Korea + Japan 08/18 – 3 Parks 1 Day
Day 6
The heat from yesterday, combined with the long day at Nagashima, added to 5 busy days in a row of coaster madness, meant I woke up today feeling like crap. Now this obviously isn’t ideal but the situation was worsened by the fact today was the day we knew we had to go hard in order to knock off as many parks in Nagoya as possible before we headed off to Tokyo.
Enakyo Wonderland
The first park of today was Enakyo Wonderland, a small family oriented park home to 3 roller coasters.
After being attacked by a flying bug half the size of my hand (no seriously) and shouting about how hot it was, we made our way to the ticket counter.
We picked up the entry only tickets because we knew it was cheaper to just purchase tokens for the coasters once in the park.
There was no turnstiles or staff to check tickets, so rather strangely we just powered straight into the park, made all the more strange by the fact we were the only visitors in sight.
I had written down on my phone the amount of tickets we needed to purchase, so we walked to the nearest ticket vending machine we saw, which was a lot more confusing than it needed to be. While making a scene at said machine, 2 staff members appeared out of thin air to come and help us, see I told you you don’t have to wait long for help in Japan.
Cycle Coaster – We started with Cycle Coaster and with immense confusion. There was a sign on the fence that implied you got a discount with 3 people, so we asked the very friendly man about it. 5 or so minutes of confusion and Google translate later we never found out the answer but he let us on for that price anyway!
The pedalling aspect actually made this strange coaster really amusing.
Jungle Coaster – A small Togo family coaster with a hamster on the front, that’s perched on the edge of a sheer drop and has brutal laterals. It was unexpectedly quite a lot of fun.
Camel Coaster – We had a mix up with our tokens and it turned out we didn’t quite have enough for Camel Coaster. The ride operator, an absolute hero of a man, personally walked us to the machine and told us which package was the cheapest in order to get just enough to ride and no spare, where else in the World would this happen!
The coaster itself although the biggest in the park was probably the least interesting. Pedalling a roller coaster and getting brutally beaten by a crazed hamster coaster were much more exciting.
As we went to leave and thanked the operator for his time, he offered to take a photo of us infront of the train in the station to forever remember our experience, what an absolute beast.
Whilst it’s obvious that Enakyo Wonderland wasn’t built for me, the staff were absolutely fantastic and managed to turn a cred run in 40 degrees into a memorable experience.
Japan Monkey Park
The sheer intensity of the heat on the walk from the car park to the entrance of Japan Monkey Park was staggering, I really can’t put into words just how unpleasant it was.
While this park was nothing special, we knocked it off in such a hurry to get out of the sun that I really can’t remember much of anything.
Highway Coaster – Easily the most boring and least memorable jet coaster I’ve ever ridden. I have 3 lasting memories of the entire ride, 1) thinking I was going to black out from the heat in the station, 2) it has a mister near the end of the ride and 3) the coaster has one of the dumbest looking trains I’ve ever seen.
Monkey Coaster – I seriously can’t remember this powered coaster at all. It had nice trains though…
Go! Go! Banana Coaster – The elderly man operating this tiny coaster gave an extremely enthusiastic chant on dispatch, which you have to commend considering it was 40 degrees and his only riders were 3 weird foreigners barely fitting in the train.
And that was Japan Monkey Park.
Higashiyama Zoo
As well as obviously being home to a zoo, this park also features gardens and of course the amusement park, from my memory the entry ticket is really cheap too.
Jet Coaster – Much like Highway Coaster from earlier, all I remember of this Meisho jet coaster was feeling like I’d been set on fire and begging for the train to dispatch because sitting in the station was unbearable.
Bear Coaster – Riding this children’s powered coaster was an immense chore thanks to the heat.
Slope Shooter – Let’s get it out of the way, this isn’t a cred, coasting down a hill in a car doesn’t count and that’s exactly what this is.
While it may not be a cred, Slope Shooter is good fun and extremely unique.
We entered the station to be greeted by 2 super friendly operators who instantly made the experience special.
Following that I wedged myself into my comfy car, then got pushed by the ops (who were singing me a song) to the base of the lift hill. Once you reach the top, you coast on tarmac down several slopes until you get back to the station.
Now that may sound a bit boring but it’s quite fun. You pick up quite some pace at certain points and hilariously crashing into the walls never gets old. Plus at one point I got slapped in the face by an overhanging plant which I found really funny.
When I got back to the station the ops were chanting, clapping and beaming ear to ear and I couldn’t help but smile too.
With those 3 parks down we had managed to knock off the 3 larger parks we planned to do today.
We had planned to visit 3 small parks with 1 coaster each next, but after we showed up at the first one to discover it was completely closed we decided to bail out on that idea.
That night while sitting in Mos Burger my condition went from bad to worse and it was at this point I decided that I probably actually had heat stroke for real. As soon as I reached my hotel room I collapsed, then set my alarm and passed out.
Thanks for reading, click here for day 7 where we visit Lagunasia and Hamanako Pal Pal.