Conclusion

So, how do I rate this trip?

I managed to get 79 new rollercoasters to my count; which was pretty incredible, and a small number of those were ones that myself and Kat were the first to ride, which means more to me than the count these days.

I visited 54 parks in the 3 weeks I was out there, again some of them we were the first enthusiast group to visit.

I visited 5 of the 6 largest cities in the country. Doing that in any country is pretty special, even more so in one as big as China.

I travelled a ridiculous amount of the country from Hong Kong in the south, to Beijing in the north and back down to Zhangjiajie in the middle. 

I am especially proud for making Zhangjiajie happen. I've managed to move from saying "I'd love to go there" to actually doing it and this has encouraged me to do more of that in the future. As crazy as my hobby is I am starting to move away from just hunting down coasters.

I have lots of great memories of this trip, with the coaster highlight easily being the visit to Happy Valley Tianjin and the non-coaster highlight being the entire Zhangjiajie experience. I formed some new friendships on the trip but had to say goodbye to some others. I knew going into the trip that China would bring out the worst in me, but it seemed to do the same to others. C'est la vie!

I'm pleased that all my extra-curricular trip planning paid off, from the little extra parks we'd jump a taxi to, to the longer journeys between the cities. My one learning there would be to not trust train ticket companies, who let me down big time on this trip.

Thanks to the organising team in the ECC for putting the main trip together.

Thanks to Kat for being a superb travel buddy for the latter half of the trip.
Thanks to the guys at Martin and Vleminckx for arranging for us to get into Happy Valley Tianjin and to ride the wooden coaster there.