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Just got word from the park owners - they got their approval and everything is back on track!

Yup!

Wow. What an obnoxious comment. I expect it from an Australian. Have you know those of us who had been before did NOT go back. It was only those who had never been. Maybe next time you should have a clue what you are taking about before you made an insanely stupid and rude comment.

The group that went had the best possible conditions for the park - Weather was good and the crowds were light. We also made sure we gave the group as much instruction and direction as possible on how to navigate the park to ensure they stayed ahead of the crowds. Still the worst park in the world no matter what any "first timers" might have to say that got lucky enough to have a tolerable visit in decent weather. In a way, it sort of bums me out when people don't get the full "Fuji-Q experience", but then again, I would only want to wish that on people we no longer allow to travel with us. This is my favorite image from one of our many awful visits to Fuji-Q which really sums up my thoughts on the place....

You're thinking of Rustusu in Northern Japan. And yeah, your assessment is about right. But the one thing about Japan is that there aren't a lot of "GREAT" coasters there, but there are a lot of really good ones, and almost more importantly, really unique ones.

I have never seen one in the USA. I think I've seen a knock-off or two in China, but I honestly don't remember which parks.

We are live tweeting about our adventures in Japan so follow along on Twitter @themeparkreview - Our next stop was Mitsui Greenland! This is a BIG update, so I'm going to let the photos do most of the talking, but I will say that this is one of my favorite "amusement parks" in Japan. Such a great place with SO MANY rides, and a huge variety as well! The park is an interesting setup as most of the rides are owned by different people. While they have a "pay one price" option, your wristband is scanned at each ride and I'm assuming that the operators get a small cut of each time someone rides or takes part in their attraction, as the operators are always trying to come up with unique ways to get people on their rides, and also ride multiple times. Onto some photos! Traveling by train is the BEST way to see Japan! It's amazing how awesome their rail system is! Today, Russell is playing the part of "old man with the cane." I love these signs on the trains! So amazing! From the train station to the park, we travel by taxi Amazing Race style! Arriving at the park, the GIANT Ferris Wheel dwarfs everything else at the park! Yay! TPR welcome sign! Time to hang out and have some fun! I love the look of this park! They have such a random collection of coasters and flat rides here. Of course, Joe goes for the powered kiddie first! Sadly, the Vekoma suspended coaster was closed today, but that's ok, there is plenty of other rides to keep us busy! The dual-track sit down/stand up Togo is actually a lot of fun! And they have a ban on selfie sticks at this park, which we fully endorse! Here's the stand-up train! Here's the sit-down. Oddly enough, this ride is actually REALLY GOOD! Unlike the Togo installations in the US, most of the ones in Japan are fairly smooth and very rideable! I love how Mitsui includes some games like archery into their pay-one-price ticket! Yes, they hand you a bow and arrow! And you shoot! Not many of us are good at it, but when a park hands you a bow and arrow...for free...you don't complain! Yay for Sphinxy: The Ride! In honor of Jurassic World, we are going to get eaten by Gao the dinosaur! Gao is one of those funky Japanese "jet coasters" that's actually pretty damn big, very long, but sort of doesn't do much. They are all fun, but feel like a "huge mine train." And of course on Gao, you get eaten by the dinosaur! The theming is great on this ride! And some of the track sections sure are... "funky!" Gotta love the front of the train with the dinosaur driving it. And yes, the headlights actually work at night! Next up...spinning! Jack and family managed to spin a LOT! Russell hanging out with some of his favorite old buddies. At the top of the hill was a really whacked out haunted walk through and the alpine slide. After walking up what seemed like the amount of stairs that would take you to space, you see cute and funny scenes like this. And some seriously creepy stuff that will haunt your nightmares for quite some time. The girls decided not to be traumatized by the 74 thousand stairs and creepy images, so they did the kiddie swings instead. Goal this year...don't send anyone to the hospital! Already we are doing MUCH better than TPDave and Scottish Steve did on our last visit! "Hey look! All my skin is still in tact!" This is what Scottish Steve and TPDave DIDN'T do on our last visit! No one fell off the sled... ...No one left pieces of human flesh on the track! Success!! "No pictures, no pictures! Please contact my agent!" All that's left of the old shuttle loop is one loop....still kind of want to ride it! lol BEST part of this park? Japanese McDonalds! Best part of Japanese McDonalds? Shaka Shaka Chicken! Yes! It's still here! This is seriously a highlight! Not sure why this never made it to the USA, but a bastardized version did make it to Europe. There's the chicken in the bag. You pour in the awesome sauce and you shake the crap out of it! And Ta-Da! You have one of the most glorious, blazing hot fast food items ever created! Yum! I don't know what exactly is going on here... Time for some more random dark rides and things... This one is a shooter with lots of funky Japanesey stuff. This one is a haunted house ride where you wear headphones... The audio portion is actually really well done! And you see screwed up stuff like this... ...and this! Next up was the candle walk-through where you hold a candle and try to keep it as still as possible while things are jumping out at you. The more still you keep your candle, the more points you get! Indoor coaster with random space theming! Yay! Tons of flat at this park. This Starflyer was AWESOME! Got video of it...will post soon! They also had one of these awesome Togo Paratrooper/Enterprise rides. They lock the seats in place while they swing and you get a really bizarre ride out of it! Yes! Chair lift of death! One tiny seat - no restraints! This translates into "Sit your ass down...don't fall. Thank you!" And yet another park where they just hand you an animal to hang out with! While this guinea pig was not presented in a basket, it was still cool! They have dogs in their petting zoo! Yes! Most Japanese don't have bigger pets because of smaller living areas. So they are in the petting zoo! Still one of my favorite coaster views - Sitting behind a dinosaurs butt while ascending towards and GIANT Ferris Wheel! Really do love the theming of this ride! Weird how the dinosaur is going to get eaten by the dinosaur! Such cannibalistic creatures! A little more of the layout of Gao. Jack doesn't like Ferris Wheels...at ALL...so we are taking him on as many as we can this trip, because we are really nice like that. The view of the park is fantastic! Obviously, as you can see, Jack agrees! lol Another view of Gao.... And yes, they have an Ultra Twister here...and we will get to that in a moment... This Ferris Wheel is about 350 feet all...and it's AWESOME! Here's the Mitsui hotel...looks kind of cool. Jack did it! 350 feet up, all the way around! And he's ready for his next giant wheel! Ice House credit! Taking a ride on the Go Karts. There seriously are just so many rides in this park! Spent the whole day having fun here. The moms kicked butt in the "maze" We've now seen these at a couple of parks and they seem to be fairly new in Japan. They are awesome with all the different challenges you have to do! The girls were the losers! lol Ok, so the Ultra Twister at Mitsui has this awesome thing you can do.... ...if you ride the coaster ten times in a row, they give you a stick to personalize to put on the wall! It's a clever way to get more riders on the coaster! This one is very smooth and a LOT of fun! Some people do group sticks to theme them! We see you Funashi! I really love these coasters! It's a shame only one made it to the USA, and it wasn't really taken that good care of. I rode ten times and I got my stick! Here's my name in English! And here it is in Japanese! lol Together, we rode the Ultra Twister 50 times! lol Our group sticks to be displayed on the wall! We also did it with another Japanese group! They were awesome to hang out with! In case you wondered what to do in the bathroom... Oh, yeah, they have an SLC here too! Such an awesome park! One of my favorites in Japan! Here you can see the map of the park...so many rides!!! Heading back home now... We love seeing Japan by train! Tonights first dinner...awesome Indian food! Even the girls loved all the breads! Second dinner... Yakitori! WANT!! MORE!!! OMG CHEESE WRAPPED IN BACON!!! CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF THIS!!! And we will end this update with some Japanese porn, because...why not?

Two Words: JAPANESE JAWS!!! Our visit to USJ overall was absolutely amazing! One of the best parks in the world! I'll post a full report later, but for now... Pros: Jaws, Space Fantasy, Back to the Future, Spider-Man, Backdraft, 3-D 4K screens in Forbidden Journey, Happiness Cafe! WOW! Cons: Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We had one of the worst theme park experiences in this area ever. Very disappointing although we didn't let it ruin our day. Just another example of how I feel Harry Potter is killing the awesome vibe Universal parks used to have. More on that later...

I think we are actually going back to Shibuya tomorrow. I'll take some pics if it's still there!

Yup! It's great! Make sure you do the cable car that takes you from one side of the park to the other. The view is amazing!

Such a great coaster, but...maybe it's just me, or maybe an artifact of the 60 fps video, but it seems to be dragging pretty badly there. Lake Compounce is my home park and I get on BD -many- times a season, and that just looks slow for some reason. Agreed. It would be interesting to see this one on a split screen with TPR's older POV of this to compare speed. There were only two people on the train during this shoot and it was while the park was closed so I'm sure that has something to do with it. I dunno, I still thought it was running pretty damn awesome!

The next part of our adventure took us to Space World on the southern island of Tokyo, Kyushu. About 1,100km from Tokyo! So, it's far! We started by spending our last days in Tokyo hanging out, wandering around, shopping, and eating before boarding 6 hours worth of bullet trains heading to Fukuoka to visit some parts in the south! Traveling 1,100 miles by train in 6 hours doing about 180mph is a pretty damn awesome way to travel! Space World really is a great park. It has three decent "big coasters" - Venus, Zaturn, and Titan. Venus being that sort weird "Space Shuttle Coaster" that was designed by Anton Schwarzkopf and built by Maurer. Titan is that "Fourth Arrow Hyper Coaster" built around the same time as Desperado and Pepsi Max and up until just this year had trains that looked almost exactly like Magnum's. (New trains by S&S/Sansei with music system in them.) And Zaturn is an Intamin launched coaster, and IMO, the best coaster in the park! Our day at Space World was cut a little short due to weather, but thankfully we had some free time and those who missed stuff (or cared) could easily come back when the weather had improved. Anyway, onto some photos & video... Wandering around Tokyo checking out the lights of Shinjuku! This area of Tokyo is one of my favorites. Fantastic looking at night with some amazing food, shops, arcades, and more! And when we say "food" we really mean Yakitori! So much awesome in here! Next day we took a trip to Harajuku where we found a stroller of cats! lol Yes, we are at "takeashit" street! lol And of course at "takeashit" street you can find the Sushi Ninja Toilet! Of course! Duh!!!! We also found some amazing fresh crepes! OMG! Sooooo good! Kristen got one filled with Japanese love! Harajuku is the girls fashion district of Tokyo. You can find all kinds of trendy clothes, cosplay costumes, and just some awesome stuff. I don't even know what to make of this! Ahh, yes, the infamous "upskirt girls" capsule machines. These are tiny action figures of young girls where you can *just* see up their skirts. SERIOUSLY! This is a thing!!! Now THIS is my kind of store! We put these signs up on TPR, and people get pissed at us. They put them up in Tokyo, and people respect them! More random Japanese stuff you can buy in Harajuku. (I bought like ten of these outfits for myself!) We decided to eat at this Italian place for two reasons: 1. We wanted to see how the Japanese do Italian food and 2. There are boobs. Mostly #2. Caprese salad was absolutely legit and fantastic! This was a "fondue cheese spaghetti bolognese" and OMG it was double orgasmic. Cheese pizza was also totally legit! Yes, Tamagotchi is still very much a thing in Japan to the point where it has it's own department store! You can totally bling out your Tamagotchi! Everything you need for your Tamagotchi world lives here! And you can even EAT them, too! This is probably my favorite arcade in Tokyo. Five floors of all sorts of games with a "girls only" floor on the top! These "pods" are super popular in Japan now. I've seen them in a few arcades in the states, but they are everywhere here now. The BEST THING EVER!!! They have Frozen songs on the drum game now!!! Best of BOTH worlds!!!! (Says Hannah Montana) I'm sure you'll recognize some of the characters from this game! Whatever game this is, I'm totally buying it! We had the chance to get everyone together to hang out for a meal at the top of our hotel looking out over Tokyo! Megan sits in the corner because that's where she belongs! Here is the view from the top of the Shingawa Prince! Fantastic! I love looking down at the train station and watching the Shinkansen go through! And at night Tokyo looks even more awesome! It's time to go 180mph for the next 6 hours down to Fukuoka! Our first stop in Fukuoka was the awesome Yodobashi store so the camera geeks can have lens envy over all the cool stuff they have here! They also have rows and rows of capsule machines! In the arcade, they had the AWESOME Super Mario Bros coin pushing machine! This game is just as cool as playing an actual SMB game! You go through different levels and boss battles, the machine drops coins, balls, and all kind of crazy stuff happens! We filled up on Mister Donut every morning. Another failed US business that still lives on in Japan! Hooray! We made it to Space World! The mascots from the park came out to greet us! They have ever seen so many freakishly weird Westerners in their life! They were awesome though, they had so much fun with our group! This is the most action Thad is going to get this entire trip! And when one giant Godzilla-sided American isn't good enough for this bird, why not have two? There is Titan, that "other" Arrow hyper coaster that people have heard of, but not many coaster geeks have ridden. The new trains feature a soundtrack system where you can choose the song. I of course chose "Naked!" The new trains are awesome looking! Very much like the ones you see on El Loco coasters! And with a 48" height restrictions even smaller kids can ride! Next up, Zaturn! This ride gets a huge thumbs up from the group! It's basically "Japanese Stealth" - Short, quick ride, but a LOT of fun! Nice floater air over the hill into the brakes! Ready for another run? Up and away they go! Here's a POV of Zaturn we shot from our last visit: "Hey, Chris! Look! We found a REAL Space Shuttle!!!" I fully endorse this way of thinking! While we waited for Venus to open, we took a ride on Space World's indoor coaster! Venus was closed due to rain... ...but they were doing everything they could to get it open for us! It really is just a twisted mess of track. Thank you, Anton! Yay! We managed to get some of us on the coaster, but then they had to close it again due to weather. Thankfully, those that needed to ride it (or knew they might not be back to the park anytime soon) got back to it to get their ride in! Here's a POV of Venus we shot from our last visit: I'm not sure what is going on here, but I'm pretty sure it's like sumo dating action figures or something... YES... once again this is a "thing." And when we are hungry where do we go? Yakitori! This place in Fukuoko is my favorite Yakitori I've had in Japan! Soooooo good! It's just outside the Hataka station, down the street to the right, and down the stairs. Amazing! Yes. That is BACON WRAPPED CHEESE and it is AMAZING!!! This is a capsule machine that are action figures of "girls squished by random stuff." Yes...this is a "thing" here in Japan! lol Because the world needs tiny action figures of girls squished by random stuff! And then there is this. I'm not sure why it exists, but it does. This is pretty kick ass. And for the coaster geeks that need to watch our POVs 24/7 - this is for you! And we will end this report with this... Because after this... There isn't anything else to say! lol POST YOUR COMMENTS!!!! Rebel_[R]_(Real).nlpack ...and VERY elaborate fountains!

New Boulder Dash POV! Be sure to watch this in beautiful 60fps!

Gonna move this to the main forum. With us being in Japan right now, not much time to respond at the moment, sorry.

From Screamscape: So.... Universal Studios Japan is getting an awesome Dinosaur themed ride in their Jurassic Park area and IOA gets a King Kong ride in their Jurassic Park area... Makes PERFECT sense! Oh, Japan... How you continue to do things so much better than any of the U.S. parks!

Yesterday was Space World, today was Mitsui Greenland. Other than having to dodge a bit of rain, it has been a fantastic two days! Updates coming soon!

I'm thinking once a year this song will surface and it has to be pretty spontaneous. This one just kind of happened! But the airtime log flume is certainly a future contender.

I would have to imagine that a good amount of slides from Wet N Wild will be coming to Volcano Bay. Especially the newer ProSlide stuff they've put in over the last ten years. I mean, if the park is closing Dec 31st, 2016 and the Volcano Bay isn't opening until 2017, that just seems to make a lot of sense to me to bring those slides over. Should be interesting to see how this all pans out. I have to be honest, though, I won't miss Wet N Wild. We still haven't even gone there once since we moved to Orlando.

Our next adventure was Nasu Highland Park, which is a couple of hours north of Tokyo by train & taxi in a more mountainous resort area of Tokyo. It snows here during the winter and this is the park that we filmed our famous 'roller coasters in the snow' video at many years ago. We really like this park a lot. It's hard to describe because like a big American park like a Six Flags or Cedar Fair park, it has a lot of big roller coasters, some petty good ones, decent amount of flat rides, a couple of dark rides, and really is a "full day" amusement park. But it doesn't look or feel like any US amusement park. There are things very uniquely Japanese about it and I'll get to some of those in the photos below. There are a couple of coasters here, namely Big Boom and Spin Turn, while they aren't going to break my "top 20" list by any means, they are very SOLID and really fun rides! Some of the better in Japan so that certainly makes this park well worth the visit! Remember, we are live tweeting from Japan so follow us on Twitter @themeparkreview - Onto some photos... Shall we start the morning by grabbing a beer from the hotel vending machine? Could you imagine how well that would work in America if hotel vending machines had beer in them? lol We have arrived at Nasu Highland! Thank you Woopy! It's a beautiful day out today, and should be awesome to hang out with some friends at this park! They have a lot of random fun collection of rides. Gotta love anything called the "Hello Kitty Pop N Smile" ride! Gotta find someone to bring back here later! <3 First coaster of the day! The Batflyer! Or is that the Bat Fryer? Hello Elissa & Kristen! There are not many Bat Fryer's left in the world! Although I think Japan has two or three of them. You can ALMOST fit two "western-sized" adults in the cars! Wheeeee! The are short rides, low capacity, but they are actually kind of fun! Love the super huge pirate ship they have here! The lower section of the park, where they have their four bigger coasters just looks like a mess of track with them all built on top of each other. And this is BIG BOOM! Big Boom is a super funky ride but it's a LOT of fun! First off, it has this really steep drop. It's not vertical by any means, but it certainly FEELS like it, and you really are cruising pretty fast when you get to this point and get whipped over that drop! Some thumbs up for Big Boom! I personally prefer the crazy airtime you get in the front seat! You get some awesome airtime over this hill going into the vertical loop. It feels like straight down! Loop-de-Loop! Gotta love the crazy amount of tires they use to stop the trains at the end of the ride! It had rained a bit during our visit, so the ride op was out there blow drying the tracks to get the ride re-opened sooner! I love Japan! Here's a video of Big Boom we shot in 2011 to get an idea of what the ride is like: Spin Turn is another really crazy ride! So at the start, it goes kind of slow...but if the cars are balanced just wrong...by the end of it you will spin more than on almost any other spinning coaster! It's crazy! Camel Coaster is pretty much your typical Japanese "Jet Coaster..." Which kind of means it's really big, really long, but doesn't do anything that special. It's sort of like a really big mine train. The section has this bizarre USA 1950s theme to it... ...with a decent collection of cars! Hmmm...Selfie Sticks or Frozen? I wonder which I'll choose? WE ARE ON A LOG FLUME! Check out our new video! It really pissed a bunch of people off so that means it must be AWESOME! lol And of course VIDEO of "We Are On A Log Flume..." "They are on a log flume..." So the park has a Vekoma SLC.... With an unhealthy amount of head padding... I have no idea what they did to this one, but it really is one of the ROUGHEST SLC's I've been on. It's like T2 bad. The extra padding DID help, but WOW! It was brutal! Here's the POV of Nasu's SLC. As you can see, this version is... um... "Not Good!" lol You cannot bring ice cream on the SLC...just in case you were wondering. Nasu Highland has this amazing food option.... You can rent a stick or a fishing pole, go to the river and catch a fish, then they will cook it for you right on the grill! So insane! Instead of catching a fish, we opted for the "Itarian Corner" for some food... Um...well, actually maybe we'll just stick to the Japanese corner... I pretty much live off Katsu Curry and Yakitori when in Japan. I don't think there is anything wrong with that! This place also had "Gyoza Curry" which was delicious! Yin even found a "Green Tea Churro!" Yummu! There really are a lot of double-decker carousels in Japan. Tokyo DisneySea has an amazing one that we will see later in the trip. Kristen had some good luck at the claw machine and will be bringing "Fluff" home a few new friends. The park had this indoor "kids discovery" center and one of the exhibits was all about roller coasters. This was seriously amazing as it showed different tracks, one of them that actually worked, and the other two that didn't. You would roll the balls down the track and one of them would make it and two of them would not. It was kind of like a real-life RCT! Especially since there was an area where you could build your own coaster track! Joe was very sad that the rain closed down the powered coaster...maybe next time, Joe. Oh, the park had one of these awesome safari shooting rides! You get in a little jeep, pull out your gun... ...and then start shooting animals! It's so un-PC it's awesome! And of course no Japanese park would be complete without a huge Ferris Wheel... Yesterday's Ferris Wheel was theme to cheese...this one is themed to fruit...of course! Two of the cars on this wheel were specially designed for "lovers." So of course I took Jack into one of them! "Hey baby! Those are some cute rodents on your shoulder!" The lovers car was amazing! It had speakers so you can plug in your own iPod to get a groovy lovers mix playing. Stuffed animals, and even a mirror. If you're gonna have sex on a Ferris Wheel, might as well do it in STYLE! "Come a bit closer, honey!" I'm not sure what this is, but I'm assuming that says something like "Pay an extra amount and you'll get a key to this box which includes even MORE weird lovers stuff!" The view of the park from the top of the Ferris Wheel...AMAZING! This maze was new for this year... ...it's this crazy multi-level maze filled with different challenges. It was actually really awesome! They have one of these weird Togo-made half paratrooper/half-enterprise wheels where they seats lock half way around to flip you upside down. It's weird, but fun. YES!!!! The powered coaster re-opened! This made Joe VERY happy! Thanks again Nasu for another fun day! We will be back! Quatro_[R]_Real.nlpack The Missile_[R]_(Real).nlpack

Hey everyone! Thanks to Facebook feeling the need to change things...AGAIN... we have added a new BBCODE when creating a post. You'll see "fbvideonew" as one of the options. If you want to embed a FB video into the forum, you'll want to grab the URL of the video. It should look like this: And make sure there isn't anything after the last / and then put the "fbvideonew" BBCode around it. The end result should look something like this: [fbvideonew] [/fbvideonew]

And this of course was awesome on so many levels!

Yeah, it's most certainly not anything to do with TPR. This is some weird error on your end.

Tourist Trap. It looks very cool and I've walked by it a couple of times, but it's a place that mostly tourists go to get "weird Japanese stuff" but I find it to me more "fabricated" weird Japanese stuff instead of the cool things you see every day while just wandering around the country. I'm sure it's a fun show and I'd like it if I went, but it's just not my thing. I prefer hanging out and doing more "locals" type stuff and blending in with the naturally strange and awesome culture instead of things that are purposely meant to be "weird" if that makes any sense.

Seems to be working again... Just uploaded this: [coastertube]http://www.themeparkreview.com/coastertube/play.php?vid=silver_bullet_frontier_city_hukw[/coastertube] Try to keep your videos under 150mb

We have been there many times. We've been doing Japan trips for over ten years now usually going there once a year. It's not the same. TRUST ME!!!