Guangzhou Chimelong, Landed: Safari Park and Paradise Tickets, Passport Entry and the Metro

Chimelong Safari Park is the headline and the more time-sensitive of the two. Animals feed and move in the morning, the signature experiences end in the late afternoon, and the park's dated hours — 9:30 to 18:00 through the November 2026 period, for example — leave no evening to recover a slow start. Paradise, by contrast, often runs later and forgives a later arrival. So the order writes itself: safari park first, on your freshest day, Paradise second. If you have only one day in the resort, spend it in the safari park and leave Paradise for a return trip.

Buy through chimelong.com, the official WeChat account or mini-program, or the official Chimelong app. Every ticket is sold against a traveller's identity document: you type the document details at purchase, and the gate verifies the same document on the day — resort-wide document-swipe entry has been in force since 24 November 2020, and some packages and annual passes add a face or fingerprint check. The official pages phrase the requirement as a 'valid identity document' and, in the texts we checked, do not name the passport explicitly; overseas sales channels do list overseas passports among accepted entry documents, and overseas hotel and ticket channels describe passport holders collecting or verifying at the gate. The safe pattern: book with the passport number exactly as printed, travel with the passport itself, and keep the booking confirmation on the same phone.

The safari park runs two price levels. On ordinary weekdays the standard ticket is ¥300, with child tickets at ¥210, youth tickets at ¥240 and senior tickets at ¥210. On 'specific days' those rise to ¥350, ¥245, ¥280 and ¥245. Specific days are not just national holidays: the 2026 definition covers New Year, Spring Festival, Qingming, Labour Day, Dragon Boat Festival, the whole 1 July–31 August summer period, Mid-Autumn, National Day, the Halloween event season, New Year's Eve — and every weekend. Paradise is simpler: one flat structure with standard tickets at ¥250, child, senior and concession tickets at ¥175, and youth tickets at ¥200. Category definitions are shared: a child is 3 to under 12 years old on the visit day, or between 1.0 and 1.5 metres tall; a youth is 12–18 and over 1.5 metres; and each paying adult may bring one child under 3, or under 1.0 metre tall, free. Both parks' admission is a single all-inclusive ticket; food, shopping and a few coin-operated items inside are extra.

Both parks hang off one station: Hanxi Changlong on Metro Lines 3 and 7. Use Exit E (Exit D also works), walk about five minutes to the Chimelong Metro Plaza, and board the free shuttle buses that loop to each park gate and the resort hotels. Coming from Guangzhou South Station — the high-speed rail hub — Line 7 gets you there in about 10 minutes, which makes the resort an easy first or last day on a rail itinerary. Local buses also serve the station (routes 129, 163 and 109 among them) and the safari park stop directly (304 and 526), but the metro-plus-shuttle route is the one that needs no Chinese and no luck. At the end of the day, reverse it: shuttle back to the plaza, then the metro — do not count on flagging a car in the exit surge.

The safari park's signature experiences carry early last departures, and they are the real schedule. The sightseeing train through the drive-through savanna runs roughly 9:30–16:30, with the last train at 16:30; the self-drive area keeps the same window; the cable car runs about 10:30–17:00. So ride the train early — first thing, while animals are active and before every other visitor has the same idea — then work the walking zones: the panda centre for the triplets, the koala hall, the big-cat and African areas, using the cable car as both transport and a rest in the middle of the day. Those internal times come from park operating summaries and shift with the season, so confirm them on the official page or app for your date; the principle does not shift: anything with a last departure gets done before lunch, not after.

Visitors with their own car can drive the safari route themselves instead of riding the train, inside the same 9:30–16:30 window. The car needs its own separate vehicle ticket on top of everyone's admission. We could not confirm a current official price for that vehicle ticket — third-party guides quote figures around ¥200 per car, but treat any number not shown on the official ticket page as unconfirmed, and buy it through official channels only. For most overseas visitors the train is the better product anyway: no driving stress, a commentary, and no separate ticket to decode.

Paradise, open since 7 April 2006, is the resort's machine park: headline coasters, big pendulum rides, shows and parades, with six new machines added in 2025 including a launch coaster, a large splash ride and a pirate ship. Ride order matters more than route: hit the signature coasters in the first hour, take shows and parades in the heat of the afternoon, and save water rides for when getting wet is a relief. Hours are the trap: Paradise publishes its opening times date by date, and they swing with seasons and events — sampled dates ranged from a 10:00–19:00 pattern across the National Day opening days to 10:00–22:00 during the autumn Halloween event stretch. Never copy hours from a screenshot or a tips post; read them off the official page for your exact date the night before.

Both parks sell a paid priority product called EasyPass: a wristband that gives faster access to rides. It does not include admission — you need a normal ticket first. Critically, Chimelong does not publish a fixed official price list for it: the official ticket page states that prices are posted at sales points inside the park, quantities are limited and it sells out. So the honest workflow is: enter, look at the real queue times in the app, and buy the wristband on site only if the day justifies it. Any website quoting you a fixed official EasyPass price in advance is quoting something the operator itself does not publish. Which attractions the safari park's version covers is likewise not officially listed — ask at the sales point before paying.

The official Chimelong app is the operator's designated mobile channel: tickets, live waiting times, performance schedules and an electronic map for the whole resort. Download it before you arrive, load your tickets into it, and let it sequence the day — queue times at Paradise, show times at both parks. The official booking flow is Chinese-first across the website, WeChat and the app, which is precisely why the preparation steps in this guide happen the night before, at the hotel, with time to translate screens, rather than at the gate with a queue behind you.

Both parks empty toward the same metro station, and the free shuttles feed it steadily. Leave a few minutes before the closing surge or settle in for one last show and let it pass; Line 3 runs back toward the city centre and Line 7 connects to Guangzhou South for onward trains. If your hotel is inside the resort, the same shuttle loop covers the hotels. Keep enough phone charge for the metro QR and the ride home — the day that starts with a panda breakfast should not end with a dead battery at a ticket gate.