^Ha, you're totally right, signage just looked so similar to me that I assumed it was the same thing.
Day 15 - Saturday 21st
I believe we started the day by grabbing some breakfast at a local cafe. We then made our way on to the trains until we arrived at Hirakata park. It was pretty easy to get to, once at the train station it was just a short walk to the park gates.
Once inside the park there was this quite cool mountain attraction, we never really found out what happens inside though as it was an up-charge attraction.
Still, we made our way through the very quite arcade area over to our first cred. The park seemed like it had some nice patches but was all a bit dated and not exactly well maintained. Oh and the park was pretty dead, looking back though I think this was down to the ridiculous heat.
The first rollercoaster we came across was "Fantastic Coaster Rowdy". A random crocodile themed coaster. One of the trains is pink and one is normal green. Nic was pretty annoyed that we got on the green one.
So what can I tell you about Fantastic Coaster Rowdy? I wouldn't say it was fantastic, more... peculiar. The layout isn't very exciting and there's a random tower that you go through that must have been a last minute ditch attempt at theming the ride experience or adding an extra thrill? However, for a family coaster it was ok and there was one kid that was totally obsessed with it. Like I lost count as to how many times he went round and each time he still had this massive grin of "that's the best ride in the World... must ride it forever" - The father didn't look as pleased and just let the kid re-ride by himself
I felt like I was dying from the heat so after taking a few photos for the CF park guide of some of the flat rides I forced Nic to let us dive into the nearest dark ride.
derp
We had no idea what would lurk inside this rather innocent looking building. First we boarded one of the little trains...
Then our journey into mega-budget-small-world-but-not-circus? began and just... wow....
It was so awful it was kind of awesome?
Outside some panic-struck Octopus action was occurring...
The heat was still giving me grief so I dived into the haunted ghost train thing. Nic didn't venture into the unknown. It was another one of those creepy "wear headphones with oddly well designed creepy audio" ghost trains.
The fun looking characters on the building are a lie
We then headed up some stairs. Urgh, it felt so burdenous. However at the top of said stairs was an Intamin drop tower... yay!
Empty park meant we walked straight on and straight into a seat made out of molten lava. It felt like the rise to the top took forever, the views from the top were pretty great and then the airtime (not to mention that sweet, lovely cool breeze) on the way down was fantastic.
Another odd Japanese Freezer attraction was lurking in the shade, it looked like a portaloo. Once inside we laughed a LOT. It literally was designed as if you were shrunk down and went into a fridge freezer so they had all these large vegetables and soy sauce bottles. It was also absolute freezing, pretty sure going from one extreme temp to the other is bad for you.
So, now slightly frozen it was time to ride this thing...
Red Falcon. Oh, Red Falcon. We managed to get in the front row for our first ride. I took the opportunity to film a POV. When I film them we try to keep quiet and omg to not laugh at some of the banking on this was just hard. I'll let you watch...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFR5dqdxqr0[/youtube]
Yeah I know, the video looks/sounds turd. That's me trying to fix it and actually making it worse. Anyway, yeah so the ride itself was a little pants but that stupid banking amused us so much we ran round and did it again.
Next we jumped into what I have dubbed "fairy card walkthrough" because it's themed to fairies, you walk through the attraction and are handed a card where you then walk aimlessly around feeling lost, scanning your card at certain computers to play a game, totally not understand what the game is about or how to play it, lose said game, walk around lost a bit more before leaving. Basically, know your Japanese if you want to play in here.
On top of the building was the rather standard spinning wild mouse cred. So we climbed the stairs and rode it. It was exactly like you think it'd ride apart from it didn't spin. Oddly enough, I think it was one of the more popular attractions in the park.
So what's next? It's hot, that looks like a log flume containing a splash into water where you get wet, decision made...
It turned out to be yet another Japanese water ride that was reluctant to get you wet. There was a lot of meandering with this one, it sort of went amongst the supports of Red Falcon in a bid to feel like it was worth riding. I dunno, I was hot and bothered and needed a break.
This area of the park loved having rides over-lapping
What's this? Vending machine has uber energy drink I had become obsessed with! *Purchases like a mad man and guzzles down very quickly* Now refreshed I was able to continue. Up some stairs was a couple of flat rides, then some more stairs to some child friendly rides themed to wizards. There was a cred, it was ridden.
As you can see, this is clearly the most exciting coaster you'll see in this report. [/lies] It was a rather bare, standard kids cred and a lovely +1 on our goon lists.
We have no shame
There was then lots more stairs, a sort of arena/show area and then this...
Could this woodie be the gold hidden at the top of the park? With barely anyone else in the area we pretty much walked straight on and was able to film a POV...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD-Ti1yXwYA[/youtube]
The video may make it look shaky but it was a great ride. It was just really fun, some decent pops of air time and very re-ridable. We went round 3 times, annoyingly we never managed to get a back row ride though due to this kid and his father who kept running round like us, always beating us to the back row.
We then found a long path which had some animal enclosures. It was a little random and the conditions the animals were living in wasn't fantastic.
Ooooo, some rapids, they look good
We found our way back to near the entrance where a few indoor attractions were. We rode the 3D laser attraction first. For the amount of space it takes up it was quite impressive and was definitely the best version we saw in Japan. You sit in these little carts that face you inwards and it sort of does and oval track. So there are actually loads of animatronics and decent scenes of things you shoot at but inbetween the scenes are 3D screens with more things to shoot at. I think the combination of the two and the decent up-keep of it just made it really enjoyable. After getting off we noticed there were prizes, didn't take us long to make note of how high a score you needed and head back in to win something. We didn't win, but the possibility excited us and made it that bit better.
In the same building is another Pokemon-like card thing. Oh we were getting addicted to these. Turns out this was a version 2. It was also by far the busiest attraction in the whole park. No lie. If it wasn't for the massive queue of kids with wallets of these cards that kept going round building their collection we would have just been doing the same. The fact they actually had huge wallets of these cards we cottoned on as to how big this thing must be. To be honest, if I had loads of these places near me, especially when I was their age, I would be there all the time. This one was also a little different to the other one but I can't remember what that difference was now lol.
We were losing interest in the park as a whole so we popped into the arcade. They had a cool Pikachu game...
They had like a ball drop thing (hard to explain). Nic had a go and sort of failed. I thought it looked easy and then I saw they had Agent P cushions. OMG. "I TOTALLY NEED THAT IN MY LIFE!" I thought, without thinking of the consequences of having to carry it everywhere and somehow get it home. I pay the gentleman behind the counter 100 yen. I get the first ball in the slot. Yes! Just need another 3 and I have 4 more goes. I fail on the second one. Boo! Then my heart starts racing and before I know it I successfully get the last 3 in the slot and I am now the proud owner of an Agent P cushion. Go me!
So much JOY!
The thing that made this all more awesome is that the guy behind the counter totally loved us and knew what I was on about as soon as I was like "AGENT P!!!!! ARGH!!!!" When he was making all these noises to sort of put me off (in a friendly amusing manner) I could have missed, but I didn't and he looked just as happy as me.
So after that moment of awesome I was like "those rapids looked cool". So we went and rode the rapids and they were not cool. They looked cool, wet, moist, choppy, exciting. But they weren't. It was yet more lies in the land of dry water rides. DRYPIDS WHY DO YOU EXIST!
Still, there was a tunnel, that was exciting.
We then proceeded to leave the park via the gift shop, cue an hour of Nic being like a big kid in a sweet shop when she discovers a whole area of Totoro toys. The below is a reanactment by a pony of Nic shopping for Totoro shizz....
We then leave the shop where Nic's purse feels a lot lighter but we're both very happy with our new gifts. To be honest that evening my mind is a complete blank so I'm gonna go talk to Nic and might let you in on what we got up to if either of us can remember.
Thanks for reading.
Day 15 - Saturday 21st
I believe we started the day by grabbing some breakfast at a local cafe. We then made our way on to the trains until we arrived at Hirakata park. It was pretty easy to get to, once at the train station it was just a short walk to the park gates.
Once inside the park there was this quite cool mountain attraction, we never really found out what happens inside though as it was an up-charge attraction.
Still, we made our way through the very quite arcade area over to our first cred. The park seemed like it had some nice patches but was all a bit dated and not exactly well maintained. Oh and the park was pretty dead, looking back though I think this was down to the ridiculous heat.
The first rollercoaster we came across was "Fantastic Coaster Rowdy". A random crocodile themed coaster. One of the trains is pink and one is normal green. Nic was pretty annoyed that we got on the green one.
So what can I tell you about Fantastic Coaster Rowdy? I wouldn't say it was fantastic, more... peculiar. The layout isn't very exciting and there's a random tower that you go through that must have been a last minute ditch attempt at theming the ride experience or adding an extra thrill? However, for a family coaster it was ok and there was one kid that was totally obsessed with it. Like I lost count as to how many times he went round and each time he still had this massive grin of "that's the best ride in the World... must ride it forever" - The father didn't look as pleased and just let the kid re-ride by himself
I felt like I was dying from the heat so after taking a few photos for the CF park guide of some of the flat rides I forced Nic to let us dive into the nearest dark ride.
derp
We had no idea what would lurk inside this rather innocent looking building. First we boarded one of the little trains...
Then our journey into mega-budget-small-world-but-not-circus? began and just... wow....
It was so awful it was kind of awesome?
Outside some panic-struck Octopus action was occurring...
The heat was still giving me grief so I dived into the haunted ghost train thing. Nic didn't venture into the unknown. It was another one of those creepy "wear headphones with oddly well designed creepy audio" ghost trains.
The fun looking characters on the building are a lie
We then headed up some stairs. Urgh, it felt so burdenous. However at the top of said stairs was an Intamin drop tower... yay!
Empty park meant we walked straight on and straight into a seat made out of molten lava. It felt like the rise to the top took forever, the views from the top were pretty great and then the airtime (not to mention that sweet, lovely cool breeze) on the way down was fantastic.
Another odd Japanese Freezer attraction was lurking in the shade, it looked like a portaloo. Once inside we laughed a LOT. It literally was designed as if you were shrunk down and went into a fridge freezer so they had all these large vegetables and soy sauce bottles. It was also absolute freezing, pretty sure going from one extreme temp to the other is bad for you.
So, now slightly frozen it was time to ride this thing...
Red Falcon. Oh, Red Falcon. We managed to get in the front row for our first ride. I took the opportunity to film a POV. When I film them we try to keep quiet and omg to not laugh at some of the banking on this was just hard. I'll let you watch...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFR5dqdxqr0[/youtube]
Yeah I know, the video looks/sounds turd. That's me trying to fix it and actually making it worse. Anyway, yeah so the ride itself was a little pants but that stupid banking amused us so much we ran round and did it again.
Next we jumped into what I have dubbed "fairy card walkthrough" because it's themed to fairies, you walk through the attraction and are handed a card where you then walk aimlessly around feeling lost, scanning your card at certain computers to play a game, totally not understand what the game is about or how to play it, lose said game, walk around lost a bit more before leaving. Basically, know your Japanese if you want to play in here.
On top of the building was the rather standard spinning wild mouse cred. So we climbed the stairs and rode it. It was exactly like you think it'd ride apart from it didn't spin. Oddly enough, I think it was one of the more popular attractions in the park.
So what's next? It's hot, that looks like a log flume containing a splash into water where you get wet, decision made...
It turned out to be yet another Japanese water ride that was reluctant to get you wet. There was a lot of meandering with this one, it sort of went amongst the supports of Red Falcon in a bid to feel like it was worth riding. I dunno, I was hot and bothered and needed a break.
This area of the park loved having rides over-lapping
What's this? Vending machine has uber energy drink I had become obsessed with! *Purchases like a mad man and guzzles down very quickly* Now refreshed I was able to continue. Up some stairs was a couple of flat rides, then some more stairs to some child friendly rides themed to wizards. There was a cred, it was ridden.
As you can see, this is clearly the most exciting coaster you'll see in this report. [/lies] It was a rather bare, standard kids cred and a lovely +1 on our goon lists.
We have no shame
There was then lots more stairs, a sort of arena/show area and then this...
Could this woodie be the gold hidden at the top of the park? With barely anyone else in the area we pretty much walked straight on and was able to film a POV...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD-Ti1yXwYA[/youtube]
The video may make it look shaky but it was a great ride. It was just really fun, some decent pops of air time and very re-ridable. We went round 3 times, annoyingly we never managed to get a back row ride though due to this kid and his father who kept running round like us, always beating us to the back row.
We then found a long path which had some animal enclosures. It was a little random and the conditions the animals were living in wasn't fantastic.
Ooooo, some rapids, they look good
We found our way back to near the entrance where a few indoor attractions were. We rode the 3D laser attraction first. For the amount of space it takes up it was quite impressive and was definitely the best version we saw in Japan. You sit in these little carts that face you inwards and it sort of does and oval track. So there are actually loads of animatronics and decent scenes of things you shoot at but inbetween the scenes are 3D screens with more things to shoot at. I think the combination of the two and the decent up-keep of it just made it really enjoyable. After getting off we noticed there were prizes, didn't take us long to make note of how high a score you needed and head back in to win something. We didn't win, but the possibility excited us and made it that bit better.
In the same building is another Pokemon-like card thing. Oh we were getting addicted to these. Turns out this was a version 2. It was also by far the busiest attraction in the whole park. No lie. If it wasn't for the massive queue of kids with wallets of these cards that kept going round building their collection we would have just been doing the same. The fact they actually had huge wallets of these cards we cottoned on as to how big this thing must be. To be honest, if I had loads of these places near me, especially when I was their age, I would be there all the time. This one was also a little different to the other one but I can't remember what that difference was now lol.
We were losing interest in the park as a whole so we popped into the arcade. They had a cool Pikachu game...
They had like a ball drop thing (hard to explain). Nic had a go and sort of failed. I thought it looked easy and then I saw they had Agent P cushions. OMG. "I TOTALLY NEED THAT IN MY LIFE!" I thought, without thinking of the consequences of having to carry it everywhere and somehow get it home. I pay the gentleman behind the counter 100 yen. I get the first ball in the slot. Yes! Just need another 3 and I have 4 more goes. I fail on the second one. Boo! Then my heart starts racing and before I know it I successfully get the last 3 in the slot and I am now the proud owner of an Agent P cushion. Go me!
So much JOY!
The thing that made this all more awesome is that the guy behind the counter totally loved us and knew what I was on about as soon as I was like "AGENT P!!!!! ARGH!!!!" When he was making all these noises to sort of put me off (in a friendly amusing manner) I could have missed, but I didn't and he looked just as happy as me.
So after that moment of awesome I was like "those rapids looked cool". So we went and rode the rapids and they were not cool. They looked cool, wet, moist, choppy, exciting. But they weren't. It was yet more lies in the land of dry water rides. DRYPIDS WHY DO YOU EXIST!
Still, there was a tunnel, that was exciting.
We then proceeded to leave the park via the gift shop, cue an hour of Nic being like a big kid in a sweet shop when she discovers a whole area of Totoro toys. The below is a reanactment by a pony of Nic shopping for Totoro shizz....
We then leave the shop where Nic's purse feels a lot lighter but we're both very happy with our new gifts. To be honest that evening my mind is a complete blank so I'm gonna go talk to Nic and might let you in on what we got up to if either of us can remember.
Thanks for reading.
