Thursday July 9th
Finally, another theme park day! (I apologise for the lack of rollercoaster content).
I started the day again with breakfast in the Hilton executive lounge. And I enjoyed Eggs Royale with a view of the Nishi-Shinjuku skyscrapers.
My first park of the day was Joypolis. I wouldn’t normally have made my way here, but Thunder Dolphin was closed (at Tokyo Dome City Attractions) and this park does have one rollercoaster, so it met the criteria for my trip report.
Gekion Live Coaster - I am not sure how describe this other than “quirky”. It is a spinning coaster, but it actually starts as an interactive game! Each of the four riders has to press each of their three buttons to the rhyme of JPOP music. And after each round one is crowned the winner. After I think three rounds? The actual coaster part starts. A voice announces in English “are you ready?”. We proceed through some mist and then are launched. There was one fun inversion - I liked the hang time on it. In the end I think I rode this four times? The queues were always quite short, less than 10 minutes and sometimes walk on. So I never bought a priority pass. I started to get better at the game part of the ride and eventually one it on my penultimate ride!
There were a few fun non-coaster rides that I did. Spicy Taxi, was a “driving simulator”/quiz. I was not good at the quiz part of it! But I rode by myself, and so never felt competitively threatened.
Wild Wing - a kind of flying simulator that reminded me of Voletarium at Europa Park. Surprisingly fun.
Murder Lodge - a horror themed attraction. Surprisingly scary - especially wearing the headphones that had an ASMR like effect that was terrifying.
After one final ride on Gekion, I left early to proceed to my next amusement park!
Tokyo DisneySea was stunning. It was evident the massive budget Disney parks have for theming, and here it was money well spent.
My first ride was Tower of Terror. I usually don’t like drop towers, but this ride was quite fun and not scary at all.
I rode the “DisneySea Electric Railway” to my next ride. The train reminds me of the Chicago L and other elevated city railways in the USA.
Nemo & Friends SeaRider was another simulator ride like Wild Wing. Though this time underwater/marine based! It had a sweet story based on Finding Nemo.
There were lots of popcorn booths around the park, and they all had very long queues. That was due to each having a unique flavour, I remember seeing ones like Garlic Shrimp. I had a Chilli flavoured popcorn, which I liked. And also a churro, which had a soy sugar topping!
Journey to the Center of the Earth was my favourite ride. And also the best dark ride that I’ve been on. The attention to detail and scenery in the ride was incredible. And the last section was very fun too. Unfortunately I only got to ride this once as the attraction closed early.
Indiana Jones Adventure was also a fun dark ride, but I definitely preferred Journey to the Center of the Earth. On one occasion I sat in the front row, at the “drivers seat”. Instead of a normal safety rail I got to hold onto a steering wheel.
Flounder's Flying Fish Coaster, was unfortunately closed that day.
Lastly the one coaster I got to ride at DisneySea was Raging Spirits. Although a steel coaster it was definitely in the style of a wooden one. Like Gekion, it had just a single inversion. The scariest part of this ride was there was no storage for loose items. We were expected to keep caps/small bags and other such items next to our feet on the floor. Thankfully none of my items fell off the rid
I left the park just as it was closing. There were swarms of people! I took the Disney monorail to Resort Gateway station. And then changed to the Keiyō line. Both trains were standing room only! And then I took the Marunouchi Line back to my hotel from Tokyo Station.
Astonishingly despite visiting two parks I only rode 2 rollercoasters!
That leaves my coaster tally at just 30!