A whole new fun ride

Hong Kong's Disneyland will open its newest attraction: a high-speed roller coaster and themed area based on the California gold rush.

Grizzly Gulch, which will open in July, is the second of a three-stage expansion following Toy Story Land, which opened late last year. The third part, Mystic Point, is scheduled to open next year.

The Grizzly Gulch ride will take 2 1/2 minutes and speed around a 27-metre hill dotted with moving artificial bears and water-spouting geysers. The mountain is the centrepiece of the themed area.

Thirty sculptors and 20 painters have worked on it every day over the past 14 months. They modelled it on California's Sierra Nevada Mountains and Yellowstone National Park.

A town from the gold rush days of the 1840s and 1850s has been built around the mountain.

'This is based on an actual location in northern California,' Ali Rubinstein, creator director of Walt Disney Imagineering HK, said. 'That is the biggest challenge, recreating an environment that actually exists.'

Rocks on the mountain seem rough and eroded, but none of them are real. Instead, 3,850 tonnes of cement were used to create them. Even the bricks and 'wooden' logs at the site are made from cement.