Good morning!

Another busy day that began before the sun.

Today we got to head to Universal Studios Japan, which is a theme park Jimmy and I have never been to!

We were especially excited about Super Nintendoland, and I thought we had done so much research to prepare. I felt ready for it. The park was a lot of fun, but even with my planning we made a couple of rookie mistakes that you can learn from.

One thing we did well was getting there early. We arrived about an hour before the park opened, and there were already a ton of people ahead of us. We had also gotten upgraded passes which gave us timed entry to Nintendoland and Harry Potter World, with skip the line passes on a few of the more popular rides. Those things were KEY to making it through the day, so I’d definitely recommend getting the upgrades if you go.

I knew when we were planning the trip that the only day we could fit in universal was a Sunday, which is not ideal because the theme parks in Japan are notoriously busy on weekends. We had a great time despite the crowds, but I had never been in a park that crowded before. Everything had long wait times including rides, food, and merchandise. If you can help it, don’t go on a weekend.

Ok, now on to the good stuff!

There was a Starbucks right by the entrance, so we were able to grab some pastries and coffee before hopping in line. Starbucks in Japan has the normal US standbys, but it’s also got some treats and drinks unique to Japan. I got some kind of honey milk latte, and a matcha scone. Both were great, and definitely have them warm up the scone. You go through security way before the actual line for the entrance, and they don’t allow open beverages in, so drink up!

Here’s the entrance:

As soon as we walked in the park we were greeted by Woody the Woodchuck. One of the fun things about visiting familiar theme parks in other countries is that there are often characters not as popular in the US who are very popular there. Woody was VERY popular in Japan.

We could not stop to say hi though, because we were rope dropping. Rope dropping is a technique for surviving theme parks where you get there early, and ride as many rides as you can as soon as it opens. Often you can get a few rides in before the lines get too long.

The guys were rope dropping The Flying Dinosaur (a massive rollercoaster you can look up if you want to have nightmares), but since I’m a chicken I decided to rope drop the Minion Mayhem ride.

Here are some pics as I was walking through the park.

By the way, we had gorgeous weather. Sunny all day and in the upper 50’s. I even walked around without a coat for part of the day.

I showed up to the ride and saw there was a single rider line. I hopped in it, and an employee took me to deserted hallway where I was left alone for a good 10 minutes.

Eventually someone came and got me and I got to do the ride. The ride was ok, but there were a lot of videos in Japanese you had to watch before getting on the ride, and the actual ride was a tame and easy vr. I left feeling like I had made a mistake, since that ride took so long to get through it meant that lines had already started to get long on other rides.

I wasn’t too worried, though, because the rides I wanted to do the most we had skip the line passes for later in the day.

I went to meet the guys to do the Hollywood rollercoaster, but the line was already an hour wait, and the Starbucks coffee was messing with my stomach, so I left the guys in line to search out a bathroom.

They said the ride was pretty fun, you get to choose your own music (they both independently of each other chose T. Swift), and there’s an option to ride backwards.

Meanwhile, I wandered around and checked out some of the shows.

They had punk rock Hello Kitty

I have no idea what the idea is with her, but she was really popular. Her merchandise was sold everywhere, as was regular Hello Kitty’s.

I also found a dumpling shaped like snoopy, and a hat shaped like Snoopy, because he is also very popular in Japan.

I didn’t buy the hat, but I kind of wish I had.

I also saw an indoor show done by the characters of the movie Sing! The show was good, but at one point a guy dressed as the gorilla was onstage singing and playing piano and the sound went off, leaving the gorilla onstage with nothing going on. He hopped back stage, and we all waited while they figured out the technical difficulties. When things came back on they ended up starting the show over, meaning that he had to come back out and do it all again. I felt kind of bad for him, but he put his all into the performance both times. The show was cute, and if you’ve got a kid who loves the Sing! movies it would be truly magical for them.

By the time Sing! Was over, the guys had made it off their ride so we went back to the minion area to do the other ride out there. This one involves shooting targets with ray guns, and is less a ride than a moving sidewalk you stand on.

Still pretty fun, though, and it did get competitive between my travel buddies.

We also got to see Groot and some minions in real life.

By that point our timed entry time had arrive to go into Super Nintendo World. This area is the newest area of the park. Jimmy in particular was very excited to go here.

Being new also means it’s extremely popular. It’s really not a very large area, so the they regiment how many people can be in that land at a time. Because we had timed entry we got to go in no problem, but by 11:30am it had closed off to anyone who didn’t have timed entry because it was at capacity. We did notice it reopened in the evening but there was a long line to get in.

We had heard that if you bought the power up bands, there were a lot of fun games to play in the land, so we forked over our money and got them.

You’d think regimenting entry would mean it wouldn’t be too wild once you got in, but this was the most crowded place I have ever been in for an amusement park.

We did find a star box and got some points for our wrist bands

But overall we decided the wrist bands weren’t worth it because there were such long lines for all of the games you can use them with.

We had heard the restaurant in Nintendo World had great food with fun theming, and noticed we could order ahead for a later time. We decided that would be perfect as we could do our rides, then go grab the food, so we put in an order.

We also had timed entry to two of the rides in the area, so we headed to Bowser’s Castle to the Mario Cart ride as that was the earlier entry. The theming in this area is so cool, and Bowser’s castle was really ornate.

Despite having timed entry, we still ended up waiting 45 min to get on the ride. It seemed like Universal may still have some kinks to work out as far as getting people through that line.

Basically for this ride they give you a VR visor, pop you in a cart, and you get to throw VR turtle shells at other carts that appear on your screen as you go through a Mario Cart course. The VR makes you feel like you’re moving a lot more than you are, and it was tame even for a scaredy cat like me. I thought it was a lot of fun, but VR rides make Jimmy sick and he also felt like it was hard to see anything, so I don’t think it was his favorite.

Jordan had won the villain blasters game, Jimmy won Mario Cart, and I won nothing. But also didn’t care.

By the time we got out of the ride, it was time to get our food. We headed over to the restaurant where we were told to wait in a line that stretched outside and around the area. This was the line for people who had ordered ahead.

This is us in the line, feeling optimistic. 2 hrs later, we were less optimistic.

That’s how long it took for us to get our food after ordering ahead. This is why Disney is and will always be better than Universal.

So if you go and think, I’ll order ahead to save myself the line! No! You will not! You will order ahead and still wait in the giant line.

I’d recommend you just don’t eat in Super Nintendo Land. Find good food elsewhere.

That being said, the food was really cute, and tasted pretty good for theme park food. No complaints once we got it.

As we were eating, we realized we had missed our timed entry into the second ride, the Donkey cart mine ride. Actually, the line for the ride had taken so long that we missed it before we got off of the first ride.

A moment of depression ensued, and we railed against the idea that you could wait so long for one ride that you miss the entry for the next despite paying extra for the tiled entry. After our moment of depression, we rebounded and decided to just ask at the ride if they’d let us on anyway. On the way there we saw some Nintendo characters

And headed into the donkey Kong area. They had some great looking ice cream parfaits here, but we were still full from lunch.

Long story short, they let us on the ride without waiting the 120 minutes projected. They let us go to the priority entrance line, because they don’t really want you to be depressed in Nintendoland. It kills the vibe.

This ride was ok. It was an aggressively jerky rollercoaster that was pretty short and never really felt like it got going. It was tame even for me, but left me with a bit of a crick in my neck. I thought the Mario Cart ride was the better of the two.

After that we hurried out of Super Nintendo World, which was becoming busier by the moment, and headed off the Wizarding World of Harry Potter where we had a timed entry ticket for the Forbidden Forest ride.

This land is easily my favorite, and while it’s a lot smaller than the one in Florida, it was pretty much the same as the one in Hollywood. The rides here are the Forbidden Forest Ride and Flight of the Hippogriff.

As you can see, this area was also crowded and busy. Because the whole park was that way. Jimmy had been able to fit the wands we got on our Universal Hollywood trip, so I got to run around Hogsmeade with my wand and butter beer.

The Forbidden Forest ride is one of my all time favorite rides, but because it is a ride that both moves you around quite a bit and uses VR elements, it makes Jimmy very sick. Turns out it also makes Jordan very sick. But I loved it.

I think this ride is at all of the Universal parks, and if you do it, just make sure you follow the directions to take stuff out of your pockets and put it in a locker. This isn’t a rollercoaster, but it does whisk you around and at one point you are hanging more or less upside down, then the ride shakes you a bit. It’s almost like they designed it to pick your pockets…

If you haven’t done it and are ride nervous, just know that I’m a total chicken but still love this ride. It has some wonderful and unique elements, and it’s not fast like a rollercoaster nor does it have any drops.

After the ride I watched the frog choir

Maybe I should pay extra to embed videos because very few things give me more joy than frog choir. Can’t get enough of them.

It was then time to try out our wands.

These wands have been collecting dust for years in our house, but we were told that our American wands should work in Japan too.

So I confidently stepped up to the plate, did the required motion, and…

Nothing happened. After multiple tries, nothing happened. Jimmy couldn’t make his wand work either.

He ducked into the wand shop to see if they could test if the wands still work. They looked at them funny and asked where they came from. He said Hollywood and we got them on our 10 year anniversary trip so they are a little over 7 years old. She told him “these are very well preserved” and should still work just fine.

So it’s not the wands, it’s the wizards.

After a few tries in a couple different areas we did both finally get our wands to work. I don’t think we have any particular talent for wizardry though.

I don’t think Jordan was as in love with Harry Potter as we were, so we decided to move on and go catch one of Jimmy’s favorite Universal Studios attractions: the Waterworld show.

I got some great videos of this show.

Hey! I can embed videos! I wonder why it didn’t work before?

Now that I know that, here’s the frog choir:

And here’s Jimmy working some magic

Anyway, the Waterworld show is always a good time. It’s exactly the same as the Hollywood version, and being in Japanese really just increased its charm. Also, you really don’t need to understand the dialogue to know what’s going on. It may actually have been better because we didn’t understand the dialogue.

The last thing on our Universal Studio list was the Jaws ride, because it is exclusive to Japan. No pics allowed on the ride, but I laughed the whole way through. It’s like Jungle Cruise in Disney, if Jungle Cruise involved giant sharks. Obviously the dialogue was all in Japanese, but what’s happening on the Jaws ride is clear no matter what language you speak. It’s not a fast ride, but giant animatronic sharks pop out of the water multiple times which may be scary for some kids.

The Jaws area also has its own restaurant. Their take on a burrito was maybe the worst food we’ve had so far (although all food has been really good so the burrito was edible), but the packaging was my fav.

And Jordan’s came with a whole deep fried crab that we were all too scared to eat.

We skipped the Jurassic park drop ride because you get soaked on that ride, and we just weren’t into that in mid January.

We did one last pass through the kids area where we saw Elmo, who our niece Tyler loves

And I stopped in to get some brief therapy, which was very needed after the break neck speed of travel on this trip.

And with that,

Goodnight.