Garet's Japan 2012 Tour

[SharkTums]

Love this park!

[Nrthwnd]

A very nice park. And they Love TPR!

 

And - the last photo there. Is that a new "island" with flat rides, in the park?

 

Don't remember that, last visit.

The like us! They really like us! (And yakitori too, yum.)

[Garet]

A very nice park. And they Love TPR!

 

And - the last photo there. Is that a new "island" with flat rides, in the park?

 

Don't remember that, last visit.

 

You'd have to ask some-one whose visited more than me, but it didn't seem that new and i'm sure I saw it in older pictures when I researched the park.

[SuperShawn]

Such a fun park! That bay is so pretty at night.

[Nrthwnd]

Cosmoworld.

 

Home of the capsule machine MEAT COW!

 

Or in my case, MEAT ROOSTER!

 

[jedimaster1227]

Just catching up on this awesome trip report... Trained whale sharks??? That certainly trumps the Georgia Aquarium ten thousand times over!

 

Seriously though, this trip report makes me miss Japan so much. 2016 can't get here soon enough!

[RoCo]

This park is definitely on my "must do" list and not just because it got trashed in "Godzilla vs. Mothra: The Battle For Earth."

 

Looking forward to the next installments!

[Garet]

Part 4: Fuji Q

 

This was the park I had most planned for, I'd check everyday the weather forecasts right down to the wind conditions to make sure I had the perfect weather, found a day with 0 winds and the super accurate Japanese weather lady said 0 chance of rain, and a few clouds, I'd gone over every trip report to plan out my day exactly, I would go to shinjuku an hour early and find the bus,I was going to get priority passes and have two go's on each coaster and then...... an ATM ate my debit card.

 

I checked my wallet, I didn't have enough for the park and the buses i'd reserved. I decided to head to the shinjuku bus ticket place and cancel my reservation, only to find that I'd completely forgotten about the much cheaper return ticket and entrance Fuji Q combo pack.. I had exactly the right amount for it (and I mean exactly I had to live off half a bottle of water that i had in my camera stuff for the whole day and walk the two subway stops to get back to my hotel). I should point out that take note of the rules on that website and pick-up your tickets half hour or so before the bus leaves or a day or two before. Even in a cold February with buses every hour, the 3 buses that left first thing in the morning were packed and there were people waiting to pick-up any unused tickets. I'm convinced 50% of Japan must skip school, there were teenagers cramming a lot of the bigger parks like Fuji and Disney to the point where there were 3-4 hour lines even though I saw 0 families. Before I begin my review I should also point out that on the day I visited the fast pass ticket booth near the carousel was open almost from opening of the park, heck it was open earlier than most of the roller-coasters. Also strangely despite having the shortest line and most efficient set-up Eejanaika sold out first followed by the new euro-fighter and the haunted house.

 

So now I had to face Fuji with no priority passes, but time for the question everyone faces.... Did I have a good day at Fuji Q? I've split my opinions into two sections one for experts (people who have been to Fuji-Q) and one for beginners (people who haven't been yet). I strongly recommend skipping over this first paragraph and go to the beginner part if you haven't visited yet.

 

Fuji Q For Experts

 

Shockingly, I had an extremely good day at Fuji-Q, maybe it's because due to bad luck I spent the past year ending up at Everland around the same time a new ride has opened, a special event or when T Express has been closed so that even the small world knock-off has an hour line and the chairlift just to leave has a 45 minute wait so I was well practiced in what to expect or maybe I just managed to find a legendary dead day for Fuji Q. However I actually think the reason I enjoyed myself so much is you see so many terrible horrible reviews that you approach with the lowest expectations and walk away pleasantly surprised. After my last day at Everland, only resulted in 4 rides, all I had written down for Fuji was eejenaka, dodonpa, takashiba and experience a star flyer. So I was quite surprised when I had most credits done within 3 hours of being in the park and plenty of time to look around. I really do feel that reading so many reviews where almost no-one had a good day had lowered my expectations so low that it actually came off better because of how I pictured the day in my head.

 

 

Beginners start here

 

There were however a lot of things that seem to be standard Fuji Q based on other reviews. Signs were up when we arrived at the park saying that most roller-coasters wouldn't open until an hour after opening, only fujiyama was open at the park opening with dodonpa opening half hour later (it didn't) and eejinaka and takashiba opening an hour after opening. There were a lot of loading issues as well, seats were randomly blocked off on the already low capacity dodonpa and they were very extreme on the nothing in your pockets policy, a whole train had to be unlocked for when I had a tissue in my pocket when the ride-op patted my pockets during the seatbelt check, I hadn't even noticed it when I reached in the same pocket to pull out my phone. Takashiba seemed really in-efficient with its station set-up, lockers up one end and loading of only one train at the other far end which resulted in an empty train constantly waiting since people would forget and have to walk all the way back down to put more in their lockers then come all the way back to the trains. Also only one train load could go put there things in lockers so quite often the train had been waiting for at least a minute before they even began loading. I've seen Euro-fighters with 2 trains loaded at once, I wish they had that set-up or let more people use the lockers at once so they could wait for the train in advance.

 

At the start of the day Fujiyama had an hour wait running 2 trains with the line way out of the station area and onto the mid-way, much later when I was deciding whether to check out thomas town or gain a credit I wasn't overly interested in, I noticed the line was really short and only half the ramps were filled. The line took me almost 90 hours because they'd removed a train for no reason 3 hours before closing. I also heard lots of announcements for rides closing the queue lines while waiting, this started 2 hours before closing.

 

Overall though i'm glad to have visited, although my first ever 4D coaster didn't quite live up to my expectations, Takashiba definitely was worth the visit for me, I've never been a fan of eurofighters, i've always felt by the time i've gone over the vertical lift i've missed the beyond vertical drop before my eyes have caught up with the rest of my body but the slow decent on Takashiba really was fun. I also loved the launch on Dodonpa, the force of it seemed to make intamin cable launches feel gradual.

On the bus and I have blue skys, hopefully a sign everything will be running today.

And we've arrived

I'm on the first bus of the 3 that left in the first batch of the day, time to run to be one of the first at the entrance

Holy crap, there's about an hour before opening, and already the entrance is way off in the distance and the line was already starting to snake around the car park.

The line cleared out pretty quick though. The park was full of teenagers on dates, whatever happened to japanese people never skipping school, the park was so full of teenage couples that the second longest line of the park was the hamster cloud coaster.

Oh look a ride that was advertised as opening half hour after opening and it hasn't. Shock.

They had the two last seats blocked off on the trains for most of the day for some reason.

One of the first trains of the day

I am quite glad I rode this first, I think it may have been having troubles on the day I went because the line was advertised at 3 and a half hours at mid-day when all the other rides were under 2 hours.

I'll shut up now and let you look at the pictures of Dodonpa now.

I wasn't sure what this but I saw a lot of people going in, it was just a bunch of static models for an anime show, I'd never heard of it but I guess if you're a fan of the show you'd enjoy it.

Something about robots,

humans,

and giant robot bug things

so pretty much like most japanese anime then

Since Takabisha only had a 80 minute wait and didn't look like it was getting smaller, I headed their next.

Edited May 23, 2013 by Garet

[Garet]

Part two, Takabisha. I'm not really good at narrating roller coaster photos so i'll just post them and put in comments here and there. Takabisha did have a nice path that ran around a lot of the ride making nearly all of it accessible for picture taking.

Testing early on

I'll end this first half of fuji Q with this pretty picture second half to follow later this week.

[RoCo]

Glad to hear you had a generally positive experience at this park! These shots of Dodonpa and Takashiba look great!

[Nrthwnd]

Damn, the lineup in the parking lot would have put me off!

 

I am so hoping our tour to Fuji-Q in July (TPR tour)

will be a good one. Week day visiting helps, I'm sure.

 

Hope you enjoyed yourself, besides the wait times, etc.

[tanthonyam]

Wow Takebisha! This is what Alton Tower's Smiler SHOULD have been.

[Garet]

Damn, the lineup in the parking lot would have put me off!

 

I am so hoping our tour to Fuji-Q in July (TPR tour)

will be a good one. Week day visiting helps, I'm sure.

 

Hope you enjoyed yourself, besides the wait times, etc.

 

Honestly the wait times didn't bother me, the problem i've been so negative with Everland over Lotte World this year is I can only visit on weekends and since they still use a hand out of paper fast passes, people grab and then line-up again and take multiple so they are gone within an hour of opening (all the fast passes are on 4 rides in one section of the park at the bottom so people will dash down to get them) and on really busy days even the chairlifts and little childrens rides have 45-60 minute waits or multiple hour waits for the new/bigger rides so you have no option but to be stuck in the lines and have to really plan out your day whereas Lotte world has been really good at having fast pass on a ton of rides this year and has the same system as Disney choose a ride scan your ticket and you can't get another fast pass until later which means they don't run out so fast and you can skip over some waits as well as find a ride that has a shortish line to wait in while you wait for your fast pass time for bigger rides.

 

I kind of felt the same with Fuji as Lotte World, Though I couldn't buy the priority passes they were still there an hour after opening and there were a few available still later on in the day for some of the older coasters so it wasn't like I had to dash to get them. The flat rides had anywhere from a 5-30 minute wait and some of the weird run around the inside of a building and get the weapons attractions had no wait at all so I felt like I had some freedom in my day and how I went about the park if that makes sense. However I could have just been very lucky with my day, though the coasters had the lines, the rest of the mid-way seemed really empty.

[Garet]

More Fuji Q: Eejanaika and Fujiyama

Eejanaika seemed to have the most organized loading and unloading of all the rides

They were running a yellow and blue train when I visited

Close up of the train

That's a lot of missing seat covers!

Since X2, is this the only 4D coaster with the old style trains? I couldn't remember the difference between "spoon" and "fork" versions and which one was the new style and which was the old.

Smile, you're at Fuji-Q

Edited May 23, 2013 by Garet

[Garet]

Last part of my fuji-q day

I still don't understand how they reached this number....

... even with the japanese explanation

Walking around the mid-way at this point

This was a fun little ride with no line so I decided to try it.

The rapids had one of the longest waits of the park and I didn't see the point in waiting since they had splash glass during February, I didn't feel like being squashed into a boat with some random people

A random run around and scan your card attractions, nobody won when I tried it.

Another run around attraction

Finally got to try one of these, even though it was much smaller I preferred this more than when I rode windseeker.

Only a 15 minute wait so I decided to give it a go.

The pizza ride.

Normally I find these really pretty but I wasn't a fan of this one, is there an uglier giant frisbee out there?

An overview of the mid-way

They had an ice skating rink set up when I visited.

Seemd popular with the couples, although trying not to be a creeper, i photographed the emptier part.

The ice-skating rink with mt fuji and a roller coaster in the background... I almost found Fuji Q pretty.

On to my last credit.

Sorry not many pictures, it was hard to take any from the queue line so most were taken before opening or of the last trains.

The mascots of Fuji-Q

Thanks for a good day, Fuji-Q

[gisco]

This park has a lot of potential but sure has a lack of high capacity rides. I would like to ride some of the flats and do the haunted walk through next time 'm there.

[David H]

I'm guessing that the main reason that the lines weren't so bad is because it was the winter. I was there at the very end of the summer (one of the last days of extended operation), on what was not a very busy day for the park, and the queues for all of the coasters were at least 60-90 minutes, and 2.5 hours for Eejanaika. Realistically it probably would have only been 90 minutes, but it kept breaking down. Their fastpasses were the only thing that made the day tolerable. And I bought 7 of them!

 

Still, it's good to hear that it's occasionally possible to have a good time at that park without spending double the admission price to do so!

[Garet]

Part 5: Tokyo Disneyland

 

Its Disney week for my updates

 

So I wake-up open the window and after a sunny day at Fuji-Q..... It's snowing, uh-oh this can't be good. I high-tail it to the western union for 10am to find its closed still since the worker is not there (presumably stuck in the delays advertised on all the subway boards), so I run a few blocks to the next one since they are thankfully everywhere and get my money but it's now 10:30am, i hope a subway to disney and arrive at the station around 11:20am so i've missed the opening quiet hours and am quite worried about the lines. However as I pulled into the station, there are quite a lot of people waiting for the subway OUT of Disney. At this point i'm not sure how many attractions will be open today but after asking around at the desk, it pretty much turns out any attraction that is exposed to the outside for even a second is closed (I think in Disneysea, they pointed only to around 4 rides on the map as open and made an X with their fingers when I pointed to tower of terror and Journey) so I decided i'd head to the main disneyland and try my luck on the inside rides.

 

Boy am I glad I did, When I arrived at mid-day announcements were playing that due to the weather parades were cancelled and more people were leaving the park, by the time I had arrived line were advertised as anywhere from 15-60minute lines but by 2pm most people had left and nearly all lines except monsters inc (and strangely Meet Mickey and Minnie which stayed at an hour wait all day) dropped to around 15 minutes. It was like being 8 and given the keys to a candy shop, Tokyo Disneyland completely empty. the second the snow stopped, all outdoor rides started being tested within an hour of the snow being stopped they had most open, 2 hours after the snow stopped they had splash mountain open and they even tested big thunder mountain and opened it around 5pm for guests (there were announcements in japanese when the ride opens and you'd see people heading all in one direction to know to get in line fast)

 

Honestly it was an amazing day although due to the snow on the wednesday, Disneysea would be super crowded the next day but i'll save that report for later (what is disneys return policy for bad weather resulting in half a parks attractions to shut down?), because it was so quite and empty cars were cycling the ride-ops seemed very relaxed and they had time to explain to me that i could take pictures on rides as long as i didn't use flash! (although some ride-ops still said no so you won't see some pictures of some rides and disneysea was so busy I was made to put my camera away for almost all rides since the ride ops were trying to get people through as fast as possible) but the disney parks on the whole seemed a lot more leniant on photos than a lot of other parks i've visited.

 

Apologies for the quality on some of these, the disney website said tripods were not allowed (even though I saw quite a few people with them for parades) and the weather made it hard to shoot.

Disneyland.....in the snow!

Personally I didn't find the snow that bad, but I think the Japansese workers were really good at removing it because in places off the path it was piled pretty high.

Again it didn't look too snowy just wet....

But it was enough to close a lot of attractions for a good half a day and cancel all the parades until night-time. Although by 5pm all the rides were open and all lines except 2 were 0-15 minutes long at that point

You might wanna brush your shoulder

I have no idea why I chose this ride first, I'm trying to think of a good reason but I have nothing

I thought people were kidding when they said the godfather director directed this.... although I also thought the same thing when they told me about Jack

Buzz was advertising a 5 minute wait so I rode it.

Shoot this guy

Cars on their way for new rides

I sucked at this, I couldn't seem to find any high point markers

Is there many differences to this ride between parks? This seems to be one of the newest I can think of that seems to be pretty much the same with one in every disney location.

Stitch was everywhere when I visited, he seems to be pushing out Chip&Dale. When Fantasmic was on Stitch and his girlfriend got a bigger cheer than Mickey

1st popcorn flavour found

After tomorrowland (I had fast pass for Space Mountain and Monsters Inc was still too busy) I decided to work my way around the park in the opposite way from most of the crowds, which meant pirates was next.

I wanted to eat here and watch the boats go by, but I completely forgot about it.

Movie tie-in alert

Wench for a bride

And Jonny Depp

Second pop-corn flavour found, although I wasn't the biggest fan of this one

More deserted streets

Snow in Hawaii?

Sadly the only ride that never opened

Aloha

Did you check any of the gift shops? I'm pretty sure he's there

They gave me this thing to help follow the story

Oh look there he is (again)

3rd Flavour and possibly my favorite from the first day

I think the cleaning staff have 10x the snowman making skills I have it's little touches like this that make me love Disney.

[Garet]

Part 2:

Currently down for the count

4th flavour was sadly boring

Here be critter's

It was cycling empty boats when I visited

I decided to head over to Haunted Mansion

I think 15 minutes included the actual ride because it was walk-on

This was the only picture I took inside... sorry

By the time i'd finshed riding haunted mansion, they'd opened splash mountain

Happy but cold riders.

More snow mickeys

I realized at this point i'd failed to take any castle pictures so I quickly snapped one for your enjoyment

15 minute wait for the Pooh ride

Empty lines

Trackless cars

Just roaming around the forest

This was a really fun ride and I don't even like Winnie the Pooh

There really weren't many familys on the day I visited.

After this effect all hell will break loose

Although capity would be a nightmare, I wish you could spend longer in this room and have even more cars running around together, it was amazing as it was but I just would love to one day have 20 cars dodging one another, somebody make a trackless ride themed to one giant disco party

Fantastic ride

Gift shop

honey themed

5th flavour, also honey themed and delicious i'm still trying to decide between this or curry (although i think my ultimate favourite was on the next day)

[Garet]

Part 3

Dumbo was down for the count until almost 6pm

A very quiet peter pan

Empty tea-cups

It's a small world

I have a whole 3 part update worth of small world photos if people want to see them, I actually sat down and edited them all to try and win my first ever bag-o-crap to create a small world filled tower of terror car for a photo-edit contest (sadly i didn't win)

Peter pan was quiet so I rode that next.

Sadly not a real shop

Randomly this ride was quiet all day until the evening when everyone seemed to want to ride it after the parade

6th flavour also boring

More empty toon town

Amazingly themed little roller coaster

which nobody was sadly riding

It was a fun little ride too

Lightning Mcqueen says Hello

After a japanese annoucement everyone started heading to thunder mountain so I did too, they'd just opened the line as I arrived so this took about 15 minutes to clear.

Snowy thunder mountain

Empty bus

My space mountain fast pass time finally arose

I'm pretty sure i'm in the minority here but I actually enjoy france's launched loopy version more, if they got the new vekoma trains that have appeared on some of the boomerangs i'd ber extra happy.

I hadn't planned on riding this but since it was on it's way out I decided to have one last ride of the original Star Tours

Monsters INC, maybe I was just too blown away by winnie the pooh's technology but I had no idea this was a new ride, it seemed more like a classic dark ride with a monster inc theme (this is not a bad thing)

Strange carriages

Walk-on Winnie-the-pooh for most of the time after the fireworks, which reminds me tomorrow's update will be disneys night parade and night photos. See you tomorrow

[gisco]

The park looks awesome with a light dusting of snow! I wish they had the variety of popcorns here in the states.

[Garet]

Part 6: Disney Night-time

 

Since the park was quiet, I walked around and took a few night-shots as well as of the only parade of the day.

Main street all lit-up

Pretty castle

Looking back towards main street

Mickey watches over the castle

Splash Mountain

The parade was about to start

I have no idea which movie the first float was from actually

Goofy lead the next float

Followed by Minnie

and Mickey

I'd completely forgotten about the movie Pete's Dragon

Snow White followed next

And shortly after that Peter Pan

Genie lead the Aladdin floats

A lot of detail went into these floats

The genie changed colours quite often including the colour of Jafar's snake

No sign of Abu or carpet

Winnie The Pooh was next

The Toy Story 3 float may have been my favourite float

A lot of characters were included

[SharkTums]

OMG! I am not a parade person at all, but KT is going to demand we see that parade since it features her new favorite 'toy' the Three Peas in a Pod from Toy Story 3!!! AHHH!!!

[Garet]

OMG! I am not a parade person at all, but KT is going to demand we see that parade since it features her new favorite 'toy' the Three Peas in a Pod from Toy Story 3!!! AHHH!!!

 

Generally, I'm not a parade person either, I don't think i've ever stopped to watch a parade at day (although i'm sure my girlfriend will make me watch my first when she finally gets to experience a disneyland in hong kong) but I have always enjoyed the light up night parades some parks have for some reason. Lights and fire makes everything more fun.

 

I couldn't stop comparing to Everland in terms of its night entertainment, the night ride parades seemed really similar in the mixture of actors and parade floats, as well as a few of the float themes and now having seen fantasmic for myself, i'm quite shocked at how much Everland ripped off the story... main character is having dreams, bad guy shows up in dream, bad guy summons fire-breathing dragon and main character pops out of a hat.....sorry light up phoenix thing. Although Everland does get bonus points for having super low fireworks really close to where you are sitting, I really enjoyed Disneylands fireworks but they always seemed so far away, I felt like it was 4th of July and I was watching from my house instead of being at the party.

[RoCo]

Loved all the Disney updates! I had to laugh that fate conspired to make Captain Eo your first ride at the park. The snow shots, the parade shots, so much great stuff. (Genie looks amazing!)