks we will be looking at later in the series, at least one of which was also then rolled out as a retheme to several existing Space Journey attractions in the adventure parks.
X-Cops / Space Expo
Known installations: 7
X-Cops is another simulator attraction with a twist. Based on a future where the prevalence of robot technology is threatening mankind, guests bear witness to a fight for the continued survival of humanity.
The ride sequence begins in one of 9 of these large vehicles which are all contained within a single room. The first half of the story and experience is set in this room, told by screen-based media.
Approximately halfway through the sequence, the vehicles all rotate 180° and move linearly into an adjacent room with multiple screens.
In this second room, the action steps up a gear. It also includes physical set pieces to enhance the experience.
Though the story may be a little overworked, this is an impressive attraction with a great surprise twist that makes it a real crowd pleaser. The same hardware exists under the name Space Expo at several more of the parks with a different, alien-based theme and storyline. Sadly both X-Cops and Space Expo were constructed at fewer parks overall and it’s hard to see whether it had any real influence on future Fantawild projects. Perhaps they were too ambitious for their time.
The Silk Road
Known installations: 1
Amongst so many examples of mass-produced attractions and parks in the earlier stages of Fantawild’s development, it could easily be thought that not a single unique attraction exists within the chain. 2015 may have been the first time that a turning point was reached however, with the opening of Fantawild Adventure in the city of Jiayuguan, Gansu province – an especially remote region of China with a significant tourist draw to a land of deserts, and deep ties to the history of the Silk Road.
The ride experience and theme are unique to this one park and consist of massive trackless vehicles that seat approximately 100 people, taking guests on a journey through the past, down that very same Silk Road. The hardware was developed at the same time as Fantawild’s third generation of theme parks, Oriental Heritage, which went onto receive a number of identical ride systems under a different theme.
After a typically elaborate and themed queue-line, once on board The Slik Road, guests are treated to an extensive ride time, travelling through a multitude of physical sets and screen-based depictions, accompanied by an on-board soundtrack and narration.
The attraction also utilises changes in temperature to simulate travelling to various areas, amongst other effects. Guests are eventually transported into the Mogao Caves, with scenes replicating a significant tourist attraction found in the city of Dunhuang, further up the Silk Road. This particular venture would go on to inspire yet another unique dark ride in a future park, and perhaps one of Fantawild’s most impressive accomplishments to date – stay tuned to this series to learn more.
The Silk Road attraction set an important milestone in the closing days of the Fantawild Adventure era. With design and planning having honed their craft in churning out unprecedented numbers of theme parks and cloned attractions throughout their early years, no doubt keeping manufacturing costs to a minimum, it seems the success of the chain eventually allowed for creative freedom in bringing unique and special attractions to parks that represented their own region. Rather than the adventurous but generic theming of dinosaurs or space, this dark ride was designed specifically for the guests of Jiayuguan, and the tourists that visit it, to experience its sights, culture and heritage.
The Adventure has only just begun
From 2007 to 2015, the Fantawild Adventure parks marked a lengthy journey of development and discovery for the chain. By the time the last few had been built, Fantawild had already moved on to more ambitious park projects throughout China, making many of these earlier attractions stepping stones into a brighter future.
The non-dark ride attractions at adventure parks are rather commonplace and would generally be considered filler amongst a wider theme park landscape, so to the rare international visitor the strength of the lineup relies rather heavily on the charm of the dark and show rides.
Though some of the earlier dark ride designs may have been held back by the limitations of developing new technology, and much of the storytelling can feel a little uninspired or generic, most of the attractions covered in this special still hold their own against any Chinese theme park of their era.
More importantly, these attractions showed promise, promise of a design and development team that would continue to build and improve upon almost all of their early attractions, leading on to some spectacular results.
Even now, while seemingly left to minimal investment in favour of building more and more newer resorts, Fantawild Adventure parks still offer a premium experience when compared to a local Chinese amusement park, and the rise of other major domestic chains seemingly only pushed Fantawild to double down on their niche of highly themed experiences.
Visiting some of these parks over a decade later, they can feel more than a little tired or unpolished and it seems possible that several more Fantawild Adventure parks could close down in the not-too-distant future. It is our hope that at least some of these will live on for as long as many parks in the Western world have. As the industry is so relatively new here, for all their flaws, they form an integral part of Chinese dark ride history.
Join us in part 2 where we will look at the next step in the evolution – the Fantawild Dreamland parks!
© Dark Ride Database
Article by Steven
Visits by Steven
Photos by Steven, unless otherwise noted.
