Sights of Reveille: PandaLand

This article was written in August of 2025 and has been cross-posted to Gnomestack.

Getting off the Fitzroy bus, you are immediately faced with the wonder that is PandaLand. For my first visit to the theme park, it's late evening and the lights are brilliant and glowing against the night sky. Everywhere I look, you see the pandas and bamboo, a veritable tableau of green, black and white that shows just how much care was put into building the theme park. At the gate, a sign clearly points to several must-see areas of the park.

To begin with, I head right and am immediately faced with a number of rides and games. Disappointingly, the target throw game is out of snowballs and even if I had the foresight to bring my own, using them is not permitted, so I shall simply have to hope that perhaps I can give it a go another time when the snowballs have been restocked.

Still, the nearby Panda-go-round and Bamboo Wheel are gorgeous to look at in the night. Even if you aren't interested in the park's rides or games, it's well worth a visit for the sights alone. The rosy-pink cheeks of the Wheel's panda fill my heart with whimsy and joy, two things that the park has no shortage of.

Of course, rides are often the main thing people wish to see at theme parks. The Panda Express takes you along its track, showing you more pandas and bamboo, as well as letting you watch PandaLand and the surrounding buildings whoosh by in a blur of light. I imagine that the ride is just as delightful during the daytime.

Skirting the park, I made my way over to the back of the park where I found another track with a warning of certain death and telling me not to enter. Tempting as it was to ignore that, there was another potential death method that I had to try out.

The water slide.

Plastered all over the theme park are claims that the owner is not responsible for any deaths, drownings or injuries. Quite honestly, that makes me nervous. Still, I'm a curious sort of person and the suggestion that death may await me at the end of a bit of fun isn't enough to stop me. I climbed the ladder to the first of two water slides, staring at the 36.4% chance of survival, and bravely went down it.

Well, perhaps I was a little over-anxious. I slowly drifted along the first water slide and was gently deposited into the beautiful pool filled with coral and apparently no piranhas (although I'm certain I saw some lurking in the water). Splashing my way to the edge, I resolved to try the second, higher slide too - this one boasting only a 24.7% survival rate. Again, a gentle drift down, this one taking me around the park.

All the anticipation left me quite hungry so I made my way over to the food truck where the only thing in stock was... bamboo. Thematic but not exactly filling. I bought a stick of it and tried chewing it, only to wipe it off and put it back in my pocket as a souvenir. As it turns out, that's the only souvenir I would get from PandaLand, as the gift shop was entirely sold out. While I'm sure this speaks well to the merchandise on display, it does mean that I have no keepsakes to remind me of my time at the park.

Refusing to let my trip end on a sour note, I made my way to the theme park's final attraction - the Space Panda. At the top, you get another great view of the park and the surrounding area but the fun part is getting to throw yourself off the edge for a small bounce at the bottom. I'll admit, as a grown adult, I did this several times. It took the sting off the lack of souvenirs, food and death, and I was able to walk out of PandaLand with a smile on my face as the sun began to rise.

On a sombre note, I realised that the owner of Pandaland has not been active in some time - likely the reason behind the many out-of-stock items. It's a shame because PandaLand clearly had so much love put into it and now it's stuck in limbo, a relic to one person's love of pandas.

Perhaps that's not wholly accurate. A sign shows that someone spent thousands of dollars on the panda merchandise. Clearly, people loved this place enough to buy all of the items that I was unable to. And did I not have fun at PandaLand overall? Did I not feel the love that Teuntje poured into the theme park?

A relic of the past it may be, PandaLand is still a place of whimsy, joy and love. My souvenir may be a saliva-covered stick of bamboo but I'll cherish it just as much as the owner surely cherished the theme park itself.

PandaLand can be found at C710 by taking either the bus or train to Fitzroy. The bus will drop you off just by the gates while the train requires a short walk of around 200 blocks.