Halloween at Happy Valley

Happy Valley is an amusement park in Shenzhen. There are a few other Happy Valleys around China. I’ve heard they’re better than Shenzhen’s, but I can only get to this one, at least right now.

This Happy Valley is a massive park, especially because it is in the middle of a major city. It has a couple major rollercoasters, a few smaller ones, a couple water rides, and a water park. They did upgrade some aspects of the park a few years ago.

Currently, they are celebrating Halloween until November 14th, giving my friends and I the much-needed time to get there and visit the haunted houses for a good scare.

It was also my birthday. No, I’m not going to tell you how old I am (I also keep forgetting. I’m old!). But my training center did get me a cake.

Getting In

The park set up 10 haunted houses and there were scary costumed characters throughout. They had a little map with all their locations. Unfortunately, it was only in Chinese.

But, to enjoy the scares, we had to get tickets first. There were no ticket sellers in the booths anymore. It was late. They did have a large, easy to scan QR code to buy tickets.

We just had to pray they had modified it to accept foreign passports as a valid form of ID. Last year, my friends had to “borrow” a Chinese friend’s ID number to buy their tickets.

This year, we were in luck and just had to enter all the information. We did have to make it past a few security checkpoints before we made it to the ticket gates, but that’s pretty much routine around here.

Haunted Houses

The first haunted house was right around the corner from the entrance. It was a few dozen steps and we were at the foot of the stairs that would lead us to the entrance.

It was clown-themed. I guess they were relying on people’s fear of clowns to scare them and then they wouldn’t have to put in much of an effort. It was understaffed but there was a good scare or two in there.

It definitely wasn’t as good as I was hoping, but for a country that doesn’t, officially celebrate Halloween, it wasn’t bad. I had hoped that some of the 10 haunted houses would be scary.

However, that hope was quickly dashed. Haunted house #2 was medical-themed. The decorations were scarier than the people. One of the guys that were supposed to jump out and scare people was too busy talking to his girlfriend to bother hiding between groups. She made a half-hearted effort to walk away as we approached, but they quickly went back to chatting as we walked past.

The third one was even worse. When my friends told me that it was outdoors, I got my hopes up as it would be something different. Different is better, right?

Unfortunately, the walk was scarier than anything in the “haunted house”. It was a lot of stairs uphill then we had to go down the stairs in the dark. That was very not fun! I’m surprised no one broke their neck falling down the stairs.

Interlude

Then we went on a water roller coaster. It was one that went back and forth. It was fairly scary when at the top of each end. I screamed a lot. It was the only time of the night that I actually screamed.

On the final pass, we got wet. Luckily, my friend purchased us a couple Panchos. They even came with leg covers. Only my hair (stupid hood flew off first chance it got) and knees (stupid gap I didn’t notice) got wet.

• 

• 

Then there was the train rollercoaster. It was fun but it was just a baby coaster. No air time. No real speed. Not even a decent hill. It just went around in a few circles and over a couple bumps.

For some odd reason, they made me take my glasses off! (The water ride made me too, but there it was a bit more understandable.) There was no way that they’d fall off my face on this ride when they’ve stayed on many other rides, some of which I even went upsidedown on! But, off they had to come.

While waiting in line, I had plenty of time to admire the face of the ride and its lovely fake rocks. But once we got on and went inside, it looked like a construction zone! There was concrete everywhere. It didn’t look like they had any plans to cover it up either. I guess if you can’t take a picture there, why bother to make it look nice?

I also gave myself a lovely bruise on my knee getting out of the train. Now, I match the spooky decor, just what I’ve always wanted…

The Not-so-Haunted Houses

Once the ride interlude was over, we went back to visiting all the haunted houses. There were supposed to be 10, in total. I’m not sure we saw all of them, but we did our best to find them all. A couple were in some out-of-the-way areas that took a bit of wandering and confusion to find.

Some of the haunted houses were better than others. Some had really cool neon decorations. Some had interesting themes – like the one that had a funeral/wedding. A couple had dragon themes which sounded really cool. However, one wasn’t really a haunted house. It was more of a walk-through adventure. The other one was a haunted house, just not a good one.

Overall, most of the haunted houses were ridiculously understaffed. One house only had one person. The most were 4 real live people. None were all that scary. I think I only jumped a few times total.

Not-so-Scary People

At least half the consumed people walking around, who were supposed to try to scare the guests, were just chatting with their friends. There was no effort to be scary from most of the people working. It was more of a family-friendly Halloween, but without there being any children present.

I just wanted to tell everyone I met working there to try a little, even if it was after Halloween. The Halloween scary time was still going on and I wanted to be scared. But, they didn’t deliver.

They did have a few “interesting” decorations though:

• 

• 

• 

• 

I was really sad that no one tried to attack me with chainsaws, as was so common in the haunted houses I grew up with. Most people tried to scare you by slapping or slamming a fake body part on the nearest hard surface. Sometimes it worked, but often it didn’t.

---

After visiting Happy Valley for Halloween, I have no desire to go back in the daylight and ride the two rides I missed. I would hate to have to wait in a long line for either of those rides as they weren’t worth a long wait.

I’ve already walked all over the park. It’s massive. We took over 10,000 steps in just the few hours we were there! The park also gets significantly more expensive in the daylight. I only paid 100 yuan for my ticket, but if I came back it would be almost 230 yuan.

I’m happy I went when I did for the event l did. Now, I know I don’t need to see the park ever again.