China builds ‘Joyland,’ a World of Warcraft-themed amusement park

Despite China's notorious aversion to video games, an amusement park devoted to World of Warcraft is currently under construction there.

China’s government may not allow people access to the full and open Internet most of us enjoy here in America. And it really doesn’t care much for video games in general. But that doesn’t mean the country is entirely negligent of the needs of the computer-savvy crowd.

In China’s Wunjin district, workers are currently constructing an amusement park modeled entirely after Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft and StarCraft, reports the Huffington Post. Really.

The park theme park, called “World Joyland,” will consist of five game-centric sections: Terrain of Warcraft, Universe of StarCraft, Island of Mystery, Moles World, and World of Legend. The park will reportedly offer visitors a number of thrill rides, including a double free-fall tower and three roller coasters. World Joyland will reportedly also have a video game museum and an e-Sports center.

The park was originally supposed to open this March. But recent photos of the build site show that the park is nowhere near ready to open.

The company building the park is CCJoy, an Internet portal company. CCJoy does not appear to have any official affiliation with Activision Blizzard or WoW, and Blizzard has apparently not given its consent for the construction of the park. But as we’re sure you have already noted, this wouldn’t be the first time a Chinese company made a product based on someone else’s copyrighted material.

News of the WoW park originally surfaced on February 7 on French website GameBlog, and many thought the place might be a hoax. But with Chinese news outlets reporting the build, as well as a number of photographs taken of the construction site, the place appears to be real.

So for all you diehard WoW fans out there — and we know there are a lot of you — now would be a good time to start saving up for a plane ticket to China. We’ll let you know once the rides are actually ready to roll.

Watch a Chinese-language report about World Joyland: