Photo of the Day: Under the Sea

As China “rails at [the recent] theme park boom“, with officials criticizing what they see as “unclear concepts, blind construction, imitations and plagiarism, low-standard duplication and other issues” in the industry, our photo theme this week is Theme Park Dream — a look at some of the weirder, whackier and notable theme parks to have cropped up in the country in recent years.

Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in the southern city of Zhuhai, has a couple of water slides and a rollercoaster, but its main attraction is that it boasts the world’s largest oceanarium, holding 12.87 million gallons of water, plus an array of sealife. China doesn’t always have the best reputation for animal welfare, and some of its zoos leave a lot to be desired, but this is one of the country’s better parks in this regard and it runs a number of marine protection educational programmes for kids.

Sorry to disappoint if you came here in search of weirdness, this park’s actually pretty well done. Oh go on then — here’s an advert for a new rollercoaster at Chimelong’s sister park in the nearby city of Guangzhou:

Photo: Guo Zhonghua / Shutterstock.com