Yomiuriland Trip Report (A Good park)

[Gazza]

Yomiuriland is a park up on a hill on the western side of Tokyo, nearish to Kawasaki.

https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/JP/Inagi/Yomiuriland

 

 

 

https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/JP/Inagi/Yomiuriland/

Apparently the park is owned by the Yomiuri Giants baseball team, but there is no sign of baseball or baseball themed attractions anywhere in the park which surprised me, but you do pass over a training field.

The park is easily accessible via direct express Keio trains from Shinjuku to Keio Yomiuriland Station. From the station you cross the street where a cablecar takes you up to the park.

On the way up you get some good views of the park.

 

They had a discount for foreigners which can be found on their website, show your passport and buy at the ticket booths to get it.

The top of the park is occupied by a fairly new area called the Goodjoba! Attractions. Basically a number of pavilions sponsored by companies with attractions themed around them.

The Shima Sieki (Who create knitting machines) had the Fashion Factory, with the main attraction being Spin Runway, a pretty good indoor spinning coaster. The queue line was well themed, with giant sized sewing related theming. Loose items were put in double sided lockers with keys with a wristband, so as you exited you could open a door on the other side to get your stuff.

You then boarded the cars, and went through a short dark ride section, with more of the same, though there was a giant pair of scissors that cut above you and an iron and spray bottle that squirted up you.

The ride has a spiral lift in the middle (like on Euromir or those Zampera Volare flying coaster). As you went up, a continuous screen ran along next to the track, and you could play a flappy bird style game by hitting a button on your restraint. 

The layout was lots of helices and flashing lights, just the right size and length...I wouldn't mind seeing this layout in a park in Aus actually.

At the exit were sewing machines you could use, and a weaving game you could play by moving your body (Didnt do it)

Nissan have the Car Factory, with a few racing simulators, and an actual EV car driving track (that was closed), but the main thing here is the ambitious Custom Garage , which is a glorifed car ride, with some steep hills. Another way to think of it is something like test track if you drove it at snails pace.

 

What made this unique is each group of riders goes into a room, and selects parts off shelves on the wall and attaches them to the car with a power screwdriver. You only have a couple of minutes to do this. An op then goes and checks your work, you board the car, and go around the track with all your parts attached. After you get off the poor op has to then take everyting off the car for the next group, so it's probably quite labour intensive. I imagine some safety managers here would have a heart attack at the idea of sending a ride around a track with parts that guests attach, even if it is quite a slow ride. Interesting ride.

Nissin Foods have the Food Factory, themed around instant noodles.

 

 

The main thing here is a fairly wet indoor rapids ride called Splash UFO. This was quite similar to the one at Fuji Q, with steep drops, spirals and regular rapids sections. The boats were themed like noodle cups, and there was a hokey storyline about a battle between some good noodle guy, and a baddie that reminded me a bit of Oldaw from Where's Wally.

The boats featured buttons in the middle, and at a couple of points the raft is stopped and there was a circular overhead screen , with the bad guy peering in, and you'd hit the buttons to fire back at him for points.

The themed waterfalls were hillarious.

As well as SAUCE BEAM!

 

They also had a My UFO Factory which was an upcharge where you could make your own bowl of custom flavoured instant noodles to take home.

First you'd get given a random lid design which you could colour in, then put the lid through a narrow slot into the sterile kitchen behind glass. The staff members would let you pick 4 dehydrated ingredients (But apparently the lid i got was a special blue one, so i got a bonus ingredient). You'd then pick a sauce sachet, and the bowl would be sealed.

Kokuyo has the Bungu (Stationery) Factory. There were a couple of kids flats themed tenuously around stationery, and another indoor attraction that felt a bit like a kids game show.

You would move from zone to zone to supposedly re-create the steps of manufacturing a notebook. In reality they were just physical games that could have been branded with anything. The first one was a bit of a fail, you had to try and find buttons on a wall that matched a sequence shown on screen, but you had 20 secs and there were heaps of buttons so i failed to get any. The next one had giant padded rollers you had to keep rolling and not let them slow down. Another one used kinekt type tech, and you had to make various poses based on instructions on a screen. Another kinekt type game had you swiping your hands to cut paper.  My favourite was one where you'd stand on a see saw to make a ball roll down ramps.

The area also had a ball factory kids play area which looked cool but I didn't go in.

I did the Alsok Sky Patrol. Alsok are a private security company, and the ride was one of those pedal monorails. I went to ride it thinking i could get photos from above, but no cameras allowed. There was a game onboard though, with a screen showing a cartoon aerial view of flying over a city, you'd pedal your car at precisespeed, which would cause a set of crosshairs on the screen to begin line up and target a cartoon criminal to "catch" them.

Down this end you could clearly see footers for a coaster that was unannounced at the time, this has turned out to be for an indoor Space Factory family inverted coaster, plus a kids drop ride. The area will be sponsored by a pharmaceutical company.

As for everything else in the park, this is down in a lower bit, and is a bit older and more weathered.

There was of course a Giant Ferris Wheel.

 

 

Giant Sky River was like a very long Mammoth Falls ride, with dry boats. It didn't really get up on the walls much.

They had a pair of S&S Towers, Crazy Hyuuu and Crazy Stooon. The former was a space shot, but I did the later because I haven't done a Turbo Drop for ages.

Wandit was a little kids coaster themed around the park mascot Wan Wan, who is everywhere around the place.

 

 

Go Kart were some fairly sedate go karts, with a a track that looped a couple of times around the main section, with some elevated sections, and some parts that were quite narrow,

Animal Rescue is a shit indoor safari themed dark ride with lots of blacklights, fake palms and fake animals, where you are shooting things like wasps and oil drums of pollutants. It reminded me heavily of Safari at Bakken.

As for the other two main rides.

Standing and Loop Coaster Momonga is coaster with a simple layout with a single loop and helix, so over and done with quite quickly, like say Sea Viper, but still good fun. The ride has two trains, and a transfer track system so you can ride either sitting down or standing up. In reality the transfer track is probably a bit of over engineering. If you were doing it today, you'd probably just have a normal station. both trains on and just load groups alternatively.

This is a Momonga by the way.

The ride itself was enjoyable. I only rode it on the stand up side (Probably should have done both for the gimmick come to think of it), and it was good fun, Togo stand ups have all been great in my experience.

The other big coaster is Bandit, a hypercoaster/jetcoaster/terrain coaster thing with a poo brown and yellow colour scheme that was quite good.

 

 

 

In terms of loose items, you were given a big reusable shopping bag to put your stuff in, this was then zipped up and slipped around the restraint, so everything came with you. Not a bad solution, the last time ive seen anything like this was the bum bags you got given to borrow on Tempesto at Busch Gardens.

The ride starts off with a big first drop, turnaround, then a long helix. It then crosses over and does some fairly shallow drops, but at quite a high speed. The final hump is bit of a kicker with heaps of speed and air. I would have liked to have done a second ride, but ops were damn slow and i couldn't be buggered lining up again.

The park had a section of smaller kids flats.

Some of them offered dress ups for the kids during the ride

The main street felt a bit carnival, but had a good variety of larger flat rides we have all seen.

Overall impressions, pretty good park, mostly due to the GoodJoba! Area, it should be even moreso if space factory turns out as good as fashion factory.

 

Bandit is worth the trip, and it is reasonably easy to access overall, so if you are looking at checking out other amusement parks in Tokyo, add this one.

Allow around 4 hours.

More photos here:

https://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/park-304-Yomiuriland