John
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
Some of us are currently mid way through a large Asia trip. I'm just doing the Japan leg, featuring Universal Studios, Nagashima Spa land, Parque Espana, Fuji-Q and Tokyo Disneyland/sea, plus a couple of other minor parks.
Currently I'm writing from the Dodonpa queue line at Fuji-Q, but to avoid skipping ahead, I'm going to rewind back to Universal.
USJ is one of the busiest parks in the world, our day there was no exception resulting in 2hr+ queues on most major rides and a longest advertised queue of an astonishing 300 minutes for Minions. Thankfully due to use of SRQs and excellent opening hours we managed to do everything we wanted to, including some rerides, without ever queueing more than about an hour.
Passing over the entrance is the relatively tiny Hollywood Dream. Clearly USJ's take on Rip Ride Rocket (including on board audio), this B&M mega respite being the smallest of its kind by some distance is still a quality ride, unlike it's Floridian counterpart.
A number of rides will be familiar to anyone who has visited US Florida, whilst others hark bark to the early days of the US parks. Backdraft and Jaws are both classic Universal, and as I only visited Florida for the first time in 2015, I was very glad USJ has held onto these retro attractions.
Forbidden Journey, Spiderman and Jurassic Park can all be found in Florida. Potter here has been updated to 4k&3D, with some minor scene changes too. 4k is a big improvement, 3d not so much. To avoid running out of lockers due to long queues, you wait the outdoor section in reverse compared with Florida, then enter via the walkthrough. The Florida indoor queue is used as the walkthrough here. Spiderman is much the same as Florida, but with twin stations for better throughput. Queue still hit 150 even with the capacity boost. Can't comment on JP, as we skipped it.
Returning to unique attractions, Space Fantasy has been the subject of much interest on here when it opened, however it currently features a "Dreams come true" (me neither) overlay. Some weird animated pop duo, so the usual music is changed, as are the preshows and some of the on ride scenes, but nothing major.
Flying Dinosaur is the most recent of the major coasters, I've never really been a fan of B&M flyers, the Superman clones are fire and I'm not a big fan of Manta either, so my expectations were not high, however I was absolutely blown away. Flying Dinosaur is absolutely phenomenal, long, fast and incredibly intense, easily one of my top coasters, just a shame about the enormous queues it gets.
Of the minor rides, Hippogriff is basically the same as Florida, there's also another kiddy coaster in the kiddy area, which is surprisingly well themed, worth doing if the queue isn't using any of the extensions.
On the whole, USJ is a quality park, but unless you visit on a quiet day, get lucky with SRQs or get fastpass you're likely to struggle, seems the locals are far more queue tolerant than us. At Fuji-Q, we'll find out just how much.
Currently I'm writing from the Dodonpa queue line at Fuji-Q, but to avoid skipping ahead, I'm going to rewind back to Universal.
USJ is one of the busiest parks in the world, our day there was no exception resulting in 2hr+ queues on most major rides and a longest advertised queue of an astonishing 300 minutes for Minions. Thankfully due to use of SRQs and excellent opening hours we managed to do everything we wanted to, including some rerides, without ever queueing more than about an hour.
Passing over the entrance is the relatively tiny Hollywood Dream. Clearly USJ's take on Rip Ride Rocket (including on board audio), this B&M mega respite being the smallest of its kind by some distance is still a quality ride, unlike it's Floridian counterpart.
A number of rides will be familiar to anyone who has visited US Florida, whilst others hark bark to the early days of the US parks. Backdraft and Jaws are both classic Universal, and as I only visited Florida for the first time in 2015, I was very glad USJ has held onto these retro attractions.
Forbidden Journey, Spiderman and Jurassic Park can all be found in Florida. Potter here has been updated to 4k&3D, with some minor scene changes too. 4k is a big improvement, 3d not so much. To avoid running out of lockers due to long queues, you wait the outdoor section in reverse compared with Florida, then enter via the walkthrough. The Florida indoor queue is used as the walkthrough here. Spiderman is much the same as Florida, but with twin stations for better throughput. Queue still hit 150 even with the capacity boost. Can't comment on JP, as we skipped it.
Returning to unique attractions, Space Fantasy has been the subject of much interest on here when it opened, however it currently features a "Dreams come true" (me neither) overlay. Some weird animated pop duo, so the usual music is changed, as are the preshows and some of the on ride scenes, but nothing major.
Flying Dinosaur is the most recent of the major coasters, I've never really been a fan of B&M flyers, the Superman clones are fire and I'm not a big fan of Manta either, so my expectations were not high, however I was absolutely blown away. Flying Dinosaur is absolutely phenomenal, long, fast and incredibly intense, easily one of my top coasters, just a shame about the enormous queues it gets.
Of the minor rides, Hippogriff is basically the same as Florida, there's also another kiddy coaster in the kiddy area, which is surprisingly well themed, worth doing if the queue isn't using any of the extensions.
On the whole, USJ is a quality park, but unless you visit on a quiet day, get lucky with SRQs or get fastpass you're likely to struggle, seems the locals are far more queue tolerant than us. At Fuji-Q, we'll find out just how much.