Korea + Japan 09/18 – Tokyo Dome City + Tobu Zoo

Time for our final day in Tokyo. We started off by clearing some anxiety that had been building all week after telling ourselves we’ll get Thunder Dolphin one evening, but hadn’t actually managed it yet due to a combination of K-Pop and typhoons. So let’s do it.

Day 13 – Tokyo Dome City

Tokyo Dome is a confusing little place. Half shopping mall, half spa, split across many floors and a road, combined with a distinct lack of visitors first thing in the morning. Got lost in a lift for a bit, then picked up some wristbands from the lovely staff and headed straight to the main event.

It’s policy here at each ride to hold a sign in front of your face containing all the rules and regulations in English, for you to show some level of understanding and then nod your agreement before entering. I admire their commitment to procedure, as this also happens on rerides, just in case something serious happened to you on your previous lap.

There’s some locker faff in the station, but the ride was only ever half full at most, so it mainly involved waiting around for things to happen. They’ve got some sort of OCD despatch procedure which involves many complicated gestures and a speech, pointing at various buttons and lights, then the staff members, who are all doing hand signals for what appears to be facts about the ride – height, speed, drop etc. It all ends with the obligatory waving as the ride begins of course. Cute.

The familiar Intamin cable lift in the middle of a city is quite a surreal experience, but these things never give you too much time to think.

So it’s not fantastic.
It’s fun because it’s interesting and cool, just not so much because of the layout, which suffers quite badly from being very forced into these surroundings.

The first drop is very good, naturally. There’s also a speed hill that packs quite a punch, and the way it comes into the big drop through this hole in the building is pretty special.

The rest involves large banked corners at 150ft in the air, a failed air time hill, a 150ft drop into the brake run and most importantly – a ‘so dumb it’s funny section’ of slow wonky hills, also 150ft in the air.

Did a very weird shooting dark ride here called The Dive to finally break the trend.
It’s a standup, with elaborate seatbelts that we were told we didn’t need, in a car that holds 4 people in a square shape, facing outwards. It moves to the middle of each scene before activating said scene with lights, sounds and movement, then does a single rotation on the spot while you can shoot things. There weren’t many scenes.

Did the log flume for some reason.

Glad we did, as it has a little lookout post for the staff in the middle of the upper level meandering section, placed just so they can wave to you and tell you to watch out for the drop as you approach said drop. Cute.
The ride was also surprisingly wet, so good for the heat.

Went over to another section of the park looking for their Spiderman type dark ride, but it’s all closed off and has been removed from the maps. Spite.

Did the ‘Big O’ Ferris Wheel. A karaoke option is available, but we had the normal pod which has a touch screen that can read out stories about the history of the park in various languages. Good stuff, though they used to have a lot more creds apparently. More spite.

Headed out of the park after a final go on the Dolphin, but kept the wristband on. Just in case.

We then got reacquainted with the concept of ‘fare adjustment’ (having to pay more for your ticket after getting the wrong one) during a very long journey to the next place. Those damn Tokyo trains.

A friendly bus driver was waiting at the station exit and he showed us the marvels of the automatic change dispenser that is built into their buses, so you can always pay the correct amount.
On closer inspection, coulda walked the journey, but I’ll claim that we were preserving ourselves for the insanity of this particular day.

Tobu Zoo

Well this is far more unassuming than I was expecting.

Got as far as the ticket window to see one of those dreaded signs with pictures and names of rides on it. It would appear that the Megalite and one of the small creds aren’t open. Please no.
Made friends with the staff lady, who explained the situation as “they’re doing their daily checks on the rides at the moment, it might open afterwards, but no guarantee.” This also included a phone call to the ride staff, which given how quiet it was, could well have been “open the ride for these lovely people.”

With no guarantee, we bought entry tickets only and wandered in for a look. Headed straight for the Megalite, where a man pretty much opened it in our face.
Right, how do we upgrade to a wristband then? He led us over to another super nice person who was making sure we understood the cost implications and how much we would have to ride to make the transaction worthwhile. “4 goes on the big one? Oooh, brave!”

So we had it to ourselves for the afternoon, which could have been amazing, but I’ve found again that they don’t all ride the same and the original is still far superior for whatever reason. We physically struggled to marathon Piraten due to its intensity, but there’s something lacking here and it’s just going through the motions more than anything.
Ugh, clones.

The true highlight was the smoke effect on the brake run, along with more OCD despatch checks where two staff make a point of walking to the front of the station, looking out at the sky and/or lift hill, pointing and nodding. ‘Yup, no rain/the ride hasn’t fallen over yet.’

Right, creds. This was round the corner, a classic Tivoli medium. Done.

An older Intamin woodie loomed in the distance. Only wood of the trip, sadly. This’ll be interesting.

There’s always that fear these days that the next unsuspecting woodie will be cripplingly rough. This one was fine. A bit something and nothing in terms of what it actually did, the odd off the seat moment here and there, but with a functional shake and comfortable trains, so… ‘a bigger Elf’ or ‘slightly better than the Vekomas’, take your pick.

The final cred was indeed down, and remained that way. It had engineers on their backs under the station track most of the time. Ah well.

Another park, another Ferris Wheel. This one had stuff about cheese, including a narrating girl that was enjoying eating said cheese in a questionably pleasurable manner. Then it turned into anime music. Classic.

Slithered round the zoo for a bit, ending up at the complete opposite end of the park which had another entrance, but headed out the way we came to save getting lost, bus and all.

Don’t know why I imagined this place as a significant park. It was far more low key and in line with a lot of other places in Japan – friendly, but a bit run down and haven’t done anything exciting for at least 10 years. Grab them while you can.


Decided that was enough parks for now and headed back into the city for some other bits. In mental preparation for the following days, we completed our ritual of hitting every music shop in town, searching for stupidly rare K-Pop albums. A ritual that very often borders on the excessive.

Went to heal at the Pokemon Centre.

This one had a far more impressive selection than Osaka, along with some good displays, but no free gift sadly.

Decided to buy everyone’s favourite Pokemon for the soft toy collection.
No, this – https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Substitute_(move)

From there we went to the free observation deck in a government building. Night view wasn’t a great idea to be honest, a bit generic looking as cities. And still haven’t laid eyes on Mt. Fuji.

Normal people would go back to the hotel and sleep at this point, but we picked up our bags from the hotel and headed to the airport for our 2am flight back to Korea.
There was method to this madness, honest.

Day 14

Korea + Japan 09/18 – Tokyo Disneyland

And here we are again. No monorail required for the main park as we’d learnt the walk the previous day. Had a slight shudder walking past the bus terminal again (looking completely different) and we were soon through the entrance gates, slithering through the crowds that had all got stuck around some singing thing in the main street.

Day 12 – Tokyo Disneyland

Headed over to Big Thunder and grabbed the first fastpass of the day, then went for the main queue of Splash Mountain. Many mountains.

Didn’t really know anything about this attraction. I’d heard the name obviously and knew it was a water ride, but that was it. I like the setting and the framing of the drop with the thornbush, it’s all rather well done.

Just seems a little odd to have it a stones throw away from Big Thunder, with another similar looking mountain and setup. I was imagining ways to fit them both in the same area, but maybe that wouldn’t work narratively.

Based around cult classic Song of the South, the dark ride sections of this are a huge part of the ride and really impressive, making it all a lot better than I was expecting. It was a lot of fun and a great start to the day.

Haunted Mansion Holiday was round the corner. The building hasn’t got anywhere the same presence as other iterations, just being stuck on one side of the path opposite Fantasyland stuff.
It was running with its ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ overlay. This made the preshow a bit weak, as rather than being somewhat scary, you just get a cartoon face appearing in the ceiling saying “Merry Christmas!” (in early September).
Ride was interesting enough for being slightly different with this overlay, but all the familiar overused effects were there as well and it didn’t grab me in any particular way.
Here comes the theme of the day, and an unfortunate side effect of visiting many of their parks – not as good as Paris.

Fastpass time. There’s always a great sense of joy associated with these mine trains. A bit of a buzz in the station, the excitement as the trains plough in on both sides. And off we go.

It’s good, particularly visually, but rides more like a Seven Dwarves, tamed down like their Tower of Terror. The wild and out of control aspect of the Paris version is severely lacking. At least it seemed to be more reliable.

Got this weird syndrome where I can’t remember what order things happened at Disney.
Everywhere else is normally quite straight forward.

Jungle Cruise: Wildlife Expeditions?

They may not be good at maintaining a sinister atmosphere, but if there’s one thing the Japanese staff excel at, it’s narrating boat rides. And the Oscar goes to… whichever girl we had. The performance was ridiculously intense and hilarious and the ride was rather secondary to it to be honest. Shame less stuff happens during the journey. Not as good as Hong Kong.


There’s a train ride above it that turned out to be much more than a train ride. Starts out stereotypically western, travelling round the water and past the paddle steamer.

Goes round this.

Then ends up chugging through tunnels with dinosaurs fighting. Think they copied Quancheng Euro Park with that idea.

Picked up a fastpass for Space Mountain at some point, which put us outside Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. All I’d heard is that it had been updated from the original, but didn’t know what that entailed – a slightly different video including one of the planets from the prequels. Best part of the ride is the instruction video where the demonstration contains wookies and everyone dressed up Star Wars style.
Being an unhealthy fan of the films, they don’t manage to capture anything special in these rides. There’s so many things you could do better with the brand and it leaves me with an overwhelming feeling of ‘meh.’

I remember going on a stupidly long walk past a construction wall several times. Not sure what was so fascinating about the wall, it was plain blue with a couple of Disney logos on it, but everyone was completely obsessed with having their picture taken in front of it. Is Frozen going there? Nah… that’s not popular any more.

The walk first took us to Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin. This was good, mainly for being different. There’s a whole lot of craziness to it, including spinning cars, so it did the job well.

Back to Space Mountain. The conveyor belt entrance with transparent roofing was deeply unpleasant in the intense heat of the day.
Got on the ride, got dispatched within less than a second of the putting the bar down. Whoa, that was an intense start.
Pulled out of the station, went left instead of right, through a curtain. Someone asks “is this Space Mountain?” I start laughing uncontrollably.
We’ve ended up in the maintenance shed. The train stalls itself and staff have to push it all the way in, bowing and apologising profusely. Please don’t, this is amazing.
We get instructed to climb out, then taken on a backstage tour through endless tunnels to end up back in the station and put straight into another train.

That may as well have been Space Mountain, cos this thing was poor. The music was off, the lighting wasn’t disorientating. It felt slow and weak as a ride. Not as good as Hong Kong.

Grabbed a fastpass for Monsters Inc and had a questionable lunch – back on track with their less than ideal food.

Except this. This was spot on.
Time for the +1.

As well as expecting to queue a million years for these kids creds, for some reason I pictured them in my head as unceremoniously plonked on a patch of land, but they’ve done an insane job of making this one look good and it was another 10 minute queue, so well done. Guess no one really loves Gadget (who?).

I knew Pooh’s Hunny Hunt had a reputation of being rather good, but it exceeded all expectations in this format. There’s something so much more magical and exciting about these trackless dark rides, watching them go about their business around you, it’s like a step closer to humanising a vehicle. Or I’m just weird.
The Tigger room is amazing, then things just get insane. Pooh does a Twilight Zone and drifts into the further, something which kept me laughing until well after the ride had ended, while we enter a room that can only be described as 1000 trackless vehicles (half of them containing characters rather than humans) dancing around each other in a drug fuelled frenzy. This isn’t the Winnie the Pooh I know, but I bloody love it.

Finally Tokyo, you’ve one-upped something.

Did Pinocchio’s Daring Journey for a laugh. It’s too fast to take in, and… the same?

Had no idea what Philharmagic was, but gave that a crack too. Sitting down on sofas in a weird lobby full of obscure posters.

Looks like it’s gonna be Hades on stage belting out some hits. Oh, no, the doors have opened and it’s a 4D cinema.

It was good actually. Donald Duck doing some black magic with Mickey’s orchestra and ending up in a load of other films for some musical numbers – Beast, Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King, Fantasia (love it). There’s a strong smell of cake that lingers from Be My Guest onwards and an animatronic Donald ends up in the wall at the back of the theatre at the end. Can’t argue with that.

Time for Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek.

They stole my idea from the last time I got bored in a Legoland and replaced a shooting ride with a ‘how many physical effects can you set off?’ ride, by using torch lights to hunt for monsters. It’s a clever idea, so I’ll let them have it. Fun too.

Pirates of the Caribbean is in a weird place in the park, so nearly forgot about it. Had a fantastic moment outside the ride, where it appeared that a cleaner had smuggled in a music player and suddenly burst into spontaneous breakdance in front of people. Then he went into the growing crowd and pulls out a girl who just happens to be rather good at backflips. They had their moment, well done them. If only it was real… I could claim it on the league.

They’ve added some film elements to the ride, which doesn’t really help it for me, but it contains a very breathtaking ship battle scene, which I don’t remember from the original. Got one of those deceptively huge drops in the dark chucked in as well. Liked it a lot.
Not as good as Shanghai, obviously.

It was now ‘time killing’ time until the closing show, gotta get at least one for comparison haven’t we. What does one do when killing time at Disney?

it’s a small world.
It’s fine really. The music is way less invasive than reputation dictates. They’ve also got bonus Disney film character models everywhere so you can play a fun game of spot all them in their various countries.

Had another go on Big Thunder, which was slightly improved by the night time and the lighting package on the sulphury geysery section.

Time to camp out the show.
Oh, there was a parade first. Pete’s Dragon, Emporer’s New Groove, Treasure Planet, all the hits.

Thought we were going to be treated to the Paris experience with sitting on the floor for the performance, but with around half an hour to go, everyone spontaneously stood up. Ugh, my bag is heavy.

Normally these shows are pretty special right? A magical moment to end the day, a world class spectacle, lots of big tunes and tears. Disney at it’s finest.
What followed was hilarious, but quite possibly the death of Disney.
They’re on the 35 year anniversary at the moment, and the show was celebrating ‘the rides of Tokyo Disneyland.’
But, we’ve just done all the rides, and some of them ain’t worth celebrating.

They’ve got the usual song tying it all together about magic and dreams come true and life is a party and all that, but it came across as way too far up its own arse when it’s so specific to a day at this theme park and not just the brand in general.
Mickey is titting about as always but the highlights were, in no particular order: low resolution footage direct from the Star Wars simulator, a celebration of the paddle steamer (I lost it hard at this point) and some flat rides no one cares about.

The actual highlight? Probably saying “Yay, the Pirates of the Carribbean theme”, because it reminded me of Shanghai.
No, it was the paddle steamer, that was the defining moment. The moment it couldn’t recover from.

There were no fireworks, very few special effects, a couple of pyros and zero interesting graphics which were also steppy and of poor quality.

It ended to absolute silence.
And then everyone left, probably all thinking ‘where was Let It Go?’

Day 13

Korea + Japan 09/18 – Tokyo DisneySea

For the second time on this trip, there were a lot of news stories and rumours going around about typhoons interrupting proceedings. Never knew what to believe, but figured do what the locals do. They were getting on with their daily business and, after excessively waterproofing ourselves up and selecting the park with the least weather affected attractions, we did the same.

Day 11 – Tokyo Disneysea

Took me until arriving at this place to realise it’s Disneysea as in Disneyland, but with sea and not just some arbitrary suffix. Weird how you read things.

Walked through the turnstyles to find the Universal globe without Universal on it. Alright, not what I expected.

Through the main street plaza.

Ah, there it is. That volcano thing.
So many things I’ve heard about this place, let’s see what it’s really all about. To clarify my position, I knew enough to be subject to a lot of hype and positive things, namely ‘the best park in the world’ to many, but knew little to nothing of the actual attractions it had to offer in terms of what they are and what they do, so it was a spoiler free experience in that sense.

First thing that hits me is the sheer number of staff they’ve paid to literally stand around all day and wave at you as go past. They’ll do other things like give you information, point you in the right direction and take photos for you, but it’s still crazy.

Headed up to the volcano first, without any sort of plan of action, which probably seems more crazy to some people. Walked straight onto our first attraction – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Wasn’t familiar with the source material for this and didn’t know what was going on, but it pretty much fixes what I slag off the Legoland submarine simulator for not doing and that’s having a sense of scale in the underwater. It has lots of big impressive sets to go past and some cool effects with Krake getting electrocuted and such. The windows were pretty low compared to the seating arrengement and it was a bit uncomfortable looking through them for that long, but otherwise interesting and enjoyable.

Picked up a fastpass for Journey and, bad weather still in mind, headed off for an outdoor attraction. Felt rather foolish in the queue as it was now about 35°C, sunny and everyone was sweating profusely. Time to crack out the sun cream.

An old Intamin coaster with the layout of a fairgound Pinfari – or Disney Paris’ Indiana Jones with more mist and a slightly better aesthetic.

That hardware in this park though… why. +1.

The actual Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull was next door in the form of his dark ride and far more amazing.

Everything in the queue and on the ride itself looked incredible.
Having only done Fantawild equivalents of the ride system, the way it chucked itself around felt vastly better and was a welcome surprise. Particular highlights were a big stone face aggressively shouting something in Japanese then shooting a smoke ring at us – couldn’t stop laughing at that one, and then the bit with the boulder – can’t even explain the magic involved. Made me very happy.

So now we’re cooking, back to Journey to the Centre of the Earth. The fastpass takes you straight to some lifts which were fine, maybe could have done something. No, that’s a different ride.
The station area was in another league to what we had seen so far and I was completely mesmerized by this stage. Caves and crystals and bottomless pits, it was hard to walk and take it all in that the same time. That’s some funky looking ride vehicles rushing up towards us.

Again I’m not familiar with the source material for this, but the ride itself had too high of a reputation that I’m not sure it lived up to. None of the sets made a lasting impression on me like the ride queue just had, some weird looking flowers underground and THE set was at best an “OK, that’s cool” moment. The change in dynamic of the ride at the end was fun and unexpected, giving it a bit of a thrill element at least, but that led to an underwhelming ending of mincing over an empty bridge back to the station.

Talking of lasting impressions, I think I’ve skipped over the Nemo & Friends SeaRider simulator from earlier. Bit of a long-winded batching procedure into the bays for the ride, which you then had to turn away from to watch a pre-show that contained a nice magic trick.
Actual ride was decent enough. Easy to follow, though I haven’t found Dory yet.

Tower of Terror was next, something I already know and love. At least I thought I did.

I like the alternate story, all the paintings in the hotel lobby of the rich guy being a troll and stealing all these artifacts around the world from their local owners. The pre-show is fantastic, while it doesn’t quite have the goofy charm of the Twilight Zone, it has a mind-blowingly good bit of Disney magic and a decently sinister undertone. The Japanese staff are far too lovely to keep that tone flowing into the loading areas and lifts, but I’ll let that slide.

It’s either like Dodonpa in that I’ve done far too much since the good old days and the ride just felt really weak, or it’s an actual recurring theme that we’ll be seeing again in this resort on the next day – everything seems slightly tamer here.
We had already picked up a fastpass for it before going in, so got to reconfirm those feelings later on.

The weather did actually seem on the turn now, it got very, very windy, to the point that poor Japanese girls were being affected by it while walking around, staggering slightly against the force. Better go get that other cred then.

This family ride was great. I’d been worried about how much time would be lost queueing at the crappy creds in these parks, but they were hauling arse on 2 trains and it took us no more than 10 minutes. A station fly by, complete with staff waving, made the experience particularly enjoyable.

The food options here were a lot better than I’ve had at other Disney parks. Let’s look at the map. Pizza? Yes. Low budget? Yes. Done.

Longest queue of the day went to Toy Story Midway Mania. It flowed well enough and had plenty to look at however.

Bit disappointed to be honest. I regularly slag off the Fantawild equivalents of these rides for having nothing going on between the screens, but this had exactly the same issue, though the actual games on the screens were far superior and a lot of fun.
Maus or that new Happy Valley one can beat this any day.

Time to head back to the other end of the park and find Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage.

This was ridiculously quaint and very much my kinda thing. Love the way he’s contently singing the same tune throughout the entire ride, no matter what the scene contains. Leaving home, beating up pirates, tigers mauling people, coming home, all with a smile on his face.

And that was Disneysea.

I kinda get the place. I can’t think of anywhere else that rivals the aesthetic they’ve created with the visuals of the park and the blending of the areas, it all looks incredible and the pictures should speak for themselves. Using the Disney scale and budget to pull off a more refined, highly concentrated and compact theme is a great concept, and I’m already trying to take what I’ve learnt from it into my latest creations in the game world, so it’s certainly made an impact.

For me, it comes down to the attractions themselves just not being particularly outstanding. My favourite on this day was Indy, and unfortunately that’s not a Disneysea exclusive. The biggiest issue is that we ran out of things to do quite early in the day (even with us being rather inefficient in our approach), and then struggled to think of much we wanted to do again.

We would have stayed for the show at the end (see events below), but it would have been ‘killing time’ until that happened.

We had completed everything that we wanted. Fancied another go on Indy while we were near, but it had broken itself for an indeterminate amount of time. Settled down on a bench outside it to reflect on the above. Anything else worth doing? Nah, not really. Just space things out until the park closing show? The wind was still blowing strong and announcements were being made throughout the park about a cancellation of a water parade that was due to take place. Then the sky darkened and a different announcement played. “Due to the weather conditions, the train service from the Disney Resort to Tokyo may be suspended later.” Hmmm. Essay incoming.

This turned out to be the most unfortunate timing in the world. It was a ‘maybe later’, so a HUGE amount of people, including ourselves, made the intelligent decision to leave te park at this point rather than run the risk of being stranded. We headed to the entrance via the Electric Railway ride (for the league obviously), which ended up being rather hilarious.

The station is up high and looking out over the sea so there really was quite a gust up. The staff were all excitedly shouting, losing hats, clutching onto railings and holding up wind speed measuring devices to see if they could keep operating within regulations. They could. But other rides were closing around us.

Left the park. Took the monorail. All fine.
Walked to the station, bought a ticket, went to the platform. The trains aren’t on time?! That’s the end of the world in Japan surely.
The train arrived, we got on the train and then it didn’t move for half an hour. It was at this point that I really started to dislike the Tokyo train system.

No announcements were being made, no information was being given other than a screen onboard scrolling through other lines that had delays and cancellations due to typhoon. Locals were constantly second guessing and getting on and off, on and off, while no one had a clue what was going on.
We were looking down below and there was a constant stream of buses leaving outside the station. The train kept filling up to the point that it got uncomfortable to stay on for too long, and we made the decision to abandon it and try something else. The staff here were beyond useless and manage to be the only rude people in the entirety of Japan (almost, wait for it). The first response we got was a plain ‘I don’t know’ and clearly not caring, the second was that we were being completely ignored, so we left the station.

Couldn’t work out the buses directly outside the station, later discovering that they only went on very local routes within the island that encompasses the Disney Resort and not getting you out to Tokyo.
There was also a taxi rank here, but with a queue that was both impossible to determine and never moving because there were virtually no taxis coming through it.

We went to the Disney ‘Welcome Centre’ towards the monorail station and asked if they could point us in the direction of a useful bus. “No, I don’t speak English, but I’ll find someone who can.” Person who speaks English: “No, we CAN’T help.” They then just stared at us.
Ok then.

Spoke to staff in the Disney ‘Ticket Office’ of the monorail station next. They were more than happy to help, pulled up a chair, jumped on a PC. Phoned someone who could describe to us in a bit more detail what they were looking at on the screen. “Take Bus 1.” Done.

Went back outside to bus 1 in the area outside the station. Got some nervous glances from the locals queueing there, with one eventually checking where we were going and telling us this ain’t the bus you’re looking for. Move along.

Back to being confused again, asked a guy who seemed to be directing people to buses, who told us to walk over to a separate bus station, nearer the entrance to the main park.

Walked over to the separate bus station to find queues stretching as far as the eye could see for certain stops. Did a quick walk past them all to see if we could find our number 1, but there was no number 1.

Asked a guy who seemed to be directing people to buses on this side, who pointed us down to the other end, towards the other queue that was impossible to fathom. So we can’t even get to the front of it to see what we’re queueing for. And these queues just weren’t moving. They potentially contained thousands of people, and all visible bus activity was at best half hourly.

Went to the ticket office of the main park to ask for a 14th opinion. They seemed completely out of touch here, first recommending a taxi and then being surprised by our response – huge queue, NO taxis. Can’t phone one because all of Tokyo is currently phoning for a taxi. “Take bus 9.”

Bus 9? Couldn’t find bus 9. Ended up methodically working out every stop in this bus station. All the quiet ones were going to nearby hotels, all of which were still on the same island, and not Tokyo. Buses with regular numbers didn’t exist at all. This leaves the final section, for which there are now 3 distinct, but massive queues.

Managed to squeeze our way to the front of these to actually find the first person who had a vague idea of what was going on. He asks where do we want to go and holds up a clipboard with a list of major stations in the Tokyo area. These aren’t buses, these are direct shuttle coaches, but I’m not fussy at this stage.
I pick a station that I know is near enough to us to get us off the damn island. He puts us in a specific queue.
And now we wait.

The train never moved. We could see the station from where we were queueing. It sat there, with people on it, just like we sat there. For 3 and a half hours.

Coaches would come and go, very sparingly. 90% of them were to stupid Yokohama, which kept us mildly entertained because no one was going there (and the park there spited us the other day), so ourselves and locals around us would react with disgust to the arrival of each and every one. There was another taxi rank behind us here, with another indeterminate queue and again, no taxis.

The wind was blowing, but it never rained. The whole evening was filled with the uncertainty of is this an actual serious weather event and if so, isn’t their poor handling of the situation potentially very dangerous? It was interesting to say the least, we even got to see the spotlights of the show in the main park go off.

Somehow, very slowly but surely, the queues began to dwindle and there was light at the end of the tunnel. It seemed like we had ended up making the worst decision, with almost no one left in the area by the time we boarded our coach, but there was clearly no right decision either.

No more than 5 minutes before we boarded our coach, a man announced that the train line was back in operation and sure enough, we watched the very same train we had abandoned ~4 hours earlier trundle over the bridge from the window of the coach. The coach was weird, with your standard 2 seats on either side of the aisle, but then little fold out seats on every row that completely blocked the aisle by the time everyone was in and as such had to be assembled in a very specific order. Wouldn’t want, say, an emergency to occur with that going on.

Drifted in and out of consciousness for what seemed like far too long, with the coach spending 90% of its time in tunnels on the return journey. Not the Tokyo I remember. But we got there, very tired and very hungry. Had a midnight snack in a restaurant as if nothing had happened. Took the metro back to the hotel.

Bit of a long day that one. But don’t worry, only have to do it all again in less than 7 hours.

Day 12

Korea + Japan 09/18 – Fuji-Q Highland

It rained pretty much all journey the next morning. This place has somewhat of a reputation for ruining everyone’s day in the slightest of weather conditions. I almost welcome it at this stage.
It had stopped raining on arrival, and the car park was dead. Promising.

Try not to crash the car on the way in.

Day 10 – Fuji-Q Highland

That’s quite the entrance, even if it isn’t the actual entrance. I didn’t know they had a Disney village style area to walk through first.

Some screens near the ticket booths said every ride bar some irrelevant ones I didn’t know of will open today. Promising.
There was a big queue for the final entrance, waiting for the flood gates to open. Where did they come from?
Their new ride entry system scans your face (after you awkwardly crouch to fit it in the screen in front of you) as you enter the park and then remembers if you have a ride pass or just an entry ticket. It’s kinda cool.

The gates opened. Now run. Which one, which one? That one?

We entered what was apparently already a 45 minute queue for Do-dodonpa. It was pumping out 8 people every couple of minutes on its 2 trains, moving alright. Then it started to rain. It carried on running for half an hour or so. Then they ceased operations, but Suzuka Circuit style, telling everyone to wait for the weather to get better again. So we wait.
An hour passes. They test another couple of trains. I think we’re moving again? Oh, nope, they’re evacuating the queue through the station and giving out exit passes to come back later, alright then.

Well that’s 2 hours gone and we haven’t achieved anything yet. Takabisha is directly opposite and we had watched that get evacuated too. Eejanaika had never moved at all.

So EVERYONE in the park was at Fujiyama, and what choice do we have but to join them?
Joined the back of a 3-4 hour queue, cowering under shelters from the moderate rain (not pictured above). They tested both trains on this ride in the morning, but it was only running one now and it’s so slow. It’s a long ride. It’s a long train. It’s a long loading procedure. Taron’s queue record is about to be smashed.
The more depressing part was that no one really joined the queue behind us, so we weren’t particularly gaining anything, just endlessly shunting the back of the queue forward, with nothing better to do.

Park-wide announcement: “Ladies and Gentleman, we are pleased to announce that Takabisha is now open.”
People had already been gathering over there as the rain eased off again, but I took a quick wander over to see that it was as bad as what we were currently in. It was. Probably not worth bailing for.

Park-wide announcement: “Ladies and Gentleman, we are pleased to announce that Eejanaika is now open.”

What do we dooooooo? Run then. If we get there quickly, we’ll be straight on it right?
Wrong. Ran straight into another 2 hour queue. This place baffles me.

They have fastrack machines outside the major rides in this park that show all available time slots for the day for ~£10 a pop. There were still some selling for right now and we knew we had to get something done.

So we walked straight into the station, putting the face recognition things to the test for the first ride of the day. It works well, maybe UK airports should invest in some.

The ride was operating 2 trains and actually running quite well with its 4 pen system that lets everyone deal with their locker and shoe removal faff in their own time. Our time had come.

I forgot how terrifying the restraints are on S&S 4D coasters. A jacket for your arms and nothing for your lap and legs which can just jump around as they please. They’re shouting “Eejanaika” and playing dispatch music, oh no. The seats just freely tilt you almost onto your head as you leave the station, that’s a thing now? Oh no.

Second time in a week I’ve been proper scared on a ride, half dreading what’s to come and holding on tighter than ever. I like that.

What I said about Dinoconda doesn’t really apply here, which is that it all felt designed around pointing you down the first drop and the rest was an unplanned mess.
This one either rides better, or I was less physically wrecked by the trip I was on.

The first drop itself felt a lot less sustained than I remember, but the remaining insanity of the layout was so much clearer and more well defined, and I loved it.

There’s almost nothing else out there in the world of rollercoasters that can do these things to you, holding you upside down and in all sorts of weird positions while you fly through inversions at ridiculous speed and height.

It does bounce your lower half around, but only through intense moments of change and not roughness, and on that final twist both my legs were clear above the lump in the middle of the seat, so I now fully understand how some riders end up with their limbs completely swapped over.

Back to Fujiyama then, the king of queues. This was still on 1 train and running terribly, with everyone ploughing through the train to the locker section in the station and faffing with that forever.
Took another age, but we got there in the end.

Every major coaster at this park is so iconic, but they also come with the stigma of ‘it could be an absolutely terrible ride.’ This one made 2 for 2 though, I liked this Togo Hyper a lot.

Its a stupid layout, namely the 250ft drop into a 200ft flat turnaround, but it’s full of surprisingly good forces and having just a lap bar only enhances that. There are no words to describe the last section of the ride which was just hilarous in execution, but it was never rough and never felt like a waste of potential, unlike certain other coasters of this size.

Dodonpa was also back up and running by this stage, we had been watching it from the queue of Fujiyama and the speed it leaves that tunnel just doesn’t look real. Time to use those exit passes.

Walked straight up the exit and immediately onto the ride, with a couple of bows and nods on the way. That was way too quick, I’m not ready for this ride.

The whole park is full of a bunch of anime girls at the moment, with them being mascots on various rides. All of them were on a giant screen in the station here.
I’m scared again, this keeps happening.
Oh no, we’re in the train, with those new offensively large restraints. I’m keeping myself sane by enthusiastically singing along to the tune it plays while the ride turns the corner into a tunnel.
Dun dun, dudun dun! Oh no, we’re on the launch track.
Dun dun, dudun dun! Oh no, the anime girls are shouting about launch time.
Dun dun, dudun dun! Oh no, they’re counting down.
Dun dun, dudun dun! Oh… no?

Well I’ve officially broken myself when it comes to launches, because this was nothing special. For the most powerful in the world, it felt no more significant. It rides fine? Again we’d bigged it up to be this stupidly intense and rough ride, but it just kinda floats around the layout of one massive corner on its silly tyres.

The only slightly questionable part is the jolt in the entrance to the newly added loop. Where once it had a straight element, they now had to find a way to angle it for an entry and an exit, but it’s not bad.

The loop is alright I guess, I like these massive ones where the train takes up a tiny proportion of it, and you get a slow moment at the top to appreciate that. Would have preferred to try the original airtime hill obviously.
I think the best bit was the little lurch downwards the track does at the end of the launch section which feels like an afterthought: ‘oops, we’d better change the elevation a bit here.’ Otherwise meh.
3 for 3. We didn’t dislike it at least.

We had had enough of Qs by now and were getting rather hungry so we bought the fast track for Takabisha and again walked straight onto it. I like that every major ride here has its own little jingle with the name in it, helping to build character for the legends. Can’t really comment on how this ride was being run. More 8 seater train nonsense with lockers. Who knows how many they were running, but they did seem to be doing some two-halves of the ride duelling when we were watching it earlier.

They’ve done something to these trains. It’s still a Gerstlauer Eurofighter, but it’s way less offensive somehow. It feels wider. It feels less bulky. I didn’t instantly regret putting the restraint down.

Ugh, that start again? The drop out of the station into the slow roll. At least it doesn’t lurch you downwards into the launch. Can’t think of much that stood out about what follows, just a bunch of very large inversions that don’t try to kill you.

The world’s steepest drop behaves weirdly though. It acts like a holding brake and then keeps inching and teasing you downwards before finally releasing. Well that was a thing.
More huge inversions. Brakes. 4 for 4. Have we just completed Fuji-Q without dying?

We were pleased by the fact they had a Mos Burger on park, as it’s something we quite often have in Japan, but they managed to ruin it here by having a reduced, overpriced menu. Bah.

A bit of fuel was consumed, then into the queue for the next cred. It took far too long and was by far the roughest ride in the park. Felt like the car was scraping something the whole way round and it hurt my brain. The Formula Rossa of wild mice.

Couldn’t be arsed to queue for what was formerly known as the hamster coaster yet, so went round to Thomas Land.

Thomas’ Party Parade is their fun little Thomas the Tank Engine dark ride, which is really well done for what it is and a welcome change from the feel of everything else in the park.

The smallest coaster in the park. I like the fact it has a fake transfer track. +1.

For some reason, the queue here had completely emptied by the time we came back, so walked straight onto the final cred of the day.

The ride is now based on their French dog mascots, Lisa and Gaspard, who have their own shop and museum back in the village.

It’s a bit of fun and punches you hard in the stomach on the brakes.

Fuji-Cat is better though.

So now we’ve actually completed Fuji-Q. With rain. Take that Nagashima.
I won’t praise this park for the queues, because they’re just awful. There was no way around paying extra for 2 of the 4 major attractions and in a way we had to get lucky with the exit pass on Dodonpa as well. This was a quiet day in terms of guest numbers and everything just default ends up on queues of 2-3 hours, which gives you no opportunity to truly… enjoy? any of their offerings. It’s an ordeal, or maybe even a ritual.
But facts are facts. It rained, it rained hard, they kept going, they stopped, they compensated. It stopped raining. They reopened everything. There’s a lot of parks out there that just don’t do that and are a lot worse in comparison, so well done lads.

There were a couple of hours left before close now and we would have to leave a smidge early to stand a chance of getting the car back in time. Let’s suck up one more fastrack and maybe one more big queue?
All fastracks are sold out now. Ah.

In the end we just went for Eejanaika, and while we were there, announcements were playing throughout the park declaring the closures of other queues ensuring that they weren’t still running past midnight or something stupid. The queue here was moving incredibly well for what it was but the timing was tight, it was tense. It was so very worth it.

Night had fallen and Eejanaika was just fantastic. Disorientating and intense, it had me doing a quiet scared laugh to myself the whole way round, I couldn’t find the words.
By far the best ride of the trip and exactly what this hobby is all about.

And now we’re running again. Gotta get that car back to Tokyo.

Hit a bunch of traffic on the return journey and completely forgot to factor in a petrol stop as well. They’re crafty in Japan and give you a list of 3 fuelling spots near to the drop off point which you have to use before returning, as well as provide a receipt to prove it. But we made it.

Oh, we still never saw Mount Fuji. There was always a cloud in the way.

Here’s another famous sight instead.

Up next – typhoons.

Day 11