Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars Roller Coaster

As a fan of Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland I was excited to try HK Disneyland’s version. Abandoned mining towns are oddly things that have appealed to me, probably due to a lot of road-​tripping in the American Southwest during my childhood, and the great flashback scene at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Some good world-​building sets in the queue areas help push the theme, although there was not a line when we went on a weekday evening. Expecting a straight HK «port» of the Anaheim version, we were definitely set up for some grin-​inducing surprises. Recommend not reading spoilers if you do plan on riding this at some point; see rating and know we enjoyed the heck out of it.
[Spoilers follow]
If you’ve ever been on Expedition Everest at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, you’ll find some very familiar elements on this ride. One difference is that for those in the front seats of Everest, the backward drop is telegraphed immediately when you see the broken tracks; where else can you go at that point? On Big Grizzly during the second part of the ride, the train goes up an incline slowly, not unlike the scene with the dynamite goats in the Anaheim version. Like the Anaheim version, I just expected a short curvy descent with some twists and turns. As you almost begin to crest the hill, you can still see the top of the tracks and there’s no indication anything is different. A cable snaps with a twang, and a wooden swing arm attached to the machinery pulling up the cart twirls from some unseen recoil. This ride goes backward?! The twisting of expectations alone made this so much more fun that the mild no-​loop ride it really is.
We had no expectations beyond riding the local variant of our beloved Big Thunder and were surprised by the post-​Everest upgrades. We loved it. Along with Mystic Manor, this ride was tied for our favorite experience while at HK Disneyland and shouldn’t be missed.