After clearing out every CD shop in the city, we found time in the evening to go to an observation deck and have a lookaround.
The view was at the top of ’63 building’, which I knew of from a KoreanTV show. It’s an obscurer/quieter/cheaper alternative to the main touristy towers.
There was also a garbage ‘art’ exhibition up here which was comprised of pathetically mundane photographs trying to pass as something they weren’t. We had some fun giving them names such as ‘woman forgets jacket while leaving london taxi’. I’m sure they’ll stand the test of time.
Day 11 – Children’s Grand Park
With the magnificence of the trip coming to a close, it was time to spend the final day dusting off the rest of Seoul’s creds. Started at the scenic entrance of Children’s Grand Park, a massive green space and took the long walk to the small amusement section right at the other end.
Grabbed some tickets for the 2 creds and ticked them off in mere minutes.
#1 Crazy Mouse
The first was a slightly off wild mouse contraption and was mildly interesting, mainly for the struggle up the steepness of the lift hill.
#2 Family Coaster
The Vekoma SFC clone had a rhythmic shuffle to it and was mildly interesting.
Still managed to take some time out to revisit every CD shop in the city before heading to the final park.
Seoul Land
After a long straight walk past many many vendors all selling exactly the same selection of fruit’n’veg and fried… things, we got to the ticket office for a road train that takes you to different entrances of the resort(?). There’s a zoo and other attractions here but we want the one with the creds of course. Another tourist discount was up for grabs at this place making it dirt cheap. Cheers again.
The Koreans were out in full force again today. After a quick scout out, we resigned to being in this park for the long haul.
#3 Black Hole 2000
First up was a 2 hour wait for this large looper of unknown origin. Half old vekoma, half jet coaster and the whole layout 100ft in the air, it was a bit something and nothing.
#4 Colombia Double Loop
The other looper of known origin (Senyo Kogyo) was next with a more manageable 1 hour queue. Not sure why the popularity between these two rides was so different as they are pretty much the same beast, this one may even be slightly better with the haunted tunnel. Half old vekoma, half jet coaster and the whole layout 100ft in the air, it was a bit something and nothing.
#5 Crazy Mouse
An hour for this weird, weird mouse ride with the wrong style track and trains. Being oddly smooth and uneventful as a ride, it didn’t really do the job it was trying to sell by appearance.
An hour for #6 Tobot Train, the last of the powered dragon saga. Worth it.
An hour for #7 Tikitoc Train. A great variation on the wacky worm layout with some brutal forces. Best ride in the park, no joke.
Finished the day off with a go on the pirate themed dark ride shooter. I got the best score in Asia.
Seoul Land took some dedication to complete with those queues, but they were never unpleasant (I can think of many places where they would be). It’s a terrible line up with a great atmosphere. Everyone’s out for a good time, just how it should be.
This was a fantastic trip overall, I can’t stress enough how much I love these countries completely regardless of their theme park industry (though that’s an added bonus of course) and it took a lot of willpower to board the plane home. Of course I was already making plans to return.
Having only had the 72 hour transit period through Seoul, of course we weren’t done with Korea yet.
Day 9 – Lotte World
The park website had confirmed that their infamous Intamin Aquatrax was back in business. “Let’s hit it on the weekday” we said, “it’ll be quieter” we said… We were back in business ourselves with the tourist card. It was supposed to give us another 30% off here, but through some happy miscalculation, it made the ticket price 30%.
By the time we had sorted the tickets and moved swiftly through the indoor section of the park, the queues had already started to explode. We grabbed a Disney-style fastrack slot for already pushing 17:00 and joined the already pushing 50 minute queue for Atlantis Adventure. It must get them on a regular basis, but it isn’t built to take a big queue. They batch at the entrance gate for a short walk and a 10 minute wait by the station, the rest of the queue is made up of a roped off section of one single straight and then just masses of guests forming an orderly line throughout much of the outdoor section of the park, round shops and even other queues. At the point it had reached 200+ minutes in the early evening, it was hard to distinguish it from the scream shield gyro swing line of 100+ minutes. No thanks.
#1 Atlantis Adventure
Loved the station. There’s a sign up saying 140 phones have been lost on this ride so far today, which I could have believed from the locals (it stayed the same number all day, so just for effect sadly). To save you clambering over the cars, a trolley is pushed up to the vehicle for your loose articles. The staff then clap and sing you out as the ride dispatches.
The coaster itself is a bit of a mixed bag. It has a fantastic start with the launch and vicious indoor airtime hill and there are some other really strong moments throughout but these are punctuated by some dodgy pacing issues. There are trims galore, some of which completely kill momentum, then there’s a weird middle section of slowly drifting past theming + the transfer track and a seemingly redundant slow LSM lift hill.
An hour into the day now and the other coaster in the outdoor section (though it’s an indoor coaster) had run out of fastrack already. Queued at least 90 for it, spending most of the time trying and failing to figure out where the ride fits.
#2 Comet Express
This ride was a surprise hit. The confusion/mystery as to what it is and where it came from only adds to the fun. We think it’s an Intamin, we know it spins and thats all you need to know. As soon as it starts leaving the station, the crazy spinning begins and never lets up. The ride is a long blur of theming, intense dizziness and laterals and from the many brief glimpses you get of your neighbouring cars you can see everyone is absolutely loving it.
#3 French Revolution
Headed back inside for a 2 hour queue at the Vekoma looper. Opted out of the Virtual Reality, why miss all the intense indoor interaction?
It had an interesting layout and rode quite well, just wasn’t particularly good because of what it is.
All the creds, which had all the big queues, were now ticked off. Time to see what else was on offer.
Dragon Wild Shooting was a great little dark ride and seems to be underappreciated. Took a second lap but failed to get the winning screen at the end on both occasions. Don’t mind losing to those cute dragons.
The Adventures of Sinbad was a really impressive story-telling dark ride in boat vehicles. I didn’t expect much from the size and indoor location, but theyve definitely worked some magic to pack so much goodness in there, particularly a seemingly huge drop.
There was even more magic afoot with a full blown rapids ride being somewhere halfway up a building. This was also great for the novelty.
Pharoah’s Fury was closed. I’ll take that as a reason to return.
Fantasy Dream was one of those classic dark rides full of slightly out there characters and sets with a love it/hate it song containing the name of the ride, sung many times. Once was enough.
By then it was finally time for the fastrack reride on Atlantis, sneaking past a good 3 hours of queue. Loved it, but it didn’t do anything to sway my earlier opinion.
That rounded off the day nicely, it was all very enjoyable in spite of the queues. Again the locals always seem to have a good time in their parks regardless, so it’s not really an issue as long as you join in with the spirit.
Some obsessive album hunting/shopping began that evening and consumed most of the following 72 hours. Life changing stuff, but I won’t go into detail.
We also went to the ‘rainbow bridge’ that night, which was meant to be one of the wonders of the world supposedly, but were hilariously underwhelmed by the spectacle. As part of a ‘show’ it played some traditional music while the fountains supposedly shot water and blinked LEDs in time. The music was bland, you couldn’t really tell what was happening and every time a song ended and we thought it was over, another one came on with exactly the same effect.
There were a couple of different types of ticket machine in Osaka. One type were friendly and were easy to use. The other type didn’t like us so much. The train station we used today only had the unfriendly ones, so there was much confusion. After a short battle with one, a wonderful passer-by noticed us and came to help us out. She gave us a detailed explanation on how to earn the trust of these machines and successfully got us some train tickets to Hirakata.
Oh look, another ferris wheel.
Day 8 – Hirakata Park
Having needed to fit in a special mission in the morning, time was not on our side for this park. With the flight back to Korea being later that afternoon, everything was done at an amusingly fast pace.
The first stop was #1 Fantastic Coaster Rowdy. It did inspire some rowdiness, due to a comedic sense of urgency and needing to take several shopping bags on board with us. It’s a small coaster with not much going on.
#2 Red Falcon restored the good name of jet coasters with some great views and one particularly amusing and jarring transition in the tracking.
#3 Crazy Mouse
This spinning coaster doesn’t spin. Different experience I guess.
#4 Peekaboo Town was almost as fantastic as Rowdy and 10 times smaller again. Amazing staff was a running theme in this park.
#5 Elf
Saved the supposed best for last with this little Intamin woodie. It was a bit underwhelming really, some harmless fun at best.
Still had time for a go on the Dark Ride shooter, Return of the Garg. Was quite impressed with the ride system and unusual scenery, but unfortunately none of us got a high enough score to win a prize as advertised. This may have replaced another dark ride that was here, we never found the one on that was our to-do list.
After successfully dodging a park mascot, we headed back out to the train station. A particularly troublesome but entertaining sequence of events followed, involving: – Running out of cash for the trains (creds at all costs, too many toll roads) – Not being able to take out cash anywhere – The hotel staff giving us great advice on how to get to the airport when collecting our luggage, only to then discover it was the wrong airport – Taxi drivers not understanding the word taxi – Arriving at the right airport 45 minutes before our flight was due to leave and it not being an issue in any way
A hectic but fun final day in Japan. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
It was a bit of a long shot tagging this park on to the trip by means of another dedicated hire car and turned out it certainly wasn’t worth doing this time around. Every day of the trip so far had been >30°C and not a cloud in the sky. Today there was a slight drizzle in the air and umbrella signs on the roads as we trundled towards Nagoya, not too concerned. Japan had been amazing to us, thus far.
There’s a massive sign up outside the entrance with some overwhelmingly confusing descriptions of what is open, what is meant to be open, what is closed, what is meant to be closed, what opens in ‘bad weather’, what is meant to be open in ‘bad weather’, what closes in ‘bad weather’ and what is meant to close in ‘bad weather’. 3 different members of staff gave 3 different answers to these questions, but they were mostly positive responses so we went for it anyway. Even pulling into the car park, the rides were already running and the park appears to be a ghost town, so what’s the worry?
Day 7 – Nagashima Spa Land
We headed straight round to Steel Dragon 2000 – the worlds’s longest coaster and a legendary name in the industry that we were very excited to ride, with its permanent physical sign saying 90 minute wait in front of it. Joined the queue and killed some time watching some painful operations up at the station. Moved a few feet in half an hour… That sounds like a ride closure announcement. A few school kids dropped out of the queue in front of us at this point but the majority of the guests remained and the staff seemed to keep things running for a while. With the pace at which we were moving however, it was clearly going to be well over the advertised 90 minutes and we have 12 other creds to hit today! (No, just no). “There’s a thing about fastrack on that sign, let’s check it out.” Gave up on the dismal queue and went round to the ride shop to try and buy some. “The ride’s closed boys.” Seriously? In the time it had taken for us to walk around, they had begun closing it all off and sending people away. Spite Dragon 2000.
#1 Arashi
The S&S freespin was next door and actually open so we sucked up an hour queue for that, all the while saying “what the hell has become of this day?” Was sort of dreading this, with Insane in the brain, but it was actually rather awesome. It does a lot of crazy flips, particularly at the start, but smoothly with none of the horrible lurching that you get on a Zacspin, providing a very intense but in no way disgusting ride.
Highlight: The video in the queue of a couple of Japanese girls having the time of their lives on it, summed up the ride experience perfectly. Lowlight: Shouldn’t have been the best ride of the day.
#2 Corkscrew was open, with an hour queue, and the light drizzle was starting to collect on the inside of my coat. Yes, this was the point where I noticed the true extent of the damage from the underfloor heating. Given the current situation, I was not amused. Slowly descending into insanity at this stage, the ride produced similar results to Rolling X-Train in that it was unnecessarily hilarious, but I couldn’t say why.
Highlight: Comedy Lowlight: Shouldn’t have been the second best ride of the day.
The #3 Jet Coaster was open and it seemed guests were already starting to disappear from the park as quickly as they had appeared. Highlight: No queue Lowlight: The magic was lost on this one, Nagashima managed to kill the concept.
This #4 Peter Rabbit powered Coaster was the only other attraction open. Might as well.
And that was Nagashima Spiteland.
Everything else was closed and remained that way.
Had some pizza for lunch and by the time that was done (around 14:00), it had stopped drizzling and the skies had cleared, but all the school trips and other guests had left the park, leaving us to wander around aimlessly in despair. Even those few rides from earlier had since closed, with the exception of Arashi, which it looked like they were just getting practice operation laps on, still being a new ride.
No member of staff could bring themselves to tell us what was going on now. What’s the procedure here? The park is open for another 3 hours. We are paying guests. The weather has cleared. What happens?
Staff were busying themselves around Steel Dragon, both in the queue and in the control box for the ride. We got as far as walking up the exit stairs and standing on the station platform looking at the train (could have sat in the seats if we wanted), ready to ask what was happening, but they all completely blanked us for the duration, actively avoiding us. I have never seen such a poor display from an amusement park.
Lost for words, we left the park in disgust and went to get ice cream. Japan immediately redeems itself as the staff ask: “Can I sing to you while I make it?” “Yes. Yes you can.” With big smiles back on our faces, we leave it all behind.
Now that we were in Osaka, there was only one obvious destination for us.
Day 6 – Universal Studios Japan
Seems there’s never a quiet day at this park, and deservedly so with such a strong line-up. It made for a bit of a worrying start when we were queuing for over half an hour just to get into the place, while watching all the fastrack packages sell out on the screens in front of us. Probably the only thing that deserves complaining about at this park is the way admissions are handled. You can’t buy online tickets direct from the park and all the ticket queues on the day are severely slowed down by people asking about and having explained to them the million different packages before deciding what they want on the spot. This is then further soured by the ridiculously overstated queue times everywhere within the park which you can’t help but think is their way of making more money out of people, though I don’t want to believe is the case.
Expecting to struggle, we tried to play things a bit tactically, but it wasn’t particularly necessary in the end.
Went for #1 VR Space Fantasy XR Evangelion: The Ride first as we knew the throughput was being halved by only running the forwards facing seats of what is usually a Mack spinning coaster and then further destroyed by the plague that is Virtual Reality. There are a couple of preshows as a build up to aliens coming to attack the city and then the VR involves aliens coming to attack the city.
Have to say I was majorly let down by this ride. I’ve seen it being extremely highly regarded in the past and I have a bit of a thing for a good indoor coaster with a strong layout and nice theming so it was supposed to be bucket list good. As we found it on this day, it was very weak as a coaster, like a mini Temple of the Nighthawk with its 3 lift hills and doing absolutely nothing in between them and sadly I don’t really see how it could have been hugely improved in the past, even with a bit of spinning. I guess I can say I haven’t truly experienced that bucket list coaster, but I’m also left very doubtful now. The VR itself was probably the best example I’ve seen so far, definitely the most detailed and well synced up. Doesn’t make me a fan of it though. Highlight: Played our cards right with the queue times Lowlight: Sad face
Scoped out the rest of the park and ticked off #2 Snoopy’s Great Race, the next cred next as it was walk on. Another Japanese version of what appears to be a Vekoma junior, this time by Senyo Kogyo Highlight: A camera wielding Snoopy animatronic interacting with the train. Lowlight: The building that housed it was like a furnace.
The stunt show/film scene simulating attraction Backdraft was good for the (FIRE!) but a little too much of a slow burn with many lengthy pre-shows. I prefer the Singapore equivalent. Didn’t know it was an actual film though, so learnt somethign new.
Turned up to Hogsmeade about 10 years too late to care, having been a huge fan of the books and the franchise until the final film adaptation went and soured it all for me. Opted for the dark ride first, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, with or without the optional castle walkthrough section, I’m not sure what was going on. The entrance had the biggest locker nonsense I’ve experienced since Arthur, but we then walked straight through the very well themed queue and on to the ride, contrary to the 45 minute wait sign outside.
I quite liked this, even though a lot of it happens too fast. The ride system is a bit odd, with the robot arm chucking you into a very different mix of scenes ranging from half a second of breath-taking physical sets to some crappy screens with Harry on a broom waving at you. Almost can’t see how it all fits together (magic, obviously). Would have liked to give it a second go to let it sink in a bit more, but didn’t find the time in the end.
#3 Flight of the Hippogriff trains on the actual Vekoma junior coaster amuse me. Why is he made out of a wicker basket? Highlight: First of many instances in the park where staff notice my shirt and say “ooh, Universal, Mummy, Singapore!” And give me a huge grin and thumbs up. Perfect. Lowlight: Done far too many of these.
I was simply not prepared for how good Jaws was. This ride was just made for Japan with their excitable staff girls doing the talking, acting, boat driving and shark shooting. There were great crowd reactions every time the shark appeared. Great effects (FIRE!). Enjoyed every second of it.
#4 Flying Dinosaur
The new B&M flyer was claiming 120 minutes of queue but was about 40 in reality. There were more great crowd reactions every time the trains ‘assumed the (flying) position’ in the station, which was making for a good atmosphere after the very intensive loose item procedures.
What a fantastic flyer this is, they’ve finally nailed it. It has so many good sensations throughout and never really lets up. The initial inversion sequence is likely to be the most intense on the planet. Pretzel loops alone provide extremely powerful sensations as you get dropped on your head and all of the air is pushed out of your lungs, but you’re already reeling before you even reach this one due to the 540° twist and half loop combo that precedes it. It remains forceful and interesting throughout the rest of the ride and into the brakes, even though it doesn’t seem like any new ground is being covered by the second half of the layout. Came back for this later as it was getting dark and had another of those magical moments on a ride. Highlight: Perfect pacing, incredible intensity Lowlight: Nasty nets that ruin many photos
Jurassic Park – The Ride was decent, but I much prefer the rapids version to these big lumbering boats as you get a much more exposed feeling from the whole setup and a bit more of a ‘ride’ out of it. The ending drop was very impressive, but all the build up and drifting around beforehand just wasn’t quite as fun to me.
The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman was very good. I got hit with a sudden wave of tiredness mid-afternoon, so didn’t take in much of this simulator ride, just remember enjoying it at the time. Good effects, great vehicle movement, a solid package.
This tiredness continued into Terminator2:3-D, where a very long, standing preshow nearly finished me off. The acting was good though. Once in the comfy seats of the main theatre, I was drifting in and out of consciousness while gun fights were going off, so again didn’t take much in until the theatre seats dropped at the end and gave me a good wake up call. I was fine after that.
Wasted a chunk of time going for this new show in the Harry Potter land, expecting it to be a Universal class production. They had converted the whole area back into a time slot basis and everyone was totally confused by this, so staff were handing out little maps to the machines that would give you a ticket. The time slots on these tickets didn’t line up with the show times, so we had to sprint along with a crowd of people through some dark trees only to miss the first 30 seconds of it. The show was hilariously bad. A few actors were up in front of the castle chatting away and there were a couple of poor projections on the side of the building of some spells, followed by some killer comedy. There was an actor on the roof of one of the shops very, very, very slowly getting attacked by a Dementor (those evil cloak things) with really over the top suspenseful music, while the actors down in front just stood and stared at their friend dying like ‘sorry mate.’ The power of love or money won through in the end and there was a smattering of applause. Left the area almost as fast as we came in to go do something decent instead.
#5 Hollywood Dream: The Ride
The B&M hyper was claiming 90 minutes all day but was about 30 in reality. We started off with a forwards run, no gimmicks, and really enjoyed it. There’s a good unique feel to the layout for a hyper, the airtime is solid throughout and it’s a very aesthetically pleasing ride.
Came back right at the end of the day and went for the backwards facing train, in the dark, with a foreboding anime soundtrack coming from the seat and suddenly this ride was stupidly good. Not seeing things coming had a huge impact on how strong the airtime was and I all I could do was laugh with joy from start to finish. Make that 2 magical moments in one day. Amazing. Highlight: Limbs haven’t flown that uncontrollably since Helix. Lowlight: Jpop selection on the on board music wasn’t the Jpop I know and love.
It’s very easy to fill up your day here with so many attractions and would definitely be a struggle to get everything done if it was ‘busy’. We had a fantastic time with it all and would have loved to get a couple more re-rides in, particularly with that very strong coaster lineup. I even stood at the park entrance and longingly watched them sending the empty hyper trains home for the day before we departed.
Somehow we still managed to squeeze a bit more shopping into that evening.
Started the day with a ride on the beautiful Miss Nozomi (the bullet train) who dropped us off at Himeji Station. We used the lockers there to dump our bags for the duration while no less than a thousand school children walked past us in single file, every one of them smiling, waving and speaking various greetings. Went to the bus station outside and jumped on the next one to the castle. They had some interesting looking old fashion buses operating, but unfortunately we ended up with one of the regular ones.
Ticked off the culture cred.
And the cat cred.
The castle comes with a vending machine that had melon Fanta. I had been promised ‘all the Fantas of the world’ on this trip, but we only found 2 that were new to us in the end.
Took another bus from there to our park for the day.
Himeji Central Theme Park/Zoo/Waterpark.
Got that all included one very expensive ticket, whether you want it or not.
#1 Camelback Jet Coaster
Highlight: Everything I wanted and more. Lowlight: Disappointingly for a zoo, no camels included.
#2 Imorinth Highlight: My first time having just a single lap on one of these Wacky Worms. A proud moment. Lowlight: £10 a head
#3 Labyrinth Highlight: Good odd fun in this unusual coaster that was sort of trying to be a wild mouse. Lowlight: Lack of legroom (that keeps coming up)
I loved the rubber escalator in this park that takes you up the hill. What I love even more is the fact that it used to be an upcharge attraction.
These old Intamin drop towers have quite an unnerving aesthetic. Thankfully the whole end sequence when you end up on your back for the brakes was a bit of a blur and I didn’t really notice being tipped on my head to get back to the station.
#4 Diavlo
Highlight: This B&M invert clone has a great setting and is good to look at. Lowlight: Felt a bit weak for a Batman layout, it doesn’t get enough ridership obviously.
#5 Hurricane – Screw & Loop Coaster
More worrying Togo encounters that proved to be entirely unjustified. Had a good laugh on this one and no troubles at all. Highlight: The speed hump at the end. Lowlight: Discount GoPro in your face in case you want to buy the video.
Another day another ferris wheel. Great views but some unnerving noises on this one.
The park was a bit of a disappointment overall, even once we had gotten over the extortionate cost. I remember looking at pictures of Diavlo in the mountains long ago and thinking “wow, that looks like a fantastic place to visit.” In reality, it feels rather run down and tired. Once again none of the attractions were particularly outstanding and we didn’t feel like hanging around any longer. Bus times were awkward to get back out of the place in the middle of the day, so we asked guest services to find us a taxi.
A 90 year old man picked us up and took us back to the train station. He was greatly amused by our reading out of the ‘things to do in Himeji’ leaflet we had picked up.
Hopped on the regular train to Osaka from there and spent the rest of the day exploring the next city and its endless shops.
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.
#1 Zaturn
Not much to report really, it was the same beast but cleaner. Highlight: Not Thorpe Park. Lowlight: Locker faff.
#2 Titan MAX
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.
#3 Boogie-woogie Space Coaster
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.
#4 Venus GP
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.”
#5 Clipper
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.
#6 Pegasus
The main attraction was another glorious Jet Coaster. Highlight: “Think of the rare points on coaster count!” Lowlight: More ridership than T-Express
#7 Boom-Boom Coaster
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.
I thought I’d died and gone to hell, waking up to the intense heat in the room sometime late the next morning, but soon remembered it was actually heaven. The suitcases lying on the now searingly hot floor had some rather damaged goods inside, namely melted food and a raincoat that I would later find out had had its waterproofing destroyed. In stark contrast, the ‘fridge’ in the room had frozen a couple of our carbonated drinks. Everything was working in extremes.
Day 2
So Japan was never originally on the cards for this trip. The eventual motivation behind the rushed first half of the Korea leg was twofold. 1) Upcoming Space World spite. 2) If you transit through Seoul within 72 hours you are entitled to some free tickets to go and watch the live recording of a Kpop chart TV show. Well that just had to happen.
And that happened on this day.
Passed some time with some sightseeing and a leisurely lunch nearby.
Didn’t feel like getting dressed up in traditional garb for the free entry inside the temple, but it’s a big thing for the young locals. See if you can spot them.
After overestimating the speed of the metro, we got to the TV studio with just minutes to spare and ended up accidentally joining the line of jealous fans that weren’t actually able to go inside and watch. Awkward. Eventually found our way inside and sat just a few metres from the stage and cameras to watch all the magnificence unfold. More life changing stuff, but I won’t go into detail.
Tried and failed to get an early night (seems to be impossible in Asia) and then at stupid o’clock we were off to Japan.
Landed in Fukuoka the next morning and took a little while to discover that the ‘airport car hire’ wasn’t actually at the airport. With a bit of faff and a phone call, a bloke in a minivan came to pick us up, all good. Got the car and within a couple of minutes of driving things got interesting. There are 2 types of toll road in Japan – some are robots and some are people. The first one we came across didn’t have a machine, but there was definitely no sign of a person either. There was no barrier. What do we do? “Go for it”, I hear, and do. “STOOOOOOP!” A man appears out of nowhere, slightly bemused and asks us for the cash. As if we weren’t misbehaving enough already, we passed him some Korean coins by mistake. All in good humour, he sorted us out in the end. Sorry Japan.
It was a pleasant drive down, taken at a very humble pace (Japan never lets you do more than 60Mph in a car). We were soon greeted by the sight of the first of a million ferris wheels in this part of the world. Lesson not learnt from earlier, we gave the parking attendant some Korean coins by mistake. It took him a little longer to notice as we had already parked the car before seeing the poor chap come running towards us. All in good humour, he sorted us out in the end. Sorry Japan.
Day 3 – Greenland
Got some entrance tickets and ride wristbands and headed in for what was to be a fairly hefty +1 marathon. The admissions girl came running over as we passed through the turnstiles and was deeply apologetic for having not given us the correct change. See. We’re not the only ones.
#1 Gao
The longest coaster in the park came first and I fell in love with Japanese Jet Coasters as a concept.
They’re such a relaxing little sit down, breeze in your hair, trundling along at unknown speeds, unknown height, having a good laugh. Nothing like those boring, thrilling western coasters. Highlight: Getting front row and being able to watch the dinosaur on the front of the train as we went round. Lowlight: Honestly can’t think of one.
#2 & #3 Milky Way (Blue & Pink)
On to my first Togo ride. Stand-up version first. This was great fun. It had forces I didn’t expect to take direct to the legs and the design of the trains puts you in a very exposed position compared to anything I had done previously. Highlight: Restored faith in stand-up coasters Lowlight: Restored faith in stand-up coasters
The sit-down side of the ride was fairly inoffensive and forgettable in comparison. The on-board music was a little odd, playing what reminded me of Wild West chase music. It was good for a race, but not very befitting of the Milky Way name. Highlight: More pink rides for the count Lowlight: Unnecessary shoulder restraints
#4 Grampus Jet
This Vekoma suspended coaster has a great name and great looking cars. Highlight: Much better than the last one of these I did at Bobbejaanlend. All I needed. Lowlight: Still a bit dull.
#5 Ladybird is a powered dragon nearby that isn’t a dragon. Didn’t expect to ride another one so soon…
#6 Ultra Twister Megaton (#300)
The namesake of this website and what was to be my 300th coaster was now, unbelievably, standing right in front of me. These are weird contraptions, in a very good way. Life feels a little less natural when you’re surrounded by cages and grease, which is basically what the cars are made of. The vertical lift hill is unnerving, particularly as I didn’t know rides of this era could even do that (these were potentially the first, though they seemingly never found fame for it – justice for the Heartline Coaster!) and the resultant pitching you over the edge into the first drop and following hill is great fun. Highlight: The backwards inversions catching me off guard. Lowlight: Bit of a car crash on the transfer section.
#7 Nio
Highlight: Middle of the road SLC on this particular day. Lowlight: Having done enough SLCs to make statements like that.
#8 Blackhole Coaster
Another, larger powered coaster, mostly in the dark. It was alright I guess, mostly forgettable.
#9 Spin Mouse
Scraping the barrel for creds a bit now. Highlight: Being handed a personal pouchie for my glasses was a nice touch. Lowlight: Done far too many of these and they never beat Brighton Pier. What’s up with that?
#10 Sphinx
This smaller jet coaster is as fun as it looks. Highlight: Killer layout. Lowlight: Lack of leg room.
Having polished off all the creds in good time, we took a spin on the ferris wheel for some views.
Again, as a park, Greenland was a very nice place to be, with many interesting and quirky coasters on offer. Sadly it didn’t quite have anything amazing enough to rush back for, though I didn’t really expect it to. A good day out, that’s all you really need.
Our hotel that evening was very nice, though in a somewhat rural location It had absolutely no food options nearby, so finding something to eat was particularly troublesome.
Korea, Japan & creds. My dream holiday. At many times this trip did feel like a dream as it was very full on, in the best way, and sleep was at an all time low. Off we go then…
We had an overnight flight without sleep, landed at dawn and then jumped straight in at the deep end. Original plan was to hit Lotte World on the day of landing, but the website said Atlantis was spiting at the time, so that park was put on the back burner. Dumped our bags at the hotel and grabbed the metro to a relevant bus stop for the park. The resulting journey was about an hour of drifting in and out of consciousness while staring out the window for any sign of T Express. “It’ll be just round this corner.” “It’ll be just over this hill.” “It’ll be just past those trees.” “That hill must be where Eagle Fortress was” (with 15 minutes of driving to go as you pass under an entrance sign for the resort). The bus dumps you out at some sort of transport hub/lower car park where you have to catch another bus up another hill into the park.
Day 1 – Everland
A tourist card we had picked up earlier gave us at least 30% off our entrance tickets during Visit Korea ‘Year’ (2016-2018). That’s nice, into the park we go.
“It’ll be just round this corner.” “It’ll be just over this hill.” “It’ll be just behind that building.” “That hill must be where Eagle Fortress was” (it wasn’t). Foolishly winging our way around without the map and expecting to see 200ft of wooden magnificence somewhere, we walked round the wrong end of the park which ended up being extremely hard on the legs.
#1 T Express
There she is. Armed with many strange stories of complicated queuing systems and mandatory time slot tickets for this beast, turns out it was just in vanilla mode with a 45 minute wait for us. Sweet. The only odd part about the park system as a whole was the need to show your entrance ticket at every attraction, which made for many wasted hours scrabbling about in pockets upon forgetting every single time.
First impressions of this huge Intamin woodie were generally great. Crazy fun in the first drop and hill, which provided some of the strongest airtime imaginable for what felt like several seconds. Some ducking, diving and a premature midcourse leads you into the second half, which uses the same layout as Balder, so it unfortunately then suffers from the same underwhelming corners and moments of waiting for something to happen. Be back later.
We hit a couple of dark rides while down the bottom of the hill:
I remember absolutely nothing about Shooting Ghost, so that must have been great.
Rotating House the mad house was themed to spells and wizards (aren’t they all?) and was reasonable fun as always. The preshow and dialogue was nothing but confusing of course.
We then mistakenly wandered into some kids’ walkthrough attraction a bit further up the hill. Put that down to a research failure.
#2 Dragon Coaser
Did the powered dragon as it might be the only one on this trip (far from it). The staff lady sings as the ride goes round, which is perfection.
#3Herky & Timmy’s Racing Coaster
Further up still is a nicely themed area with a fun family coaster. Solid stuff.
Still climbing, nearly dying, we made it back to the entrance area to buy some tickets for the Kpop hologram show. Oh yes.
#4 Rolling X-Train
Got the Arrow looper ticked off during the wait. For some reason this ride was almost dangerously funny to me. The subtle offness to the shaping of the track, the quality of the trains and the way they juddered about and then nearly folded into your face during the loops caused a bit of laughter related internal damage to me. Arrow at their finest.
As an unhealthily obsessed fan, the Kpop hologram show was life changing of course. I won’t go into detail.
Pandas next, love the variety on offer at this place. There was meant to be some crappy looking interactive preshow presented by Samsung before getting to the animal enclosures, but thankfully this was skipped. I imagine something caught fire.
That’s the life for me.
From there we moved swiftly on down to the safari jeep tour as time was pressing on. I guess I’ll compare it to Zufari (bad luck). This attraction doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. It’s just a truck, with live commentary and animals. Obviously a lot better off for this, as you get right up close and personal with some very impressive creatures and ploughing through the water is deeply satisfying.
On the theme of ploughing through water, we jumped aboard the rapids next. Once again I was deeply amused by this ride. Sitting in a little pouchie of a seat with a tarpaulin over me, feeling both cosy and terrified at the same time. My favourite Hafema boys are back in action and this time there’s nothing you can do for damage limitation. It got me wet in places that weren’t physically possible from the seating arrangement. As an extra point of awesomeness, there’s a free bunch of many different styles of heat lamps at your disposal, once you manage to crawl out of the boat.
Having done a crafty loop of the park, the rapids kicked us back out at T Express, just in time to finish the evening with a couple of night rides.
Ascending the lift in the dark and looking out at the park was one of those magical moments. Moments that remind me why I’m in this hobby. I wouldn’t say the ride had physically improved in any way by this stage, but the atmosphere was amazing and made it a very standout experience. I just couldn’t believe I was in Korea.
Overall I found Everland to be one of those parks that I could just spend the day at doing pretty much nothing, because it’s just a guaranteed great time regardless. The locals definitely seemed to share that attitude as well.
That was an excessively long day though. Fell asleep a few times on the bus back and could have quite easily missed the stop, not that it felt like it mattered at that stage. Somehow made it to the hotel in one piece and then skipped over the fact that our room had under floor heating that was set to somewhere in the region of 35°C…
This may be the most brief Disney trip report around. At the time of visiting, it had only relatively recently opened and was already big news everywhere, to the point that I had personally got fed up of reading about it. Figured others might think the same.
Day 8 – Shanghai Disneyland
After turning down a few hundred imitation Mickey Mouse ears on the excessively long metro line to the park, arrived in the outside shopping street and bought some tasty cakes for breakfast before heading inside.
The park as a whole wasn’t busy, but Soarin’ was already on 120 minutes and had run out of fastracks. First ride on your right as you enter is a great place to put it, gobbles people up for the day. Nothing else broke 30 mins all day and we only bothered with fastrack on the 2 coasters, out of principle rather than necessity. The rapids ride and Crystal Grotto were closed all day and I was somewhat disappointed about those. Pirates was also closed, for now.
Peter Pan’s Flight felt like a nicely freshened up version of the older ones and a good kickstart to the magic.
Didn’t bother with the Winnie the Pooh ride this time. Been there, done that.
The walkthrough attraction inside the castle centrepiece was quite interesting with various scenes from Snow White sung in Mandarin and a bit of projection trickery. It didn’t contain anything from other films like I had expected though, with all the apparent clues to every other Disney film in history in the queue line.
Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue was good fun, as the classic Disney shooting dark ride should be. Just a shame the spinny lever that usually rotates the car didn’t do anything.
There was also a Star Wars exhibition in this area plugging the release of Rogue One.
#1 TRON Lightcycle Power Run
This ride is so visually impressive, inside and out. I have already made my feelings on Motocoasters quite clear and this is obviously the best of the bunch by a significant margin, with a surprisingly strong launch and plenty of pretty things to look at – the indoor section with the projections that follow the train is nothing short of mesmerising. I just still can’t get on with assuming that position, it simply detracts from the experience for me. A re-ride further proved my point, as we happened to get batched into a disabled car that’s located on the back of one of the trains. Tron was much, much better as a normal sit down rollercoaster.
With some perfect timing, we happened to be walking past Pirates of the Caribbean Battle for the Sunken Treasure just as it opened and got on the first boat of the day, following a 6 mile casual stroll through the huge queue while everyone behind us was desparately trying to overtake. Wow. My previous belief that ‘Disney’s best rides are non-IP’ went straight out the window. This attraction is quite the masterpiece of immersion and words cannot really do it justice. Straight up there amongst the very best of dark rides for the sheer combination of everything it does better than I have ever seen before – animatronics, projections, screens, the vehicle movement. It has it all. Soon after we left, it broke down again (still ironing out some teething problems obviously). Later still, we happened to be passing the very moment it reopened for a second time. A clear indication of skill on our part.
The pirate related show in the same area was rather entertaining. It was quite dialogue heavy, but had some good stunts towards the end.
The canoe ride was a waste of time. Tried to scouted it out quite a bit beforehand and couldn’t see much going on, but thinking of Jungle Cruise and Disney, I presumed there must have been something special about this attraction. There wasn’t. Just some half-arsed rowing around some open water.
#2 Seven Dwarves Mine Train
The other coaster in the park is very well themed and ridiculously smooth with those magic cars, but unfortunately it’s weak as a mine train – I know Disney revolves around family experiences but at least the other iterations give you something to think about. This was purely visual entertainment. Didn’t feel the need for more than one go.
Got hand stamped and went back out to the village via the smaller exit for some food that nearly killed me. I expected better from Disney endorsements.
Gave up on the merchandise shops because they were stupidly laid out and far too packed. It seemed that most of the guests’ day out consisted of Soarin, Shop, Show. So to get ahead of the curve, we settled in for an early wait at the castle for the closing show.
Everyone was surprisingly civil during the whole build up and throughout the actual event. Being constantly on edge for losing a good spot seemed like a wasted effort. The show was very good of course, I couldn’t really place it above or below any of the other standard film and song snippet based closing shows that I’ve seen at the other parks, I imagine it just depends on your personal preference on what films and songs you get at the time. This was the first time I saw Star Wars make an appearance in it, which was cool, if a little odd.
It’s a very nice park, but for now it lacks a couple of extra killer rides for a Disney, just to keep you there for a truly satisfying full day experience. As good as Pirates and Tron were, they wouldn’t keep me here for another 12 hours. I’m not so sure the upcoming copy and paste Toy Story land will fix anything about that issue… so it could be a good many years before I think about returning.
Days 9 – 11
The following morning we were due to head to Happy Valley Shanghai, but minutes before we left the hotel for the day I was suddenly very, very ill and ended up bed ridden for the next 2 days of the trip. I can only assume it was from the food outside Disney the night before and fear through that guesswork has completely rewritten how I will experience China in future – be a lot more selective about meal consumption, it just isn’t worth potentially ruining the trip for a bit of sustenance.
This unfortunate episode meant that there was only a Saturday morning left with which to attempt the Happy Valley visit before our early evening flight back to Singapore. Having spent 2 days in bed pretty much doing nothing but obsessively running through in my head how I could still achieve what I wanted at the park, what to ride in what order, what I would skip if it was busy, we took the stupidly long metro out to the place armed with the most meticulous gameplan you can imagine.
It all went wrong very quickly. The ride closure sign indicated that the Gravity woodie was to be closed for the day (priority ride #1). Though there are several other significant coasters in the park, they are all clones and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to miss them for now. I was still thinking that the more I got done today, the less there would be to do next time (clearly now that I have messed up and will HAVE to come back in future for the star attraction).
Got as far as the queues for the ticket window, where it was a complete scrum. There were tons of people around, making it look worryingly busy and they were all faffing here over no more than a couple of open windows. A good half an hour passed in the queue with very little progress, all while I’m getting rather anxious about the mountainous task that lies ahead. As I finally near the front, I get blatantly queue jumped by a large group of teenagers who are all brandishing money, both on their phones and shouting out to various people dispersed throughout the mess of crowd behind me and simply taking forever to do what they need to do. At this point, still not feeling 100%, I decide no, I’m not putting up with this today, it will just be horrible.
So we went to see one of the local water towns for a bit of culture instead.
Bonus China highlight: Particularly enjoyed the excessive lengths to which they went to indicate that this cable floor cover was a trip hazard. Yes, that bloke in the brown suit has a megaphone and it is his responsibility to announce “mind your step” every few seconds.
Click here to see a summary of all China trips made on this travel visa.
