Universal Studios Japan
https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/JP/Osaka/Universal_Studios_Japan/

Finally, onto the final three big parks!

Universal Japan was the most expensive park of the trip. It was the 2nd and 3rd of January, so peak pricing for admission, as well as for a Universal Express 7 pass. Don’t ask how much I spent!

The park is easily acessible via the local trains in Osaka, its like 20 mins from the main station, you change trains off the Osaka loop line and walk across the platform to a shuttle along the shorter line to Universal.
 
The park opens at 8am, but opens earlier for hotel guests. I was there waiting at the turnstiles at 7am, and people were already there queuing for general entry. But for some reason, they opened the park to everyone very shortly after the hotel guests anyway, like at 7:30 or so. Excellent, it meant an earlier start! Future visitors should keep this in mind…you might get lucky like I did.

 
So naturally I made my way quickly to get on Flying Dinosaur.

 

The theming looks pretty cool, but there is no escaping that once inside it’s just an enormous cattlepen capable of holding thousands of guests…A couple of ‘islands’ of theming would have broken it up a bit, but it is what it is.

The storyline is simple…JP scientists have created new technology to let people experience flight like a Pteranadon.
The wait was minimal, and the ride is superb, dethroning Tatsu as my favourite flyer.

The first drop is much better than any other flyer, because it is so steep, you feel like you are diving headfirst towards the concrete.

(Compare with older flyers: )

Next comes a 540 degree zero g roll, where you end up on your back before coming up into a half loop…You’ve really got to prepare for the intensity.

After a couple of high up turns there is the famous pretzel loop, but this one goes into a tunnel for a bit of extra thrill.

The rest of the ride is a bit calmer, but very fast paced, as you loop and corkscrew around some buildings, finishing off with an inline twist.

 

Perhaps the only black mark against the ride is how it has resulted in all of the Jurassic park zone having to be covered in nets.

I thought it was a nice touch how all the supports were painted in a copper patina.

 
Next up I did Snoopys Great Race to get it out of the way before the park got busy. A highly themed indoor kids coaster inside a sound stage, done as if you are filming a peanuts cartoon. The restraints are well designed, intended for a parent and child to ride together, with extra padding to hold the kid in.

The Universal Wonderland kids area continued further back , but i dunno, it felt a bit too modern in some parts, and not 'fun' and immersive (I love SWs Nickelodeon land for that reason)

I then headed towards the back of the park for Amazing Adventure of Spiderman.

For those unfamilar, its a ride that combines motion base vehicles that can spin and tilt, that move through a a dark ride. You wear 3D glasses, and there are several large screens built into the sets, with a fair bit of interplay between the on screen action and the physical sets. The story goes that the sinister syndicate are attacking NYC, and you are cadet reporters from the daily bugle being sent out in special vehicles to follow the story. The queue line has this interesting treatment where everything is painted in matte to make it look comic book.

Naturally, you get caught up in the fight between Spiderman and the baddies. One of my favourite attractions at Islands of Adventure, so i was interested to see how the Japanese version compared. Much the same apart from the dubbing, though the last time I rode this attraction in Florida they hadnt done the new animations.

There are a few things i had never spotted that you cant see in POVs, like in the sewer scene a giant physical pipe flicks up in front of you in response to Hydros attack. There's also a hillarious moment on the screen where Dr Octopus is marching down the street and a car is hurtling away from him, tearing around a corner desparate to escape, knocking over a fire hydrant in the process.

First express ticket I used was for Minion Mayhem, a simulator that replaced back to the future. This ride has a giant curved screen similar to Sky Voyager, however instead of sitting in long rows, you sit in individual 'open air' simulator pods that are on jacks. You board the pod in its own small room, the pod is lifted up above the walls of the room, revealing the giant screen in front of you.  There are three levels of pods, so you can imagine they need a lot of staff to sort riders into each room.

The ride film is the same as the hollywood version except they have added a bit of extra film at the start to match the moment where your pod is lifted up out of the loading room.  The preshows thankfully have subtitles too. The story goes that you are being transformed into minions, and are sent on a training course. The ride film was enough to get a smirk out of me despite not really being into minions, since it felt like you were in one of those hamster races, except with mininons running all around you.

The actual themed area is ridiculously busy, i guess they must really love minions there! There was a small demolition derby/junkyard jamboree type flat ride i didnt bother with,

Since it was nearby i headed to Space Fantasy a Mack indoor spinning coaster with a sort of abstract modern spacey theme rather than the 80s space theme of Disneylands space mountain.  This had single rider so the wait was minimal, and far shorter than what the sign said.

I liked this thing at the main entrance, a little spinning car on top of the sign.

The coaster itself isnt very big, not much taller or more intense than a roller skater, though of course some good spinning.
It didn't really feel like a journey into space, just a whole bunch of lighting FX kind of stuck togther....They had scrims with lasers, they had a few blacklight planets, they had LED screen modules that responded to your arms waving around as you passed. It was a fun ride, but it didn't have that huge scale and sense of being in deep space like you get on space mountain.

The loading system was cool though, with cars coming through the station perfectly timed, following each other to the millimetre, with conveyor belts....So just like the loading on Haunted Mansion, except they were dealing with individual rolling cars, not a chain.

I had an early lunch at Happiness Cafe, and a minion burger with crumbed mystery meat.
The coolest thing though was the freestyle machines. Normally these just do soft drink, but here they had a hot drink version that would do various combinations of of coffee or chocolate or green tea, with other flavours, so you could get a hot choc strawberry for example.

I think at this point I did Jaws , which is basically spicy jungle cruise, with some bad shark animatronics that appear to follow your boat and jump out of the water. This has single rider.

The queue is actually really well themed though, done like a historical museum.

No photos allowed on the ride though.

The next express ticket i had purchased was for Hollywood Dream: Backdrop. a B&M mega coaster, with one train out of 4 running backwards.

They play heaps of warning messages on TVs about not doing backdrop if  you are prone to nausea, but it's not that bad at all, especially if you have done DCR backwards.

The ride also has onboard audio, so you can pick stuff like Pharell Willams or J Pop. 

The ride is great fun, with moderate air, but good pacing, and lots of twisting and turning, and a fairly intense helix at the end.
Perhaps the most impressive thing is how they have squeezed such a large ride in, with the huge areas needed for the queue, double load station and 4 train storage.
 

The express tickets conveniently put all your Wizarding world of Harry Potter attractions together time wise, so i headed in.  This one is probably the best themed of the lot, since you go down a forest pathway to the land, making it feel quite secluded from the rest of the park......

Until you spot Super Nintendo World right next to you.

They have a warm version of Butterbeer here too instead of the frozen one! Awesome.

The shops were all the same, albeit more crowded, they seem to have adjusted the offerings for local tastes, eg Zonkos joke shop is one tiny end of the actual building its in, and they have made Honeydukes lolly shop encroach further since i guess people like lollies more than gags.

 

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is great, but i preferred my experience of the one in Hollywood back when it had 3D.

I noticed this one was a bit brighter than the others, so you see a lot more in terms of curtains and unthemed walls and breaks between the scenes. No single rider on this one either grrrr.

 
For the best experience, keep your head back with your eyes focused fowards since it tends to work better for the sightlines.

It's stuff like this that makes you remember you are at Universal not Disney...you cant just pretend the top of the wall doesnt exist:

For those unfamiliar, you ride in a 4 person row of seats at the end of a robotic arm. This robotic arm runs on a track, and you are twisted and turned and spun through each scene high in the air. The mechanisim is carefully hidden during the loading process behind a wall (with a slot that allows the vehicle to move through the station with the end of the arm poking through), though at a couple of points in the ride you can see the vehicle ahead due to how many they are running.

They also have Flight of the Hippogriff, a roller skater with very detailed theming. This was included on the express ticket....you certainly wouldn't want to queue for it considering it's just like Roadrunner.

What else did I do?

Hollywood Dream

Might as well talk a little more about this one, you start off with an a lift hill enclosed in a tunnel, as the music climaxes you do a curved first drop, floater hill over the main street roof, an overbanked hamerhead turnaround, then another floater hill back over the main street roof.

A couple more decent airtime hills follow, as you run parallel to the main street of the park. After a mcbr is a fairly punchy helix, then the track starts heading back towards the station, actually passing through the back of some buildings at high speed.

I particuarly liked the safety video for the ride, it was done in this real 1950s "Jetstons" animated style for lack of a better word.

Terminator 3D

Still reigns as the best park 3D show IMO. The queue and preshow is in the wonderfully 80s foyer of Cyberdine systems, and the show itself takes place in an auditorium with live actors running around in front of the screen.

Backdraft 

Blooper time here. Some of your express passes let you pick between 2 attractions. One such pairing is either riding Hollywood Dream and seeing backdraft....And i accidentally used it on Backdraft without thinking! Baahhhhhh.

The show itself is impressive, with a couple of crap preshows with Ron Howard yabbering on, then you get to the actual main room where its a chemical plant that catches on fire, with huge fireballs, collapsing equipment and so on. Wonderful in the Osaka winter.

I didn't get to Jurrasic Park till the 2nd day.....Sooked out and bought a poncho. 

It felt a little flat compared to the Hollywood original and even the IOA version, with some bits of theming taken out....Less moving bits and bobs it seems.

Jurassic anus:

Waterworld is waterworld. I gave it a courtesy visit.

What i thought was crazy is people still sitting in the wet seats at the front, and the warm up pre show still doing the routine of soaking people with hoses....When its winter and 10c outside!

 

Thoughts on the park overall:

-Like most parks in Japan, admission is good value, though the express passes are very expensive. If you are from overseas they make you buy them through a travel agent...I used Klook.

-The attractions are great, but the park is very crowded, but some of it makes no sense, like i can understand queues for attractions since capacity is expensive. But long queues for food does my head in, because they should have more stands and make more money?

-The single rider queues are good, but its about 50-50 in terms of how accurate the wait time is. For example you'll often see 120 min standby and 110 single rider. Hardly worth it right? Well sometimes it'll be 110, other times you'll be on on 20 even though it says 110, so just bear that in mind. Space fantasy was consistently far less than what the display said.

-Well themed, particularly main street, the studios section, San Fran etc have HEAPS of thematic detail. But since the park has expanded, they've obviously expanded into old Back of House areas,  so a couple of attraction, particularly Universal Wonderland and Hollywood dream, it feels like you are looking at backs of facades that have been flag painted, so they don't feel as well done. Best way to describe it is the difference in feel between MW main street and  the MW Arkham courtyard.

-You could proably do the park in 1 day if you used express passes, but 2 days is more comfortable to take it all in.

-Flying Dinosaur should absolutely be done first.

And a few more pics to finish off. ( Heres about 350 more: https://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/park-71-Universal_Studios_Japan )

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 20205 yr by Gazza

Fantastic write up, thanks @Gazza

ive never really considered Japan as I’ve always said I’d rather take the family to the OG parks in the US before we go to the others, but with our US trip cancelled for this year due to covid and potentially no change on the horizon with the situation over there, Japan may become a real viable option.

are all the rides/shows in English or dubbed/subtitled at least? 

When I visited a couple years ago, Flying Dinosaur was less than a week old and these were the queue times

Thankfully, I somehow managed to get a Fast Pass which included the coaster. Still my number 1 favourite coaster 

38 minutes ago, themagician said:

When I visited a couple years ago, Flying Dinosaur was less than a week old and these were the queue times

Thankfully, I somehow managed to get a Fast Pass which included the coaster. Still my number 1 favourite coaster 

I was much the same. Fast Pass saved my life.

9 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

Fantastic write up, thanks @Gazza

ive never really considered Japan as I’ve always said I’d rather take the family to the OG parks in the US before we go to the others, but with our US trip cancelled for this year due to covid and potentially no change on the horizon with the situation over there, Japan may become a real viable option.

are all the rides/shows in English or dubbed/subtitled at least? 

From my visit last year its a mixed bag.

Most of the major rides are in Japanese, many of which not having any subtitles. That includes Harry Potter, Despicable Me and Spider-Man. Didn't ride Jaws or Terminator on my visit so I can't comment on those. 

A few of the shows are mixed English/Japanese and they have subtitles in most of the shows that take place indoors such as the Sing one. However others dont have subtitles, such as the Backdraft walkthrough and Waterworld.

Edited July 11, 20205 yr by Baconjack

23 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

Fantastic write up, thanks @Gazza

ive never really considered Japan as I’ve always said I’d rather take the family to the OG parks in the US before we go to the others, but with our US trip cancelled for this year due to covid and potentially no change on the horizon with the situation over there, Japan may become a real viable option.

are all the rides/shows in English or dubbed/subtitled at least? 

The queue line videos have subtitles usually, but nothing on the rides, though occasionally some shows will have some random English, eg Universal Monsters.

If i had young family I'd not hesitate to go to Japan first! It's closer, cheaper and basically same time zone, so no jet lag.

On the whole I felt it was an easy place to travel (so long as 1 person has a roaming data pack), its safe so it feels relaxing, and seemed kid friendly in many ways

The parks will be busy though, and you will get on everything at least once, but you have to carry the mindset that for every fast pass ride you do, you'll have a 90 min wait on a different one.

And of course, the holiday as a whole will probably be more interesting than say going to LA, and going to the parks + hollywood + santa monica or whatever people do on their first time in the US.

Edited July 12, 20205 yr by Gazza

This report makes me miss USJ a whole lot. How do you think it compares to the rest of the Universal Parks?

I loved usj, was so busy when we went but everything from the theming, que lines, the happiness from the workers to the overall quality of the rides was mint. Such a good experience, as with disneysea and Disneyland, disneysea being the better of the two

Anyone else seen the mariokart coaster and super mario world reveal, the amount of detail that has gone into it is crazy, will definitely be going back

Ya as a massive Nintendo fan I dying to go but like you think my mom will fly me to Japan next year 

1 hour ago, Smol bean said:

my mom will fly me to Japan next year 

Are you American?

it is an unfortunate side effect of the modern generation that kids are learning from online media sources - many of which are american and therefore americanisms are permeating other western culture.

My four year old has in the past picked up on american words for things - like 'diaper' for example, which we needed to correct.

But i'm sure this will instead just be fobbed off as an auto-correct error or dictionary on his phone... something else kids have these days.