Well well well, this was truly an amazingly fun day! the Universal Studios Japan trip was organised for and by the denizens of Seminar House 3 (however largely the CIE et al.) but we managed to get those who don’t (or did) live in SH3 to come along too … so basically just Jamie. (whose photos I’ve stolen for this blog post)
Group photo!! hai chi--------zuuu!!
Anywho! so much happened that awesome day so I’ll break it down and tackle each segment and demonstrate my mad organizational abilities.
- The Jaws Ride
- Spiderman Ride
- Rollercoaster!!
- Night Parade
- Other random bits
The Jaws Ride –
The Jaws Ride, it gets a ‘The’ preceding Jaws not because that’s the actual title of the ride but because it was that fucking awesome!
So here is basically what happens, we lined up our crew in the queue for a good 40 minutes.. we jump onto our boat for what we assumed was some tour / ride with Jaws involved. What we got was something much much more cooler. We had, this tiny little Japanese woman as our guide.. showing us the area, she had her little mic and told us little things about stuff.. UNTIL!!
Jaws attacked! (who would have thought?!) and then this tiny little Japanese woman became what I can only describe as a Jean-Claude Van Damme with boobs and slanty eyes (ohh I went there) … anywho, she rocked out with a massive gun and shot into the water which responded with massive explosions and water flying everywhere.. followed by a Japanese ahhhh!! *insert random frantic Japanese speech here* eventually, after Jaws had a go at the boat a few times she decided to shoot a barrel of oil which also exploded and fire engulfed the boat and we all recieved 3rd degree burns.
But yeah, no.. the fire went all across the water as if some level 8 mage casted wall of fire and it just sat there for a while.. while it was still there, everyone could feel the heat and literally retreated that inch or two that they could whilst fasten in their seats because it was that hot on your face.. but right after that, some mist came on top of us before our Japanese Jean Claude decided enough was enough and blew the crap outta Jaws.
Amazing ride, made 100 times better because it was a midget of a Japanese woman wielding the gun and going head to head with Jaws.. ahhh, loved it. Right after the Jaws ride, under pressure and with the “Who are you?” song playing by the Who.. it was this destined moment, this point in time, where our theme park group formed, myself, Andrew and Christa. Our day would be ruled by fate and we would be rewarded for going with the flow.
Spidersman Ride –
Spiderman! woooo, okay of course the Spider man ride was awesome, in fact I’m going to say Spidey was in fact, one of the best rides there.. which clearly it is. For a few reasons!
- The queue! it was here we bought these ‘express’ tickets that basically catapulted us to the front of the queue
- 3D awesomeness in a awesome ride type simulator thing
- The ride accommodates 16 people but we got it to ourselves.. so the picture at the end was hilariously funny. (13 empty seats? lol)
So I don’t want to ruin the ride, but I guess I’ve pretty much done that with the Jaws ride so I’ll just jump into it. Spiderman.. wow, 3D glasses, spidey verus a bunch of bad guys (SPOILER: spidey wins!) and it was amazing amazing amazing. Words can’t describe it. The simulation was quite amazing, at one point we were falling (according to the 3D screen) but the thing we were in made it feel like we were actually falling and then rescued by Spidey’s web of love.. (not that sort of web of love but the other web that comes out from his hands, wouldn’t mind either tho!) long story short.. I think the Spiderman ride was the best ride there.
Rollercoaster –
Ahh the rollercoaster, what theme park is complete without a theme park? I’ll tell you, a half assed theme park with cheap bastards that couldn’t afford to put in even the dodgiest of rollercoasters! but yes, as you can imagine USJ has an awesome rollercoaster, it goes around half the bloody park which is quite the area to cover.. our theme park team tackled this thing twice, the second being the better of the two. The first time round we waited in the line like normal people for about 40 to 50 minutes, and we sat at the end of the rollercoaster and thought we had a good time. The SECOND time round, we used an express ticket.. we were on the ride, on the front-most seat in a matter of minutes, literally 3 minutes. We would have walked past at least 300 people.. 300 ordinary non VIP peoples. We managed to request that we wait for the next rollercoaster and get the ichiban row! (not sure which translation to use, the best or first row – number 1) anyhow.. it was amazing. When we jumped on the second time round, it was nearing darkness so the theme park was alit with lights of all colours! completely sweeeet. We got off the ride knowing full well that we’ve signed off on our rides for today in the best way imaginable.
Night Parade –
This night parade was completely unforeseen but loved entirely.. so much effort was put into these floats it was amazing. Only pictures can be used to communicate their level of awesomeness and even then these don’t do the intricate level of detail put into these things justice.
Yay for Elmo, Snoopy and Hello Kitty!
Arabian Nights! followed by a bunch of dancers.
Yeah so as the pictures would indicate, this parade was very much so on the epic side of the scale of life.
Other random tidbits of stuff that we did? ahh I dunno.. we had awesome fooods at some New York style pizzeria (I liked the bolognese), we went to the Terminator 3D thingymaboby, Back to the Future ride, Jurassic Park ride, saw a parade during the day and generally had loads of fun together. Ohh and our dream team theme park fellowship group thingy!! we all got our faces painted.
The day was long and very enjoyable, we finally left the park late at night and headed home. <3
buuut we made it and the view was totally worth it. Once we started on our way down we came by a group of people, I think they were two families, 2 wifes and 1 husband and a few kids going down the mountain.. in high heels. Now you have to understand, the trek up the mountain was so steep and hard, the steps were narrow and once again. REAL STEEP. So, with the sun already disappearing into the night, we worried a lil bit for these guys as the women were crying, taking step by step down the mountain that took 1 hour and a half to get up. So we got down, the using our mobile phones as light and decided we should tell someone that there was a family still on the mountain. We came across a restaurant and told them using our shitty Japanese skills. Let’s just say the message didn’t get across and I just asked for a few flashlights and then scaled the mountain once again on a rescue mission! well we rescued them and they were so thankful! we actually ran away when we were down the bottom cos they were so thankful!
