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Tokyo Weekend PTR - Part 3: Yomiuriland and Joypolis

gavin

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After finally getting the Togo pipeline coaster at Nagashima Spaland after 2 failed attempts, I still had one personal Japanese coaster vendetta to settle, which meant going back to Tokyo (10 years since I left there), and I had a long weekend recently to get it sorted.

I originally had a Friday off work, so had booked a very late flight for Thursday night to get me in first thing on Friday morning, with the intention of grabbing breakfast/coffee somewhere and heading immediately out to Fuji Q since there was no way I wanted to hit that place on the Saturday.

However, schools in Hong Kong were suddenly closed on the Wednesday, and once it was confirmed that they would also be closed on the Thursday, I ditched my original flight and got a new one to leave on Thursday morning, meaning that I’d get to central Tokyo mid afternoon that day, giving me a bit more time there and meaning I wouldn’t be heading straight to a park immediately after an overnight flight. Thanks protestors/rioters!*

*delete according to political affiliation

The focus of the trip was a third visit to Fuji Q, but I decided I’d also try a few +1s since I didn’t really need to see or do much else in Tokyo. I was staying in Shinjuku, and the hotel was only a few stops on the metro from Tokyo Dome, so I headed there that first evening.

Tokyo Dome City

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This hadn’t really been on the cards, but I had extra time now and it was nearby. On my first visit, there had been 4 coasters, and they still had 3 when I was living in Tokyo (Thunder Dolphin, Linear Gale and the spinner), but since then they’d closed all of them but Thunder Dolphin.

It gets dark very quickly in this part of the world, so I decided to wait for a night ride on Thunder Dolphin. Also, since my last visit, they’ve added that ugly netting all along the track.

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Seemingly out of nowhere, a new coaster appeared earlier this year, taking up part of the space where Geo Panic used to live. If it weren’t for this popping up, I probably wouldn’t have gone to be honest.

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It’s a family, launched shuttle coaster and is actually pretty decent. The forward circuit is in complete darkness. You return to the station and are launched through the same circuit backwards, but this time there’s a bunch of cool lighting and music.

This being Japan though, there are some stupid rules. I had a very small bag with me, expecting to leave it in a bin somewhere, but you had to take everything on with you. “Finally, some common sense,” I thought. “I can take this small bag onto this small family coaster.” But no. I had to put my bag into another bag which they provided. I could only take that bag on.

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There was other new stuff which I didn’t bother with, such as some 3D cinema shooting thing and a new/different haunted house. I didn’t bother with a wristband though. The place is free to enter and I only wanted the new cred and a Thunder Dolphin reride, so I just bought individual tokens.

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The area looks nice at night, with a restaurant “street” along one side. I got a traditional Japanese crunchwrap supreme from Taco Bell for dinner.

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Thunder Dolphin was much as I remembered it: an amazing first drop followed by not much, but elevated due to its location. I used to use it as my quick coaster fix when I lived in Tokyo since it’s pay-per-ride and open in the evenings, so was easy to call in after work. It’s aging well at least and is still very smooth.

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And that was it. I think I spent about 90 minutes here including dinner and was back at the hotel by around 7pm. Fuji Q next.

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gavin

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I’ve just had a new, bigger computer monitor installed at work and have realised how s**t my pictures have been looking due to the recommended Imgur resizing, so hopefully they’ll be better from now on. They're still resized to prevent any loading issues, but at a higher resolution hopefully.

Anyway…

Fuji Q Highlands

This was the main reason for being in Tokyo. I’d been twice before and missed out on Eejanaika both times. The first time was fine since it was a month of opening and I knew it wouldn’t be ready, but the second time pissed me off. It was “closed for maintenance” while they planted a few crappy shrubs around the base of some of the supports. Having bagged Dinoconda in the meantime, not having Eejanaika was even more irksome since I NEEDED the set of three.

I got a bus from Shinjuku Station, which got me to the park about 10 minutes before opening. You get a good view of Fujiyama as you arrive, and I think this whole little French village area was new since I was here last.

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My plan was to get fast passes for the big four coasters. There was only one couple in front of me at the fastpass booth, but they were being ridiculously burdenous, so I sacked it off in favour of getting a quick ride or two in before it got busier.

YAAAAAAAASSSSSSS!

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I went straight to Eejanaika, which is actually the furthest coaster entrance from the main park entrance, and saw that they had a single rider line. WTF?! Fuji Q in some kind of efficiency scandal? It wasn’t opening until 10am though, and it was around 9:30 I think, so I just got into the regular queue, which only took around 15 minutes at that time in the morning.

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It was being run pretty well to be fair. It was on two trains, which were getting dispatched at roughly 3-minute intervals. There’s some f**kwittery involving taking ALL shoes off for no reason, but that wasn’t impacting the dispatch times. I was expecting Dinoconda levels of ineptitude (single train with 10-15 minute dispatches), so it was an extra bonus when that wasn’t happening.

The coaster then. Amazing, but shaky. I loved it, and rate it more highly than X2, but preferred Dinoconda. They’re all completely ludicrous pieces of machinery, but Dinoconda pretty much does what Eejanaika does (throws you around like a rag doll), but manages to do it without a huge rattle all the way round.

The single rider line was great though, and was used a couple of times later in the day, ending up with roughly 15-minute waits instead of the 60-minute+ line that formed for most of the day. Fujiyama also had a single rider line, which always ended up with practically walk-on rides, so that was another lifesaver.

I needed Takabisha here as well since it was new since my last visit, but didn’t feel rushed since I’d quickly bagged Eejanaika and the place wasn’t too busy, so slowly minced in that direction and took pictures of stuff.

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I wanted to do Haunted Hospital again, but they’ve now got some stupid group booking system in place. You’ve got to have a group of between 4 and 8 people. Common sense would dictate that any solo guests could just be shoved into any group of less than 8, but no. Meh, done it before anyway. Stupid though.

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My plan was to get a fastpass for Do-dodonpa and do Takabisha in the meantime. There are individual fastpass machines out front of the major rides, so that whole anxiety-causing advice of “YOU HAVE TO RUN TO THE FASTPASS BOOTH IMMEDIATELY!!!!!” thing isn’t strictly true though it would be easier to get them all at once and get them early if it were busy and you were worried about them selling out.

I accidentally got a fastpass for much later in the day at the Takabisha booth by mistake (stupid), but decided to use it for a reride later anyway since I hadn’t done it before. Dododododonpa still had plenty of fastpasses left for the afternoon (the machine has time slots on the buttons), so I got a late one for that as well.

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I decided to suck up the 60-minute queue for Takabisha since I knew I’d be fine for time with other stuff. I really liked it. It’s pretty smooth for what it is and has a decent launch and substantial layout.

Fujiyama was walk-on with single rider; the regular line stayed at between 30-60 minutes for most of the day. Again, they had two trains and were getting them out at a decent rate.

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I love this coaster. It’s definitely aged quite a bit in the 10 years since I last rode it though, and is quite brutal in parts, especially the weird twisty bit near the end.

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The former Zola 7 building had been sitting empty on my last visit, but now has a crappy museum thing taking up most of the space:

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A small section also contains Endless Haunted Mine. It has tiny, 2-person trackless cars, and you have a strap/seatbelt pulled over the front of your body pinning your arms down. You also have headphones (that kind where it feels like stuff is happening right in your ear – very common in Japanese horror attractions), but there’s not much to look at as you go round.

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It was a mostly clear day, meaning that you could actually see Mount Fuji.

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Did the Ferris wheel for the photo ops:

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The remains of the Wild Mouse coaster. Kind of a shame it’s gone since it was one of the better ones of its type and it doesn’t free up much room.

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Fuji Airways was also new since my last visit. I’m soooooo over flying theatres, but this one was actually really good. The preshow video was hilarious – very tongue in cheek – and the ride system had plenty of movement allowing for a very cool “barrel roll” effect (no you don’t go upside-down, but the movement coupled with the video was very effective).

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This 3D shooter was new this year. It has trackless vehicles (a waste really) and is a “Midway Mania” style shooter. It’s decent, but I’m getting bored of the ride type honestly.

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I didn’t do either of the water rides, any of the stuff in Thomas Land or many of the flat rides (just the giant frisbee I think), and the suspended hamster thing was closed.

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Dododododododododododododonpa then.

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I used to love this ride, but now it’s a horrible, horrible disappointment.

The launch is still incredible, but the rattle around the huge curve is so much worse than before. The replacement of the top hat with the loop is just criminal. Add to that the very uncomfortable new OTSRs (it used to have lapbars), which tighten as you hit that small downhill section after the launch and crush you for the rest of the ride, and you’re left with an absolute steaming turd. I’d be happier if they’d just ripped it out and built something new.

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I’m just going to throw in some repetitive pictures, mostly of Takabisha since it’s ridiculously photogenic and I was hanging around near it for a while waiting for me fast pass to kick in.

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It also looks great with Mount Fuji in the background, with a decent vantage point from one side of that waste-of-space pond thing they have. Have some more very similar-looking pictures.

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Getting out was a bit of a pain. I had a pre-booked bus ticket, but my bus ended up being about half an hour late (no doubt the driver was forced to commit seppuku right after his shift). The Shinjuku buses were coming through every 5 minutes though, so I ended up going through the rigmarole of checking if it was my bus every time. My bus was always “the next one”. Anyway, no biggie.

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Overal then: third visit, and third really good day here. It wasn’t too busy (Friday and getting cold), but some of the queues did get quite long. Eeejanaika and Takabisha stayed at around an hour for most of the day, Fujiyama quite a bit less, but Dododododododododododododododododododododododonpa got to 90 minutes very quickly and never dropped below that, with the queue getting shut off well before park closing. This wasn’t down to operations – cars were flying out way quicker than I’ve ever seen it before – but with such a s**ty capacity, it’s never going to be any better than that.

I did what I wanted to do, with rerides and a few extra bits and pieces, but a 5pm close could be pretty tight for a first-time visitor who wants to do more that I did, especially Haunted Hospital. One massive improvement there though is that you now prebook a slot rather than wait in a regular queue, which used to easily get up to 2 hours+, so you can go off and do other stuff in the meantime.

What I would say though is to not bother with fast passes on Fujiyama at all. Single rider that s**t. It’s pretty much the same for Eejanaika, but a fast pass guarantees an instant, no-wait ride, as opposed to a 15-20 minute wait on a quiet day (or potentially considerably more on busy days). Also, they apparently don’t use the single rider queues on very busy days, but that should be posted on the website beforehand. Even on quiet days, absolutely get fast passes for Takabisha and Dodododododododododododododdododdododoododoododododododododonpa.

The operations here have definitely improved throughout the park. I never had an issue the first two times, but I still noticed a marked improvement with almost everything, most notably dispatch times and, of course, those single rider options. It was great to see such improvements when pretty much every other Japanese park continues to be stuck with horrendous inefficiency.
 

Gazza

Giga Poster
Noooo, so no way to do the Hospital solo?

I cant tell from the pics, but do the rapids still have those plastic screens they put on during winter?
Edit: Balls, no they aren't there.
 

gavin

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Noooo, so no way to do the Hospital solo?

I cant tell from the pics, but do the rapids still have those plastic screens they put on during winter?
Edit: Balls, no they aren't there.
I'm sure you could just ask people who are going if you can join their group. Most young adults would have enough of a grasp of English to know what you were asking, and they'd probably enjoy the novelty of having a foreigner join them.

Sent from my Redmi Note 7 using Tapatalk
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
Still can't believe we spent 10 hours there and never actually saw Mt. Fuji.
That stupid wild mouse rattled my brain so I found the demolition picture very satisfying.
Congrats on the set of course.
 

oriolat2

Giga Poster
Well, I did Haunted Hospital "solo". As you mentioned, you can book a time slot as a single guest. What they did was at the preshow area, they had me go to the preshow room alone and then made me join a smaller group of Chinese people. Having so many preshow/briefing rooms, they can easily batch as many people as they want to maximize capacity.

I also thought that Eejanaika was incredible. In fact, it's one of my all-time top coasters. And during peak season, I didn't use a single fast pass, yet joined the single rider line for as many rides as I could, which resulted in a very nice and productive day for FujiQ standards. I even got to ride Do-dodonpa twice (loved the launch sequence "it's laaaaaaunch time" "do-do-don-pa!").

Glad you had luck this third time around! I can't wait to go back to Japan!
 

gavin

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^ When did you go? The sign out front (in the tented booking area away from the actual attraction) stated group reservations only and no single guests in the rules/regulations, but I guess it could have been a translation issue meaning nobody could actually go though alone, rather than the "you must book as a group" idea that it seemed to be? I honestly didn't bother to fully check since I wasn't interested in doing it again.

The final bit of this then:

I had the Saturday left, which I had intended to be a lazy day, maybe a bit of sightseeing or revisiting old areas, but I (obviously) ended up getting some creds instead.

Yomiuriland

It had been a really long time since I’d been here. I went on my very first visit Tokyo, but had no need to go again on the second visit or when I was living there since there was nothing new. Since then, there was a semi-substantial new cred though.

You access the park via a cable car from the station. You could walk, but it’s a fairly hefty uphill trek. As you crest the hill, you see Bandit approaching.

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Like a lot of Japanese parks, they have some foreigner discount, which I always forget about, but the guy at the window asked about it this time. I didn’t have my passport, but he accepted my Hong Kong ID after looking at it slightly confused for a while.

Bandit first up then. I really liked this ride when I’d done it before, and still liked it this time. I’d forgotten the contortion needed to get into it though, and the OTSRs, which take away from it a bit. Still a very god coaster though.

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Momonga was only running the stand-up train, with the sit-down one nowhere to be seen. No worries as I’d probably not have bothered with the sit-down option again anyway.

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I did the shot and drop towers since they were there and walk-on. Well, almost. There was just one ride op to run both towers, so there was a bit of a wait while she alternated between the two.

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I hadn’t done this raft thing before. I think I’d assumed last time that it was separate from the park in the water park area, but it’s not. I’m glad I did it this time, though, as it’s by far the best of this ride type that I’ve done (all 4 or 5 of them, so not saying much perhaps).

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The new coaster turned out to be in a completely new area. I’d assumed it would have taken up the space where White Canyon used to be, but that area seems empty now. No idea what was in this area before all the new stuff was thrown in. It’s called “Goodjoba!” and each ride/building is themed to some kind of factory.

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Car Factory had this pretty cool little kiddy thing. Before the ride, you go into the garage/workshop and have 90 seconds to customize your car by attaching bits to it. There are buttons inside the car to turn on lights etc., and accelerator and brake pedals that don’t actually do anything. Before you “drive” the car, you have to test all the buttons.

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Food Factory has an indoor rapids ride, where the boat is the cup of some UFO cup noodles (clearly the sponsor here) that goes through the noodle factory. It was FAB! It picks up decent speed and even has a fairly big, steep drop.

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Fashion Factory houses the new coaster, Spin Runway, themed to a clothing factory. The lifthill has a decent game element. It’s a spiral lifthill with projections that follow the car. By hitting a button on the restraint, the Yomiuriland dog mascot flies higher or lower on the screen to collect various clothing items. When you hit the coaster section, you’re then in the fashion show section.

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I didn’t do any flat rides or older dark rides, choosing instead to get rerides in on Spin Runway and Bandit before heading out at around 2pm (I hadn’t bothered rushing here for opening, so only did about 3 hours in the park), getting the cable car back down to the station.

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I decided to head to one of my least favourite places, Joypolis, also because there was a new cred there since last time. This was a bit of a pain in the arse since there’s no easy way to do it from Yomiuriland. I had to go back to where I’d come from that morning, Shinjuku Station (takes about an hour), then out from there to the Odaiba area (another 45 minutes or so in another direction).

Tokyo Joypolis

I’d already made the decision to just get the cred and leave. I like the Odaiba area, but have spent a lot of time there in the past, so I didn’t feel the need to hang around. Joypolis had a bunch of new stuff (they’re constantly retheming stuff to keep it fresh), but I had no interest in spending more time there than necessary. Strangely, for a Saturday afternoon, it was pretty quiet.

Some stuff then. Halfpipe Canyon and the three “Wild” simuators are all still there, but most of everything else seemed new/rethemed since I was last there.

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Gekion Live coaster has replaced the old spinner that used to be in the same place. As a coaster, it’s crap, but the dark ride/game section is quite well done. Each restraint has coloured buttons which you hit in time with the music by following screens in front of the car (imagine a “Guitar Hero” style of game). The screens are cool though as they move along tracks with the cars, keeping things moving.

The only part of the coaster you can see from off-ride is the inversion. A spinning coaster with an inversion was all very exciting when this ride popped up, but it’s dull really. As just a coaster, the Golden Horse inverting spinners are better.

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The only pictures I took around the area as I headed back to the station:

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From there, it was back to Shinjuku where I had a night out at a few bars I used to frequently hang out in. Meh. I didn’t have a bad night, but the crowd at one place was very different to how it used to be, being half full of straight, white, basic Beckies who’ve clearly watched a couple of episodes of Drag Race and decided that “gay guys love us!” No. GTFO honestly.

I had a slightly hungover flight back the next day, but nothing too drastic, and then a further two days off work since the schools still didn’t open until the Wednesday. There was no way to know this, though, since it was announced on a day-to-day basis, but I’d ended up with a full week off. Too bad there was no way to know this, or I’d have stayed in Japan longer.

Never mind I guess. I still had a decent weekend. There was only a +5 to the count, but that wasn’t really the goal here anyway. I was only really planning on finally getting Eejanaika done, grabbing Takabisha in the process, so the extra +1s in the revisited places were a little bonus and all three were quirky little things even if, as coasters, they weren’t up to much.

That’s that then.
 
Love the Fuji Q photos, it has such a picturesque backdrop. Glad you didn't have to use the Fastpass for everything; we got spited out of front row on Takabisha because we had Fastpasses, which is ridiculous. Glad you think Eej is fab, I have no basis for comparison as far as other 4D coasters go though.

Yomiuriland is a place I always forget I even went but was actually a decent park. Love the UFO noodle ride, so much wtf!
 

Gazza

Giga Poster
I feel like talking more about Panic Coaster! Back Daaan for anyone who comes across this thread, since it doesn’t really warrant its own topic.

But I liked it! And it was one of the better family coasters I’ve done.



Spoilers



Basically, it works like firechaser express, except there is no reversing point midway through the course, though it still has a dead end station.
The station had a big projection on the wall of a cartoon bomb bouncing around, until it eventually goes off sending you into the course in darkness.
The layout was something like this from memory. I was fully expecting a very basic layout like the other Gerstlauer family shuttles, but it had a few turns and bumps.
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There is a switch track at the entrance to the station, so the train comes around the course and re-enters the station facing the opposite way to it started.

When you re-enter the station, there is another projection of a cartoon bomb, and another gentle launch. But on the 2nd lap around the course the whole interior is lit up with hundreds of colourful ball shaped lights, with mirrors on the ceiling and floor. Imagine heaps of these basically.

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