The theme park that never opened…

I already found a series of old attractions in Datong, but this time I saw an unfinished brand new theme park. Not far from my strange futuristic unfinished architectural projects, that you can read about here and here, I recently discovered another fascinating ambitious planning project: a theme park which also never got finished in Datong, in the middle of nowhere.

This park is part of a chain of theme parks called Fantawild, conceived by the Shenzhen firm Huaqiang ¹. There are already a lot of these parks all accross the country in cities like Zhengzhou, Chongqing. You can know more about these parks thanks to this report.

It seems to me that there is a connection between this park’s problems and the political crisis that happened with Datong city government: when Geng Yanbo left in 2012, all his ambitious projects were put on hold. Fantawild Theme Park could have been one of them. Already, during the construction phase, there was a lot of delay and a report from June 2014 about the unfinished project can be found online with pictures of the semi-finished attractions. You can read about it here. At the end of 2014, however, the park finally seemed achieved and was supposed to open very soon after, but in 2015, the opening was once again cancelled.

The closed theme park

I went inside the park area and even if all the equipment looked brand new and ready to use, the empty buildings conveyed an eerie atmosphere.

Yet, even if the park is officially « ready to open », the environment around the park still needs some work…

The empty parking lot

The empty shopping streets

According to the interviews I did with the local employees, the park should be authorized to open normally from May 1st this year until October 1st. I will follow up on this new schedule but i can already wonder why such a project should only open during five months each year…

 I have to bring some new information about this place: the park finally opened on July 16. 2016!