I should be doing work. Seriously. I’ve got so much to do, but finding any excuse to put off doing it, so I thought I’d do another “slightly” backdated trip report.
I can’t remember exactly when this was, but more than likely would be June sometime. A couple of friends and I decided to go to the “Design Festa”, a huge art/design/fashion exhibition in Odaiba, which happens to be the area containing Joypolis.
First off, I **** ing LOVE this area. It’s easily one of my favourite places in Tokyo. However, I **** ing HATE Joypolis. It’s sooooooo awful.
Anyway, a couple of pictures from the general area:
Tokyo Big Site: A huge exhibition centre where the “Design Festa” was held:
We must have spent a good 3 hours here, probably more, just wandering around. Here’s a bunch of pictures. I would caption all of them with some “CRAZY ASIANS!!!!” comments, but I don’t think it would be right to do that without including pictures of meat on sticks, or me eating McDonalds, neither of which I have because I’m not cool or funny enough.
Anyway, after all that arty-farty bollocks, I persuaded my friends to go to Joypolis. I’d been before, and didn’t really rate it at all, but the coaster there was undergoing a refurb and I didn’t get chance to ride it. Yeah, it was basically a case of “want the cred” unfortunately.
Joypolis is part of the “Decks” shopping and entertainment complex.
I would have been happy to pay the basic entrance fee (about 3 quid), get a ticket for the coaster (another 3-4 quid) and **** off, but we ended up buying the all-inclusive ticket for about 20-25 quid. I could go onto a currency conversion site, but can’t be arsed.
The first thing we tried was the coaster, Spin Bullet.
What an absolute load of gash. Rough, painful and boring. For some reason, the queue moved really quickly though, which was definitely not a trend the rest of the ride operators were following.
Sorry for the crappy pictures, but it’s hard to take a decent one. I think I was subconsciously inspired by the Design Festa, and so the crappy quality of the pictures directly represents the quality of the experience itself.
Through viewing these blurred, dark and lurid images, the observer is at once transported, finding within themselves their own personal darkness, pain and anguish.
The viewer, when confronted with the starkness of a post-modern, kafkaesque device of physical torture, literally and metaphorically emerging from the darkness, is forced to question their own attitudes towards living in a 21st century society in which we all, surely, are trapped?
Someone actually gave me a degree for writing **** like that. Anyway, the ride was **** ing crap.
So, onto the best thing at Joypolis: Halfpipe Canyon. This thing is seriously good fun. We had to wait close to an hour for it, and twice some stupid Japabint got scared and hit the emergency stop button, meaning that the whole thing had to be reset, which takes **** ing AGES.
Halpipe Canyon, along with a lot of the attractions at Joypolis, is basically a massive, oversized arcade game. We didn’t bother with this next one, as it involved looking stupid:
We did try this next one though, which I can’t remember the name of though. It had a really short queue (HA!), so we thought we’d give it a go.
It’s a kind of space-themed bobsled game, with two players in each “pod”, one behind the other, who pull/push joysticks to control it. The whole thing can rotate 360 degrees, so you’re strapped into it really securely.
It took for EVER to load and unload people, and there was absolutely no need for it to. Each cycle of 8 people (4 pods with 2 players each) took 15 minutes. Our “short” queue ended up taking an hour. The ride ops go through a whole safety instruction spiel, even though they’ve already made you watch a video and read an instruction card. Then they load the 8 people, which in itself takes ages, before going through the whole thing again. It’s **** ing stupid.
Was it worth the hour-long wait. Not a chance. **** knows how long people have to wait for that thing on a busy day.
Along with Halfpipe Canyon, the best things here are the simulator rides, which are actually excellent. There’s Wild Wing, Wild River and Wild Jungle. They’ve all got nicely themed cars and stations, and are really very immersive. After loading, doors in front of the cars open, and the cars move forward into the ride space, which the screen completely wraps around.
The best one has to be Wild River, which splashes you with water and has an amazing commentery: “Oooohhhhh WILD!! OOOOOhhhhh IT WIIILDOOOOOOOOH!”
We went into The Room of Living Dolls, which again took ages because of a crappy 8-people-at-a-time capacity. No pictures of this unfortunately, but it’s one of those attractions where you wear those headphones and it really feels like there’s someone walking around you and talking right in your ear. No idea what you’d call it.
Anyway, by this point we’d had enough and left, not bothering with the Prison Break walk through:
Nice night view of the Statue of Liberty and Rainbow Bridge:
We had a quick wander around Venus Fort shopping centre:
And went to see the massive Gundam robot thing.
It does stuff every few hours, but we’d just missed it and couldn’t be arsed to wait around until it did it again. It was cool anyway.
So, a pretty productive day really, but Joypolis is ****. It was crap the first time I went; it’s still crap now. **** ing awful place.
Odaiba is awesome though.
The end.
I can’t remember exactly when this was, but more than likely would be June sometime. A couple of friends and I decided to go to the “Design Festa”, a huge art/design/fashion exhibition in Odaiba, which happens to be the area containing Joypolis.
First off, I **** ing LOVE this area. It’s easily one of my favourite places in Tokyo. However, I **** ing HATE Joypolis. It’s sooooooo awful.
Anyway, a couple of pictures from the general area:
Tokyo Big Site: A huge exhibition centre where the “Design Festa” was held:
We must have spent a good 3 hours here, probably more, just wandering around. Here’s a bunch of pictures. I would caption all of them with some “CRAZY ASIANS!!!!” comments, but I don’t think it would be right to do that without including pictures of meat on sticks, or me eating McDonalds, neither of which I have because I’m not cool or funny enough.
Anyway, after all that arty-farty bollocks, I persuaded my friends to go to Joypolis. I’d been before, and didn’t really rate it at all, but the coaster there was undergoing a refurb and I didn’t get chance to ride it. Yeah, it was basically a case of “want the cred” unfortunately.
Joypolis is part of the “Decks” shopping and entertainment complex.
I would have been happy to pay the basic entrance fee (about 3 quid), get a ticket for the coaster (another 3-4 quid) and **** off, but we ended up buying the all-inclusive ticket for about 20-25 quid. I could go onto a currency conversion site, but can’t be arsed.
The first thing we tried was the coaster, Spin Bullet.
What an absolute load of gash. Rough, painful and boring. For some reason, the queue moved really quickly though, which was definitely not a trend the rest of the ride operators were following.
Sorry for the crappy pictures, but it’s hard to take a decent one. I think I was subconsciously inspired by the Design Festa, and so the crappy quality of the pictures directly represents the quality of the experience itself.
Through viewing these blurred, dark and lurid images, the observer is at once transported, finding within themselves their own personal darkness, pain and anguish.
The viewer, when confronted with the starkness of a post-modern, kafkaesque device of physical torture, literally and metaphorically emerging from the darkness, is forced to question their own attitudes towards living in a 21st century society in which we all, surely, are trapped?
Someone actually gave me a degree for writing **** like that. Anyway, the ride was **** ing crap.
So, onto the best thing at Joypolis: Halfpipe Canyon. This thing is seriously good fun. We had to wait close to an hour for it, and twice some stupid Japabint got scared and hit the emergency stop button, meaning that the whole thing had to be reset, which takes **** ing AGES.
Halpipe Canyon, along with a lot of the attractions at Joypolis, is basically a massive, oversized arcade game. We didn’t bother with this next one, as it involved looking stupid:
We did try this next one though, which I can’t remember the name of though. It had a really short queue (HA!), so we thought we’d give it a go.
It’s a kind of space-themed bobsled game, with two players in each “pod”, one behind the other, who pull/push joysticks to control it. The whole thing can rotate 360 degrees, so you’re strapped into it really securely.
It took for EVER to load and unload people, and there was absolutely no need for it to. Each cycle of 8 people (4 pods with 2 players each) took 15 minutes. Our “short” queue ended up taking an hour. The ride ops go through a whole safety instruction spiel, even though they’ve already made you watch a video and read an instruction card. Then they load the 8 people, which in itself takes ages, before going through the whole thing again. It’s **** ing stupid.
Was it worth the hour-long wait. Not a chance. **** knows how long people have to wait for that thing on a busy day.
Along with Halfpipe Canyon, the best things here are the simulator rides, which are actually excellent. There’s Wild Wing, Wild River and Wild Jungle. They’ve all got nicely themed cars and stations, and are really very immersive. After loading, doors in front of the cars open, and the cars move forward into the ride space, which the screen completely wraps around.
The best one has to be Wild River, which splashes you with water and has an amazing commentery: “Oooohhhhh WILD!! OOOOOhhhhh IT WIIILDOOOOOOOOH!”
We went into The Room of Living Dolls, which again took ages because of a crappy 8-people-at-a-time capacity. No pictures of this unfortunately, but it’s one of those attractions where you wear those headphones and it really feels like there’s someone walking around you and talking right in your ear. No idea what you’d call it.
Anyway, by this point we’d had enough and left, not bothering with the Prison Break walk through:
Nice night view of the Statue of Liberty and Rainbow Bridge:
We had a quick wander around Venus Fort shopping centre:
And went to see the massive Gundam robot thing.
It does stuff every few hours, but we’d just missed it and couldn’t be arsed to wait around until it did it again. It was cool anyway.
So, a pretty productive day really, but Joypolis is ****. It was crap the first time I went; it’s still crap now. **** ing awful place.
Odaiba is awesome though.
The end.
