Bowser
TS Member
Well, i made it! Fittingly it was a rollercoaster of an experience.
A few general notes first:
- This park is hard work! The heat is utterly overwhelming and the crowds are insane. This wasn't a particularly busy day either but many of the main attractions had 2 hour queues all day. But...
- Park hours were 830am till 930pm!!! Imagine that! 2 hour queues are a lot more acceptable when you have a 13 hour day *cough Merlin cough*
- I know over-employment is a thing in Japan but my god the amount of staff in this park is insane. I'm not exaggerating, it must be into 4 figures. My favourite example was after dark, there's a long forest path into Hogwarts with fog machines and literally every 5m max there's a member of staff guiding you with a torch. So here alone you probably had more staff than an entire Merlin park (sorry, will stop the bashing from here on).
We actually didn't arrive at the park till just before 11am. We had Nintendo World booked for 1120am and with the jetlag and heat decided having breakfast and not rushing was for the best.
There was a short queue at the area and then we were in!
It was already pretty busy and everyone is trying to get their content or standing around gawking so i did both. We went straight to the Mushroom restaurant to get a reservation but they didn;t have one till 245pm! We said yes anyway and figured we'd take our time as this was the main reason for the visit (or so i thought, more on that later). We also had Express Passes which i bought for 7 rides so wasn't worried about running out of time (more on that later too).
Then we headed straight to the Mario Kart ride in Bowsers Castle:
Just to say, the theming everywhere is sublime. You are in Super Mario. Everything looks flawless, from the way the coins rotate and the shells move, it's all been created to perfection.
Here is the queuing area inside which we mostly bypassed but did still get to see a fair bit of .Very cool.
Above is just after the merge point where everyone gets given these mario kart hats to wear and then there's a pre-show explaining how the ride works. It's in Japanese but has English text. Once on the ride, there's a magnetic pair of glasses you attach to the hat which brings up an AR display. You turn your head to aim at things and then there's a steering wheel with buttons which you press to shoot weapons.
As an aside, the queues were somewhat baffling. There were typically 4 lines on all the big rides and i couldn't quite figure out how they were batching because you were still asked how many when you reached the car. They might have just been double checking you had been batched correctly. Again there were so many staff everywhere. You had your Express pass checked several times on route on each ride.
Inside it was on 2 stations, which was the first time i've witnessed this at a theme park (technically Baron at Efteling has this i think but you can't see the stations. Actually The Mummy at Singapore had it too but only one was open).
Anyway, the ride itself is really fun! It's a bit overwhelming as there's just so much going on. My only gripe, which i remember TPWW mentioning, is there are some really cool set pieces but you barely get to see them as you're having AR flashing everywhere and trying to score points. But it works so well and is really fun. I got the top score too so was happy with that.
Oh which reminds me, my friends insisted we get the wrist-bands and boy was i glad we did! More on that later too but suffice to say your score from this ride was added to it.
Next we went on Yoshi:
This was probably the worst ride of the day. You get a nice view of the area and there's a couple of very short set pieces but overall feels like a wasted opportunity for a proper childrens dark ride. Was also very hot, like everything and i felt like a complete dork in a car on my own but better than being put with a family! It was part of the Express Pass but waiting an advertised 80 minutes for it would have been ridiculous.
After this, we went round the area finding the challenges. These are games you play from Mario, like hitting shells into blocks, matching the blocks etc. You can just watched other people do it, which is what i was recommended to do BUT when you do it with the wristband you get points. If you complete enough of the challenges then you a key, if you get 3 keys.... there is a secret attraction!!!!!!
This is utterly insane as a concept. I've never seen anyone mention it and i imagine most people miss it because of the language barrier.
Now it does have a queue time so perhaps people do notice it but i think once you're inside the area you can't buy the wrist-bands strangely. I might be wrong on that though. Anyway, the idea is to beat Bowser Jr. I'll put in a spoiler what happens in case people want the surprise!
Now here was where things started to get tricky. We still had 90 minutes till our reservation and had pretty much done everything. And it was so hot i was starting to get heatstroke. But we figured we might never be back so lets keep the reservation and just spend the time alternating between the shops which had cooling AC. The merch was amazing, just endless well made bits of anything you could imagine and plenty you couldn't. A dream if you wanted to spend.
Finally it was time for our reservation. Inside was a little underwhelming. It was nicely themed but it was very much a cafe in the style of Vampire Kitchen. The food was very nice though and also themed:
It's a nice place to eat but i wouldn't wait hours to go in there.
Might start a new post now as i'm worried this won't upload...
A few general notes first:
- This park is hard work! The heat is utterly overwhelming and the crowds are insane. This wasn't a particularly busy day either but many of the main attractions had 2 hour queues all day. But...
- Park hours were 830am till 930pm!!! Imagine that! 2 hour queues are a lot more acceptable when you have a 13 hour day *cough Merlin cough*
- I know over-employment is a thing in Japan but my god the amount of staff in this park is insane. I'm not exaggerating, it must be into 4 figures. My favourite example was after dark, there's a long forest path into Hogwarts with fog machines and literally every 5m max there's a member of staff guiding you with a torch. So here alone you probably had more staff than an entire Merlin park (sorry, will stop the bashing from here on).
We actually didn't arrive at the park till just before 11am. We had Nintendo World booked for 1120am and with the jetlag and heat decided having breakfast and not rushing was for the best.
There was a short queue at the area and then we were in!
It was already pretty busy and everyone is trying to get their content or standing around gawking so i did both. We went straight to the Mushroom restaurant to get a reservation but they didn;t have one till 245pm! We said yes anyway and figured we'd take our time as this was the main reason for the visit (or so i thought, more on that later). We also had Express Passes which i bought for 7 rides so wasn't worried about running out of time (more on that later too).
Then we headed straight to the Mario Kart ride in Bowsers Castle:
Just to say, the theming everywhere is sublime. You are in Super Mario. Everything looks flawless, from the way the coins rotate and the shells move, it's all been created to perfection.
Here is the queuing area inside which we mostly bypassed but did still get to see a fair bit of .Very cool.
Above is just after the merge point where everyone gets given these mario kart hats to wear and then there's a pre-show explaining how the ride works. It's in Japanese but has English text. Once on the ride, there's a magnetic pair of glasses you attach to the hat which brings up an AR display. You turn your head to aim at things and then there's a steering wheel with buttons which you press to shoot weapons.
As an aside, the queues were somewhat baffling. There were typically 4 lines on all the big rides and i couldn't quite figure out how they were batching because you were still asked how many when you reached the car. They might have just been double checking you had been batched correctly. Again there were so many staff everywhere. You had your Express pass checked several times on route on each ride.
Inside it was on 2 stations, which was the first time i've witnessed this at a theme park (technically Baron at Efteling has this i think but you can't see the stations. Actually The Mummy at Singapore had it too but only one was open).
Anyway, the ride itself is really fun! It's a bit overwhelming as there's just so much going on. My only gripe, which i remember TPWW mentioning, is there are some really cool set pieces but you barely get to see them as you're having AR flashing everywhere and trying to score points. But it works so well and is really fun. I got the top score too so was happy with that.
Oh which reminds me, my friends insisted we get the wrist-bands and boy was i glad we did! More on that later too but suffice to say your score from this ride was added to it.
Next we went on Yoshi:
This was probably the worst ride of the day. You get a nice view of the area and there's a couple of very short set pieces but overall feels like a wasted opportunity for a proper childrens dark ride. Was also very hot, like everything and i felt like a complete dork in a car on my own but better than being put with a family! It was part of the Express Pass but waiting an advertised 80 minutes for it would have been ridiculous.
After this, we went round the area finding the challenges. These are games you play from Mario, like hitting shells into blocks, matching the blocks etc. You can just watched other people do it, which is what i was recommended to do BUT when you do it with the wristband you get points. If you complete enough of the challenges then you a key, if you get 3 keys.... there is a secret attraction!!!!!!
This is utterly insane as a concept. I've never seen anyone mention it and i imagine most people miss it because of the language barrier.
Now it does have a queue time so perhaps people do notice it but i think once you're inside the area you can't buy the wrist-bands strangely. I might be wrong on that though. Anyway, the idea is to beat Bowser Jr. I'll put in a spoiler what happens in case people want the surprise!
You go into a building and are assigned a number. Then you stand on a spot and you get projected onto a screen as a character. Then you have to throw bombs, dodge bullets, jump etc. It's so cool, again it works brilliantly!
Now here was where things started to get tricky. We still had 90 minutes till our reservation and had pretty much done everything. And it was so hot i was starting to get heatstroke. But we figured we might never be back so lets keep the reservation and just spend the time alternating between the shops which had cooling AC. The merch was amazing, just endless well made bits of anything you could imagine and plenty you couldn't. A dream if you wanted to spend.
Finally it was time for our reservation. Inside was a little underwhelming. It was nicely themed but it was very much a cafe in the style of Vampire Kitchen. The food was very nice though and also themed:
It's a nice place to eat but i wouldn't wait hours to go in there.
Might start a new post now as i'm worried this won't upload...
R
