Korea + Japan 04/17 – Space World
What the hotel lacked in food, it made up for in convenience. Just 15 minutes and £30 pounds of tolls up the road was our next park. This was to be the final season of operation for Space World, so we felt very fortunate to have made it in time.
Day 4 – Space World
It was a bit of an odd sensation being able to drive alongside Stealth’s launch track to get to the car park.
Bought a ticket from an actual alien and parked up.
Opted to head round to the Intamin launch clone first.
Not much to report really, it was the same beast but cleaner.
Highlight: Not Thorpe Park.
Lowlight: Locker faff.
The Arrow hyper was up next, with a rather painfully slow queue. An audio announcement kept repeating the name of the ride in a cute accent, so that helped a little.
Grabbed the back row, picked a good on-board tune to listen to with the buttons on the restraint and crept up the lift hill in anticipation. I thought these replacement trains were meant to be an improvement, but something went wrong somewhere.
Instead of your standard first drop, back row ejector sensation, there was some sort of collision between the wheels and the rails and it only continued to jolt itself stupidly around the layout for the next couple of minutes.
There might have been some forces somewhere, but everything was drowned out by it riding so terribly. It’s a shame really, the layout is a lot more interesting than something like Big One and I imagine it could have been half decent if executed properly.
Highlight: Laughing at the catastrophe.
Lowlight: The catastrophe.
We had a look in some shops on the way past and they had some decent merch with statements in recognition of their final year. There were also a couple of walls outside which you could write your farewells to the park on with the pens provided. Kinda gives you the feels.
We opted to sit forwards rather than backwards on this relatively small jet coaster for throughput reasons.
Highlight: Staff were great at hyping the ride up and getting people excited.
Lowlight: It didn’t really deliver.
This one of a kind Maurer looper was running quite a bit more efficiently than the other creds. It was as good fun as it looks. The loop itself and lots of very heavily banked corners give it the intense feel of an almost Olympia Looping (bad restraints included).
Highlight: Watching people trying to cope with taking bags on ride for the only ride in Asia for which that seems to be allowed.
Lowlight: Bit of a weird jolt in the first hill
Had some crepes while waiting for the final outdoor coaster to open. I learnt here that they’re apparently a Japanese cuisine…
Review of a man who hasn’t really eaten anything for 3 days: “I’ve had better.”
What appears to be Togo’s version of a Vekoma junior coaster was a good laugh for its size.
Highlight: +1
Lowlight: Weird lunchtime closures
Jumped on another ferris wheel for the views and a sit down. A couple of nice touches on this one in that they give you a pair of viewing binoculars and there’s a notepad and pens in each pod, for inspired sketching?
There was one more cred to go, but no such luck. Required a bit of a hunt in the big indoor section to find it but staff outside said it was spiting.
We had achieved everything we felt necessary at a reasonably leisurely pace, so headed out to the car.
Space World was an odd place really. It still had a good sense of fun about it but felt perhaps not quite as ‘nice’ as Greenland the previous day. Again, nothing amazing to go back for. Aww…
Sort of on the cards, if we had been quick, was a trip to a park called Kijima Kogen. I found it on the sat nav and made the following statement: “We’ll get there at 16:55 and it’ll cost us £70 pounds in tolls.”
That’s a no then.
Side note:
I’m always hearing stories from people about places that are expensive (Scandinavia, Singapore etc.) and then starting arguments with such people. I had always put it down to tourist traps and a foolish necessity for coffee, beer or whatever people are into these days. If you played it smart, they were never any worse than back home.
Japan is expensive.
Just to exist in.
There is no avoiding it.
All major roads are tolled very heavily. Parks, trains, food, entertainment and shopping are all comparatively expensive no matter how you go about it.
At regular points from this moment onwards, we would jokingly say how much something just cost us in pounds and all you could do was laugh out loud.
Not a complaint at all because it’s just the most lovely place. I call it Awesome Tax.
Had a couple of +1 alternatives written down and plumped for the following as it was the most convenient/decent looking thing on the way back to Fukuoka.
Kashiikaen Yuenchi
Plenty of fun faff here with car parks and getting into the place. With the tactic of driving physically as close as possible to the coaster, ended up in a car dealership. From there we were pointed to the car park for Sylvanian Family Land.
Having not made a connection between the two, we took a long walk around the perimeter of all that to the back of the coaster and wandered into another park entrance that end. It turns out it is all one park, seeming to be going through a UK-style massive kid’s brand overhaul. But we went in the ‘cool’ entrance at least.
The main attraction was another glorious Jet Coaster.
Highlight: “Think of the rare points on coaster count!”
Lowlight: More ridership than T-Express
The only other cred was yet another Powered Dragon thing.
Highlight: Name
Lowlight: Shame
Job done. Exited through Sylvanian Family Land into our actual car park and headed off into the city to drop off our vehicle and have a night in Fabulous Fukuoka.
Car hire staff were extra nice. They usually only shuttle customers to and from the airport, but after explaining we wanted to take a train the next day, they dropped us off downtown instead.
Day 5