Journey to the Sunken City

沉没之城之旅

The Backstory

The legends and myths of Blight Reef span thousands of years and feature countless tragedies, from the sinking of merchant vessels to being pillaged by pirates, but the most infamous legend of the terrible reef is that of Zhenchen, better known as The Sunken City. Legends say that the city of Zhenchen was once a thriving metropolis of commerce and trade, giving it the nickname “The Gates of Asia” as it was oftentimes the first port of call into the continent from outsider trade. The buildings here were sturdy and expensive, and the city was known for their love of the arts, from music to acting to painting to poetry. By all accounts, Zhenchen was among the most dynamic and thriving cities in all of the world, but just as this began, it would all come crumbling down.

In the year 102 BC the city was barraged relentlessly by storms and tsunamis, and over the course of fifty days and fifty nights the city was dragged from the land it sat on, the entire ground beneath it pulling and grinding on the seafloor, dredging up sand and rock below its wake. After the fiftieth day of the neverending storms, the city had sunken beneath the waves of the South China Sea, lost to history, and from the rocks and sand dredged up as the city carved through the seafloor sprung an impenetrable black reef of rocks and corals. As generations would come and go and explorers discovered the region, turning it once again into a thriving port of call for traders throughout much of the sixteenth century onwards, the legends faded and many believe it to be completely fabricated. Still, even today some explorers and visitors to the decrepit seaside town claim to know of the ruins of Zhenchen, deep in the darkest depths of the sea, home to incomprehensible monsters and merfolk alike.

The Queue

When making your way through the town nearby Blight Reef, you’ll discover the Sea Cave Expeditions, a tourist agency located nearby a set of caves made of reef rocks that sit just next to the lagoon. Following the crowds into the line brings you into an old seaside fishing shack that doubles as the Expedition Headquarters, a tourist center filled with old maps and pictures from the days of Explorer’s Reef’s heyday, including vacationing tourists in front of the lighthouse, snorkelers exploring the reef, and people hanging out on the beaches. Old tourist guides to Explorer’s Reef lay on tables and tickets for different excursions like parasailing and scuba tours hang up as well. You leave the main lobby and enter into the main office where it is set up as a museum dedicated to the legendary lost city of Zhenchen, featuring old coins, bricks, weapons, and more allegedly from the lost city.

From there you enter into the first pre-show, a room with a large screen where guests are introduced to “Dr.” Han Zhou, a “historian and archaeologist” in a comically oversized white lab coat, who has allegedly been studying the sea caves within the town of Blight Reef. Zhou tells everyone about the history of the sea caves of Blight Reef and how some believe it to be the home of the long lost city of Zhenchen. He showcases “footage” of an expedition his researchers went on to the “city” as we see footage that appears to be from a movie set or a cheap amusement park's sole dark ride. He tells guests that his tours are the only way to possibly get to the lost city and that the extreme fee they paid to get in is well worth the entry fee. He then gets mad when someone leans in and whispers that this is the crowd that got the all-inclusive package. He shakes it off and puts on a smile again. He tells us to exit this room and continue down the hall to get to the expedition briefing room. His connection is severed and guests make their way out into the hall between pre-shows. Some photographs and paintings are hung up, but it seems clear most of the company’s budget was spent on the first two rooms.

Guests enter into the second pre-show room, here an Australian woman named “Dr.” Betty Brandt tells guests all about the extreme dangers that lurk within the sea caves. From giant jellies to a terrible curse that drags all who enter down to the bottom of the sea. She then chuckles and says that’s no problem though because these tours are among the safest in all of the Dark Kingdom. She then explains basic safety instructions found in other rides, such as seatbelt requirements, pregnancy warnings, etc. She finishes with “oh yeah, and your guide called in sick, so it looks like we’ll be doing it remotely. Good luck!”

From here, guests exit the pre-show and make their way to the loading docks where they see their vessels. These ride vehicles are a combination of the EMV vehicles of Dinosaur and Indiana Jones Adventure mixed with a boat ride like Pirates. Using similar technology to the water coasters found at different parks around the world, including SeaWorld’s Journey to Atlantis, this is an amphibious vehicle that can serve as a smooth slow boat ride, but can also kick into a unique thrill ride that tosses you around as you go. Guests load their vehicles and make their way out of the loading docks and into the first sea cave.

Ride Experience

Once in their vehicles, guests begin making their way through the sea cave to see small animatronics and static figures of different ocean animals. Crabs, gulls, sea stars, barnacles, the likes. It’s not long before a voice is heard over the attraction’s radio system (hooked up in painfully obvious speakers lining the cave) that tells you ominously that soon you’ll be coming upon the long lost city of Zhenchen and to beware the curse of the city. With that, the boats round the corner and pass by the same cheaply-constructed fake city that is present in the pre-show video. Poor animatronics of people with gills and fins sit around, doing things such as sharpening a shark-tooth spear, grilling fish on a fire, and doing a pose and dance of readying spears like the old Jungle Cruise attraction’s headhunter party. These animatronics are more akin to those of a Chuck E Cheese that had been left to rot than anything normally seen at Disney. Guests are meant to feel incredibly underwhelmed by these nearly static figures.

A voice comes over the speakers (still painfully obviously taped to the ceiling of the ride and outlined in a red glow) and ominously says that this is the ancient city of Zhenchen and that as legends said, it’s true that the people became adapted to living in the sea, growing gills and webbed hands and feet. The voice also says they’re incredibly dangerous and not to be trusted as the same effect once used on Jungle Cruise of simple noise indicates the figures threw their spears at guests. As a monologue begins, guests see alarms start blaring as the speaker is interrupted. On the speaker are shouts of “incoming tide” and “they’ll be trapped in the caves” as the alarms blare loudly. The boat slowly moves to a pair of caverns as employees panic and try to get guests on track to get out through the cavern they’re not heading to. However, the rushing sound of water fills the caverns as the alarms and chatter stop. The vehicles drop down a small hill in the pitch darkness as the temperature changes and guests are heavily splashed.

At the bottom of the hill, guests find that they are no longer in a boat in the water, but rather seem to be underneath the sea as the blue lighting and rocks indicate as projections of fish and shadows move along the walls. The cheap set and obvious speakers are gone, this is clearly not a planned part of the experience, rather, guests really are beneath the South China Sea. As the vehicles round a corner, a figure stands, or rather floats, just above the floor. As guests approach, the figure reaches its hand out and is lit by a soft blue light to reveal a real merperson. With a fish’s tail, gills, and webbed hands, this figure is in the uncanny valley, not a human, but not an animal, somewhere in between. The figure warns guests that they shouldn’t be here as Zhenchen does not belong to humans, nor does it belong to merfolk. The boat, however, is automated and ignores the kindly merperson’s warning as it rounds another corner.

Here, a lifelike ancient Chinese city sits, undisturbed, as guests pass by a real life in the city, with merfolk playing and eating and swimming alike. However, the soft and mysterious undersea music shifts as guests continue along, turning dark and sinister. The cave walls begin to be covered in crustaceans, emulating an infestation of sorts, as the chittering of crabs and isopods overwhelms your hearing. The echoing voice of the merfolk blast in this segment of the cave with warnings of "THEY are here" and "do not continue on." Yet the boat ignored the warning. Coming out of the cave, guests hear electric zapping and the sounds of destruction as giant jellyfish with tons of eyes animatronics terrorize a town. Two are far off, one carrying the top to an old building, another using its tentacles to destroy another. Other jellys on a screen in the back show this carnage occurring all over the city. However, guests initially can be happy they are behind a wall until a massive animatronic jelly rises halfway over the wall and its tentacles come over, destroying the buildings around and attempting to get guests. Its many many eyes peering at terrified guests as it reaches but just barely misses the tentacles.

The ride peels out, passing by in an attempt to escape, entering into an agricultural district. Here, the kelp gardens are in full bloom, yet the farmhouses and crops here are still under attack. From the ceilings, the heads of terrifying bird-like behemoth monsters pluck down, knocking over buildings and attempting to snatch guests from their seats, just barely missing. A whirlpool on the ceiling serves as a portal for these heads to stick through, implying the monsters are on the surface and are dabbling like ducks would do. The jerky motions of the ride vehicle swerving to avoid the feasting predators shake guests up as they escape into another part of the city. Yet here, the kelp grows huge and has houses located underneath. A massive crab monster with many eyes and sharp legs destroys the buildings in the city as it’s extra claw reaches for guests, the ride moving and swerving to avoid the massive crustacean.

It speeds up into a cave and stops for a second, almost as if to catch its breath, before the head of a massive eel rears up, having a mouth like a xenomorph and neon glowing lights all around it. It pursues us, launching forward as the ride peels backwards out of the cave and spins us back into the city. Here, we see a group of undersea pirates with the heads of different sharks and sea creatures (think Davy Jones’ crew in the PotC movie) pillaging the village. They seem to be possessed with hatred and fear as they turn to the guests and shout, beginning to move towards them as the guests escape, also nearly avoiding the clutches of a massive coral monster who lunges out from behind a massive rock.

The boat seemingly finds an exit as it begins up a huge lift hill towards the surface. However, as the boat climbs up, the water seems to get deeper and deeper, the lights changing to be darker, as if up is actually down. From the top (or bottom?) of the hill, the coral monster rises up, ready to snatch guests. It lunges forward but the boat dips below it, narrowly avoiding it and spinning and turning as it cascades through the cavern in the pitch black, flashes of the monsters seen appearing as the spinning happens. Finally, the boat regains control and plops safely back into the water and paddles through the exact same display from before the flood, with the same dialogue from the cheesy speakers echoing out, almost as if nothing happened, or time itself returned you. The boat then exits the cave and back out into the dock where guests disembark all terrified and confused, just as the eldritch beings hunting them would want.

Next: Mogui Grotto

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