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JAPAN: Lots of food, creds and lols

gavin

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Nic said:
Pocari Sweat. It was **** disgusting.

Pretty good for hangovers though.

I absolutely detest it when people try and piss all over other people's trips with the whole "OMG I can't believe you didn't go on __________" thing.

Having said that, please tell me that you went on the log flume at Cosmo World?

If not, then OMG I can't believe you didn't go on the log flume! The drop is brilliant as you're already running at some speed when you hit it.
 

peep

CF Legend
^^ Gavin, why did you not tell us this before we went? :p Na, we spent lots of time watching it but weren't really in the mood to give them money considering they weren't letting us ride their creds.

^ Who knows, if someone does please let me know because every time I saw the sign for Gorilla Biscuits I thought it was another restaurant.


Day 10 - Monday 16th

So this was to be our day of leaving Tokyo and travelling down South to Fukuoka. However a massive tropical storm decided to mess us about. We got to Tokyo station where we found masses of people looking lost (end of a holiday so everyone was heading home). Behind the gates to the platforms were lots of staff stopping people from going through and there were lots of announcements. Everyone was quite calm, just a little lost. Lots of people had decided straight away to just set up camp on the side in their groups. After scrapping some information together from various staff members and their broken Engrish it turned out that the storm was heading straight for Tokyo and all train lines had come to a standstill until they had a better idea of the situation.

I admit I was slightly panicked and I think Nic was too but we tried to hide that and just tried to get our head round the developing situation. The longer the trains were out of action the more unlikely it would be that we would get to our hotel for the night and we'd have to sleep at the station/find alternative accommodation. Every now and then we'd ask more staff members what to do, some told us to stay and wait, some told us to get new train tickets. We'd queue for new train tickets and then told after a long queue that there are no trains (well, exactly? We were still told to come to see you though?). It was getting rather annoying however we went to check the boards one last time before giving up and finding a new hotel when trains had started to appear. The only announcements were in Japanese so we had no idea what was going on. Up to a random platform to find a train going to where we wanted. YAY! At last a train to take us South.

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Well, that ruined the excitement of getting on our first bullet train lol. We were so relieved to finally be on a train though. We had got to the station at around 10am, finally got on a train between 3 and 4pm and made it to Fukuoka really late (I think around midnight). The train had to keep slowing down in badly affected areas. At one point we went over a bridge that went over a river that had very clearly burst its banks...

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To put in some context. The storm had actually done a fair amount of damage in several areas of Japan, mainly causing heavy floods in areas we went through. News link

So when we finally made it to Fukuoka we went straight to the hotel which was a 5-10 minute walk from the train station. We literally went straight up to our room and were relieved to finally be in our hotel.

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What made it even better was that it was a very nice hotel, large room (uncommon in Japan) with comfortable beds.

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Thank **** we made it

And that was the end of that extremely stressful day. I wish to never experience that again in a non-English speaking country.
 

peep

CF Legend
Day 11 - Tuesday 17th

After a fairly early start we made our way down to the ground floor where a breakfast buffet was on offer. There was quite a decent selection on offer even if we didn't know what half of it was or was too scared to even consider trying lol. After we had filled ourselves up we walked to the train station and caught a bullet train from Hakata to Kokura station and then switched over to a local train service to Space World. The whole journey took around 40 minutes. The local train revealed something which we were way too excited by...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzkbnaJcIqA[/youtube]

Upon exiting the train station it's obvious on how to get to the park. There's a long elevated path all the way to the park entrance. It's made that more obvious by the awesome metal arch things over the path, all the signage oh and the giant cred wrapped around a huge space shuttle.

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Yay! Space World!

I have to admit that this was one of the parks I was really looking forward to. We managed to get our tickets sorted pretty quickly before heading straight in. There were a couple of photographers that insisted on taking our photo.

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It didn't take long before Nic discovered her new love... Space pandas...

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It was pretty obvious from the start that the park was going to be dead all day long. There was just the odd group of teenagers here and there. Yay for going on school days :p We headed straight to Zaturn (Stealth clone as we called it). We didn't wait too long before having to stuff our belongings into lockers and on to the ride. There was then lots of faff before we launched. It was just as good as Stealth so all was good.

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The attention to detail on the theming throughout the park amazed me

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The park had big bouncy space boobs

We walked over to Titan which is the biggest coaster in the park and is pretty dominating over the area is sits in. However it was closed for one reason or another. BOO! So we continued around the park to the next cred.

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Spitan spiting

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Epically themed log flume

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the park was also well into Halloween already. So much into Halloween that the indoor cred, Black Hole Scramble, was re-themed for Halloween and they heavily advertise it. The coaster hides in a large building which also has several things for kids and a simulator. It's a little bit of a maze but it's all amazingly 80s/90s. In fact, later on in the day we had come to the conclusion that the park was like if Saved by the Bell (due to the colours) made love with an 80s space theme. Anyway, I digress, we found the coaster and with several other people made our way through the long empty queueline. In the station we were met by an ordinary ride operator dressed up as a witch and there were various typical Halloween things hanging everywhere. This was the extent of their Halloween make-over. This amused us.

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The coaster itself was fun but nothing spectacular. I don't remember any effects or anything stand out apart from it being a fun little family coaster. After all the Halloween hype I was expecting something inside but apparently not. Oh well.

We decided to try out the Mission to Mars simulator next. We were joined by a couple of small groups which was quite nice really as it meant we could just follow them. The pre-show video made it obvious that this was a copy and paste from an American park. It was one of those simulators where you sit in a large ‘car’ which just sits in front of a huge screen. It was alright, not the best one I’ve ridden and it is a little dated.

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No idea

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As you can see, it was quite cool but very dated

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I do love their dedication to theming

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More randomly placed Halloween theming for fun

We then made our way over to the next rollercoaster. Clipper is a fun space shuttle themed family coaster. I kinda love the trains <3

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Love them

It was then time for the large coaster that wraps itself around what looks like a real space shuttle. Now, I was under the impression that Venus GP was a Togo, it looks like one for a start. However just looked on rcdb.com to discover it’s actually a Maurer Söhne. Shocked. So, the ride looks great and the big build up in the station is pretty cool. However the restraints are actually trying to kill you. There are these small bars that sit over your shoulder like on stand up coasters and I’m not sure how or why but they are extremely painful. The ride would actually be fantastic fun if it wasn’t for these restraints. We could have just had a bad row or something but after that first fail we were put off re-riding. It’s a shame because it looks amazing.

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<3

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Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggsssssss innnnnnnnnn spaaaaaaccceeee

If you don’t get the above reference... get out.

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Massive space museum. Apparently they have real moon rock or something. We kinda forgot to go inside

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This was derelict. Shame.

It was then time to experience the very seriously named rollercoaster, Boogy Woogy space coaster. It should have been pointed out earlier that each coaster had its own sort of sign-language dance and chant. Oh we had lots of fun with this one. Both staff members were going about the instructions as per usual and then they noticed us and were all like ‘umm, boogy-woogy?’. Then as the ride goes off everyone in the station shouts boogy woogy while doing the little hand gesture. More parks need to do this, it’s hilarious. They should all name their coasters silly things first though.

Ahem, right. So the coaster train is actually able to provide two ride experiences. Forwards and backwards (way before it was cool). We just went for ordinary forwards first. This was a good idea as it doesn’t exactly ride very well and does try to beat you up a little bit. So as you can imagine we were dreading the backwards version. Yeah, it was just as bad as you could imagine.

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Normally I wouldn’t do a report of the loo situation but Space World needs one. I had sparked quite a quote last year by proclaiming “there’s theming in the toilet’ at Port Aventura. Well, due to this I couldn’t stop laughing when I entered one of the park’s loos.

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My pictures don’t do it much justice but there was a fair amount of very 80s/90s space theming inside. As soon as I met back up with Nic we both smiled and shared our bemusement at the theming.

I think this might have been when Nic rode one of the Space Pandas. I would like to thank Togo for making these and somehow getting nearly every park in Japan to buy them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9MgW4G_Rb0[/youtube]

I think we went in search of food next and after a few ‘hmm, not quite sure what’s even in that’ moments we ended up at what looked like a fried chicken place on the map. It turned out to be an actual KFC. It was surprisingly good and Nic had their special burger which she claims contained awesome sauce. Awesome.

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The wrapping contained all the awesome characters

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The new Krushums ad made my eyes really go. The lady is also quite a famous singer

Afterwards we discovered a place which had alien themed burgers, was quite sad we didn’t end up there.

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We then headed over to the rapids and proceeded to laugh a lot at this...

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I hoped it would get us wet, it was hot (but a dry heat compared to Tokyo’s horrible humidity). There was also quite a queue. The ride actually has a couple of nice pieces of theming. Overall we didn’t get that wet though despite the many signs suggesting otherwise.

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They had a room which tried to dry you but none of it worked. Not like it was needed anyway. We opted to try out the 4D movie, the Little Prince. I remember seeing the company trying to sell it at EAS the other year so was intrigued to actually see the end product. I have to admit, this might by the best 4D film I’ve ever seen. The effects were well used, the animation was excellent and overall was enjoyable. It ended a little abruptly but it’s only a small issue with an overall fun film.

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It was then time to try out the awesome looking log flume. There was quite a long queue for this one too. We noticed while we queued that every time a boat went down the main drop two blasts of water shoot up in the air either side of the drop. It’s pointless but looks fantastic. Once again we didn’t get that wet. Oh well. It was all about the random drop that takes place on a turn. I’ve never seen one like it before so that was cool to experience.

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Coming off the corner drop

We noticed that people waiting for the kids log flume were being given water pistols so we had to check it out. The idea is that you take a water pistol and then shoot at little paper targets which turn a different colour when hit. A love this idea, just the idea of being given a water pistol is genius.

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As we were coming off we noticed that Spitan had awoken and was testing. This meant we ran straight over to the queue to find other people had the same idea. We still had some time to wait before they decided it was ok to open. We somehow ended up still waiting quite some time once it was open.

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It takes forever to get to the top of the lift hill. It feels really tall considering it’s not actually that tall. It’s a really fun coaster though and does lots of weird things. I didn’t manage to get any pics of it’s silly elements so here’s a pic off rcdb.com...

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We then decided to ride the Stealth clone again while the whole park was discovering Titan was open. It was still good.

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We bumped into the characters who were awesome. Sad we didn’t get to see one of their shows though as they looked awesome.

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We decided to get some ice cream from cre cre. Mainly because of the name but also because ice cream.

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Theming, it’s always watching you

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Lol

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This happened every time we went past one, I didn’t think we’d ever leave :p

We decided to go and ride Titan once more and then call it a day. Despite the park being pretty empty we just didn’t feel like riding anything again. There was a random pool of water tucked away to one side with some fish in it.

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The waterpark was closed. You can see their new slides though

So after exiting the park we noticed there’s an awful looking hotel which is themed (obviously). I mention this because the car park signs made my day...

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Want to see how much the Japanese love theming?...

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The awesome train station building

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Nic enters our very fancy business hotel

After chilling out for a while we headed out for food. We ended up in a really traditional looking bar/restaurant (the sort of place with a particular name that I can’t think of). The place was rammed with business peeps being very loud and drunk and ordering a whole world of food. The food was pretty good if memory serves.

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Nic’s salad

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Lots of food

We decided to then check out the huge department store. We finally ended up in the kids area and just as we were getting into our browsing of the store we were informed it was closing. Boo.

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Made of nightmares


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A whole world of pinko slots

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The 25th hour of the day is my favourite

It was then time to sleep for the next day was due to be a long one.

Once again, thanks for reading 
 

peep

CF Legend
Sorry I haven't been posting more of this trip report for ages. I do plan on finishing it lol.

Day 12 - Wednesday 18th

The plan was to travel all the way over to Mitsui Greenland. Trying to figure out how to get there by public transport was a pain and we were concerned we might have had to back out of going there however the allure of riding a giant coaster themed to a dinosaur was just something we couldn't resist. So an early start and a nice filling breakfast at the hotel got us ready for a long day of travel and creds.

We caught a bullet train to Chikugo-Funagoya where we switched to a local train. We were literally going in the opposite direction of all the commuters which was odd. The bullet train station was clearly a fairly recent addition and was quite a nice little area even if it was in the middle of nowhere lol.

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Follow those yellow transfer signs we did

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Don't forget to swipe your [strike]oyster[/strike] Sugoca card

Trains don't run through this station very often and after a little wait our little local train arrived.

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This be our stop!

This next part of the journey was scary. We had to catch a bus in an area where barely anyone knows or understands English. This bus stop had a huge Greenland resort sign but barely any info on the buses that go there, very helpful. A lovely old Japanese lady noticed we were a little confused and tried her best to help her. Then a bunch of teenage girls appeared, the old lady asked them if they were getting the bus we were after and they said yes, the old lady turned to us and pretty much told us to follow them lol. She was so sweet. We had ages to wait which meant we walked around a bit, grabbed some snacks and joined the ever increasing number of teens waiting for the bus.

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I have no idea what this poster is for

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The Colonel celebrating Halloween

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Shrugs

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Welcome to somewhere you're not quite at yet, thanks sign

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The bus is here! Everyone rush on

So the bus was rammed and we spent the journey standing up having no idea how long the journey would be or anything. Fun times. If you're paying your fare by cash (like I was) you take note of what stop you get on and at the front of the bus is a sign which tells you much you have to pay, it's actually quite a good little system but the driver has to just trust that you're paying the right amount.

Anyway we finally arrived at a very empty Mitsui Greenland. I think it was pretty much us, half the bus and a small smattering of locals. We paid for our entrance and ride band and started our cred run.

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Yep, this would prove to be yet another park full of little bits of Halloween theming.

The entrance area felt really random and sparse, it turned out to be a rather consistent theme throughout the park. Some nice bits of theming here and there but everything is very dated and open. The park has lots of potential but I doubt anything will happen. Our first cred of the day was the small kids cred by the entrance. With a simple ladybird theme it was ok, a very average family cred.

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We then walked over to Grampus Jet which was a family suspended coaster themed to whales?

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My memory is rather awful but I think we enjoyed it.

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See, really nice bits of theming everywhere

It was then time for the Milky Way duelling creds. It looked like bits had been recently painted, but not all of it? Was a little odd. We did the sit down one first and it was good fun, biggest problem is just how long it takes to load both trains, minimal staff times. We then did the stand up coaster side and OMFG, we both loved it, loads of airtime was had and the mental banking at times was awesome. It was clear which side was better and it was the one we were scared of! Who said standing creds can't be good?

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Such a mess of track <3

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So this was their park-wide sound system

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One of the scary loud bug things, you rarely see them but my gawd do you hear them

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I really wanted to ride Danger in a maze but I have no idea what it is/was and it wasn't open

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It was then time to ride the fairly long but rather dismal Sphinx cred. Nice station theming though.

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It just doesn't do anything

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Random loop anyone?

There's a chairlift which takes you up to a very creepy looking building to provide you with views of the area, we didn't bother.

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It was then time for the next cred which was just your standard spinning mouse. There was a little wait for this one though and in the now increasing heat it wasn't too fun. Might be a good time to point out that the heat this far south was a dry heat from the Sun whereas everywhere else it's more humid and inescapable. But yeah, the mouse cred was just as you'd expect it to ride.

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The Nic and I discovered our brand new obsession... Forest adventure Gulli! Turns out this is a pokemon-like card game thing but loads of parks have walk-throughs where you gain a card at the end! It was amazing and simple enough that we could do it despite the staff looking sceptical (every time). So, want to know more? Sure you do which is why I documented it all in photo form....

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The idea is you get given a thing which is either red, green or blue. Throughout the maze will be these points which have a colour light above them, when the light is the same colour as your thing you place it on the podium and you gain points.

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Clearly more hilarious than pokemon

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Christmas present fish?

After you exit the maze you place your thing on the end podium thing where you now gain your card. But first you have to battle the evil dark cloud thing by bashing a big red button as much as you can possibly bash it. Not really sure on the specifics but the end result magically changed every time so no idea if skill is involved. I like to think so because I always got the better card!

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My awesome level 80 marijuana bird thing

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Nic's level 15 grasshopper of why

So we clearly had way too much fun in the maze and it was time to cool off on the rapids. Dragon River, I was looking forward to cooling off and annoyingly it was dry, I think my legs might have caught a small splash or two but overall it was very disappointing.

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We then found some go karts which obviously had to happen.

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We continued on our way round the park when we then came across the legend of the salamander. Can I please point out the size of the entire building in the below picture...

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Oh, that looks small for a shooty dark ride. Yes, yes it is. These things are all over the place in Japan, there's basically a continuous stream of these large boxes with some seats and guns that pretty much go round in a circle. Considering the size the ride does seem to last for quite some time and they are quite fun. Plus the exterior theming on this one is fab.

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The boxes

It was the clearly time for PANIC JUNGLE! A very brightly coloured log flume with a small indoor section. It was also rather dry.. DISAPPOINT.

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I can't really remember what happened inside, I don't think it was too exciting

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Don't mess with the bear, he'll cook you some food and steal your balls?

I then bravely entered the Hell Hall. I'll admit I was proper freaked out by this ride. You have to wear this 90s headphones where they play some proper creepy as feck soundtrack with some ruddy good sound mix going on. Everything else was old and boring but at times I had to actually take off the headphones, I can't deal with creepy sound effects sounding like they're actually next to me or something. Nic wouldn't have been able to cope with the awful old props, let alone the audio.

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For lunch we ended up in this very 90s McDonalds. Nothing too exciting here.

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Oooo, an indoor cred, didn't know you had one of these Greenland

So obviously the cred was ridden and it was odd. There was one bit where it kinda came out of the building and then just sort of went back in.

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The thrilling layout

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The exciting trains

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These kids rides turned up everywhere too



I'm gunna have to leave it there for today but I shall try to finish this part of the report before the year ends :p
 

peep

CF Legend
Day 12 continued

It was finally time to encounter the park's pipeline coaster, Megaton. I was quite looking forward to trying it but also quite nervous because they do look rather grotesque. After a little faff with our belongings we were on. I really enjoyed it, such a simple little ride but it's rather enjoyable, well, apart from the very abrupt stops. I filmed a POV for you lovely people, it's wonky because I didn't have anything to attach it to the ride vehicle so sorry for that.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBSG0BlzNYA[/youtube]

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The station is actually really odd because on one side of the vehicle it's holding on to the track but the other side is just sort of left waiting for more track to cling on to. Getting in and out of the ride vehicle is a bit of a pain too but it's all totally worth it.

Next up was the park's SLC, Nio. I loved the colour scheme but it was still a poor SLC.

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The ferris wheel that sits next to it really dominates this area of the park, just looms over everything.

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It was then time for the last cred in the park, the one we had been building up to, the one with the crazy theming that makes travelling down to the park all worth-while. Yep, it was time to ride the big beast, the dinosaur themed Gao.

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I think this ended up being one of the biggest disappointments of the trip. The crazy dino themed hill is epic but the ride is slow and boring and doesn't really do a great deal apart from take up a huge amount of room in the park.

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Even the exterior of the station was pretty cool

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Park has lots of hills and valleys

It was hot and we started checking out the other attractions in the area. We came across a huge Arctic themed walkthrough. It was absolutely freezing inside and it went on forever. Within minutes any moisture on me felt like it iced over, crazy times.

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Nearby we found another walkthrough, this time it was outside and themed to a jungle. It was very dated and was sort of falling apart. We walked up the tree and everything despite it not feeling very safe.

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Love the hat

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I don't think this was designed with Western adults in mind

We then rode the pipeline two more times before riding the air conditioned ferris wheel. It provided some really good views of the park.

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It wasn't till this point we realised how close to the coast we were

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After that relaxing ride we went on a walk, mainly to take photos of the family rides for the CF park guide. On our walk we discovered a little petting zoo. It was rather random and out of place but they had dogs and Nic loves dogs. They also had a flamingo mincing in a paddling pool.

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I think the weather was too hot for the dogs as most of them laid around like this

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Nic is the star of the latest Godzilla movie

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They had just built this huge statue of this character (you see him everywhere), the photo staff were so bored they insisted on taking photos of us stood in front of it

We ended up riding the stand up Milky Way cred again before taking some more pics and getting the next bus back to the train station.

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Once we got back to our hotel we crashed for a bit, watched some TV about tents that can't blow away? I dunno. We then went out for food and caused lots of awkward moments in a rather new restaurant that was trying very hard to be quirky. I got annoyed/frustrated that on the TV next to us they kept repeating the first 5-10 minutes of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.


Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll have the next part up in the new year.
 

peep

CF Legend
Day 13 - Thursday 19th

This day was mainly a day of travelling and sightseeing around Osaka. It started as any other day, packing our bags and having some food before checking out of the hotel and to the train station for our bullet train to Osaka. At the train station Nic got a cherry flavoured drink from a vending machine which apparently tasted uber sour.

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I picked up a mystery fruit Fanta. As in, Nic and I have no idea what it's meant to be, it tasted ok.

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Upon arriving at Osaka's main station we then navigated the local trains to our hotel where we were able to drop our bags off. Once we had sorted our lives out we navigated some more trains over to Osaka castle. The weather was really hot and although the huge gardens were beautiful it was almost hard to really take it all in, the walk up to the castle nearly killed us lol.

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You can just about see the castle in the distance

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Sooooo many stairs

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One of the many shrines around the grounds

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When we were getting near the castle these two old ladies waved and said "hello" and they were so happy when we replied, I think we made their day, they definitely made ours.

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We decided to stop and chill out in the shade with a snack before entering the castle. Entrance to the caste was only a small cost and over the stairs up the castle they had loads of misters which was nice and totally needed. As soon as you enter you enter a lift up to the top of the building and then you make your way down a staircase. Now, I have to admit I was really disappointed as soon as I entered the building, the entire interior was just like a dated museum and to me it just felt wrong. I'm so used to visiting similar attractions in the UK with their original walls and stairways that are slowly falling apart, not a semi-modern interior with original-looking exterior. Turns out most of the castles in Japan are like this because they've been destroyed several times since they were originally built so most, like the one in Osaka, are just replicas of the original. Sad times.

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The views from the top of the castle were stunning and it also gave a good sense of how huge the castle grounds were.

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I really liked this building. According to a map it was another museum

Photos are only allowed on certain floors inside so instead of getting in trouble I just opted to not take any. It was an ok museum but it felt like the timeline of the exhibitions was all over the place. Turns out they had loads of wars and the castle tended to be the centrepiece of the battle. It's a shame our trip to the castle was so disappointing. However I'm glad we went there as I do love the exterior and it was nice to do some traditional sightseeing.

Oh and all the walls, moats and gates were awesome.

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Back near our hotel we found some fantastic Engrish.

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Our hotel was near Shinsaibashi-suji which is a ridiculously long shopping arcade. So after checking into our hotel room we decided to take a walk down it. We stopped off in a huge arcade and Nic dived into another Daiso.

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Coin pushing machines have gone to the next level here

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All of the machines are slightly different but what happens on the screen is integral as to how ridiculous your time playing it will be. Nic ended up getting loads of balls emptying their contents all over the place

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The arcade goes on and on and on and on

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I think this was just a random road that went off the arcade, the city feels so dense and mental, just shops, arcades, bars, restaurants and karaoke rooms everywhere you look

The arcade runs down to where the canals are which is another mental area, we saw all sorts of crazy things.

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The famous Glico sign. This area filled with neon signs is pretty much the Osaka equivalent of London's Piccadilly circus.

Then randomly, amongst all of the modern craziness was this awesome old building, totally wasn't expecting to see something like this.

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The CRAB

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Hang on, that isn't what I think it is... Is it?

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Yeah, welcome to the weirdest looking ferris wheel I've ever seen. Annoyingly it was closed.

We were hungry by this point and we had plenty of places to choose from. We ended up in a pizza buffet place. It's a chain called Shakey's. I really liked the pizza and drinks were also unlimited. Nic had unlimited beer!

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Dessert pizza anyone?

Walking back to the hotel we noticed the department store was in quite an old and amazing-looking building too.

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Twisty screen

We then got back to our tiny hotel room to rest for the next day which was due to be a very long one.
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Just catching up and you were more excited about the POS dinosaur ride than the Pipeline coaster??? You mad, mad fools!

Once again, great stuff John :)
 

Jordanovichy

Credit Whore 2016
I think it's important to do non-coaster and non-park stuff on trips like these which is what I plan to do when I'm older. Great report again, John. Love the look of that ferris wheel, do you have any idea of an English name for it?

I bet Nic loved the unlimited beer ;)
 

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
^It's not like a Don Quijote store to have an SBNO ride!
 

peep

CF Legend
Day 14 - Friday 20th

This was the day I was really looking forward to and Nic was dreading, especially because of the all the marketing we saw throughout the trip so far. We were off to Universal Studios Japan. They had only just started their Halloween Horror Nights and the marketing was literally everywhere. So, anyway we grabbed some food and got on the train over to Universal.

Straight out of the train station you enter CityWalk which is really crammed and crazy compared to the Orlando one. There was also a construction wall on one side making it feel a bit more tightly packed – turns out it’s just for staff parking. The hotels looming over everything was weird too.

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CityWalk has it's own Octopus ball museum

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Turns out we turned up on a stupidly busy day. We had to join the masses in the queues for tickets. In a realisation that these crowds were by far the worst we had seen we had to splurge money on very expensive fast pass ticket things. The idea of spending loads on these was horrific but it needed to be done.

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Crowds <///3

I'll explain now that in Japan the Universal Halloween is pretty much split into two events. During the day it's mardi-gras/festival themed and then in the evening the zombies come out to play and all the special attractions open. This is why you'll see loads of kids characters on posters and that. I love this idea though, best of both Worlds.

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A Universal trip report wouldn't be right without a photo of the globe

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EXCITEMEMT

We enter the park and the first thing which is a major shock to the system is that they have Streets of America (amazing theming I should add) under a massive roof. You don't really notice it apart from when you look back at photos.

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So many people <//3

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Their stall theming was amazing

There were a couple of characters roaming near the entrance so we had our photo taken with Bert and Ernie and the female woodpecker (name escapes me).

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The theming was incredible

We ended up accidentally catching a Hello Kitty show which was random.

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Everyone had gone straight to Hollywood dream so we decided to just go back to it later in the day.

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The man with a sign was the end of the queue

Another odd thing about this park is that it's so close to everything else, just outside the park is a giant bridge that somehow just fits nicely into the background of the American street sets.

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The detail in the sets was brilliant

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This massive stage was for the kids Halloween show which we annoyingly missed because it's only on once a day.

After walking around for a bit and realising that all the queuelines were already horrific we ended up joining the first group of peeps for Terminator 2: 3D. Nic had never experienced this attraction and it was one of my favourites in Orlando so I was excited to be seeing it again despite the language barrier. It was just as incredible as I remember, the 3D is probably the best I've ever seen and all the effects and actors are just awesome. It's so sad to think that in a couple of years this attraction will be no more.

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Glad we didn't have to queue in this stupidly long cattle pen

We randomly decided to head over to the very bright and colourful kids area known as Wonderland.

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We ended up being big kids and riding the Hello Kitty themed 'cupcake dream'. It's just a spinning tea cup ride.

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So many bright colours

The whole area is split into three themes, Hello Kitty, Snoopy and Sesame Street. As part of the Halloween celebrations the characters were themed to fit into a 'trick or treat' theme. It looked pretty awesome but it also looked like something you had to pay extra for.

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We then headed into the Snoopy Studio where we queued around 20 minutes for the cred. I loved some bits of the theming like all the birds that stick out of the house once the train enters the brake run.

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We were going to ride Jaws next but noticed that Waterworld was about to start and I really wanted to see it. So we ran and just about made it in before it really kicked off.

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Suffice to say the show area and arena is excellently themed and I thought it looked amazing. The show itself is also pretty good with plenty of stunts and fire. Fire is always good (apart from on my face or in my home).

Instead of heading to Jaws next we ended up going over to Jurassic Park to try and beat the queues. The area felt really immersive and somehow better than the Islands of Adventure version. Jurassic Park is one of the only rides in the park to have a single rider queue and we decided to use it. This worked so well that we pretty much walked on and ended up on the same boat. The ride itself is exactly the same as the Orlando version and is excellent fun. Also got quite wet, this was needed on a very hot day.

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The shop was filled with awesome merchandise....

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The theming inside the store was also great.

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And then outside a dinosaur was on the loose!

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The amount of people not noticing the dino and then getting terrified when it was pointed out to them was high. Probably one of the best streetmosphere acts I’ve seen in a park.

Jaws was up next and yet again was an excellently themed area. I missed out on the Orlando one so was excited about finally getting to ride one. Turns out the queue was uber long so we used up one of our pass things to skip the queue. I say that, we still ended up queuing for ages, which in a way was nice because we got to see all the awesome queueline theming.

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So we finally got on to a boat and the first thing I notice is how big the boats are, was quite surprised by that. The ride itself I didn’t like, was just lots of meandering about on the water and then “oh look, a shark”. I think the bit in the shed was the best bit due to it building up the tension of what could happen next. Yeah I can’t quite put my finger on it but I just couldn’t get my head around why people would love this attraction.

Anyway the tat shop at the end was just as awesome as the Jurassic Park one...

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Outside the Jaws shop was the only time we really saw Hogwarts under construction, it felt really far away from the rest of the park. When that opens later this year it is going to be crazy busy.

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Back in the Jurassic Park area we grabbed a drink from an epically themed vending machine. It also had misters and on a hot day misters are very welcome.

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More awesome theming

As part of the Horror Nights one of the restaurants was themed to Jason from Friday the 13th franchise. It seemed really popular despite the huge prices on the menu.

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Oh yeah, not forgetting the 90 minutes wait time to get in!

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I really love all the America street sets even if it contains Backdraft (I ride I disliked in Orlando). Luckily it was closed on our trip to make way for a temporary experience themed to a popular TV show or film (looked like a paranormal detective show). The experience actually sounded cool but not for non-Japanese speaking peeps.

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We soon found ourselves in the queue for Back to the Future. Another ride I missed out on in Orlando. The queueline was horrific but we just sucked it up and joined the end. It was quite a slow moving queue too. The ride itself is awful, the old simulators just sort of throw you around in really jolty motions (just like the Simpsons ride then). The film I could have sworn was a little out of focus too and was just a bit rubbish. I expected more for such a fantastic film franchise.

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In one of the other buildings there was another short term attraction. Before going I really wanted to do it (shoot real people dressed as zombies with real pellet guns) but there was just no way I was going to fit it into our day.

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We ended up waiting for the mardi-gras themed parade next. The plan was to watch it near to where it starts and then run into Space Fantasy after it passes us. This is what we ended up doing but in the process we missed the awesome bead-throwing and confetti. Oh well. The parade was awesome, so upbeat and fun. All the cast involved just looked like they were having an awesome time and it was just so bright and colourful. The parade ended with a float and a mass group of guests they had found who were in fancy dress. Yeah, I loved this parade a lot.

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Fun fact: I just found out that the pink character this lady is wearing is a Seasame Street character specifically designed for this park

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Random guests by loving life

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Oh yeah, it’s not over yet!

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Elmo was loving his cape

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And that was that, all the percussion guys and the singers etc were live broadcast throughout the huge parade route and they were awesome. I found a video that gives you a good taste of what it’s like –

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfY1znTgoRo[/youtube]

So as planned we then dashed over to Space Fantasy, an indoor spinning rollercoaster. You have to dump loose belongings into a locker first which takes a 100Yen coin (gives it back to you later). The queue was a decent length for the coaster but we decided it would be worth the wait. Outside is a massive cattlepen which then sends you into greenscreen booths for a random photo opportunity (sad to find out it’s not just Merlin) before you enter the batching area for the next stage of queue. Next to the batching area is a cool robot that moves about and has a smiley face. You then enter a round room where there’s lots of cool light and then you walk along a few corridors before hitting the loading area. For a spinning coaster it’s extremely efficient and there are loads of staff members around making sure everyone is loaded and secure as quickly as possible.

So the ride – I don’t want to go through it step by step as it’s best to just go and experience it. I can tell you it’s full to the brim with light effects, cool on board audio and a room that made me jump (loud noise) every time. Unfortunately on our first go we stopped on one of the lift hills for about 5-10 minutes before continuing on. Once off at the station they grouped all of us up and sent us back round to get another go. Love it <3

It’s by far the best spinning rollercoaster I’ve ridden, it’s fast, spinny and very fun. A big feature of the ride is that it’s all about flying through space and ending up going into the Sun where you meet all these little ‘Sun fairies’ which are totally kawaii (cute). I really fell in love with this ride, it’s just so fun.

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A sun fairy

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I totally got one

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She’s like their Mum or something?

It was time to go from one fantastic attraction to another... Spiderman. I’d only experienced the Orlando version in its full HD resolution so I was glad to find out that they’d only just re-opened the Japanese version in the same glorious resolution. My memory is starting to go here but I think we might have used a pass for this as I remember pretty much walking straight onto the ride. It is of course, one of the best dark rides in existence.

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I still love all these street sets

We were heading back over to the main entrance area when outside Space Fantasy we saw a large group of peeps had formed a performance area so we stopped and waited in the heat of the Sun for about 15 minutes before a bunch of performers from the parade came out and did a really cool performance. It was really lively and they got quite a few guests involved too. It was worth waiting around for.

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Worth pointing out that all the drummers were from America and only spoke to the guests in English

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We were getting hungry but couldn’t find a restaurant we were happy with or they were too busy so ended up picking up some meat filled buns. Nic got an Elmo and I got a Hello Kitty. They were yummy and very filling.

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Is it me or does Elmo look evil?

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What to do next? Oh this looks fun...

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We were so excited about being able to ride ‘Backdrop’ or the ride car that runs backwards. They even had a sign counting down to when it wouldn’t be going backwards any more (10 days). However during some research for this report I just found out it’s now been made a permanent thing as it was so popular!

Anyway, things didn’t exactly start out so well for us. As we got there we discovered they had closed the Backdrop queueline as it was full (they didn’t want anyone else queuing for it) and the only way to get in the queue was with a ticket. Now, absolutely no where did it mention this ticket system and to say it annoyed us would be an understatement. We spoke to several cast members with not a lot of luck (hard to communicate due to the language barrier). After some nagging we discovered that the single rider queueline was still open but would be 3 hours! We decided it was our only option, I mean, we couldn’t NOT ride it backwards.

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Well, the queue was not 3 hours. It was a long wait, yes, but it kept moving and we were on after about an hour and a half. This was definitely helped by a lack of normal backdrop queue resulting in a whole train just for single riders. We were over the moon when we were finally sat down and leaving the station. Choosing what music to play was a hard decision, all bar one track I’d heard of and I loved what the other tracks were. It was a fantastic ride experience, smooth, fast and the air time over the hills and down the first drop were heightened by the sensation of not knowing what’s coming next. We both loved it, fantastic ride. It was then time to run round and join the normal Hollywood Dream queue. Still a ridiculously long queue (I can’t remember how long we queued in the end) but it was worth the wait. While not as exciting as going backwards, it was still a solid, fun ride. I think having on board ride audio certainly helps the ride too.

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It was now starting to get late and that meant the zombies would soon be let loose on the park. Nic really doesn’t like zombies or anything scary so stuck to the main entrance area and the kids area. I went and queued for Space Fantasy: Ringu edition. Oh jeez, I’ve never felt so frustrated in a queueline. The rides that get a Halloween night makeover close for an hour, what I didn’t plan for was that everyone joins the queues within this hour break (I was also under the impression that the single rider line was closed- it wasn't). So turning up a little late to the party I join the back of a 2 hour queue which for several 10-20 minutes was stood still due to staff waiting to expand the cattlepen queueline. To be honest I wasn’t wearing a watch and not knowing how long things are taking can sometimes make the situation worse. Just when the queue wasn’t moving would I ever get frustrated though. Apart from that it was a fairly smooth continuous flow of people.

As soon as I entered the inside queue the changes began. The first holding room the lights dimmed and they projected the beginning of the Ringu tape. I am not making this up but as soon as this was projected 90% of the group started to panic so when the Ringu girl appeared at the door we had to go through you can imagine the reaction. I found it hilarious, I don’t think the rest of the group did though :p. We then had to walk up the corridor where the Ringu girl disappeared. After that it was a fairly standard queue before getting on the ride. The ride itself they had turned off all the lights and effects and the on board audio had changed to creepy music and kids saying stuff (apparently extremely freaky stuff judging by the reaction of the lady sitting next to me) and other generic creepy kid sounds. I think the only time I got ‘scared’ was when it was quiet, dark and the suspense of not knowing what would happen next. Unfortunately the ‘pay-off’ was just the projection of the Ringu girl on the wall on the end break run. Sad face. So despite the ride still being good I was very disappointed by the changes inside and the long time I had to wait to discover that.

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They have a spinning ride vehicle model outside to show you what will happen inside

Obviously by now it was dark outside and the event was in full swing. I still had ages before meeting back up with Nic so I decided to walk around the entire park to see what they had in terms of zombie happenings. Well it was definitely wide spread and there were quite a few different things going on. It’s hard to take photos of people moving in low light so apologies for the quality of most of the following pics...

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Caged zombies would escape and start running around

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Every now and then ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson would play and all the zombies would do the dance. Clearly the best thing to happen throughout the event

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Big searchlights were being used to track down zombie hoards.

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A hoard of zombies would attack a ‘guest’ and then be broken up by a police guard or two, paramedics would take the ‘guest’ away on a stretcher

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Chainsaw wielding madman anyone?

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By the time you saw this sign it would be too late

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A truck of dead bodies with a zombie or two for fun

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No idea what this thing was that was lurking around the Jurassic Park area

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Several watch towers had been set up around the Jaws area

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A zombie feeding point thing

I still had loads of time so decided to join the queue for the Mummy walkthrough. I was inside in about 5 minutes, the capacity of this walkthrough was ridiculous. The lady providing the safety talk for the group I was in clearly did the whole spiel, she then looked at me and was like “umm, follow torch?” I tried to show her that I fully knew what to do (this wasn’t exactly my first horror walkthrough experience). After reassuring her, my group went in through the Anubis room (there were two walkthroughs set up, I couldn’t believe that was even possible). The theming inside was beyond anything I had seen before, was really awesome. Unfortunately most of the scares were only experienced by the guy in the front, who to be fair was hilarious to watch.

After that I headed over to the Hello Kitty area to meet back up with Nic. She revealed she had re-ridden Backdrop (jammy so and so). We watched the zombies for a little bit more before deciding to make our last attraction Shrek 4D (everything else had too much of a queue). I loathe Shrek and Shrek 4D. Oh well, it was kinda worth it to discover how you exit their cinema...

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Yep, the screen goes up and you walk through it

What’s weird about the cinema is that the pre show room is made for Shrek and then the exit shop is all about Sesame Street. After the film we spent ages and lots of money in the shops before finding food in CityWalk. We could have eaten anywhere in CityWalk (even yummy Mos Burger) but we found ourselves in Hard Rock Cafe. The food was as you’d expect it to be, filling and very delicious.

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This is just popcorn flavours

It was then back on the train to our hotel. It was such an amazing day, I really love Universal parks. Just a shame we had to sort of rush our day there and it was stupidly expensive.
 

Jordanovichy

Credit Whore 2016
Just as I'm about to go to bed and John goes and posts another Japan instalment.

Looks absolutely FAB. You really seemed to make the absolute best of a park that is packed to the rafters.

I do have one thing to moan about. I'm now going to have nightmares:

Peep said:
 
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