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.
Today was our last day in Japan and we were determined to end it on a high after yesterday’s nightmare. Things were off to a good start when a friendly lady came over to help us buy our train tickets and with them in hand we were in for a pleasant train ride to Hirakata Park.
Hirakata Park
With just a few hours left before we needed to the be at the airport we knew that as soon as we arrived we needed to hit the ground running. This was a massive shame in a way because Hirakata Park was a lovely little park and had a very simular feel to Greenland and Space World in that the staff were wonderful, it felt very “Japanese” and it was a rather pleasant place to just exist in. The perfect place to end our Japanese park list, just like Greenland had been the perfect place to start.
Crazy Mouse – Nothing special at all to this Reverchon spinning coaster, except the staff who were wonderful.
Elf – Adorable family sized Intamin woodie, nothing stand out but certainly a fun little coaster.
Fantastic Coaster Rowdy – I think they put more effort into the name than the coaster itself but I’m totally ok with that.
Peekaboo Town – The experience of a beautiful ride operator wedging my proportions into this tiny coaster is better than the ride could ever be.
Red Falcon – Maybe the best jet coaster yet. This time thinking to myself, “what an amazing trip I’ve had to Japan, also note to self, burn down Nagashima Spa Land”. The perfect coaster at the perfect park to finish up Japan.
We all left the park buzzing and with plenty of time spare to take it easy on route to the airport, then of course it went wrong.
As a group we completely ran out of Japanese currency between Hirakata Park and the hotel to collect luggage and due to reasons you couldn’t use credit cards on the Japanese subways. So we left the subway system to find a cash machine. First one didn’t take UK cards and the second one had a minimum spend of something laughable. After too much hassle we found one suitable and took out what we assumed was enough to get us to the airport.
After picking up our bags we ran to Osaka station where we learnt taxi drivers in the taxi rink don’t understand the word taxi and Osaka has 2 airports and we don’t know which one we need. We were already running majorly late now and couldn’t affford anymore confusion so we asked the information counter in the station which airport did we need and please sell us tickets for it.
The airport we needed was over an hour away and we didn’t have enough money to buy the tickets, so Heartline launched out of the station to look for another cash machine while I did some maths. At best we were going to arrive at the airport 45 minutes before the plane is due to take off, at worst and most likely we were going to miss our flight.
We managed to check into our flight after 30 minutes of bad signal on the subway but ultimately we all just assumed we were screwed. That was until after running through Osaka airport we got to the check in desk where they allowed us to check in our bags and made no fuss at all that we arrived so late. Then finally after an intense queue for security we got to our gate and collapsed in relief, we had made it.
Finally at peace, we landed in Korea at about 8pm and this time instead of taking the high speed train to Seoul station, then the subway to our new hotel, we opted to just board the subway at the airport and slum it the whole way which took forever. By the time we were all settled into the hotel it was midnight and we had to be up in 6 hours for Lotte World, I’d never complain but these trips really do test how dedicated you are for this game.
Thanks for reading, click here for our first day back in Korea, featuring Lotte World!
Our original trip line up did not include Nagashima Spa Land but Heartline went to an immense effort reordering everything so we could have a day at what I consider one of the two (other one is Fuji Q) legendary Japanese parks. After this experience however my opinion of Nagashima Spa Land has been forever ruined, am I going too far, I’ll let you decide.
We had planned and tried every option of getting to the park for it’s 9 opening but due to the worst case of car hire faff to ever exist we pulled into the car park at 10.
Nagashima Spa Land
It was lightly spitting with rain as we walked to the ticket office and noticed a sign saying half the park was closed today. Then we looked at another ride closures sign on the ticket office window that said only 3 rides were closed today. So we asked the very rude man selling tickets what was occuring. The 3 mentioned rides were down all day (note the website did not mention this on it’s maintenance page) and the sign with half the park listed as closed was because of the slight rain. We made sure to ask him extemely carefully, “if the rain stops only the 3 rides listed on this sign are closed?”. “YES!” he snapped back, well we’ve no reason to believe he’s lying, let’s do it.
We ran to Steel Dragon and joined the back of what looked to be at least an hour queue. On the way there we saw a sign that said that Steel Dragon was closing at 3 for maintenance. It was now half 10, Steel Dragon’s going down at 3, the park closes at 5 and there’s at least 10 more coasters to ride, plus the rain has just gotten heavier. With that in mind we decided to leave the queue and buy fast track for Steel Dragon from the Steel Dragon photos kiosk. The very rude woman snapped at us and responded that the ride was closed.
Arashi – With everything going to hell we joined the 45 minute queue for the park’s brand new S&S Free Spin coaster. At the time I really wasn’t a fan of Arashi but with a revisit I love it to pieces, so just call my first opinion based on the mood at the time.
We noticed that Steel Dragon now had a very rude man blocking the entrance and we were getting desperate for answers so went over to him. “If the rain stops Steel Dragon WILL reopen?”. “YES!” he angrily snapped back.
Corkscrew – All I remember of the park’s Arrow corkscrew coaster was getting wet, the staff being very rude and all hope for today being lost.
Jet Coaster – As well as the staff being very rude, the visitors to Nagashima Spa Land were disgusting. We’d seen school children in almost all the parks and they were completely fine elsewhere but at Nagashima Spa Land they were awful. We were queue jumped, barged into and then had our seats stolen on Jet Coaster. I spent the whole ride wondering if this whole day was just setting out to annoy me because it was working.
Peter Rabbit Coaster – Amazingly the park opened their children’s powered coaster in the rain but almost nothing else.
4 attractions that we wanted running in the entire park, so we went looking for food and a place to sit down. We ended up in a children’s oriented pizza restaurant because like the rides almost all the restaurants were closed too. During our meal the rain stopped completely, not only that but the sun came back too, so we sat there waiting and watching to see if anything moved for over an hour.
We got bored of waiting and because we’d heard it multiple times that things would reopen when the rain stopped, it was time to ask again.
Off to Steel Dragon and we stood at the entrance for over 15 minutes while the staff completely ignored us. A very rude staff member was in the control box, 4 or 5 were cleaning the queue, all could see us, none of them wanted to help. So getting angry we walked up the exit stairs and stood on the station platform, the very rude man in the control box hid under the console and those in queue still pretended they didn’t see us, unbelievable.
We asked a member of the Arashi team when was Steel Dragon going to reopen and she said tomorrow. It’s now 2pm, the sun’s shining, there’s 3 hours of operations left but Steel Dragon’s not coming back and nothing else is happening to the other closed rides.
It was clear then that the park had just given up because there was a few hours rain in the morning. I’ve since ridden Japanese coasters in downpours and witnessed Japanese park’s reopen as soon as bad weather stops so there’s no excuse at all for what the park was doing. Not only that but the fact that several staff members told us that when the rain stops everything reopens just made it even more insulting.
Talking of the staff they for the most part were all extremely rude, condescending and very un Japanese.
Nagashima Spa Land managed to morph from one of the most exciting parks of this trip into a park I’m in no hurry to ever return to.
In case you are wondering I deleted all my pictures of the park in disgust, I apologise for the lack of visuals in this report.
Thanks for reading, click here for day 8 where Japan redeems itself and we visit Hirakata Park.
We arrived to a massive queue at the entrance and started to get worried. Thankfully things were just moving slowly because everyone was buying fast track packages with their entrance tickets. It seemed a bit strange to me to buy fast track before you knew how busy the park was, not to mention it massively slows down entry. This wouldn’t be the only slightly dirty trick Universal pulled to sell fast track, they were adding up to 30 minutes extra onto some queue times, which seems a bit desperate from a park chain as massive as them but alas, money.
Space Fantasy The Ride – Space Fantasy was sadly in a VR overlay when we visted. So instead of getting a supposed World class attraction, we got giant robots destroying the city, what a disappointment.
Jaws – The classic Universal attraction I’d seen so many times online and I loved it! It helped even more that our skipper was fantastic.
Jurassic Park The Ride – Another Universal classic and once again outstanding. The attention to detail is breathtaking, the animatronics were awesome and the drop was even more intense than I expected, I can’t praise this enough.
Backdraft – The park’s special effects show and ignoring the boring preshows Backdraft was amazing. I love fire effects and I’m super interested in movie special effects, so it was clear I was going to enjoy it but it ended up being so much more intense than I was ready for.
Spiderman – My first experience of this amazing ride technology and I can see why it won many awards and spawned copy cats, it’s incredible. Easily one of the best dark rides in the World, an absolute joy from start to finish.
Harry Potter & The Forbidden Journey – The Wizarding World of Harry Potter had never really interested me, despite being a huge fan of the books and not against laughing at how bad the movies are. With that in mind I went into the Wizarding World with low expections and yeah, it was fine I suppose. I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t look massively impressive because it does, it just doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t think it helps itself either with how busy and cramped the area is, plus all the super expensive merchandise on sale really makes it scream cash grab to me. All the power in the World to you if you love the Wizarding World but it’s not for me.
I went into Forbidden Journey with equally low expections and even then somehow managed to walk away disappointed.
Firstly just getting on the ride was a major hassle. Thousands of people everywhere outside the queue, then you enter the castle and have to pick between castle walkthrough or Forbidden Journey but it’s not sign posted well and there’s people everywhere so good luck with that. Then you get to a massive room full of lockers, full of tons of people all faffing about, then finally you can ride.
I’ve since ridden a Chinese knock off that’s so much better than Forbidden Journey and has further helped me to explain why Forbbiden Journey isn’t for me.
3D glasses, screens 2 inches from your face, crazy out of control robot arm and everything going 1000 miles an hour. At best it’s a bit of a mess, at worst it’s motion sickness. What’s even more annoying is how short it is and that it basically just showcases scenes from the movies in a “best of” Harry Potter vibe.
Terminator 2 3D – Much like Backdraft if you ignore the hours long preshow that’s only in Japanese, then T2 3D is amazing. I’m a massive fan of Terminator and this show took that and went crazy with it, there’s just so much awesome stuff going on it’s hard to keep up.
Now for Universal Japan’s big guns, their 2 custom B&M monsters.
Hollywood Dream: The Ride – At the time of riding this was my 2nd ever B&M hyper coaster and I really enjoyed it. Having now ridden quite a few B&M hyper coasters it’s even better than I gave it credit for at the time.
3 things make Hollywood Dream amazing.
1 – Combining the tried and tested B&M hyper air time with lots of twists and turns.
2 – Having on board audio.
3 – BACKWARDS! While Hollywood Dream forwards is great fun, riding it not knowing what’s about to happen is fantastic, surprise airtime is so much more intense. On our last ride of the day, we rode backwards with intense anime music playing and it’s something I’ll never forget.
Flying Dinosaur – I wasn’t expecting this to be one of the best roller coasters in the World, but it is. I didn’t think B&M or their flying coaster model was capable of making one of the most intense coasters ever made, but they did.
Easily one of the most intense coasters in the World, body crushing forces, perfectly paced and all while flying, this coaster is unbelievable, there really isn’t anything else to say.
We had planned to end our day watching the Hogwarts projection show but due to major faff related to the Wizarding World we only managed to catch the last 5 minutes and it was laughably bad, so thankfully we didn’t miss much.
Universal Studios Japan is home to some seriously fantastic attractions but as a park it never really did anything super special. I never had my “OMG I’m at Universal Studios” moment and the staff never went out of their way to improve my experience. Small probably pointless complaints I know but this is Universal Studios after all.
Thanks for reading, click here for day 7 and an awful experience at Nagashima Spa Land…
Today began with my first ever trip on one of Japan’s legendary bullet trains and while it was everything I wanted it to be and more, it did cost over one hundred pounds each, ONE WAY, not the full way, so for the price it’s probably about what you’d expect.
We were on route to Osaka but were stopping off at Himeji for the park and to see the castle. Once we got to Himeji station we rented the last 3 large luggage lockers and now free of that burden we set off to explore.
First we took a bus from the station to Himeji castle and in stark constrast to Korea the bus drivers here are the friendliest people on Earth. We spent about half an hour seeing as much of the castle as you can for free before we caught another bus to the park.
Himeji Central Park is home to an amusement park and a safari and you can’t buy tickets for just one, also if you want to ride the rides once you’ve paid to enter the amusement park, then that’s a further cost. I’ve easily paid worse for less but that didn’t make it sting any less.
It stings even more when the park itself feels very tired and forgotten, with some areas looking totally abandoned. A perfect example of this is when I went to the bathroom, the light didn’t work and there were spider webs everywhere. Another would be the park’s Ferris wheel which was covered in rust and felt like it was about to collapse.
Hurricane Screw & Loop Coaster – Togo looping coaster that was nothing special but it wasn’t rough.
Labryinth – Probably the best coaster in the park was Labryinth, a Meisho mini coaster that was alot more brutal than I was expecting but in a good way!
Freefall – My first experience of a first gen Intamin drop tower and I loved it. Scary, janky and hilarious in equal measure.
Giant Ferris Wheel – As mentioned before this Ferris wheel was in a digusting state and I was quite honestly worried for our safety.
All said and done I walked away from Himeji Central Park pretty disappointed. The park really does look a state, the star attraction (Diavlo) rode badly and we paid through the teeth to experience it. Space World was in such better upkeep than this place and that’s gone now, so what does that say really?
We needed to take a taxi back to Himeji station because the next bus to arrive at the park was 4 hours away and we had no reason to stay for that much longer. From the station we had 2 options, bullet train or scenic train to Osaka, we opted for the latter because we were making such good time.
After checking into our hotel we went out for shopping and food. I had been warned Osaka was rougher and ruder than other places in Japan but it still took me by suprise when the staff at some expensive pizza place treated us like scum, the polar opposite of how we were treated in Fukuoka.
Thanks for reading, click here for day 6, Universal Studios Japan!
Sadly Space World closed at the end of the 2017 season, apparently from a combination of lack of visitors and the land it was sitting on being worth alot of money. I knew very little of Space World before visiting and I can’t honestly say I grew majorly attached to the park, yet I find it hard to not get upset knowing that this place full of memories and fun days out is gone forever.
Zaturn – This Intamin hydralic launch coaster is an exact clone of Stealth at Thorpe Park and neither coasters do anything for me personally. Zaturn was also our first taste of the sometimes over the top Japanese coaster rules. In this case, you are batched to the air gates, then told to go to a small room full of lockers next to the station, then back to the air gates, then they let you into the train but don’t pull the restraint down, then a man with an information card walks up and down the train reading rules, then they secure the restraints and then you’re off. It was taking about 15 minutes to launch each train, probably a good thing we only needed one go on Zaturn.
Titan MAX – I normally quite like Arrow Hyper coasters, sadly not this one though and it’s all down to the horrible new S&S trains they have added. I left the station with a mild lack of sleep headache and came back literally crying. The already less than perfectly shaped Arrow transitions are amplified 100 times with these awful trains, it quite literally rode like a series of car accidents.
Venus GP – The star attraction at Space World is easily Venus GP. This Maurer custom looping coaster whilst perhaps not as good as I was expecting still managed to provide a fast and intense experience. Possibly the best part of the coaster was that on dispatch rock music would blare over the speakers and the operator would get the train to raise their devil horns.
We once again ended a park in Japan with a ride on a giant Ferris wheel, this time however each pod had a notebook in it for you to leave your mark on Space World and personally I think that’s genius.
It really is such a shame that Space World is no more. Sure the coaster line up was lacking quality (certainly unique though) and certain areas of the park looked worse for wear but Space World had a real sense of character that many parks I’ve visited would kill to have. From the excitement of the staff to the little touches like the notebooks on the Ferris wheel and the wall to write your goodbye message to the park on, Space World had heart and I’m sure the park will live on in the memories of everyone who visited.
We had planned to half day Space World and Kijima Kogen but due to over running at Space World the plans had to change. For the record, it would have cost £70 ONE WAY in tolls to go from Space World to Kijima, so maybe it was never going to be worth only having half a day.
A quick look online and we managed to find a park nearby that had a couple of coasters to check out.
Kashiikaen Yuenchi was it’s name and we probably spent 45 minutes trying to find the car park and then the park entrance to this tiny obscure park but it was worth it for another chilled out jet coaster and twin helix for the count.
