MiscellASIAeous (the Wood and the Whale) - Part 6: Misaki Park

[HeartlineCoaster]

I had some days spare in Asia while out in Singapore again and wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Not enough time to do anything too major, though sadly there aren’t many places left out this way I could do for too long anyway.
With RMC consistently hammering into my rankings over the last 6 months, Hakugei was obviously the most major draw in the region. But it didn’t feel like enough - all that way for one ride… I don’t think I’m quite ready for that stage of the hobby just yet.

Hit some more China was the other idea, with new stuff up and coming all the time and the odd bits to mop up in between. But they’re so slow in getting things done - stuff that spited me over a year ago still not being ready and I couldn’t be arsed with the disappointment again for now.

If I can add one more major coaster to this trip, I’ll be happy.

So I took a gamble on some wood and booked three dirt cheap one way flights.

And in no way did it look like it was going to pay off.

I’ve been spited by Wood Coaster twice before. It’s about my most spiteful thing going. I got as far as the entrance the first time, after 90 minutes on a bus from hell and then being chased down by people trying to sell me plastic buckets and spades for a trip up the mountain. The ticket desk said it was closed. I walked away.
The second time I went I didn’t bother with all that, just phoned up 2 days in a row from somewhere nicer and got stuff about ‘it’s been raining the last few days so… you know… maintenance’. Yeah, I know.

Their website has become more fancy these days and has details in writing about their extensive maintenance schedules. Every Monday, every third Thursday of the month, every April (and from personal experience every January or every sight of rain either before or after). The world’s most closed coaster.
Avoid all that then, we’ll hit it on a Saturday in June.

As the day drew nearer, the weather forecast was just… terrible. 2 weeks of thunderstorms either side of the day I was going. It doesn’t make meteorological sense, but it’s China, so that’s that then.

Day 0 – Shenzhen

So I landed with the full expectation of just spending a rainy day in a hotel.

I’m obviously getting too complacent with the whole immigration/entry/getting around thing in China cos I expected to just walk in and get a transit visa on arrival.
There weren’t any staff available for this when I got there, so I spent a good hour standing around in ghost town airport waiting for someone to show up at the visa desk while the immigration helpers did their best to avoid contact with me after the initial encounter and a couple of other officers at desks eyed me suspiciously.
I thought the people I was waiting for were gonna be one of the official uniformed looking immigration officers that rocked up with their 7-Eleven instant noodle dinners and disappeared into an office to eat said dinners rather than acknowledging my existence, but it wasn’t them.
Instead some random/normal looking airport staff type woman appeared while chatting into her phone and asked to look at my passport. She looked at it and walked off again without saying another word to me, still on the phone. Clearly no one knew what they were doing and they don’t get many people doing it this way. I would say I’ve missed this fun, but it felt like a wasted journey to begin with.
She eventually reappeared with a friend and they bumbled their way through the process over another hour or so, constantly phoning people up, running off to somewhere else in the airport to get information on something, looking up something on the internet or chatting to other officers at the desks.
Got a stamp, got in. They were gone again before I could thank them for their swift service.
And now the metro is shut for the day. I do love a good taxi.

The faff didn’t end there as the hotel ended up being the first I’ve ever come across in China that doesn’t accept ‘foreign cards’. It’s 2am, give me a break, I want to sleep. It was a daytrip, so I wasn’t packing enough cash to settle that and do everything I wanted to do the next day but fortunately, as they bluntly told me, there was a cashpoint round the corner. Ugh.

It’s not actually raining though.

Day 1 – Knight Valley

Less than 3 hours later and I’m getting déjà vu from the previous time I was in this city, waking up stupidly early in the morning to check the ‘weather situation’ outside before deciding whether to bother with a 2 hour journey for nothing. It’s still not actually raining, but I’m too tired to care. Back to sleep.

Still wasn’t willing to commit to the extra journey on a whim at this stage, so waited til office hours and phoned the number we had some success with before. No luck, couldn’t get a human. Well, I’ve come this far, lets see if I can at least lay eyes on the damned thing this time, open or not. But I ain’t taking that bus again, someone can drive me.
The hotel staff were like whoa man, don’t do it, that’s gonna cost you £20. Their opinion was ignored.

It rained the tiniest of bits on the journey over to the park, but otherwise was just lots of low cloud in a regular mountainous fashion. Game over I thought, they’ll be doing their track walk now and instantly think ‘time to go home’.
Driver bloke was friendly enough to offer his phone number and a return journey as we got there, as it was a ‘remote area’. That’s a sound option. Could be returning in about 5 minutes.

Got to the ticket desk. There was a sign of closed rides up, which I don’t even remember existing before, more positive steps? Wood Coaster wasn’t on it. The woman with the tickets confirmed this. In we go then.

I think the following walk was my new peak in cred anxiety. I’ve been lied to by staff enough times now to still think It’s not open. I failed to pick up a map so didn’t know where I was going.

You keep climbing these escalators up the mountain, half of them broken, you still can’t see the ride for about 15 minutes of walking - I expected it to be dominating the hillside, but it’s insignificant in comparison to the size of the resort.
Passed a sign with ride specific opening times. The Wood Coaster is open from 10:00-18:00. Is this actually happening?

I joined the queue at 10 and there was a bunch of engineers on platform, with the ride making familiar GCI brake noises. It took them another half an hour, but it tested and it opened.

Ahhhhhhhhh. It was so good to get on it. That and the ride itself is… so good. I was a little worried as GCI have been a source of minor let downs for my last 2.5 years as well as reports of it having not aged well. But if there’s one GCI out there to rival the mighty Bamboo, it’s this thing.

Got everything I want from one of these – fast, relentless, buckets of airtime, goes on forever and aggressive - really, really, aggressive. Perfectly on the limit.

The layout is just majestic. Never mind the station flythrough that no queueing guest sees, there’s a bloody quad down passing in between the station and the brakes and it made me giddy with happiness. I loved everything about it so much.

And whose wonderful idea was it to stick a big GCI up here anyway. It did the Wildfire turnaround atop a mountain before Wildfire did. Stuff like that makes me love it even more.

There was a bit of jeopardy added to the whole experience (probably heightened it even more) in that the lift hill contained an assault of weird looking moths and other weird and not wonderful flying creatures that would crash into your face or land on you as you climb 200ft into a rainforest. Eww. I hate bugs.
I don’t even want to know what those things are doing to you at 60mph, but I ended up with one inside my shirt that looked like a leech at one point. So much no. But so much yes.
Have some more pics.

Just to tease me a bit more it also rained a little more during a queue for another lap. They made announcements about stopping if it got worse, but it didn’t, so they didn’t. Good for them.

Kinda wish the park ended there, but there was some other stuff to see. Stumbled into what I only knew as discount Waterworld. Sums it up nicely. Wasn’t the most professional of performances, but it was a laugh. The show ended to announcements of 'stick around to have a photo with the white man'. Think I’ll pass on that one.

Foolishly followed the crowd out of there into some underwater ride thing. Some aggressive announcements were being made about 80 seat capacity and 30 minute show intervals. It then turned into an old timey bumpkin scrum as the less refined guests started pushing and shoving to make sure they made it in. It’s only the second time I’ve seen this sort of behaviour (the first being that awful tour group at Fantawild Ningbo) so it’s far from the norm, but it is rather disgusting. We didn’t make it and left the queue rather than wait again. I’m sure it was nothing mindblowing.

From there it was a hot and sweaty queue for the cablecar up to the top of the mountain. Things only got sweatier when the greenhouse roof portion of the queue became home to two huge hairy moth things that were bigger than my hands. If they end up at Wood Coaster, I’m dead.

Some lovely views up top. Didn’t bother with any rides as the queues were too grim.

Did the funicular train back down, was completely empty in contrast to the cablecar for some reason.

Bobkart spited disappointingly, but got what I came for.

Got a friendly staff girl to lend us her phone so we could contact the driver man, as our Chinese SIM had conked out up the mountain. He said 40 minutes. This made an easy excuse for one more lap of the wood, as the queue was invariably 30 minutes for 30 people.

When he turned up we made an outlandish request to be driven to a mall in the city to get some food rather than straight back to the hotel, at which point he got all mopey saying he wouldn’t have bothered coming back for us if he’d known it wasn’t the full fare. Well thanks.

And that’s it for one long day in China. Seems like a lot of text for one ride. Good times.

 

[Matt N]

Great report @HeartlineCoaster; glad to hear you liked Wood Coaster after waiting all this time to get on it! Does it rank highly for you; judging by what you said in the top 10 thread (can't remember exactly, but something along the lines of coasters that surprise you) and what it looks like in POVs, it looks very much like your sort of ride?

Can't wait for the rest of your report, especially your thoughts on Hakugei!

 

[Ben]

Wood Coaster is sooooo good, sounds like we were there just after you (we went this Saturday)

With it being a holiday it was way more crowded and we ended up waiting 2 hours for Wood Coaster, but it’s so good I didn’t mind.

I was worried because I first rode it in 2011 and hadn’t done half the **** I have now, like Python and RMCs, but this still easily stacks up.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Does it rank highly for you; it looks very much like your sort of ride?

Oh yes, it's very, very much my sort of thing.

I was worried because I first rode it in 2011 and hadn’t done half the **** I have now, like Python and RMCs, but this still easily stacks up.

Great to hear, it's always reassuring to revisit something and find it's as good as it ever was, no matter what you've done since. Proves we do know what we're on about... sometimes.


Previously on my trip reports:

Challenge time. There’s a lot of smaller parks around Nagoya with not a huge amount going for them, but it’s always fun to see what you can mop up.

With the ‘bigger’ stuff out of the way, there was a few +1s to try and hit up. This was the first, but on arrival it seemed they had given up for the day, with a few locals hanging around just for somewhere to be, but no staff in sight.

Figured this may be a similar case for the other places and called it a day for creds, opting to go to a mall instead. No regrets.

So after landing in Nagoya again, we picked up where we left off on that day to clean up the rest of the area.

Day 2 – Akashi Park

Oh look, a Ferris Wheel. Hello Japan.

This place was cute, took a few minutes to work out where the tickets were sold as it didn’t really have an entrance, just a bridge over a road.

You knew that the whale in the trip report title refers to this ride, right? That’s why you’re here.

A quality piece of engineering.

Kariya-shi Kotsu Jido Yuen

This was the place that was closed by the time we got to it. It seems to have undergone some expansion since, including some new fairground rides and a new toilet block. Watch out Six Flags America.

Another quality piece of engineering.

Potentially Japan’s cheapest cred at ~36p

Sea Train Land

This place was a little more significant than I expected. It had another of those Senyo shooting dark rides as well as some other stuff, but I’m all burnt out on them.

Shame the cred is only a Zamperla thing. My 7th in as many months.

It’s a bit closer to the city and the day was now over, so felt like jumping on the wheel for a look.

Couldn’t quite see Steel Dragon from here. It’s somewhere after that second bridge on the right but there’s a lot of other weirdly tall stuff in the area.

That was fun.
It really was actually, something so chill about just driving around little parks with no anxiety.

 

[Howie]

... all that way for one ride… I don’t think I’m quite ready for that stage of the hobby just yet.

Classic denial. Mate, you're mayor of that stage of the hobby! ?
Fun reading, as always.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Classic denial. Mate, you're mayor of that stage of the hobby! ?
Fun reading, as always.

Two rides man, not one. Thats 100% different.


Day 3 – Nagashima Spa Land

Oh no, back here again. Almost feels like home.

Rocked up before opening to find an unnervingly large queue forming outside the entrance plaza. It looked worse than it was however, as there were gates shut before the actual ticketing area.
Soon enough the gates opened and all concept of a queue quickly dissolved as people from everywhere homed in from all angles, cutting past those who had been politely waiting at least half an hour before opening. Typical Nagashima, nothing like the rest of Japan.
Followed the hustle and bustle into the ticket booths, got a wristband fairly promptly and headed in.

Straight to the whale.

Ah man. The early stages of this day were doing absolutely nothing to change my mind about liking this park. The operations were as dire as to be expected. A single train dispatching every 6 minutes. An average of 4 empty seats per train due to their dumb row assignment methodology. I was there in the first 200 people and it took me an hour to get on it.

Logistics – there’s a member of staff in the cattlepen area who hands out blue and red wristbands and rattles off a speech in rapid Japanese to every person. The purpose of this wristband is to get you into the locker area which is situated under the station, which you pass through before and after the ride. Upon reaching the station you give up the wristband, basically to stop people getting off the ride and cutting through the lockers again for another go. It’s an improvement on their other rides in that it saves having locker faff in the actual station, while loading the train, but it still seems to take just as long with all the various batching procedures and airport scanners for tissues in your pockets that lead up to it.

So thankfully the ride was amazing. Enough for me to put up with all that many, many times, coupled with the fact it was the sole reason I was there in the first place. Lets see how many RMC name drops I can squeeze into a review.

It’s got one of the stronger pre-lift funky sections which are always a laugh, closest to Twisted Colossus. A big ol’ lift looking out at the rest of the park or over the water. A zippy little corner before an up and over drop, like a third of a Wildfire. And then it begins.

It’s got length. It just goes and goes with equally good stuff from start to finish, unlike Lightning Rod.
There’s some really strong airtime in there, never quite as intense as Twisted Timbers, but it’s beautiful blend of sensations between the elements, more like a giant Wicked Cyclone.
The stall only felt particularly significant towards the middle of the train similar to Joker’s little one, it just hits it too fast at the ends of the train to give that real magical upside down moment.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing though as the speed is quite surreal at times, watching it offride brought back memories of Railblazer. It just doesn’t look like it should be going that fast through those elements, it’s unnatural.
It’s a gorgeous ride to look at as well - that blue and white, like a giant Twisted Cyclone with much prettier trains.

There, think that’s all of mine. Let’s take a moment to behold this creation.

In all seriousness though, I loved it. It’s a hard layout to learn even over a few laps - the scream inducing airtime on some of the hills that you forget are even there. The out of control feeling I’ve been missing on some of these things is present in the exit of the first outwards banked turn thing as it twists and throws you down a double down. This bit gave ‘poorly prepared on Skyrush’ levels of uneven pain into alternate single legs when sitting towards the back. I’ve missed that too.
There’s some pretty vicious laterals out in the overbank near the end that makes it better than your average filler corner and the hills either side of this really kick ass. Possibly the best hill of the whole thing is chucked in right at the end of the ride as well, a wonky little thing hidden in the structure that was also scream inducing. Every time.
Fantastic stuff, well worth the trip.

They decided to add the second train during my second queueing, bumping the wait time up to about 90 minutes. Dispatches did drop to 3 minutes so it was an improvement later in the day, but the queue just grew and grew throughout the morning. Well that’s 2 rides in 3 hours, what else has this place got again?

Took some courtesy laps on the decent stuff around, starting with the Dragon. This was operating surprisingly well with its 2 trains. It seems to have lost its limelight within the park for now against the new boy, I wonder if that is just newness or genuine appreciation for a much better ride. Time will tell.

Pretty much how I remember it. The lift is good for the openness on the left side and the way it goes on forever. The drop doesn’t feel like 300ft and isn’t very good. It bounces through the first 2 valleys quite ferociously and there’s absolutely no sensation in either of the big hills. The corners are huge and rather pointless, bit of wind in your face – yeah man, can’t beat that sensation of speeeeeeeed, it’s like Fury all over again.
Then it gets fun, awkwardly adjusting itself into the midcourse. Even though it brakes quite hard at this point, the following hills are all decent and seem to go on forever. I imagine it has to have the most consecutive straight airtime hills on any ride in the world and it is pretty joyous for that.
A slight shudder, a ghost from my past, hit me as I stepped onto the exit platform. Getting on this ride was all too easy this time.

Token lap on my ride. They make me happy. It’s such a weird and complicated looking death machine but also so simple. How many rides come off of one of their rails every lap just to get through the station? And the fact they had terrifying vertical lifts (and drops) 100 years before anything else claimed fame about it.

Acrobat then. Still as good looking as ever. They were operating the other station today, so that was a novelty. Never together.
I forgot how intense this thing was. Pretzels are amazing of course, but the turn immediately after was so forceful that, to be graphic, my salivary glands failed me. I spent the rest of the ride dealing with that while it meandered around, never living up to the start again.

Time for the rest of my body to fail me, on one of the few rides in the world that still scares me. I regret it every time, sitting down in the seat with the rigid restraint uncomfortably biting into my collar bones. Feet dangling as it drags you vertically up. Why did I do this again? Oh no. OH NO. OH… *words gone*. It’s too intense to shout.
The initial moments of it flipping after the lift are like no other ride. It’s so far out of my body’s control that I don’t know what to do with myself. I go into survival mode - all I can do is sit there, hold on and exist through it. But nothing like SLC survival, it doesn't hurt, it's just purely through intensity.
I love it anyway. Whether I enjoy it is a different matter.

They've got this new shooting dark ride thing that appeared opposite the whale which I thought was cool, diversifying their lineup a bit. Then I found it was upcharge. Wanna do something other than queue 90 minutes for rollercoasters today? Well you've gotta pay. I still don't like this park.

Time to calm down on the wheel. The views just got even better.

Would have been Hakugei 'til I bleed, but operations. The pain was stronger from the queueing than from the ride, though the waiting did die down a little as the afternoon went on. At least it was amazing enough to keep me there 'til the end of the day. I'd had ideas of leaving early if things had stayed how they started.
As we learnt from Hershey, always persist.

 

[Hixee]

Hakugei with those blue skies is one hell of a beautiful looking ride. Fantastic!

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

With the important stuff out of the way it was time for some general credding. The outbound flight was from Osaka, which I’d done before, so it had to be an area to the west that I hadn’t yet hit. Ended up skirting round that city and onto the island of Shikoku. Only 5 hours driving, childs play these days.

Day 4 – Tokushima Family Land

Follow that ferris wheel.

First little place was another one of them ghost towns. Part of a bigger zoo resort, but was literally the only car in the car park on arrival.

With staff outnumbering us at least 4 to 1, bought some ride tickets and headed to the first cred. The person standing nearest sprang into life and started it up for us in a friendly fashion.

More quality engineering. The manufacturer of these is unknown but it seems to be a suspiciously similar to that awful one at Fuji Q.

It rode a lot better though. Rough and ready, but no headache inducing vibration. A good laugh.

Other cred was boring Mr. Vekoma Junior. +1.

And that was that. On to the next one.

The road to the only other park on the island took us over some lovely mountains, at which point it decided to rain on us. On arrival, the weather had technically cleared up again, but dark clouds loomed ominously close. Tense stuff.

For a bigger park/resort it was equally ghost town-ish. 5 cars in the car park on arrival.

New Reoma World

Took the plunge and bought the entry ticket, then bravely bought ride tickets on route, with the ever present fear of approaching rain.

First priority was the big boy. A jet coaster type thing called Vivace. Couple of old staff blokes were happy to see some customers.

In classic ride type fashion the first drop is angled at about 20 degrees, but the low turn over the water was pretty damn forceful for one of these. Overall good fun, something a bit different.

This one was next.

Weird little mouse type thing with an interesting layout. It started to rain on us on the lift hill. Oh no.

RAN round to this one as it was the last remaining outdoor cred. Worryingly the op had just walked off but we were told to wait a couple of minutes while sheltering in the station.

It was a wet experience, but they did run it. Literally couldn’t have timed it better as the weather just got worse and worse and they closed the whole area around us immediately after. Good stuff.

Which only left this beast. Spaceship 2056.
Now featuring VR obviously, but at an additional cost. Politely declined the VR option to a little confusion from the staff, but the only other guests in the park had appeared out of nowhere next to us and did the same.

Waited around a while in the first part of the indoor queue where more guests magically materialised. They did want VR and were batched into a second queue where they got an extensive set of instructions about putting them on, while one of the staff members was falling asleep on his feet. Interesting to see the Japanese approach to hygiene is to supply a thin clinical looking eye mask with eye holes cut out, to go underneath the actual headset. I like that.

From there we were all led down some spacey themed corridors into a room with some screens. Had a bit of a pre-show talk, then got taken into a spacey themed lift with more pre-show talk. It was all rather cool in a low budget sort of way. Reminded me of a less physical Clone Zone.
The lift takes you to the station, where we were separated from the VR lot. Ha, they had to wait for the next train.

The ride was small but quite fun. It starts at the top and works its way down to the bottom lightly jolting around in the dark, like a discount Eurosat/Spatiale Experience. It ends at a separate offload station meaning riders skip the lift hill.

Fortunately there’s a sheltered seating area at the exit of the ride as it was proper chucking it down when we emerged. Sat and watched it for a good half an hour wondering how any of these places survive in this manner, while the staff walked back and forth with umbrellas smiling, waving and closing things down.

Once it got light enough to handle, we made our escape.

It’s a nice looking place with a great setting, just in the middle of nowhere with very little to do.
Needs investment, but it ain't gonna happen.

Up next – more of the same.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Day 5 - Miroku no Sato

The adventure continues in yet another seemingly abandoned park. We were the second car into the car park and that was it for the forseeable future.
They didn't have enough staff to simultaneously run both the ticket window and the turnstiles to get in, so you could potentially just walk in without much resistance. Japan though, wouldn't happen.

Paid our dues and headed to the back of the park for the big cred, where the quietness turned into a right pain. There were no staff at this end of the park at all, the cred had a sign about maintenance as well as there being tins of grease on the platform and dust covers on parts of the train. That... doesn't look good.

Also to my surprise, the engineers that we saw on our way up had turned on the Ferris Wheel for the morning and then left it running totally unsupervised. I could have let myself on or gone into the control box and had a play, had I fancied.

Back to the other end of the park then, which was quite the ordeal due to the weather suddenly being a lot hotter. A small school group had just entered the park and the little cred was up and running.

Grab that then, with it's cute caterpillar face. And what a layout - slow drop into a vicious unbanked corner, end.

The same maintenance sign from the other ride was also present here, just tucked to the side. So by Sherlock Holmes powers of deduction, it seemed like it was a sign generally used to shut something rather than having such a specific purpose. There's still hope.

With that in mind, went to the little service centre to try get some info on the other cred. Was greeted by an old man who, though friendly, was utterly useless. It was quite clear I don't speak the language and my questioning was all done through universally understandable gesturing and pointing with maps, clocks, etc. His solution to responding was to speak very slowly in Japanese with zero expression on his face and absolutely no attempt to gesture or mime in return.

Though we had other places to be today, I wasn't giving up yet. Walked once again to the other end of the park as I'd noticed other guests slowly heading that way. Maybe that will spark some life into them.

Breaking news in the industry - this ride is white on RCDB. It is now pink.

There was a little go karts thing at the top and that was being alternately operated by a single guy who was also now looking after the ferris wheel. The engineers also arrived back up the hill and began to carry out what I assumed to be a ground level track walk on the cred. Good sign.

Camped it out for a good hour in the shade, watching various other activities take place like turning the chain on and watching all the links. Gut instinct said this was all 'morning' checks rather than full blown maintenance, though the morning was fading fast. Rather than bother the engineers, decided to have an attempt at asking the lone operator what time it would open. Luckily he knew a smidge of english and managed to say "thirteen". 1pm then, good man.

Considering the park opened at 9 and that was another good hour of waiting, got fed up of sitting around there and went back to the car for a while, assessing the various travel options - there's still a long, long way to go today.

But I hadn't come here for nothing. Headed back in just before 1 to see it testing. Good.

More breaking news - it used to be called Himalaya Coaster, but is now known as Music Go- star. Isn't that something.

The Music part is reference to these speakers in the magnificent 900° helix and it also has a shiny new fountain plaza to go with it.
And wait, what's this? 2 of the cars are now backwards! This is too much excitement to handle.

So I got on it, backwards of course. It ain't very good.

Made it a bit more interesting, but it's a tad on the rough side and too jolty to provide legit airtime in the single drop and air time hill before it corners forever and ends.

The corner wasn't smooth then it does that dumb early Arrow style 'let's keep the banking of this transition continuing through this extended straight line', which is also the brake run, which is made from reverse kicker wheel tyres. That's just bad planning.

Tick.

Off we go.

Brazilian Park Washuzan Highland

Was quite excited for this place. Another nice location. Got my ride, a standup and a jet coaster with good views.

Got the the ticket window to be greeted with "English?" Yes mate.
A map was pulled out and the phrase "rollercoaster closed" was used, followed by marking an X in pencil against 3 creds.
So, all of them then?
Arigatō and sayonara.

The view of walking away disappointed.

Time for an esoteric reference to my Oakwood trip report.

Who needs Coasterforce when you can have Castleforce?

This is Okayama Castle.

Pretty isn't it.

The day didn't end there as we had to be in Osaka that night to drop off the car. It was gonna be intense, following the delays in the morning.
The sat nav in the car was nice enough to not be up to date and we ended up losing another half hour (and probably 20 quid in tolls) getting lost on a brand new highway that it didn't even know existed. "Keep right" my arse.

That was enough to tip the timing over the edge and unfortunately the people at the place had gone home. Managed to park it in their actual multi-storey overnight at least.

Up next - more intense timing. It's the Osaka way.

 

[Gavin]

Washuzan seems f**ked. I can't remember if it was on here or somewhere else, but the last report I saw from that place, which was quite a while ago, had the stand-up and ultra twister closed.

 

[TilenB]

Washuzan seems f**ked. I can't remember if it was on here or somewhere else, but the last report I saw from that place, which was quite a while ago, had the stand-up and ultra twister closed.

I found this reddit post from 8 months ago, which reported the Stand-up still being operational, although in rather dreadful looking condition.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/9m4zkx

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Washuzan seems f**ked. I can't remember if it was on here or somewhere else, but the last report I saw from that place, which was quite a while ago, had the stand-up and ultra twister closed.

Having now missed it, I'd welcome a full closure. 1 less Ultra Twister to complete the set!


Swung by the car place again in the morning to sort things out. They were cool with it, no additional cost.
Last time we were in Osaka we flat ran out of cash taking a train out to Hirakata park on the last day (creds at all costs) and then struggled to get anywhere from there as they don't tend to accept cards at train stations. To add to that excitement we started heading towards the wrong airport which is at the complete opposite end of the city, realised halfway, then strolled into the right one about half hour before the flight and got on.
This time we felt like experts, but it still seemed to take forever to get around and cash was still running surprisingly low. Japan's a harsh mistress.

There was one more park on the cards for this trip and I had pre-planned it up to the point of getting to a station that would serve as the ‘crossroads’ between going there or going straight to the airport.
We arrived at this station with an hour to spare. Asked the station guy how far it was to the stop we needed. 20 minutes each way. That leaves us 20 minutes to do the park. Eh, gotta try haven’t you.
Chucked the luggage in a locker and jumped on another train.

Day 6 - Misaki Park

Think I confused the poor woman at the ticket desk in my rush to get in this place and get it done. She kept asking about passports, which is also what the Japanese like to call park tickets that let you on the rides – ride passports. I kept responding with no, intending to pay per ride.
On reflection, I believe she was trying to give us a foreigner discount and use our passports as proof for this. I think we got the discount anyway, but the numbers didn't tie up with what I had researched previously and I was counting on that to not run out of cash again.

Yet another story of a completely deserted park with not enough staff to fill the gaps. All the ticket windows were closed and the ride ops had to be called over to run specific rides in the usual friendly manner. They also took cash in hand on the ride platform (with each transaction possibly being our last) instead of using their ticket system.

This beast was first. Doesn’t look very New any more.
Sketchy jungle mouse type thing. Bit of a laugh.

The most interesting one was this old 1950s Jet Coaster which was on top of what felt like a small mountain.

It had a lot of foliage to dive through and some decent speed and drops to it, even though it looks completely flat from the bits you can see.

Impressive stuff for what it was.

Last up was Child Coaster, scraping the coins together at this stage - I'm not leaving without completion.
Might be one of the closest rides I’ve come to not fitting in, it took sitting with my knees at about 45 degrees to successfully settle. Vicious but fun little thing, as these things often are when they’re not designed for you.

Park complete in under 20 minutes and back on the train. The ticket machine was doing a Plohn and not taking coins of a certain denomination, but luckily the man in the office was willing to receive.
Made it to the airport on schedule with the equivalent of 7p in cash left in the wallet.

Quite the cheeky +3. Needed that to make up for Washuzan Spiteland.

The End.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Summary Time

New creds - 16
Total parks - 9
Best coaster - Wood Coaster
Best park - Honestly? New Reoma World
Spites - 4/20 (20.0%)
Might have been low on numbers, but if you've seen my new list:
New top 10 rides - 2
Happy with that.

 

[roomraider]

Good TR Hearline. Always enjoy an update from these parks

I found this reddit post from 8 months ago, which reported the Stand-up still being operational, although in rather dreadful looking condition.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/9m4zkx

They actually refurbished the ride earlier this year. It no longer looks like this thankfully. The Jet Coaster has also just been refurbished apparently with the UT currently undergoing the same treatment. Quite why they were all shut during HC's visit I can't say. Clearly its a park thats been declining recently but at least they are putting some effort in suddenly.

You can see the newly painted standup in these pics. A friend of mine also visited earlier this year and said the sitdown train wasnt on the track but stand up was running. Bit unknown if this is permenant though.


Edit
A little research seems to suggest the rides are closed due to an incident with the train on the Stand-up where due to a bolt failure part of one of the cars came off. (no injuries)

Small news report in Japanese

ねじとナット緩みが部品落下原因　鷲羽山コースター事故で倉敷市見方：山陽新聞デジタル｜さんデジ

倉敷市下津井吹上の遊園地・鷲羽山ハイランドで５月、立ったまま乗るジェットコースター「スタンディング...

www.sanyonews.jp

I think this is what we refer to in the Offshore industry as a near miss. An incident that didnt cause any injury but could have been really severe had the circumstances been different.

We all know how serious the Japanese take incidents on rides. SD2K was closed for 3 years after the accident there.
not good news for the park especially as they seemed to be trying to do something good at least :/