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Old 2 Feb 20, 07:24 PM  
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When you gachapon a star: Tokyo Disney and Japan 2019 - Day 10

Hello dear friends, I'm back with more of our Japan adventure. Today, it's our second day at USJ!

Day 10: Full day at USJ, featuring as many rides on Forbidden Journey as we could manage

Day 10 was our full day at Universal Studios Japan. We woke at 7.15 and dressed and got ready in a leisurely way. This was one of the great things about our hotel – it was literally five minutes’ walk from the park entrance, so we didn’t have to worry about timing. And in fact, we could see the park out of our window, with one of the rides already going round, even though the park wasn’t due to open until 9. We could see that hundreds of people were heading to the park entrance; it was going to be a busy day in the park, even though it was p***ing it down (again!).

We left for the park just before 08:00 and grabbed a delicious Starbucks before walking through City Walk and joining one of the queues at the entrance.





As we had suspected, it was looking very busy.

The park opened about 8:50 and, of course, everyone ran straight to the Harry Potter area, including us. By the time we joined the queue for Forbidden Journey it was a 50-minute posted wait time.




We joined the queue, which today was taking a different route to the previous day. Instead of going straight into the castle, then to the locker room, then on through the castle to the ride, the queue snaked round the side of the castle to the greenhouses.





The queue was extremely long. I would say we waited at least 50 minutes. It was also hot, wet and sweaty.





The queue didn’t go through the greenhouses and then into the castle via the entrance they use in Florida (though there was a door there); instead once you’d gone through the greenhouses, you went into the castle via a small side entrance, through a hallway and then to the locker room.




This certainly wasn’t a great way of doing things, because it meant the line through the less interesting bit of the queue (the side of the castle and the greenhouses) was really long, the locker room was pandemonium, and by the time you got to the line through the castle and bulk of the pre-show, there was almost no queue at all. It would be better to arrange the queue differently so you’re going slowly through the pre-show bits and can enjoy them, and also so you get rid of your stuff in the lockers before you join the queue.

Listen to me ranting – can you tell I was hot and sweaty and a bit fed up?

The ride was amazing of course, and probably worth the wait. We wanted to try and ride again, as something told us it was going to be 2-hour queues all day, but the wait time was already too long by the time we emerged. Hogsmeade was also mobbed, so we left in search of other rides. Our app told us that the other rides still had shorter queues – everyone had gone straight to Forbidden Journey and most of them were still in the queue!







We walked through to Jurassic Park so that I could take my chance at Flying Dinosaur. The main queue was 50 minutes, plus the single-rider queue was 30, so I joined. Bex went off to the main Jurassic Park ride.



The line for Flying Dinosaur ended up being more like 20 minutes than 30, so I almost wasn’t ready for it when I got to the front. The cast members were telling single riders to join rows like ‘6’, ‘3’, ‘10’ etc. whenever there were spare seats. When it came to my turn, I was told to go to row ‘1’. For some reason this didn’t really click into place, so I wandered off looking for row 1 and joined a small queue with three teenage boys in it. My thought process was, ‘OK row 1, found it, cool. Row 1. Like…the first row. Like…at the front. Shiiiiiiiii…’

And then it was time to board the ride. I checked my harness about fifty times, but I actually felt nice and secure. Nothing could prepare me for the ride though, which was epic! It was one of those rides where you are tipped up so you’re always facing the ground (like Air at Alton Towers), and the very first thing we did was a massive drop, straight down, face first towards the ground – I screamed my head off but it was amazing. The ride also goes over one of the walkways and, as I hurtled towards her, I saw Bex looking up at me from the ground. I waved like crazy.




The rest of the ride was brilliant too. The g-forces were very intense and there were lots of loops, so it definitely would be too intense for some people, but I was skipping with excitement when I got off. Fantastic!

Bex had meant to single rider the river ride while I was on Flying Dinosaur, but the queue wasn’t open yet, so she just waited for me.



We went back to try the river ride again, and this time the single rider queue was open. We were in the same boat again. Bex went to the second row and ended up getting absolutely soaked. I was sent to the back row and for some reason, they didn’t send anyone else to join me, so I sat in the middle away from the sides and barely got splashed at all!

After that, we went to the New York area to ride Spiderman, which at USJ is in the building that houses The Mummy in Florida. It’s a good location for it, but I personally would rather have The Mummy than Spiderman if there was a choice!

We single-ridered, waiting about 20 minutes. It’s a seriously good ride – definitely one of the best of the 3D screen rides, though this type of ride isn’t my favourite. Afterwards, we saw a Spiderman photo-op spot in a side street, so we decided to get a pic with him. I’m not quite sure why, as we’re not really massive fans of Spiderman – it just seemed like a good idea at the time. It was probably to do with the fact that it didn’t have much of a line!



It was quite a cool spot for a photo, but we always feel awkward when they try to make you buy the photo after they’ve taken it. We were literally never going to do that, even if it had been the most flattering picture of us there had ever been, which it wasn’t.

It was now 11:15ish so we walked slowly round to the Waterworld area for the Waterworld show.



The show wasn’t till 12, but the park was really busy and there wasn’t time to do anything else. The wait area was also quite nice, with appropriate theming, and cast members constantly threatening to douse you with water. Waterworld is one of those shows where the first few rows will get wet.

We went into the auditorium at 10 to 12 and found seats in the middle, but out of the danger zone. There was a warm-up guy for each section and ours was hilarious – he kept chucking water at people out of nowhere.

The show itself was excellent. It’s a stunt show, like Indiana Jones, but far better. The actors do lots of zooming about on speed boats and stunts on jet skis as well as regular stunt fighting.




The villain was brilliant! He was hamming it up like nobody’s business and really brought the show to life.




The hero and heroine were also fantastic, and extremely talented at punching and hanging off of things.



At the climax of the show, there was a very cool bit where a plane came crashing down into the water and then the hero and heroine escaped on a speedboat. It was awesome.



All in all, definitely one of the highlights of the day.

Edited at 07:35 PM.
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Old 2 Feb 20, 07:29 PM  
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Part 2

Next, we went to single rider the Jaws ride. We waited 20-25 minutes and were in two separate boats. My ride was very good of course, but the CM was not as good. He was getting distracted by people misbehaving in the boat, I think.




It was now 13:00 and I suggested we have lunch. We had been talking about trying the Hollywood Dream, which is a big coaster that goes all round the park, however, and Bex said if we were going to do it we needed to do it before lunch, or she would be worried about throwing up.



So we walked to the Hollywood area and found that the queue was only 30 minutes long – perfect!

Before we joined the queue, a cast member took us aside to check that we would be able to fit into the ride seats. Well, she checked me anyway. Once she saw that I squeezed in, she was happy for us to join the queue. Bex was a bit offended by this – it was the first time it had ever happened to us – but I could see where the CM was coming from. The seats were narrow, and it’s a safety thing.

Anyway, the ride itself was amazing! We only waited about 15 minutes in the end (no time for Bex to psych herself out!) and everyone waved to us when we set off. It is one of those rides where you choose what music you want to play as you go around – I chose Shake It Off by Taylor Swift and Bex chose Happy by Pharrell. Perfect tunes for such a fun coaster! There were no inversions, but it was still pretty intense. It starts with a very big drop, where I almost felt like I was standing up out of my seat, and then afterwards is very fast. As I said, it goes all over the park, so it’s a great way of seeing things from up high.



It was now 13:30 and time for some lunch. We decided to go back to Amity to try the restaurant there, which is a quick service chicken-and-chips sort of place. The queues weren’t long, as it was late-ish to be eating lunch, so we were soon settled in a window seat overlooking the Jaws ride, with a fried chicken meal for me, and a shrimp cutlet sandwich meal for Bex. The chicken meal cost 1390 yen (£9.70) and the shrimp cost 1490 yen (£10.40). We both really enjoyed these – simple, tasty food. And no one does fried chicken like the Japanese!



You can tell I’ve eaten – look how happy I am.

We also really enjoyed overlooking the Jaws ride. Bex, in particular, was fascinated by the efficiency of the CMs as they arrived in the harbour, chucked people off the boats, checked the boat, and gave things a bit of a wipe down and then moved on to the loading dock for the next group. She was timing them and kept turning to me saying ’25 seconds!’ ‘That was 19 seconds! Amazing!’ I was also very impressed with their efficiency but was mainly concentrating on my chicken.

Despite doing mainly sitting down activities for the past couple of hours, my feet were still bothering me, so we went to try out the Sing On Tour show. Bex really liked Sing, though I thought it was fairly average.



We queued for about 20 minutes (I think we’d just missed our chance to go into the show before) and the show was…OK. The characters from Sing were played by people in big costumes who danced on stage to some random pop songs. I don’t think they were songs from the movie, but I’m not sure. In order to make the thing good they needed to write some of their own songs for the show and the characters all needed to be singing live. Two of them did sing live but the others didn’t, which seemed a bit weird, and the live acts were much better than the ones that were just people dancing in slightly awkward costumes. It was certainly nothing to the dancing we’d seen from the costumed characters in Big Band Beat! And the rest of the audience seemed to agree with us; although the auditorium was packed (because everything was packed on that day) the response was fairly muted.

After the show we went back to Spiderman to single rider it again. This time we only waited about 5 minutes and ended up sitting right next to each other, which was great. It’s really an excellent ride. They have all the usual 3D ride staples (water being sprayed at you, things flying at your face etc.) but they’re all done in a witty and interesting way.

Next, we went to the Despicable Me area to explore it.









It’s a really cool area, though we didn’t fancy queuing for the Minion Mayhem ride. It was one of the really popular ones, with a wait of an hour or more, and we’d done it in Florida. The façade of the ride and the surrounding area is far better than the Florida version, however.



There are also various Despicable Me and Minions shops and a bank with an interactive ATM.






This is also probably a good point to mention that there was some kind of Minions summer event going on in USJ that day, which might have explained why it was so busy. At various points throughout the day we saw people dressed in Minions overalls dancing and getting the crowds going in the streets. As we’re not really Minion fans we didn’t really pay much attention. Bex tells me it was also the beginning of the USJ summer water event and so the minions were chucking water at people in the crowd.

My feet were really killing me by this point and I could have done with going back to the hotel and having a rest. Unfortunately, the USJ tickets don’t allow you to leave the park and then come back again, so we had to find another way of escaping the heat and crowds. I must admit I complained bitterly about this rule, and I still think it’s a bit pointless. It’s worth knowing before you go, however, as it may affect how you plan out your days at USJ.

We, therefore, walked to the Jurassic Park area and took refuge in the big restaurant. No one noticed us going in so we didn’t feel the need to buy anything, and just sat at one of the tables inside. There was air conditioning and it was fairly comfortable and peaceful.



Of course Bex couldn’t sit still for long in a theme park , so I only got about 20 minutes to rest my weary feet. We compromised by going to the Monster Rock and Roll show in the Hollywood area. I think they used to have this in Florida, but we never went to it, having heard it was a bit hokey. The performance started at 16:45 and there was no queue. We went inside the auditorium and sat near the back of the auditorium, though we needn’t have done because it wasn’t full.



Well, I certainly enjoyed the show more than the Sing show, but only because it was fully batsh*t, and embraced it. The performers were actually pretty good, but the show itself was very weird. The premise was…well it wasn’t exactly clear, but essentially various different movie monsters (Dracula, Beetlejuice, the teenage werewolf etc.) came on and sang some songs and did some dance routines.




For some reason, the whole thing felt really 90s and drastically in need of an update. Or of being replaced by something, you know…good. That having been said, I enjoyed it more than the Sing show, and not just because I was in need of some AC. They were at least performing live and throwing themselves into it.

When the show ended, we walked back the Hogsmeade area to see whether we might be able to queue for Forbidden Journey. A show was about to start on the little stage in the village, so we sat down on the ground to wait for a few minutes so we could watch it.

At 17:30 four Hogwarts students came out to do a wand demonstration.



The actors were really good, especially the Gryffindor boy (who seemed to be a real Brit), and they got a little boy out of the crowd to help them with wingardium leviosa, which obviously was dead cute. Obviously, we tried not to take pictures with the kid’s face in them.





All of the actors seemed confident in both English and Japanese, which I thought was pretty impressive.





The kid they chose seemed to have bought himself a wand that day, because he had a really badass one with a skull carved into it. He was dressed as a Gryffindor, but I have my doubts.

They also demonstrated a locomotor spell, which included some really cool effects on the standing stones that surrounded the stage.



They made it seem as if they were levitating the rocks, with more and more of the rocks rising into the air as the spell got stronger (they encouraged members of the audience to point their wands too, to increase the strength of the spell).

It was only a little 10-minute show, but it was really pretty good. I was glad we’d caught it.

After that Bex really wanted to go and queue for Forbidden Journey, even though the posted wait was 65 minutes, as she knew we might not get another chance. I agreed somewhat reluctantly.

In the end, the wait was probably 50 minutes, but that was quite enough for me! The ride itself was awesome as usual, and we were both glad we’d done it.




Edited at 07:37 PM.
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Old 2 Feb 20, 07:33 PM  
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Part 3

We emerged from the ride into Filch’s Emporium and decided to buy the few bits and bobs we’d seen the other day. We both got some pretty boxes of chocolates, mine had the Hogwarts crest on it and Bex’s had the castle. Sadly, the chocolates themselves ended up being genuinely crap (I don’t think we even finished them…we didn’t finish a box of chocolates! ) but we’ve still got the boxes.

I also got a butterbeer mug (2200 yen - £15.30) which was really expensive but very cool and a teacup with a design representing the Grim in tealeaves as a present for our sister Jeannie.


Represent!

I was all shopped out by this point, but Bex wanted to take in the atmosphere and look in a few more shops. So, I went to sit outside the Post Office and Bex walked round Hogsmeade.








She didn’t buy anything, but she really liked the displays.








She also received a lot of attention for her t-shirt, which was Harry Potter themed. For some reason, everywhere we went that day, people commented on how much they loved Becky’s top, which was just a cheap one from Primark. My dress and bow, which were also HP-themed, seemed to be too subtle to be noticed.



It was now 19:00 and we were ready for some tea. We also wanted to be in a good position to watch the castle projection show, which would be starting at 19:45. We, therefore, decided to eat in the Three Broomsticks. We weren’t that excited about this prospect, as we’d eaten at one of the HP restaurants in Florida and found the food to be like overpriced school dinners, but location is everything, I guess.




The options for food were uninspiring, but fine.


Everything was overpriced, but we’d expected that. We went for two ribs meals with two large lemonades, which came to 4760 yen (£33) – ouch. The food was OK, but not very special, and the portion wasn’t massive.




We certainly did have an excellent spot for the castle projection show. This turned out to be a tiny bit disappointing, as it’s very short (only 5-10 minutes long) and doesn’t have much of a story. It’s celebrating the four Hogwarts houses, but I feel there’s an opportunity to do something a bit more special here, and really make the most of the possibilities afforded by HP and the castle itself.








In fact, the show was so short, that we waited until 20:05 to see if there was any more to it. At that time, however, the show just started over again. We decided to take advantage of this moment, with everyone looking at the castle show, to have a go on Forbidden Journey. The posted wait was down as 15 minutes, but in fact, it was a walk-on – result! After that, we ran round to go again as there was still no queue. The CMs remembered us (because of Becky’s t-shirt) and thought it was hilarious that we were going round again. Clearly they thought we were massive nerds. They were right.





Bex wanted to try one more time, but unfortunately, they were now closing the ride. Well, we’d done pretty well! We walked slowly out of Hogsmeade, taking in the evening atmosphere.







Then we walked back through the park, catching the last of the parade as it went past.





Before leaving, we had a brief look in the Universal Store, as Bex’s holiday spends were burning a hole in her pocket. Nothing really appealed, however, as none of it seemed very creative. It was all just an object with a character’s face slapped on it (usually a Minion), and almost none of it was park-specific, which is Becky’s favourite type of merch. The only thing that she briefly considered was a nice cookie tin celebrating the Night Parade (which of course we’d loved), but even that wasn’t cool enough to buy. It’s very frustrating when you’ve got money and want to spend it on nerdy, overpriced things that you don’t need, but there’s no nerdy, overpriced things for you to buy!

We finally left the park roundabout 21:15 and headed back through City Walk. Bex was after an ice cream so we went to the Lawson (a little supermarket) next to the train station to try and find something. We found some not-particularly-interesting-but-still-ice cream ice creams and went to try and buy them. Unfortunately, everyone in the park seemed to have left peckish too and the queue to ring up items went all the way round the shop. We couldn’t be bothered to wait that long, so we just headed back to the hotel.

This turned out to have been a good decision, however, because back in our hotel room and still craving ice cream, Bex remembered that she’d seen a sign for Coldstone Creamery downstairs. She therefore went down to see what she could find and returned some minutes later with two of the most beautiful ice creams either of us had ever seen.



They were also delicious and well worth the price, which was quite high. Mine was mango flavoured with big chunks of real mango, and Bex’s was mint choc chip. Perfect!




We finished up the day by doing some bits of packing and messing around. We went to bed at about 23:00. It had been a 19,000 step day – quite hard on the old feet!

Bye for now friends - thanks for reading XXX
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Old 2 Feb 20, 08:03 PM  
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I’m not surprised you needed a rest, what a huge day! I love the theming for the Minions area, it looks brilliant a great day
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Old 3 Feb 20, 10:30 AM  
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Originally Posted by Sparksy72 View Post
I’m not surprised you needed a rest, what a huge day! I love the theming for the Minions area, it looks brilliant a great day
Thanks for reading and commenting

The theming in that area was spectacular. Even though I'm not a huge Minions fan I still enjoyed how witty it was
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Old 4 Feb 20, 01:51 PM  
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Those ice creams are also now on the to do list 😋
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Old 6 Feb 20, 08:26 PM  
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Sounds like a great day apart from your poor feet! I didn’t realise that if you leave the park then you cannot return in the same day - do you know if this is the same for all USJ park tickets or was this something exclusive to the ones you had?
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Old 7 Feb 20, 10:49 PM  
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Would love to go but will only have half a day and 3 other people to get on board with the idea (we’re going to Disneyland / sea at the end of the holiday). Have a feeling it’ll be Osaka castle instead...love the Minion area though
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Old 9 Feb 20, 04:40 PM  
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Originally Posted by Tinkermom View Post
Those ice creams are also now on the to do list 😋
That list is getting long! It's shaping up to be a pretty good trip.
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Old 9 Feb 20, 04:43 PM  
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Originally Posted by rachelhelen82 View Post
Sounds like a great day apart from your poor feet! I didn’t realise that if you leave the park then you cannot return in the same day - do you know if this is the same for all USJ park tickets or was this something exclusive to the ones you had?
As far as I know it's all the park tickets. It makes for a long day and is definitely something to keep in mind if you're planning a trip there. Thanks for reading
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