Korea + Japan 04/17 – Hirakata Park

Day 8

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!

Korea + Japan 04/17 – Nagashima Spa Land

Day 7

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.

Korea + Japan 04/17 – Universal Studios Japan

Day 6

Now staying in Osaka, it was only a short train journey from our hotel to Universal Studios.

Universal Studios Japan

For years I’d been obsessed with watching videos of the Universal Studios parks online so I was extremely excited to finally get to one.

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…

Korea + Japan 04/17 – Himeji Central Park

Day 5

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

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.

Camelback Jetcoaster – The perfect time to think of how much this park just cost us.

Diavlo – B&M Batman clone that rode completely forceless and they wouldn’t let us ride anywhere but the front to give it a better chance.

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!

Korea + Japan 04/17 – Space World

Day 4

Space World

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.

Boogie-woogie Space Coaster – Nothing really special about this little Senyo creation other than the staff operating it being awesome.

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.

Thanks for reading, click here for the next part of my Japan trip report, this time featuring Himeji Central Park.

Korea + Japan 04/17 – Greenland

Day 3

Today started very early because we needed to be at the airport to fly to Fukuoka. After a short and pleasant flight we were in Japan and immediately the sentiment that the people here can’t help you enough shone through, I have to this day not met a friendlier immigration officier.

A slight faff with car hire later and we were on the roads of Japan. It’s worth saying now, if you want to go anywhere in Japan that’s not local then you’re going to run into many tolls. That’s fine you’ll think, that’s a pretty common occurance these days, well the thing is, the tolls in Japan are very expensive. It’s not uncommon to pay £30-£40 for a couple hours of driving. Now it can still be cheaper than taking trains and you can get prepaid toll cards that reduces the fee slightly but it’s something we weren’t expecting so it’s worth knowing.

Greenland

After paying for parking with the wrong currency we arrived at Greenland. We really couldn’t have picked a better first park in Japan. Whilst Greenland has no stand out attractions, no mind blowing theming and no breathtaking scenery, there is just something really nice about the place. A major part of that is because of just how welcoming the staff are, in some parks you feel like you are a burden for being there, Greenland felt like the polar opposite of that. Couple that with my first taste of wacky Japanese coasters and I really enjoyed my time spent at the park.

Blackhole Coaster – A slightly ghetto enclosed powered coaster, I remember enjoying this.

Gao – My first Jet Coaster, a nice sit down and chance to think to myself “damn you’ve made it to Japan”.

Grampus Jet – Vekoma suspended coaster, it was alright.

Milky Way – Milky Way is actually 2 Togo coasters side by side, one features sit down trains and the other stand up. The sit down side is good fun but the stand up is kind of awesome. The Togo train design means you are properly standing, not just sitting uncomfortably like Intamin and B&M. Not just that but you are properly standing with what feels like almost nothing holding you in. When you put that train on a layout that’s smooth, forceful and includes air time then wonderful things happen. The 2 best coasters in the park hands down.

Nio – Vekoma SLC…

Ultra Twister Megaton – I’d been wanting to ride one of these very unique coasters for a long time and wasn’t disappointed. The lift is unnerving, the drop is terrifying, the air time is strong, the inversions are vicious and going backwards is crazy. Just watch out for the brakes!

We ended our day with a ride on the park’s massive ferris wheel and with views like that it was the perfect way to conclude our first day in Japan.

Our hotel for the night was located miles from any restaurants or shops, thankfully because this is Japan, the hotel staff went out of their way to make sure we didn’t go to bed hungry.

Thank you for reading, please click here for day 4 and Space World.

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