Universal Studios

A bit of a week ago, wewe went to Universal Studios Japan, henceforth referred to as USJ, which is conveniently located in Osaka. Think Disneyland (or Movie World), except themed with Universal Studios movies, not as big as Disneyland, but a lot bigger than any Gold Coast theme park. We got ourselves a year pass (slightly more than the cost of two visits), and will definitely be going back a few times.

Were we getting on the right train? How cool are my shortrs?

Walking in, I felt like a little kid again. The music was all highly cinematic theme songs, and I started dancing down the street. It was so cool, and I must say it definitely outclasses any theme park on the Gold Coast.

The first thing we did was queued up for Shrek's 4D Adventure. The fourth dimention came from the fact that the seats moved, and they occasionally sprayed water at us. I was pleasantly surprised that despite the complete lack of any English in the featurette, it didn't pose much of a barrier to our enjoyment. Also, as it was just a short featurette, they wer able to play to the 3D really well, without it looking deliberately staged for 3D.

Then it was time for the rides. They varied a bit in quality, and I would say that the newer rides that relied highly on visual technology (3D effects, lots of pretty lights etc), were much better than the old fashioned type where a mechanised dinosaur jumps out at you. It was intermittently raining all morning, so the wait times tended to be between 15 minutes and half an hour, which was much better than usual. Another advantage to the rain was that I bought myself a cute snoopy poncho. At least, I decided that it was cute, the others laughed at me. At any rate, it had ears on it. Unfortunately, I didn;t get a photo.

All in all, we had a great time, although personally, I would have left an hour or two earlier. We didn't get back home until nearly 8:00, and I was exhausted, and felt it right through the next week.