Suuuuuper early start today, with an alarm on! By 7am, my nephew Kristian was here, and we set off towards the train.
Today’s destination was Universal Studios Japan, our last theme park until next year, as far as we know! Unlike our adventures at Disneyland, DisneySea and even Expo, today was a cooler day, which is why the girls went pant shopping on the weekend. We had our rain jackets on this morning, as an extra layer on our way to the park.
The excitement is palpable already from Nishikujo station, where locals and tourists from far and wide are now all getting on the same jam packed subway the last two stops to the Universal Studios park. There are groups of people dressed up (one entire family dressed all in Where’s Waldo costumes, another where three young boys had matching cow print pants), some more gory and ready for evening than others. The outfits people wear to parks never cease to amaze me, as some of them look like they are going to costume parties, and I wish I had snuck pictures, but how do they even sit in those things??
We arrived at the park at 8am, and stood/walked/waddled in queues until 8.45am, when we were finally through and free to roam the grounds! The destination for most people early in the morning is Super Nintendo World, which Joe was able to secure us Timed Entry Area Tickets on the app as soon as we entered the park. The Japanese lottery systems are a true headache to understand, not to mention navigate, and Super Nintendo World is so popular, it is often all booked up before 9am. I am glad we arrived when we did, and I’m grateful he was able to get the timed entry for 9.30am.
We decided to walk over in that direction to see if we could get in earlier, and on the way we saw this little kitty:
When we made it to Super Nintendo World, the sign said “At Capacity”, and we were not able to enter until our timed entry ticket time of 9.30am. We wandered over to Jurassic Park, where the lines for the most popular rollercoaster were pleasantly short at only 25 minutes, so Kristian hopped on for an experience on his own. We sat down for a snack while we waited out our time for SNW, and then met Kristian at the below sign after his flight on a flying dinosaur.
The souvenir photos in front of the SNW entrance cost ¥2,200, so we took our own selfie.
I understand why this particular part of the park is so popular! What an amazing little world they’ve created! We could absolutely have spent several hours here, doing all the things, eating all the foods and buying all the souvenirs, but this is just a small corner of a large and diverse park.
The line for Yoshi’s Adventure was nice and short at 50 minutes, and after 25 minutes of stomping in line, we were actually on the ride! And what a view we got! Maylin and Téa rode their own Yoshi in front of Joe and I, and Kristian had a dinosaur all to himself behind us. The challenge was to match up the dinosaur eggs you saw along the ride with the flashing eggs on the dashboard of your seat, which made it more fun than just a sightseeing trip.
Back down on the ground, we saw that the line for the Minecart ride was now at 195 minutes wait, which even at half that (seeing as Yoshi promised 50 minutes and yet was only 25 minutes) would mean over 90 minutes in line. For travellers like us when you only have one day to experience as much as possible, I couldn’t imagine spending hours in line for just one experience at a time. Lots of locals have annual passes to the park, and sure, spend a day standing in line if you can come back next week and do it again. While we were looking around and deciding where to go next, we spotted a few Nintendo celebrities:
From SNW we were planning on going to the Minion area, but saw that WaterWorld was opening up for the first live show of the day, so of course we lined up for that instead. We are so glad we did! The show was scheduled to start at 11am, but ten minutes before then, three of the actors started entertaining the crowds. Anyone sitting on the blue rows at the front of the audience was warned they may get wet, and boy did they get WET! The actors would take enormous water cannons and spray towards the audience, with some especially lucky audience members getting an entire bucket of water over their heads, all in the name of entertaining the rest of the audience.
While the show was all in Japanese, it’s incredible what can be communicated by body language and following along what the rest of the crowd is doing. “When you see this guy, show him two thumbs down and boo loudly”, “These are the good guys” and “Here, pour this tiny bucket of water over your head, I’ll pour this giant bucket over mine”. (Of course, only the tiny bucket was full, there were maybe a couple of drops in the giant bucket…) Those of us who know the movie Waterworld had an easier time understanding the plot of the show, but it was a really good 20-30 minutes of fast paced action, with explosions, flares, fireworks and fire, with seadoos, boats and lots of squirting water action!
When the show ended, the dinosaurs were out for their daily walk through Jurassic Park:
By now we were starving and ready for lunch, and Téa had requested lunch at the Happiness Café. In the first line, we were asked to place our order online, so that when we made it to the till, we scanned a QR code and paid for our meals. We were then showed to a table, and told to go pick our food up at the counter. We grabbed trays and handed our receipts to the staff, Joe carried one tray, and I tried to carry two. Suddenly I had two staff members rushing to help me, and the winning one waited until I grabbed cutlery and napkins, before he followed me all the way back to the table, carrying my tray.
Joe had a Minion cheese and bacon burger, Maylin had a Minion kids meal, while Téa, Kristian and I all enjoyed the Minion chicken and waffle meal. The salads with grated onion and sesame dressing was really good, as was the chicken. The waffle was super sweet (we did not need the maple syrup), and I generously donated the cold corn soup with popcorn to Joe, as he did not get one with his meal. The ratatouille, rice and french fries were also good.
Directly across the street from our lunch restaurant, we found the Villain-Con headquarters. Lots of fun was had making faces beside the statues throughout the area:
The Villain-Con Minion Blast ride was supposed to be 40 minutes wait, but ended up being much shorter as well (thank goodness!). On this ride, we were each assigned a colourful dot on a moving walkway and told to not move from our dot. We were given a white electronic blaster, similar to the piranha one, but sans deadly fish, unfortunately. While on the walkway, we were aiming our blasters at interactive screens all throughout the building, and had lots of fun trying to earn coins and hit our villaneous targets. At the end we got to see our scores, and I feel like if any instructions had actually been given in English, we would have obviously done much, much better…
Minion Park was also so well made, with so many fun statues in all directions. Lots of games there as well, where you could win stuffies. And today’s vending machine is from this area, too!
From Minion Park we finally made our way towards Hogwarts and Harry Potter’s world! The way to get there is along a long path through a forest. I’m very glad we went before dark! As you can see, there’s snow on the rooftops, so obviously it was very cold in this part of the park.
Honestly, this could be a park on its own, and I believe there are entire parks elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, when you are only visiting the whole park once, there will be limits to how long you spend in each corner, and how much you get to do in each area. We did not line up for any of the 2 hour + waits to go on any of the rides, even though Maylin was begging her cousin Kristian to go with her (the rest of us voted no).
We explored the wand store, the school uniform store, Honeydukes the candy store and Zonko’s the prank store, but decided to pass, even though a pack of Every Flavour Beans would have made for a fun “gift” to someone who don’t know what they are…
Hogwarts castle had Filch’s Emporium of Confiscated Goods as a souvenir store, and we also did not purchase the electronic, magical chess set seen here ($840CA).
On our way back out through the area, we happened upon a delightful choir performance, with some very cool toads lending their bass voices to the rhythm section. Message me if you want the video I took of this!
Our next destination was Wonderland, where Sesame Street, Peanuts and Hello Kitty all entertain the younger crowds (although still lots of adult only groups coming through, because after all, in Japan they adore all things cute).
Snoopy’s Flying Adventure was unfortunately Out of Service when we first arrived, and all staff members we asked had the same answer “we don’t know if or when it will reopen”. We decided to find a curb to sit on to have a quick snack, and just like that, they had reopened the ride! We were told to expect a 45 minute wait, so I grabbed the girls’ backpacks and went for a walk while the others lined up and went flying.
By this time, it was after 4pm, and while not yet sunset, it was getting darker, cloudier and colder. We decided we had done enough and had very little energy left, so headed for the exit. On our way there, we saw some familiar colours, and a taped off portion of the sidewalk. We were among the first to line up, and Joe got us front and centre spots. After about 15 minutes, when Glinda and Elphaba finally appeared, they spoke to the audience, and then selected Téa and Maylin for this afternoon’s first meet and greet. They were such good actresses, a polite and engaging little conversation, and then pictures to end.
Once we said our goodbyes to the witches, we actually and finally headed towards the exit, all sad to leave but with such great memories from a magical day. In comparison to our two Disney days in Tokyo, we were able to get more out of our day here due to the weather. It’s incredible what a difference in energy levels you have between 40 degrees and sweating, and 17 degrees and putting on more layers…
We took the subway, a train and another subway, and then a bus to get as close to home as possible. Joe went straight home and trusted us girls to select his dinner from 7Eleven. There was no way we were cooking anything tonight! We ended up eating some spicy fried chicken, corn dogs, macaroni salad, potato salad and a glass noodle salad. And of course some vanilla Coolish to end.
As we were all exhausted, and the fitbit had recorded over 22,000 steps, we only made it halfway through a movie before we all collapsed into bed. Relaxing day tomorrow, it’s supposed to be 13 and rain all day!