Japan 05/26 – Universal Studios Japan
Dropped the trusty car back off in Osaka that night and had one more day in the city for
Day 19 – Universal Studios Japan
I had a good time here back in 2017. Strong coaster lineup, well rounded supporting attractions, manageable queues.
Since then the stories haven’t sounded so pretty, but with a potential +2 on the cards it seemed worth a shot after so long.
It’s bad.
They haven’t improved their online ticketing system. Barely had a website at all back in the day but instead now you can try and fail to buy online as a foreigner. To compliment this they now no longer sell you anything on the door, instead insisting you walk to a nearby convenience store (which given my experience with Nagashima potentially wouldn’t work either) and then re-queue for half an hour of security checks.
So, as it always was, but shouldn’t be, buying through a third party online is the best option.
Despite being on the premises at rope drop, Nintendo land was immediately a total write off for the visit. I did my due diligence on the rules (which shouldn’t be necessary) and without some form of paid extra like fastrack or staying on-site, the only option was to furiously refresh the app at park opening and book a time slot. The slots simply never materialised on the app, so I assume everyone went for the paid option. -1.
One minor draw for me was the opportunity to experience Space Fantasy without a VR headset, for which it has had may IPs over the past decade.
It recently got rethemed to Club Zedd (who?) and has some new obnoxious preshows about going to Club Zedd for a party in space. Cheese.
The effect of this on the ride is some on-board EDM and a feeble attempt at a rave coaster.
As a ride that was raved about maybe 20 years ago, not being able to see the ‘scenery’ had always left us feeling like we had missed out a bit.
We hadn’t however, the hardware was exactly as I remembered – 90% lift hill, 10% weak layout. Your mileage may vary with spinning of course but there’s seemingly little opportunity to get too exciting with it.
This results in a lot of talking on the lift hill (thanks for coming guys, you made it, we’re gonna have a grrrrreat time), music and train building to a drop and then very little pay off, three times over.
X in its rave years was far better. Stupid Walking Dead.
Headed over to Snoopy land to get the only available new coaster for the day.
They’ve redone the inside of the building and replaced the old coaster with a Vekoma junior. #1 Snoopy’s Flying Ace Adventure was nice enough.
Another big deal for me here is that Jaws is still alive, and here only. I have much love for this attraction.
It’s so silly and impressive at the same time, and when acted well by the captain, never fails to deliver a great experience. One to be treasured.
Something else that loomed over the day was that, despite my due diligence, Flying Dinosaur got suddenly booked for long term maintenance after I was in the country. By far one of my favourite coasters in the country that I was of course greatly looking forward to being reunited with.
While this screenshot is symbolic of a bad day, there was some comfort in not even being able to lay eyes on the Mine Cart Misery queueline.
And this was a ‘quiet’ day, by measure of some of the shortest opening hours the park offers all year.
No Flying Dinosaur is double damage here, because it means the only other major coaster has to do twice the heavy lifting on crowd control.
As such, Hollywood Dream was a perpetual 90 minutes or worse, on a 5 train B&M.
I wasn’t going to be dealing with that more than once so went for the full commit to the only sensible option – backwards only. The queue for Backdrop barely moves because it’s only one of the trains, so it doesn’t even paint the illusion of efficiency, sadly.
90 minutes came and went and I was finally sat down in the train, ready to pick a song. Some faff was going on however, staff kept looking down between the train and the track and making panicked calls to supervisors over their radio mics.
Supervisors arrived and our row was evacuated to the exit platform with no explanation. Many more words were spoken over the next 10 minutes. Lost article? Sensor fault? Who knows. Everyone got very impatient, for Japan, and then back on we got.
So, how was the ride? Despite all the build up and negative sentiment, it managed to hit that magic spot for me once again. Feels like I’ve oversold this one in my head for nearly a decade now, but I’m still learning that I should never doubt myself. There’s no denying what rides make you feel at the time and backwards this was bliss.
In the here and now I also had a fantastic time on it. The airtime is surprisingly potent, for a B&M hyper. More like the unrefined lurching type of moments of a Silver Star than the famous fantastical floating of a Mako. The lack of anticipation of layout that comes with going backwards of course accentuates this at least two-fold and I have never bothered to learn every detail of what was coming or where it was going. And it goes on for what feels like an age, for it’s size.
As an added bonus, the song lineup has changed over the years and I feel my pick this time contributed better to the experience, so that was nice.
Peaked on that and left the park with little desire to queue for anything else. The end.
Sad state of affairs really. Thankfully the park is still reasonable value for money, as a tourist at least, even if you only get 4 attractions in 4 hours. There’s strictly no re-entry, which is odd considering the fact that there’s a citywalk with a plethora of food directly outside. Just don’t expect both completion and comfort,
Feels like the lineup has been cut significantly. This is partly me, because I’ve done too much and have no intention of doing stuff like Harry Potter any more. Partly circumstance, because no Flying Dino is a big no no.
From my personal nostalgia however they’ve lost Terminator, Backdraft and Spiderman which were all perfect for padding out your day and then maybe making you consider another 90 minute queue for the premium attractions. Instead they’ve added Nintendo, but it’s behind a paywall, has 3 hour+ queues and I know for a fact they’re not premium attractions. So it’s not an appropriate replacement for the average guest.
And it’s seemingly just far too busy now for the average guest to really enjoy at any time any more. Like Florida. And Cedar Point.
Give me a jet coaster any day.
Summary
Prefectures – 20
New parks – 15
New coasters – 27
New dark rides – 5
New jet coasters – 10
Best new park – Adventure World
Best new coaster – Pink Typhoon Backwards Coaster
Best coaster – Hakugei