kayoss

LOL, me & my friend did the exact same thing... waited 45 min for superman and came back later only to be on the 'doomed' car. What was really weird about that is although I've heard rumors of an Intamin Reverse Freefall Coaster's fail-safe system with the permanent polarized magnets in the maintenance bay and all... I could've sworn that I heard it only happened about 5 or so times in the ride's history. Has it actually happened more then that?! Although the coaster nerd in me loved seeing the fail-safe system work and thusly safe my life, I'm totally stunned as to how or why such a massive failure could occur. Needless to say... coming back down the 400ft drop and realizing it WASN'T SLOWING DOWN and BLOWING BACK through the station at 100+ mph before being hard yanked by the fail-safe magnets was certainly my most thrilling, genuinely fear-filled coaster experience in my 800+ coaster career. Hello wall! Glad I didn't go through you!! Seriously... we were almost at the END of the maintenance bay! They had to wench us back into the station... ... just imagine if we had been ACErs! We would've definitely blown through, and ended up on Gold Rusher!!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!!! Soon my friend's smug attitude will be replaced by 100 MPH BACK THROUGH THE STATION FEAR!! Superman kind of looked like it wanted to kill me when I took this photo of it at Golden Hour.

I have the re-scored soundtrack for this. PM me for an MP3. Ditto for Splash Mountain Tokyo...

At least you all now know what the 'violent urinating cherub' I mentioned forever ago finally looks like! I told you Robb!!

As someone who has actually tried just this, let me just crush your dreams now: the operator actually laughed at me at called me "baka" for even suggesting such a thing. The indifference they treat their guests with is just further proof that the operations are in fact intentional, and is the hype that keeps the place packed.

I don't know why people who have been to the park *once* keep saying how we are "unlucky" about our visits. We have been there multiple times over several years and seen the EXACT same horrible operations each visit. Seems to me that either these one-off experiences were the "lucky" ones or maybe some people just have a higher tolerance for poor park operations. It just seems odd to me that the people who have been to the park many times seem to tell the same story we do, but people who have only been there once seem to love it and had the best time ever. Just sounds a bit fishy to me.... --Robb Yeah, I totally agree. My two visits to the park and I was turned away (with both times waiting over 2 hours) from Dodonpa. There's absolutely no excuse for the complete lack of empathy for their guests. Sure, it's Japan where folks don't complain like they do in America, but Fuji-Q is truly run like they intentionally want to make sure you will not be able to do all the big rides in a single visit. Actually, I think that's exactly how the park is run... and in a horribly twisted way... they may be on to something. The park is consistently a mob-scene. No matter when you go, even a weekday in the middle of exams week, it's crowded. Because of the unique 'line-culture' of Japan (which isn't exaggerated at all) some sadistic and evil japanese businessman probably observed this, calculated the savings in operations and maintenance by the running the park as badly as they do, and because of their high-profile rides and the desire for people to ride them, created his own endlessly replenishing 'huge lines everywhere wow' cash machine. There's simply no other reason for the park to be 1) so damn popular 2) run inefficient in the most efficient culture in the world Totally legitimate operations gripes aside, the park (including the much mentioned Haunted Hospital) has 5 OUTSTANDING completely original walkthroughs/experiences. The coffin show thing has the most OMFG!! moment of any theme park attraction in the world (if you don't know it's going to happen) and all the walkthroughs, from the crazy-cute Katamari Damacy-like Lucca Town, to the hilarious and incredibly fun 'hidden treasure' walkthrough/experience to the AMAZING thomas dark ride with it's ROTATING SWITCH tracks... to the GUNDAM ride... even the REALLY interesting architecture museum (to the right of Dodonpa... it's easily missed) this park frustratingly has some of the best theme park experiences I've ever had in all my travels. There's even an awesome binaural sound haunted experience which is so 'wtf', I couldn't stop laughing. I also liked their terrific flat ride collections, with the Santa Clara Great America "Octopus" clone being especially nostalgia masturbatory, and their adorable 'mini log flume' in thomas land being the only one of it's kind I can think of in a theme park. For haunted house/walkthrough/interactive f*d up experience junkies, this place is your DisneySea. Seriously. If you go to this park just after opening (when everyone rushes to the big attractions) and head straight to the haunted walkthrough.. it's a walk-on (and remains so for the first two hours)... also all the other amazing walkthroughs, dark rides, and such are practically empty since everyone is trying to go on the three big coasters or the retarded raft ride. If you go to the park without your heart set on the big rides, just sticking to the amazing experience ones, you'll probably have a great time and not have the frustrating experience like so many others have had (myself included). It's so frustrating that I still haven't been on those big ones despite my two visits, but even more frustrating that I'm sure I'll be back, just because the third time is the charm, and know even if I don't get to go on Dodonpa yet again, those walkthroughs are absolutely the best of their kind in the world.

I'm actually not sure why that SBNO coaster has remained but others have been removed. Probably to draw attention to it in hopes that another park would pick up a "top 10 woodie" for cheap. If I recall it's been SBNO since 2006. I think it's a combination: Does anybody know if Aska has been removed? It hasn't. It's still there, and according to these pictures taken September of this year, it looks to be in pretty decent condition. http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread.asp?fid=1&threadid=59791&currpage=1&pp#post0 These new current pics of Dreamland (which I CAN'T BELIEVE slipped under my radar) are just spectacular... look at the fountain's pipe system... the growth coming up down the fake "main street". It gives me freakin' chills! Next trip to Japan, I'm so going there with an expensive camera and a ninja plan to take like 5000 photos. Just imagine what the 'build your own theming' attraction looks like NOW! God, I'm squealing like a little girl now... FYI... the UER (of which I'm a huge fan and increasingly frequent contributer) is a hobby of mine... everyone should check out their insanely large photo database of abandoned theme parks from all over the world. Mmmmmmmm. Post-apocalyptic Disneyland.

I agree with you Eric... I've gotten the Xtreme pass ever since it's been offered... but this year I was shocked to see that Flash Pass is no longer included. A "discount" ? With no word on even how much the discount will be? I wish someone could shed some light on this, because if it's anything other then $5 or so, they've lost a customer. The free flash passes actually got me to drive to and visit the park. With a $75 difference, the parking simply isn't enough to warrant the price.

Why? You can still ride it (and unquestionably the best version) at Universal Studios Japan. As Japan's BTTF attraction is only 6 years old, there's no chance of them ditching it.

So glad you caught Musical Circus this time around, Robb. As I said last year, not only was it my favorite ride of Parque Espana (yes, coasters aside), it's on my top 5 lists of Dark Rides ANYWHERE. It's simply one of the weirdest, tripped-out, messed up, and technically impressive dark rides ever built. Best of all, it's totally original and has an insanely catchy theme song of it's own. Something cool I heard from a friend at Walt Disney Imagineering: the incredibly complex ride system used in Musical Circus was actually designed for a never-built ride for an unnamed Pavilion at Epcot. It makes a whole lot of sense for an Epcot ride if you think about it, kind of a "Carousel Theater 2.0". The capacity on Musical Circus is ENORMOUS, especially it's capability of 5 (!) circular platform ride vehicles, that not only lift up into the show scenes, rotate 360 degrees around, move DOWN out of the show scenes and then amazingly move across forward (and sometimes diagonally) through the tripped out fiber-optic starfield world. The ride system is crazy expensive, which explains why we never got it at Epcot. It's not trackless (the LPS system used in Pooh's Hunny Hunt & Aquatopia at TDR) but rather the guided wire system used in Ellen's Energy Adventure and the 4th Dimension sequence in Orlando's Tower of Terror. This tech masturbation alone would give hardcore ride geeks like me a reason to go see it, but what makes Musical Circus really awesome is that it’s SO MESSED UP (in a good way!!) Here’s the story, roughly translated: it begins all weird and happy with forest creatures singing and stuff, but then the mischievous bunny character decides to wander away from the forest to find adventure. So you descend out of his forest home, down into the fiber optic world, then up to the next circular scene, the crazy psycho circus world, where an ENORMOUS, incredibly impressive (genuine full-scale animatronics, mind you, like almost everything in Musical Circus) jack-in-the-box guy says there’s no escape. They then taunt the rabbit, calling his songs stupid, and then threatening to eat him, as well as all his friends (referring to us, the audience). Then, the coolest most demonic looking sequence in a dark ride ever happens. Hundreds of little red glowing evil eyes start to pop up everywhere, and fork and knife sounds are heard. They begin chanting something close to ‘delicious, delicious” as the ride vehicle spins faster around the in the show scene. More and more creepy characters appear, and they begin singing an evil ‘we’re going to eat you, delicious delicious” song, as yet more eyes, fiber optics, jack-o-lanterns, dancing dinner plates, and other disturbing animatronics come out from hiding behind trees, bushes, and even the ground. Finally, you descend again, move diagonally through fibre optic kingdom, then are lifted up into the only 3D Movie portion of the ride, where the “Princess of Music and Imagination” makes a promise to stop the nightmares for our bunny hero on the condition he returns home. The best part of the 3D Movie sequence is the jarring transition between the cartoon animatronics world, and the very “Star Wars Christmas Special”-costumed live action Japanese actress which seems to not only be inspired by that, but also strangely reminiscent of Angelica Huston’s “transformed and orange” state at the end of Disney’s Captain EO. Yes, from now on, our bunny hero has learned his lesson… we descend down into the star field once more, then up into the first show scene (now redressed) for the INSANE musical so-happy-your-head-WILL-pop-or-we-may-keep-you-here-forever original song. “Amigo Amigo”. At least 50 animatronics sing in this scene (including singing MUSHROOM GUYS!), with probably about a hundred more moving figures (but not full AA’s) adding even more disorientation. Finally, at the climax of the chorus, the bunny waves goodbye, and rows and rows of daisies ‘grow’ all around the theater in a way so over the top and elaborate…. that you swear there must’ve been something in that iced beverage you had a moment ago. I’m so glad someone got some footage of the ride. I’ve been to the park twice now, and both times wasn’t able to get a perfect recording. I’ll be happy to share what I do have though. All hail musical circus!! Lol….

In the last couple days of it's life, it was indeed a restaraunt combined with the walkthrough

OMG! Talk about being out of the loop! Haven't checked the boards in a while, and I just realized you guys were in Japan. I've been in Japan for two weeks now (totally coincidentally)... I've been mostly working... but managed to fit in visits to TDR, Parque Espana, and Spaland (although I got there and found them closed.... not fun...) Anyway.... reading about your recent trip to Fuji-Q made me remember my horror trip there last year. But just think Robb, at least you GOT to ride a coaster! I waited 3 hours for Dodonpa, it broke just as I was boarding, they gave me that useless pass.... and by then the lines were ‘cut off’ for both the 4D and that big black one. And it was 2PM... and the park closed at 6PM. The worst part of the experience was that (of course) Dodanpa NEVER reopened, and they wouldn’t let me use that pass for another ride (like on Eekanaja or whatever it’s called) even though they dispatched train after train with an absurd amount of empty seats. It’s weird to say this about a theme park, but the operations are not only reprehensible, they’re downright cruel. Especially when compared to EVERY OTHER JAPANESE theme park (which always seem to have friendly, helpful people) it just blows my mind that they wouldn’t try and make a visitor (ESPECIALLY a foreign visitor who has obviously travelled thousands of miles to visit their VERY out-of-the-way park) try and have a good time. It almost seems like that park purposely rips people off through it’s operations. Actually, that makes the most sense given it’s consistent ly awful operations combined with absurdly high admission fees. The truly sad thing is that the non-big-3 attractions are really quite excellent. I love dark rides and walkthroughs, and Fuji-Q has the best & weirdest walkthroughs of any park I’ve ever been to. From the weird “standing coffins” theater experience, the ‘sanrio-like-scalding-pink-dollhouse-anime-cute-girl-on-crack walkthrough’, the ‘mystery cave’, the ‘haunted dojo’.... and of course the simply stunning Haunted Hospital... it’s just an AMAZING collection! Even the dark ride in Thomas Land is REALLY well done... did you guys notice the locking and rotating switch-tracks? Totally unexpected... and really high quality. The log flume is old but fun, and the mini-log flume in Thomas Land is actually very unique. Even the retarded Gundam attraction simulator is fun... as is the weird indoor coaster, the ‘Revolution at Great America in Santa Clara upside-down flat ride’ that’s actually INVERTED style, the old weird 70s-era Amusement Park flats that scatter the park... there’s just too much here to totally dismiss it... because there’s so much that’s so rare and so unique. This park really has the potential to be a fantastic one. It certainly has a great backdrop. That makes it even worse.... it’s just so depressing that the big rides have such awful awful operations. I’ve never wanted to go to a park again as badly as I don’t. I didn’t this trip. Sounds like I made the right choice. Anyhow.... tomorrow (Tuesday, September 18th Japan-time) is my last day in Japan, and I’m going to be at DisneySea. Is anyone there right now? I would love to meet up with some people... that would be a blast.

lol... I've never even been inside the thing. But a closed Skull restaraunt is just about the best thing in the world to take pics of

Decided to put up a page for Skull Kingdom, including a gallery of photos I took in May 2007. http://web.mac.com/okwhatev/Kayoss_Travels/Skull_Kingdom.html The gallery includes the ability to upload your own photos (or video) and I encourage everyone who has any to upload them. Even though I've never been inside, I'll miss the novelty of the building. Be careful! It will eat you!

I don't know man.... something about feet? being.... you know... ripped off ?

Yeah, I'm also interested in the inverted/floorless system for the coaster. It really sounded interesting. To answer your second question, yes the boat ride closed in '99 I believe. Does the flame continue to shoot out from the cave? That would be seriously funny if true. What's with closed boat tours in the Florida parks? Animal Kingdom, Islands of Adventure, and Magic Kingdom (around the castle) all had them and they're all gone. BOO!

Do you get a discount at either the Cold Stone, Papa Johns, or Johnny Rocket's with a Six Flags Magic Mountain "Xtreme" pass? *crossing fingers*

again..... isn't Dodonpa's 0-106.9Mph is 1.8 seconds the undesputed champ? After all, we're talking about the ride I personally waited 1 1/2 hours to ride before it broke down just as I was about to board. Although I never got to ride it (yet) it did look much faster then Xcellerator, and honestly, quite painful. Most people agree that Dodonpa is probably the edge of.... shall we say.... good taste... with it's G's. If there's one that's faster, point me in it's direction so I may also wait 1 1/2 hours to ride it only to be turned away. (can anyone tell I'm still upset?)

Doesn't Dodonpa in Fuji-Q Highland have the fastest acceleration by quite a large margin?

Sunsplash actaully has a couple of different versions of the toilet bowls, plus they have NorCal's only Master Blaster, so there's definitely more than one good slide there to make the drive worth it: http://roseville.golfland.com/attractions.aspx#SunSplash%20Waterpark Man...... now Northern CA gets a Master Blaster too?! Can't believe I'm jealous over something in N CA (especially since I grew up there and moved to LA to escape!)

Looks are deceiving. There's just something unique and freaky about flying off a 'track' and 'crash-landing' into a pool

Ah Fuji-Q.... nothing like waiting 3 hours to board a coaster (Dodonpa) only to have it break down, and then refused ENTRY TO CUE for Eekanjia whatever-it's-called because the line could 'possibly extenend after hours'. Did I mention I went on a non-holiday weekday and it was 2:30PM? I love the IDEA of Fuji-Q, HATE the management.

are there any differences in the florida or japanaese versions compared to the Hollywood version? As long as a ride exists somewhere I'm never to sad when clones die.

Yeah.... when I read that I guessed going around 2PM (it closed at 6) would be fine. It was September 24th, 2006.... and everything had a 2-3 hour line. For some odd reason, Spiderman was only an hour, so we hit that and then after looking at the insane lines for the other attractions (and being told *EVERY* single rider line was *NOT NOW* or.... closed) we just took pictures of how pretty the place was instead of getting upset at not being able to ride the attractions. Finally after an hours wait in the inside portion of the ET ride, we went backwards through the que and left (our plane was at 8 that night). Bummer. Supposedly. Unfortunutely, it's completely random when anyone can actually use the single rider lines, and they open and close them throughout the day. (It's INFURIATING to see the massive amounts of empty seats go by..... just weird that there would be unannounced times of the day when single rider would or would not be available)

Wow, these slides (and this park in general) do look really cool! I didn't even know this park existed! Thanks for the tip!!

Hmmmmm..... these? Cause they don't seem taller then Raging Waters San Jose's "Shotgun Falls"..... I'd actually be curious to know where the highest fly-off-the-slide-and-into the pool waterslide is.