Firefly Hill Amusement Park in Yantai Botanical Garden

Brief Introduction

Firefly Hill Amusement Park is located in Yantai Botanical Garden, a 4A-level tourist attraction in Shandong Province, China. With an area of approximately 21,000 square meters, it is the first independent IP-themed children's park within a botanical garden in Shandong. This unpowered theme park emulates the grassland environment where insect biological communities flourish and takes plants and insects as the IP protagonists, offering children an adventure of playing and interacting with insects and fully enjoying various theme functions such as interactions and entertainment performances.

Design Concept

The Firefly Hill Amusement Park in Yantai Botanical Garden aims to build an outdoor playground for children with the design concept of "Talk to nature, Make Friends With Insects". Cowboy Group has created an insect kingdom paradise, integrating the lush forest environment, so that children can listen to the chirping of insects and the calls of animals, get in close contact with plants and insects in nature, and approach nature in the closest way and witness the wonderful interactions between organisms in nature.

Design Details

The entrance of this themed park is crafted in the shape of a large tree,looking extremely novel and mysterious. At the same time, elements like cacti, jungles, pumpkin houses, rare and beautiful flowers and plants, and Hobbit huts are integrated into the design of this entrance to create an entrance of the themed park that is filled with a fairytale-like ambience.

The Firefly Hill Outdoor Playground is set within Yantai Botanical Garden,therefore,in this verdant grassland architectural setting, a wide variety of plants, insects, and other species abound, enabling children to learn about the food chain in different ecological environments and understand the survival principle of natural selection it embodies. On the basis, this theme park has crafted highly realistic plant landscapes, oversized insect models, and abundant mimetic scenery, making children feel as if they have stepped into Andersen's fairy tales.

In the customized outdoor playground, there are two green micro-terrains with different topography. Arthropods represented by spiders and insect communities represented by rhinoceros beetles and ants form two opposing camps. Each dominates one side and stages stories of love and animosity every day.

In this micro-topography area of arthropods led by spiders, a Spider Queen Playground is designed, which mimics the scene of spiders spinning silk and sets up spider webs one by one for insects to trap them. Only bold insects dare to take on the challenge. To escape being preyed upon, insets needs agile skills and balance.

The two large “pincers” of the Spider Queen are made into two extremely long custom stainless steel slides, and the palps are climbing nets. Around the Spider Queen Playground are also distributed small and large special trampolines, cloud trampolines, sand pits, and so on. In addition, the huge “stomach” of the Spider Queen is also filled with mechanisms such as drilling nets, climbing ropes, and climbing nets...

In insect communities represented by ants, the beetle king, the rhinoceros beetle, and the ant king are regarded as the protagonists of this community. Among them, the legendary "Howl's Moving Castle" has become a moving castle in the ant king's playground. Inside, it is integrated with lookout towers, popular science interactive walls, spiral staircases and other obstacle course projects. While the abdomen of the rhinoceros beetle playground hides hidden climbing nets and drill ladders. In addition, this area is also equipped with rock climbing walls, stepping stones, and buried trampolines, etc., which are enough for those big kids who like challenging competitions and military confrontations to have crazy fun all day.

The two camps, each boasting unique skills, frequently stage a tense and thrilling duel on the circular trampoline "arena".

Going further ahead, there is a trampoline cloud adorned with painted story patterns. It is as soft and elastic as a giant marshmallow, enabling children to fully experience the wonderful feeling of strolling in the clouds.

Inside the Firefly Theater, there are numerous vividly colored seven-spot ladybugs. Their postures in a prone position become one mysterious cave after another and the smooth and tension-filled lines harmoniously blend with the surrounding environment. Meanwhile, the incorporation of outdoor playground playsets such as insect and plant-shaped slides, turntables, and percussion instruments endows the entire Firefly Theater with childlike charm and playability, bringing boundless joy to children.