Malcolm's Korea and Japan Trip

Introduction

2009-10-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

In 2005 I visited Japan with the European Coaster Club travelling around most of the large theme parks on Honshu and you can read all about it here (but not right now please!). In 2009 a second trip was organised this time including Kyushu and prior to visiting Japan spending a week in South Korea. In addition to all of that I also decided to spend a few extra days with a mate post-trip to visit Hokkaido, the northernmost island.

The plan would see us taking in around 30 theme parks in 21 days, and for me doing an end-to-end tour of Japan, and here's the report of the holiday which hopefully is informative and amusing, although I admit there are some pretty awful puns buried within.

As ever, what I write isn't meant to cause offence, some of it is intentionally written in jest. Please take it in the spirit in which it was written. Should you be interested in obtaining high-res pics let me know.

Travelling to Seoul

2009-10-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

So the flight to Seoul was pretty uneventful, with us stuck on a plane for about 10 hours and spending most of it watching the in-flight movies. Korean Air were superb, with very professional service, some nice food (the spicy Korean sauce livened up the journey somewhat) and tri-lingual service announcements that would test your frustration levels as you found the previously mentioned movies being paused constantly.

As I don't have any photos of the flight you'll have to make do with my movie reviews instead.

Fighting:

This piece of trash stars the jug-eared twat from one of the Step Up movies, Channing something I think his name is. In this Oscar winning performance he plays a young man who can't sell pirate copies of Harry Potter (not something I'd ever want to purchase on impulse to be honest) and decides to become a fighter on the illegal underground circuit instead. Along the way he falls in love and has a run-in with an old best-friend. I'm sure there are some other cliches that he encounters along the way. Prior to watching this I had to watch a trailer featuring some Korean guy drinking Irish coffee in Dublin.

Adventureland

This is a movie about a guy who has to work a Summer job and does so in a little amusement park. Along the way he falls in love and has a run-in with an old best-friend. I can't remember if there's much fighting however. The main reason for watching this was that it was filmed in Kennywood, a quite nice park in Pennsylvania where I thought I'd broken my neck after a tickling incident on their wooden coaster back in 2006. The film was OK even if it did feature Ryan Reynolds (although in this one he'd not wielding a sword). Prior to watching this I had to watch a trailer featuring a Korean guy drinking more Irish coffee in Dublin.

Push

This was a movie I wanted to see earlier in the year but eventually missed due to me realising it was going to be a cheap rip-off of Heroes. It stars that awful Dakota Fanning brat as a psychic girl who hooks up with Ryan Reynolds (not wielding a sword) and some other people to evade the authorities who are tracking all the mutant-hero-people down. I don't think she falls in love along the way, being a bit too young still for that. I do recall falling asleep part-way through but thinking the ending was quite clever in the way all the Hero-mutant people unite their powers to thwart the baddies and save the day. Prior to watching this I had to watch a trailer featuring a, now annoying, Korean guy drinking his third Irish coffee in Dublin.

Sniper

Having had enough of the Hollywood fodder I usually enjoy I decided to give the foreign movie section a go and chose a Korean movie about Snipers. This was actually really enjoyable and tells the story of two best friends who are at Sniper academy and eventually fall out. One remains with the police force and the other goes rogue and starts doing bad stuff. It builds nicely to a superb climate which features a sniper shoot-out across a warehouse. Along the way we're given tips on how to be a good sniper (controlled breathing etc), something I'd look forward to putting into practice one-day. Being devoted to his sniping career I don't think he fell in love and it didn't feature Ryan Reynolds with a sword. The trailer however did feature Irish coffee #4 being consumed by a now buzzing Korean lad.

The Escapist

I can only assume I'd subconciously chosen this as I'd been cooped up in a metal box for quite some time. This was a British (read "miserable") film about an old guy and his escape from prison so that he can see his crack-head daughter and sort her out. This film contained the usual prison cliches (corrupt cops, governor who doesn't care for this inmates, murder that doesn't get investigated, stupid escape plan etc.). Even though the film was bleak I did successfully make it all the way through. Prior to watching this I really wanted to track that coffee-addict Korean guy down and given him a smack after he was now enjoying his fifth caffeine laden drink.

So having watched all that the plane landed at Incheon, the city's international airport out to the west of Seoul and upon leaving the plane we were greated by men in white coats and face masks. The H1N1 virus that the media and government had turned into a means to keep the nation scared back home was being even more seriously here. Everyone entering the country from abroad would have to pass these guys who'd put some device up against your neck, I'm assuming to check temperature. Having passed that we then had to walk in front of a thermal camera, which would check core body temperature. Upon successfully getting through that we were then handed a packet of wet wipe tissues. Beyond that immigration was extremely smooth and efficient, and in no time at all we were on our way to Seoul in our Karaoke themed coach.

En route from the airport, the city's attempt at the Golden Gate bridge had suffered a Spinal Tap unit-of-measure complication.

The river that runs through the city isn't natural. It came about following a burst water main incident 20-years ago that they never fixed. You can still see the burst main here!

There's an awful lot of development going on in Seoul. A good sign of the city becoming more and more successful. To make the best use of the land a lot of the new developments become tall buildings...

...or very tall buildings. The one on the right is the DL63 building and its over 20 years old. Currently the 3rd tallest skyscraper in the city.

Incheon

2009-10-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

For the first two nights of our trip we were staying in the Hamilton Hotel smack-bang in the centre of Incheon, where the Westerners tend to hang out. I use the term "smack-bang" because if you wanted smack it wouldn't be too hard to find a dealer and if it was a bang you were after the city's red light district was 50-metres up the road.

Here's a view from the hotel window, overlooking the main junction with plenty of Western-chain restaurants. Those less adventurous in the club wouldn't have too far for dinner here. The hotel had laid on a really nice Korean meal for us, where I got to try Kim Chee (spicy pickled cabbage of some sort) for the first time. Very nice too!

Kim Chee in the 80s courtesy of the WWF

Kim Chee today

"Shut your mouth and look at my wad" said Harry Enfield in the early-90s. Well here's my wad of Korean Won; one million's worth. I had brought around £550 worth of currency to spend in South Korea, which the bank had nicely gift wrapped for me. I had planned on just bringing £500 but when I saw that I was not far off being a millionaire I had to go for it. As it turns out I could easily have survived with a fifth of that amount. The currency rates on this occasion had been extremely favourable.
Here's another view from the hotel window. This time overlooking a very busy pool-party on the roof of our hotel. It wasn't particularly hot, but it was humid. I think the crowd were making the most of what I discovered later to be the last pool-party of the season (this was September).

Following check-in and before the meal a few of us decided to go out for a small walk to a nearby bridge. The Banpo bridge is just a bridge that goes over the river but last year the city authorities decided to turn it into one of the world's largest fountain displays, with fountains firing out horizontally along its length. It was just a mile away from the hotel so we thought we could easily do this.

This is what the display looks like.

A wonderfully simple mural.

I would come to realise later just how physically fit the Korean people are. This multi-gym set up in a small park was a hint. I have only ever seen this in one place in the UK I guess because in most locations it would get trashed.

So in researching the Banpo bridge I'd written to the company that had installed the fountains and asked them what time the display would be at, 2000 supposedly. Here's David stepping out over the side of the bridge in preparation for the display starting. We waited and waited and waited and well nothing happened. No display tonight. We jokingly suggested we may had got the wrong bridge and would see it going off up the river, but that was not the case. It turns out that the display was at 1900 and 2100, having been changed a few weeks prior. So did we come back an hour later? Nope, we'd written the night off as a dismal Malcolm-failure and were back at the hotel enjoying the meal.

The sign isn't saying "Danger - beware of ill prepared tourists walking on this bridge"

At night Incheon comes alive. Close-by is an American military base and this is where the soldiers come to "let loose". Because of this the area has a bit of a bad reputation.

Having said that they do tolerate Ginger folk.

and they don't hold back on their advertising.

Having explored a little of the Incheon area it was time to succumb to the long flight and rest up for the next day, which would take in two parks and a rather fun morning side-trip.

Korean War Memorial

2009-10-17T00:56:00.000-07:00

Before the club headed to park #1, myself David and Jeppe decided to heed the words of the Pet Shop Boys and "Go West" out of Incheon to a nearby war memorial. It was only about 20 minutes away on foot from the hotel, 40 if you have little legs, hours if you have no legs at all.

Along the main road in Incheon are these little plaques in the floor that teach you how to say "Yo" in many different languages and state what the capital of that country is. Seoul was my 29th capital city :)

There were also these little pieces of art too. I think the logo has something to do with the city of Seoul but not being able to read the writing below I can't confirm that.

I had tried learning the Hangul writing system prior to the trip but realised without knowing the underlying Korean it would be pointless. Japan borrows a lot of western words and has a writing system that caters for it; Korean doesn't. The writing system however is lovely and very well designed. It looks confusing to those of us familar with A B & C but once you get around the concepts, it quickly falls into place and you very quickly realise just how crap our western systems are.

The Hangul writing system is so straightforward that the country prides itself on having a 100% reading rate. Our tour guide had also told us that Indonesia have now adopted it for their country.

In the centre of Seoul is this large hill and atop it stands the main communication tower. Some of the Americans on our trip who'd arrived a couple of days ahead of us, went up it to get a good view of the city but found it too overcast to do so.

Soon after we arrived at the War Memorial and it wasn't obvious whether we were going to be allowed in. The road that this is situated on houses a number of Embassy type buildings each with their own armed guards, and the memorial site had some of their own too. But once we clocked some elderly people having a morning stroll on the other side of the gate, we made our way in, the guard not reacting at all to us doing so.

A large sculpture I think made to resemble a missile that has been split to symbolise the end of war.

The sculpture that surrounds the missile which beautifully captures the impact of war on both those involved with the fighting and those unable to do so.

Beyond that a massive hall, which I think contains much more on the history of Korean War. Unfortunately at 0630 in the morning when the three of us were walking around it, it wasn't open.

Is this a your's or is it a mine?

Another stunning sculpture that captures the plight.
As well as remembering WW2, the memorial also strongly remembers the more recent Korean war between the North and South started in June 1950 and officially hasn't ended although there's little fighting these days.
The West came to the aid of the South and China the North and between them over 2 million people were killed the majority on the North side.
The 2.5 mile no-mans land now between the two countries, referred to as the DMZ is a popular tourist attraction although I don't know why.
I couldn't visit it due the itinerary but also because if you visit it you can't give blood back in the UK. I guess because no one is responsible for that area.
For more on the Korean war you can click here

Beyond the statues lie a massive display of military vehicles, from tanks to trucks, planes to submarines and the rest of this page is going to be full of them. I had decided to come here based on seeing a few planes in Google Earth but only visiting it in person was the scale of it appreciated.

A parade square at the back of the complex. That speaker system in the top-left is actually a sonic weapon, the sort of thing that Leftfield use to play their dub and that the KLF used to kill sheep.

How is that dangerous exactly?

A very pretty ceremonial drum, I have no idea what its purpose was here in amongst all the military stuff.

TUO YAW is Korean for "exit" supposedly.

This is a sonic weapon. The sort of thing that the KLF use to kill sheep and Leftfield use to vibrate your bone structure.

A cool looking boat that is actually a submarine, either with that soft top!

Despite the humidity, the museum was pretty cool and I'd never seen such a huge display of military hardware in one place before. Having had our fill of big guns it was time to head back to the hotel for breakfast before heading out to the first park of the trip.

Childrens Grand Park

2009-10-17T00:55:00.000-07:00

The first theme park of the trip was Children's Grand Park, a small theme park within one of the largest public parks in the city of Seoul. The main park was fairly busy with a number of school parties who gave us a nice greeting of "Welcome to Korea". My Korean was nowhere near as good but I was able to put together a "An hyeung a se yo" which means "Good Morning/Day/Evening".
I have no idea who these characters are but I'm guessing they didn't come from the same show as each was drawn in a different style.
A small children's playground with a rather peculiar upside-down house playhouse. Obi Wan Kenobi appeared and told us that "This was not the park we were looking for" and we felt an overwhelming urge to move on. Bloody Jedis and their cheap mind tricks.
A very nice large pagoda type building, the banners also displaying the same cartoon characters as seen earlier led me to conclude that if I wanted to know more about those characters I'd have to go inside, later!
The park has two roller-coasters. This was the first one called Crazy Mouse, called as such due to the paint-job that looks like Mickey Mouse has taken too much LSD. Due to the rain, this ride didn't open.
One of the unique rides from the last Japan trip, and it was nice to see them here in Korea too. The animals are coin-operated and play music whilst moving the riders very slowly around the park. The giraffe looks a little bit odd!
One of those rides that is just asking for trouble.
The graffiti in the station of the second coaster. Cute! We'd come to realise that most of the time the graffiti wasn't nasty tagging but sweet stuff like this, however sometimes there would be quite a lot of it.
This is the second coaster called '88 train. I'm guessing the ride opened in this year and doesn't have anything to do with two oversized females getting stuck in it. The ride had very little leg room, even in the front, and in ensuring my legs didn't get injured on the ride I missed the couple of rough bits that threw my shoulders into the restraints. An instantly forgettable ride, although I seem to have contradicted myself in writing this review of it.
Smile for the camera!
This video game is called "Come on Baby". It's a track-and-field type game that features babies as participants who get hurt should they fail the challenge (e.g. skipping over a live electric cable)
I found this clip on youtube which shows it in action.

Having had enough of the little park and enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing people queueing up for the coaster that wasn't going to open I decided to venture out to see what else I could find in the main park.
Close by was this replica of an old steam train. Just a replica though.
Nice paving. Smile, even though it's raining.
These little mushrooms are actually the public toilets. Nearby a speaker system in the trees was playing Christmas carols. I think its the first time I've head "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in September. The English lyrics aren't understood by the majority of visitors to the park but our guide told me that they like the melody of the singing, which is why its popular.
The caterpillar seat outside the pagoda. The exhibition had something to do with the planet and climate change.
Something to do with world love.

Some models of the previously advertised cartoon characters.

Children's Grand Park was always going to be a quick stop and the wet weather compounded that. The coaster counters were off to a bad start with the one coaster not running. It did however open later in the day and some of those more hardcore/stupid members returned to ride it. Not me though, there would be plenty more coasters on the trip to experience.

Lotte World

2009-10-17T00:54:00.000-07:00

The second park of the day would be a little kinder to us weather wise with most of it being indoors. The Lotte company seem to be one of these large umbrella organisations that have their fingers in many different pies selling products across many markets. Having re-read that you might conclude that they just sell umbrellas and pies, and I hope you know what I mean.

Some of the group gathering outside the main entrance. I rather stupidly asked the question "In what year did the park open?". Not one of my cleverest moments admittedly given that the answer was splatted all over the park.

A slightly more obvious clue.

It became quite obviously very quickly that this building was vast with a full-sized ice skating rink on the bottom floor and the theme park on the 3 levels overlooking it. They even have a rapids on the third floor! The giant pumpkin was part of the Halloween theming that Lotte world were putting all around the place.

Giant Loop is one of those "is it a coaster or not" sort of rides with the track consisting of nothing more than a single loop that the train is powered around. I'd never done of these before and it was quite fun although a moment of panic saw me thinking that my wallet had fallen out of my pocket. It hadn't; this goldfish had forgotten that he'd put it in his bag prior to boarding.

French Revolution is definitely a coaster but isn't as fun as the previous looping ride. The restraint system had some very large cushions on the overhead restraint that would smack your ears quite hard. It's never a good sign when you see people coming off the ride holding their ears. Imagine what I must have thought when nearly every passenger was holding their ears, some of them crying.

Theming or a strange seat for the occasional weary traveller who found the walking around the massive complex a bit too much?

Bonus points if you can figure out how Tim was able to get these 3 happy prisoners behind bars. A clue - it didn't involve lubricant and a shoe-horn.

Lotte World has one of the coin-shitting donkeys that is more famous in Efteling. Oops! Did I just use a bad word? Sorry, I meant a coin-shitting ass. Now, which one is worse?

I don't think Efteling has pumpkins quite as cute as these though.

Lotte World doesn't just have a massive indoor theme park. It also has this outdoor section. I'm guessing in Korea you can't patent fantasy castles if you don't have a Disney park here already. As you can see it was also quite empty today, the rain keeping the locals at home.

The Lotte mascots are these strange assortment of raccoons, cats, pigs and I have absolutely no idea what that kid on the left is supposed to be.

By far the best coaster in the park, and arguably in the country was Atlantis Adventure. This ride is built by Intamin and uses a ride system called Aquatrax which is designed to mix a water ride with a coaster track, using LIMs to power the coaster around the track.

This was the only part of the ride I'd seen prior to riding it, the majority of it being enclosed inside a well-themed volcano. Because it hadn't been spoilt for me I had an amazing first ride with a great launch section into a top-hat start that totally caught me by surprise.

The Gyrodrop tower. Quite a good ride, even more so in seeing Jeppe's trip badge fly off his neck on the way down (Yes, he did make it out of the prison cell seen earlier)

The park has a third coaster called Comet Express, which you could overlook as its underground. This ride was a lot of fun too, especially if you rode alone as the cars rotate on the way round and the more unbalanced the car the faster the spinning.

Back indoors and Pharaoh's Fury is a dark ride that employs the same ride system as the Indiana Jones attractions in the Disney parks. Whilst not being quite as well themed on the ride as its counterparts the queue line knocked Disney's theming for six.

The queue takes you through an Egyptian museum with some stunning pieces of Egyptian art. Quite spectacular and almost as good as a Tutankhamen exhibition I saw at the O2 earlier in the year.

A view from of the indoor section from up high. How did I get up here you might ask (well not you lot who have been here, you already know the answer). The orange and green balloons you can see going around the roof are people carriers that take you around the circumference of the building, and I'm in one of those.

Some nicely painted lockers. That little bear child thing has grown up and now has the horn...must be puberty!

Back outside now for some end-of-day rides on the Atlantis ride. A nice light job on the castle too.

Lotte World is a stunning complex, the scale of which I can't really put across in a quick report. The only place I can compare it to is the Mall of America but if they closed the shops and extended the park to fill the space. It was also quite funny that one of the best rides of the trip would be ridden on the first day.

Seoul Night Time Walk

2009-10-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

After the park the club headed back to the hotel but I decided to stay out, have a wander around Seoul and take some photos. I knew that the walk from Lotte World to the hotel would pass by the Olympic Stadium so I decided to check that out.

A history of Olympic mascots commemorated in statues along the main Olympic boulevard, although I only found three, which were close to each other.

The 88 Olympics were held in Seoul and this tiger mascot was called George

The 92 Olympics were held in Barcelona and this cat's mascot was called Clive.

The 96 Olympics were held in Atlanta and this mascot with cannons for eyes was called Barry.

(actually they're called Hodori (Seoul), Cobi (Barcelona) & Izzy (Atlanta)

A random arrangement of Olympic rings en route to the stadium.

No idea who this is. I'm guessing some famous Korean athlete of years gone by.

This mural remembers two Olympic events that no longer take place, although I personally think they should come back. The guy in the background is Korean head-slapping champion Kim On Ken and the guy in the foreground is Sila Amkari who had dominated the sport of hair-pulling for 3 successive Olympics in the early 80s. It looks like Mankini's were popular here before Borat made them so in the West.

and here is the Olympic stadium, which I eventually stumbled upon. It's a real shame that the stadium isn't lit up at night. It did mean however that I was able to get this quite odd shot of it by putting a 20 second exposure on the camera. A conveniently placed traffic cone made a great tripod; Macgyver would have been proud of my improvisation.

A not so great one of one of the other stadiums close by, which I believe was now a baseball ground for one of the local teams.

Another long exposure shot of the main stadium with ribbon-twirling hat-wearing Tony the Tiger. Great!

The Olympic coach park giving the false impression that there must have been some major event taking place. As it turns out there was nothing going on at all bar some junior athletes doing some training. I think the coaches were just parked here en masse away from the narrow streets elsewhere.

The entrance to the Bonguensa Buddhist temple, which I found quite by accident after eating some chicken skewers from a street vendor (well it I think it was chicken). It was across the road from the Coex Intercontinental hotel, which came to my rescue. The shrine is famous for being haunted, the ghosts of past visitors making frequent trips in the dead-of-night going to pray to the Gods. I think I got lucky and snapped one, or it might just have been my long-exposure again.

A little over-exposed but a magnificient statue at the back-end of the shrine. The photo doesn't do the scale of the statue any justice whatsover but it is extremely tall.

..and at this point my second big camera battery ran out, the previous one having run out earlier in the day. You can call me ill-prepared but I did have a little ixus camera in reserve.

Wandering way off-track now. I knew I needed to be heading North-West and this street of neon was taking me South. So be it, who knows where I'd end up. Surely that's part of the fun in visiting new places?

Actually it soon started to get a little seedy so I was soon heading back on track.

A really cool lit building in what was clearly the posh shop district of Seoul. I really didn't blend in in this area at all and was soon on my way.

Cute cartoon apologising for some construction work that was taking place on the bridge I had to cross. This cutifying of bad messages is quite popular in Japan too and I really like it.

Here I am leaving the southern half of Seoul, crossing over the river towards the hotel. What I hadn't appreciated is that having crossed the river the expressway I was walking alongside would turn away in the opposite direction to where I wanted to be headed. Not ideal.

A rather interesting poster advertising Whisky :)

As it happens not only was I not going the right way, the jet lag was also starting to kick in. I was also rather stubbornly refusing to jump a taxi or the metro to get me home, the rationale being that I wouldn't really appreciate the city in doing so. But in walking I soon became appreciative of the hills that litter Seoul, some were extremely steep and I did definitely appreciate the need to not walk too close to local drunks who were testing their martial arts by kicking trees down.

The upshot is that I eventually got home after 1am completely wrecked having walked in the region of 8 miles, ah well!

Gyeongbukjong Palace

2009-10-17T00:52:00.000-07:00

This morning was supposed to be all about waking up early and catching the metro to visit the Gyeongbukjong Palace in the north of Seoul. If you think I was mad for doing so given the night I'd had previously you'd be pleased to know that I'm not and I didn't do it. I just couldn't get out of bed in time to fit it in.

But I'm sure it was very beautiful and I will endeavour to include it the next time I'm there.

Seoul Land

2009-10-17T00:51:00.000-07:00

Heading south out of Seoul we made our way to Seoul Land, a rather nice park out located up in the mountains. Along the way our local guide had made us aware that due to the risk of spread H1N1 school groups had been barred from going to theme parks. A bonus for us that would ensure we'd have no issues queueing for rides, the downside being that there wouldn't be many people in the park to interact with.

The park is dominated by a large yellow corkscrew coaster which stood over the rear-entrance to the park. We only realised later that we weren't entering through the main entrance and were initially confused as to why there was no main street as big parks usually have.

The park mascots at Seoul Land are two pre-pubescent turtles. It's not known whether they grow up to become Ninjas or not.

A rather peculiar cartoon that doesn't really describe the rides that well, but as a fan of Asian art it was good to see. Other parks later in the trip would feature similar pieces.

Following a quick go on the log flume (which featured a laughing pirate captain that would pee on you) the first coaster opened up. Called rather imaginatively "Kiddy Coaster" the ride proved to be a bit of squeeze, for some members more than others.

I have absolutely no idea if this is a real show being advertised here but having a mole with a turd on its head can't exactly be quality television or mainstream. In fact you could say its underground shit.

The park has the most realistic recreation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa I've ever seen. Having seen this I don't believe I ever need to see the real thing.

A good job on the Epcot too, and if memory serves me correctly the attraction inside it was way more interesting than the Florida one too. It was a sex education walkthrough thing that included graphic footage of abortions and had the tools involved in the process laid out for you to play with. Pretty powerful stuff, which certainly hit the message home. I'm never going to get pregnant now having seen it. Something that Thorpe Park might want to consider adding, if only to keep the chav population down.

The haunted walkthrough was more a guided tour through a few set pieces. There were no real scares in this. They would be hard to top the abortion footage to be honest so perhaps they don't bother trying.

A view of the mountains around the park. Although there weren't many school kids visiting today there was a coach party of ninjas and you can see some of them here...if you look hard enough.

The second coaster was "Crazy Mouse" and it wasn't the usual mouse coaster, in fact bar the final turn which knocked us a bit this was a really fun ride.

The same can not be said of this rotating tin-of-sardines ride. I'd ridden one of these in Cardiff and I can only assume it was peer pressure that made me ride it again.

Next to the Sardines ride was a powered dragon coaster. Exciting stuff!

The big yellow coaster has the strange name of Black Hole 2000 and I couldn't really understand why. Although it looked structurally impressive it wasn't much fun to ride.

The park has dodgem football. First time I'd seen that! Much more fun than going going round in circles.

Move along people, there's nothing for you to see here.

Could this be the coolest kiddie ride ever? I don't think so Michael.

A lot of theme parks have a spherical rock fountain feature. This park has gone better by having a massive stone ring that rotates round. Show offs!

Oh no! It's the pigs...

Another view of the park showing the two big coasters. The yellow one has already been mentioned. The blue one with the loop is called The Columbia Double Loop Coaster and I don't quite understand why.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it has something to do with the colour of the ride track matching the colours of the Columbian flag. If I'm wrong then it must be because riding the coaster is like taking Columbian drugs - both get you high, and on that note I'll grab my coat.

On the right is Flora, our Korean Tour Guide. In the centre is Andy and unfortunately due to Andy's exuberant posing I have to guess and I think its Cal.

Bizarre topiary, liking the peace sign though.

Seoul Land was a pretty nice park with a good mixture of rides but none of them were particular spectacular. It was ironic that the best coaster was not one of the big two, the mouse coaster was the only one I rode more than once so that gets my vote.

The drive to the next park took us past some massive developments. As Seoul becomes more and more busy developers are building entire housing complexes outside the city and workers are commuting in. Having seen tower blocks fail as a social project in the UK following their popularity in the 60's it would be interesting to see if they work here.

Korean Folk Village Park

2009-10-17T00:50:00.000-07:00

The next park for us was called Doocoland and its part of a larger Korean Folk Village Park. Wanting to learn the culture as well as visit the parks I was quite looking forward to this place.

A collection of locally grown peppers for us to sample. They weren't that bad.

It was rumoured that they grew pot in this park, I don't think this was what they meant though.

These traditional masks were made to protect the ugly villagers from being picked on by the nicer looking folk. However the plan backfired when the people who did the bullying could easily identify the ugly people as they were the ones wearing the masks.

The park has a large number of authentic looking buildings and has become a popular filming location for movies that want to feature authentic looking buildings. This hoarding is advertising the fact that a TV adaptation of The King and I was being filmed here. Shall we dance (in front of some authentic looking buildings) one, two, three. I can't think of any decent "King and I" puns so 'Yull' have to make do with this one.

Doocolands not so big big wheel.

The rollercoaster wasn't too bad buried in amongst the trees.

More bizarre animals. The one on the left looks like the what you'd end up with a zebra was ever possible to mate with a giraffe. A "gibra" or "Ziraffe" perhaps. The one on the right however does look uncannily like that dog from The Banana Splits.

See!

Beautiful paint job on this "the-concrete-gives-its-age-away" shelter in the centre of the Folk park.

A large centre of the park is put aside for growing crops that Korean farmers would typically harvest. They have the common things such as corn and potatos, but they also grow hemp. Had this park named its coaster after Columbia then I wouldn't have been overly surprised.

Some of the old traditional buildings.

A Korean photographer party baiting ducks with bread and leading them into a paparazzi photo experience.

This is a crazy traditional slack-rope walker who captivated the crowd (most of us are in the shade behind the camera) with his amazing display of rope walking. He could walk, run, hop, bounce, jump, jump on his arse, jump on his arse whilst rotating, all without falling off. It was one of those routines that could be kept very short indeed had he just done his best trick first (a combination of hopping, jumping, sitting, standing, and turning around all at once) but he didn't. He teased us with a simple display of walking first and worked his way up. By the end of the routine I think he'd made some new fans of the audience, which he could use to aid his balance in the future (did you see what I did there?)

Actually the pics don't do the guy justice so here's a clip I found on youtube (is there anything you can't find on there?)

Escaping the crowds, myself and Jeppe had noticed on the map, a shrine tucked away in the trees away from the main park and being the nosey curious tourists that we are we decided to go and check it check check check it out, and very stunning it was too.

Playing with the depth of focus on the camera to get sunflower photo.

The folk village has a haunted house and whilst I'm not sure it's quite traditional (although I'm happy to be proven wrong) it wasn't too bad an attraction. I don't remember being overly scared by it but it was pretty long in length which made it fun. (Having just read this back I've realised that the previous sentence could be easily misconstrued - this was not intentional).

A traditional Korean man, resurrected from an cryogenic sleep on his way to get married in a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. We left the ceremony just before it started sensing that it might be a little bit boring. I think this chap gets married every day at 2pm and has been doing it every day for 200 years. All that consumating (although we don't get to see that) is the reason why he now has to make his way there by horse.

Strange totems in the woods - The Brair Witch Project perhaps. (Apologises profusely). At least these ones have a nice big cheeky grin, not terrifying at all.

I have no idea what these symbolise but I'm sure they're not just the locals putting their washing out to dry.

Doocoland was a silly little park and I only spent 10 minutes in it, if that. Most of the day was spent taking in the traditions of the Korean people and the best part for me was making my way up the mountain (albeit not that far) to see the shrine, which was stunning.

On the way out of the park I decided to buy a souvenir and purchased a traditional fridge magnet. Be careful of the gift-shop the people in there are very pushy for a sale which I wasn't comfortable, but perhaps thats the traditional way of selling things.

Inchon

2009-10-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

This night we stayed in Inchon and for dinner a small group of us (the more adventurous some might say) picked a local Korean restaurant for dinner. There was a total language barrier here with us not being able to speak Korean and the people running the restaurant not being able to speak English. So in true "what the hell" spirit we pointed at a Hangul covered board and ordered 4 dishes at random.

What we got was an amazing selection of food that we would cook ourselves. The biggest surprise however was a bowl of unidentifiable insects as a side dish, which after a little "I dare you to go first" game actually turned out to be quite nice.

At one point in the meal we were handed a mobile telephone. The staff bless them had called round their friends for someone who could speak English and who could translate, but we didn't really need it as by this point we were off and running (with the eating I mean).

Later on an English speaking local came in (I don't know if they called him to come round) and had a chat with us. He was surprised that we were eating the insects as "Americans don't usually eat them". We told him that we weren't American and that they were probably at McDonalds. He went off and chatted to the girl who was serving us. 5 minutes later another bowl of insects was served. Whilst they were nice, 2 bowls was pushing it. We bagged some of them to show the others on the coach what we'd eaten (actually Andy forget about the bag and discovered it towards the end of the trip).

The whole meal was delicious and extremely cheap so we felt it appropriate to give a decent tip, which led to initial protests but when we insisted they take it they were elated. A nice ending to a very fun evening.

From the restaurant we went to a local bar where we had to endure a Christina Aguilera concert on a loop. At least it wasn't Celine Dion and we stayed long enough for a couple of drinks before heading to bed.

Seolbong Lake

2009-10-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

On this morning David, Jeppe, Me, Myself and I decided to head out to a nearby lake. Why a lake you ask? Well the town we were staying in wasn't that big and certainly wasn't touristy. A quick look in researching the area in Google Earth prior to departing showed a collection of pictures in this area, so concluding it had to be the most photographic area in the city it seemed worthwhile visiting.

But how to get there? It seemed to be within walking distance and we started off OK but soon found ourselves under a freeway with the option of following or heading off towards this Expo sign nearby.

The little trick I learnt was to follow the locals. In the early hours the older people tend to head out for their morning strolls and Tai Chi workouts. They know the area and also know the recreational areas to head towards. This paid dividends as we found the lake on the other side of the Expo sign.

The lake during the day has a huge fountain balsting out the centre of it. Not so early in the day (it was about 6am). The buildings going up the hill in the background are a ceramics museum and exhibition. I guess baking clay and varnishing them is a big thing in this part of the country.

Cute pavement decoration. The 1000M mark indicates the walk around the lake. Because it was man-made they were able to set the dimensions on it and it is 1000 metres around its circumference. Perfect for those people who run a set distance, and there were a few this morning.

The lake has a number of art pieces around it to break up the monotony and offer something for the silly tourists who enjoy getting up at the crack of dawn to photograph.

The whole area was amazingly serene and I was pleased we'd taken the time to come and check it out.

That's the main ceramic exhibition, which obviously wasn't going to be open so early in the day. The giant vase was quite cool though. Not being able to enter this we needed a hand in knowing where to go next and fortunately for us there was one doing just that.

This headless chap is the mascot for both the exhibition and the city itself. He reminded me of a Homepride man who had had a run-in with a hungry Hannibal Lecter.

Ascending the hill took us past a number of ceramic pieces, some more stunning than the others.

Some very nice graffiti on the side of a walk-through kiln attraction, which I'm betting shows the pottery and glazing process used in producing most ceramic pieces.

Headless HomePride man again.

Looking back down the mountain towards the city. Our hotel is one fo the tower blocks way off in the distance, showing the distance we had covered. It was actually much nearer than it appears.

At the top of the ceramic walk is this building, which I think is another exhibition hall. We couldn't get close to it due to the closed gate (the bars of which the camera was squeezed through to take the photo) and should we have made it through the gate Headless Homepride Man #3 was clearly stopping us. I would call him a bouncer but given he's made of clay I doubt he'd bounce.

Large traditional looking building passed on the way back down. The map of the complex we saw at the bottom of the mountain showed a childrens park with some funny looking long slides. That was the main impetus for ascending it. The maps at the top however had the kids park painted out indicating that a) it was no longer around and b) the maps need updating elsewhere. It was still a worthwhile walk however.

Here's a giant chicken and I stuck my head up its arse (I need to see if I can find the photo). It would be an amusing story to tell the others when I got back to the hotel.

"What did you get up to this morning you loon""I stuck my head up a chicken's arse. How's breakfast"

Halfway down the mountain is a large open area, which given by the signage was currently being used for some sort of learning festival. I only took the photo because they somehow managed to make reading look cute.

I wonder if the inspiration for this work ever asked the sculptor if their bum looked big in that?

If so, they need also mention if other body parts were also affected by the same problem.

On the northern bank of the late a small group were gathered to do their Tai Chi exercises. These old sprightly folk were amazing to watch and put me to shame. I doubt very much whether I would be able to complete the routine that they were doing. It was amusing that at one point they started practicing Karate chops. We joked that having done it for 5 minutes the instructor might shout out the instruction to attack us for taking photos and filming them.

Really nice modern theming on a nearby pagoda.

We passed this shop on the way back. It looked to only sell oversized childrens costumes. These would have been fun to buy if I could have fitted in them and if I had means for transporting them around for the rest of the tour. As I couldn't do either and as the shop wasn't open anyway there was no way I could do it.

I like how the butcher shop has a photo of a happy pig. "That's before we killed it and chopped it up to server to you"

Some of the shops were starting to open as we made our way back. The stock of fresh crab had been delivered to this restaurant. It was amusing to discover that most people could quite happily order food in a restaurant but not if they saw it alive outside first. That's clearly not a problem to the locals here. For humour value I'd probably pick one on the bottom if only to see if the others would attack the hand grabbing it on the way down.

A rather saucy advert for, not sauce, but beer. I'd love to know what the actual slogan says as I can't see what the connection between beer and a woman partly exposing her breasts could possibly be.

Dinky van!

Nice metallic flower tree piece that I tried to photograph on the way out but the light was too low. Got a better photo on the way back.

Inchon downtown at around 0720. I can tell the time is approximately that by the length of the shadows and the frequency of traffic on the road.

This French style motel looked very out of place in amongst all the other buildings. The red logo above the motel sign signifies that the building has a spa. These are very common across Korea.

A rather bizarre poster advertising some event from a few months back. No idea wha the fruit eating bald dudes are supposed to be representing.

And here we are back at our hotel. The hotel Miranda, named after Miranda Sawyer who is most famous for playing Queenie in Blackadder II. The Koreans fell in love with her portrayal and many cities have some sort of monument or recognition of her acting prowess.

The morning walk went extremely well and even though it was nothing more than a lake with some pottery around it, from it I started to convince myself that early starts were actually a good thing. This came mostly from seeing the old dudes out on their constituitionals and me thinking well if they can do it so can I.

So I told the others at breakfast about how I stuck my head up a chicken's arse and soon after we were en route to the largest theme park in Korea, Everland.

Everland

2009-10-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Everland is the largest theme park in Korea and has been around now for about 20 years. It used to be called Farmland, I wonder if back then it just had farm animals. It was this park that gave the incentive to visit Korea on account of it receiving a new wooden record breaking coaster - T-Express. It was also a nice surprise to be told that a contact had arranged for us to have the coaster to ourselves for one hour prior to the public being allowed to board.

We were welcomed to the park by a couple of mascots and a number of nicely dressed women. Again with the government advice there were hardly any other people at the entrance.

This park had also gone pretty overboard on the Halloween theming. The strange thing is I think Asian countries celebrate the day less than we do. It's only the Americans that go overboard on this.

This pic shows just how busy the park was. Bear in mind this is 5 minutes on Main Street, five minutes after the park had opened its gates. The exclusive riding may end up being a joke as we might have been the only people in the park anyway?

With the majority of the group heading straight down to the wooden coaster I decided to head in the opposite direction and see what else I could find.

This is Herkl & Timmy's Racing Coaster, a medium sized kiddy coaster in the Aesop's Fable themed part of the park. Herkl is the Hare and Timmy is the Tortoise, so the story should be obvious. The coaster was OK interacting nicely with the gardening around it. The best part of the ride for me however was the cute ride-op with an evne cuter voice who would say some pre-ride spiel in Korean prior to launching the ride. I have no idea what she was saying but I could quite happily listen to it over and over again.

The rest of the Aesop's park was very well themed. It was just a shame that with no kids visiting the park today, the majority of this part of the park was either not being used or not being utilised.

Two of the coasters were down at the park today. The large white corkscrew was closed for a ride inspection.

The yellow swinging coaster hidden in the trees and rated as the best of its type in the world had recently been closed, which disappointed a lot of the trip attendees as it was expected to be one of the premier rides on the trip.

A rather intersting flat ride that I hadn't come across before. It sort of looks like one of those games where you have to pass a ring around the metal course without touching it or you'll set off a buzzer.

The park has a dragon, seems to be quite a common coaster in this country, I guess because its cheap.

At the bottom of the valley you get an amazing view of the new coaster. T-Express was built a couple of years ago taking the record for the steepest drop and I think it is also the tallest drop on a wooden coaster. The second hill looked particularly good.

The ride resides in the nicely themed Alpine section of the park and is themed around a runaway train. Rather peculiarly however the ride is sponsored by a national telephone company hence the T logo above the entrance.

The ride itself was a ride of two halves with the inital part being very intense and powerful but as soon as the ride hit the mid-course brake the momentum of the ride was drastically killed and the coaster didn't have the same intensity any more. Having said that I did remain on the train for the entire hour, whilst people queued for the front and back seats I stayed put in the middle, which was actually the best seats on the ride.

With the hour up the ride opened to the public and surprisingly there was a decent crowd waiting to ride it. I decided to queue up with them and have one last go. Riding with the club is great but as they've ridden everything and anything the experience is different to riding with people who get scared, scream, and hold on for dear life. In short a more real audience, and I wasn't disappointed with the crowd screaming and cheering, even on the second half.

5 years ago I would be running to have a go on rides like this. Now I don't bother having ridden them way too much. The downside to having too much of a good thing perhaps. For some people spin rides are like crack and having tried them and liking them they have to have more, but I'm not like that.

The park has a small 50s themed area half way down the hillside. As with the rest of the park they'd done a good job with the theming. The adverts for cigarettes with the odd looking Sean Connery were particularly nice.

Even though the park was running at a ridiculous low capacity they still went ahead with their Carnival Fantasy Parade.

The parade was pretty good actually but a little odd in that most of the participants were not Korean but appeared to be Russian. In fact later in the day we found a Russian circus show which contained the same people. So it looks like the park makes the most of this work group by having them do the parade as well as the circus.

Being on a mountainside, getting around the park could be a pain but fortunately for those of us who wouldn't be good at ascending the hill, the park had built a couple of cable car systems that we could take advantage of, and boy did we use this!

A rather peculiar ride where the seats bounce up and down and rotate in time to some random tunage.

The park has a nice big wheel but with the windows covered in a green tint, taking photos from the cabins wasn't really practical.

Some nice views of the T-Express coaster.

Another coaster cartoon. This time for T-Express.

With the youngsters catered for by the amusement park the developers also built some nice gardens for the older people to enjoy (or for those who don't have the nerve to ride).

and for those who are more interested in animals the park also has a small zoo and safari park. Now prior to the trip I had seen a clip from this park where they put a bear cub in with some monkeys and lion cubs. The cub was absolutely petrified but in dubbing canned laugher over the top they made out it was a funny situation.

Anyway the safari park wasn't very good to be honest. Most of the animals looked bored and didn't have much room to move around in. The animals also knew that when the minibuses came around the drivers would offer food so they would congregate around the feeding places and stand on their back legs to get the food. Not very natural at all. I did get to see a Liger and some humping Hyenas though, so it wasn't all bad.

The polar bear enclosure wasn't that big either but they weren't pacing back and forth like most zoos. Whilst I was taking this photo a second one launched itself quite spectacularly off a rock into the water and I completely missed it with the camera. This also happened at Yokohama Sea Paradise on the last trip so I'm 0 for 2 when it comes to photos of diving Polar Bears.

Realising the time we had to make a hasty exit out of the park where we were given a farewell by the park's brass band. Perhaps the best brass band I've ever seen but then I'm a sucker for a cute Korean girl with her mouth around the end of a ..... enough of that. Apologies for the over-exposure in the photo, I think the camera was steaming up, although I'm not sure how.

Everland is a very well themed park with a decent selection of rides. It was a shame that Eagle's Fortress was not running but the good news is that the park is not getting rid of it completely. They're just replacing the current swinging trains with some new ones. Exactly the same process that took place with the Vampire at Chessington back home in England. So I will have a very good reason to go back to Korea.

Following the departure from Everland we made our way further South to the city of Daejeon.

Kumdori Land & Expo

2009-10-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

After a quick 5 minute morning walk to the river at the end of the road and back we made our way to Kumdori Land. This park was part of a much larger Expo land for the '93 Expo. (some information about daejeon)

Whilst we'd come to realise that most of the Expo site was now abandoned the park was still doing reasonably well. Having said that, on the day that we were there the park were not going to open any of the rollercoasters because of the H1N1 curfew, but Flora our translator was able to get them to reconsider and they did open them all for us. Super!

I'm always up for trying new stuff and this morning I was trying some of this Fanta grape juice that you're encouraged to shake before you drink. Fortunately the gas isn't that bad and you don't get covered when you open it however when I had first swig I discovered the drink was fully of Aloe Jelly, which I didn't expect. There was much amusement at my expense as I choked on the drink and spat it out. But once I was over the original shock of that the drink itself was quite nice.

the aliens in the city posters were also to be found outside the park entrance. That nice looking building was a castle on this side but some sort of dry ski slope on the other.

A "Seven Mole" bash the mole on the head game, which only features 6 mole holes. I have no idea where mole #7 comes into it. Perhaps he's the one that escaped, put a turd on it's head and moved to Seoul Land.

Not having the same budget as Lotte or Everland, the park had not gone too overboard on the Halloween theming but some of it was better than others.

Is this the Korean James Bond?

The big yellow coaster like Seoul Land is called Black Hole 2000. I think in the past the park must have had some sort of space theme, that at least would explain the galaxy sign (see the signs section for that) and the alien statues around the park.

The park does have a big wheel but suffers from the same problem as Everland in that the windows are tinted...except for 3 that the majority of the club tried to ride but were denied entry too. Being the first to ask though, we didn't have that problem and were able to take some photos that others couldn't. In their defense I think the park staff said that later on the cabins were getting too hot (they weren't ventilated) so they would only put people in the tinted ones. Because we got their early the cabins must not have been that bad.

Black Hole 2000 and the park surrounding it. You can see that the park isn't that big at all and the coaster totally dominates the park. The dome building houses the indoor coaster, which was a lot of fun. The final coaster is the green one just beneath the hill after the loops. That was the worst coaster in the park but it has to be said the worst of a good bunch.

The Kumdori Coaster is a rollerskater, and not too bad at all.

The final coaster is an indoor one and really good. Perhaps the best coaster in the park.

This is the Expo site. Each of the funky looking buildings housed some sort of attraction during the Expo.

The club making their way up the ramps to the station for the Black Hole coaster.

The Black Hole coaster wasn't that bad at all actually. I liked the initial helix, which offered a nicer start than the usual big drop. The loops were comfortable to ride and the ending had a half corkscrew manouveur that was pretty cool too.

Perhaps the coolest Kiwi Fruit ever. This is their fruit themed teacups ride.

This golf buggy has seen better days. This isn't part of any ride whatsoever.

The park has a booster ride but I don't recall it running today. In fact I didn't really spend that much time in the park at all really. I was more interested in the Expo site so having ridden the coasters and taken some photos from the wheel it was time to say goodbye to Kumdori and go to explore Daejeon Expo.

The first building we entered housed a large exhibition all to do with energy, how its produced and how we should conserve it. It wasn't bad at all but aimed at school kids, not adults.

Some of the other buildings in the Expo complex, most now lying empty and un-used. A real shame to be honest but this is pretty common with Expo sites I believe. The city is given the money to produce the buildings but not maintain them and if the city can't get private firms to sponsor them then they'll fall into disrepair. Having said that the buildings were all still looking good even if they're no longer used.

The dome was being used and housed a 3d cinema, which myself and Jeppe saw a show in. We were the only ones.

Archimedes having his Eureka moment. Part of a small display of famous scientist dudes.

A lot of club members were interested in a monorail track that was passed on the way to the park. It turns out that its actually a maglev system to get people from the Expo Park to a large Gallery/Conference centre some distance away. However it looked like this was the first building to feel the effects of nobody coming to the Expo anymore and had been closed for some time.

On the South side of the Expo complex is this cool bridge. A nice simple suspension design. Beyond it lay more exhibition centres, a massive park and a large residential area.

This is the centrepiece of the Expo. It's 93 metres tall in line with the year the expo was held. It's also partly open to the public and for a small amount of Won we were able to ascend the spike to the donut and take a look around. Actually our ticket also gave us access to the higher viewing gallery but it was roped off...that didn't stop us going up and having a look anyway.

Looking South from the tower. Now you know how I knew what lay across the river.

Some other views from the tower.

I took the opportunity to take some wide-angled photos of the park too.

Underneath the tower lies this rather massive drum, which the sign proclaims is the largest in the world. I don't know if that's still true. It is pretty big though.

Kumdori was alright as a small park, albeit it with a big coaster. The Expo land was fun to explore but a little sad to find it mostly empty and un-used.

From that half-day park visit it was time to head to another half-day park nearby.

O-World

2009-10-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

O-World actually has 3 parks in one. A small amusement park, a zoo/safari park and a flower garden. We were there to visit.....can you guess which one?

The park had one of the best entrances ever with each ticket booth within the body cavity of a random animal.

They also have cute park mascots with these safari outfitted lions that look like they've taken too much Ecstasy.

Like Everland, O-World employs Russians for their stage shows. The national dancers weren't very good and the girl twirling hoops was a little better...just a little mind. The Korean pop act though was truly bad. So bad in fact that most of the few people who'd lasted this long decided enough was enough and that it would be more pleasurable to leave the shady respite and face the midday sun instead.

The park has 2 coasters. The first one is a spinning coaster on a mouse type circuit. It was OK.

The other whilst nicely themed had a bit of a kick to it.

Having done the rides the next port of call was the safari park. It was much like Everland with bored looking animals in small enclosures waiting to be fed.

In the zoo part of the park some of the animals were looking bored too. There was a little moment when this baboon and the Frenchy had a connection and you could sense that the baboon was wanting out but couldn't.

Another enclosure that contained some mighty fine ass or were they donkeys?

I'm quite pleased with these meerkat photos although I don't have any others to compare them too. (Those in the UK should get the reference here)

Some of the other animals on display.

The parks small sculpture garden.

The Ecstasy seems to be wearing off but the mascots now appear to be in that paranoid phase that sometimes happens with a come down. Why else would they be looking suspiciously from within a bush.

Back to the world's best stage show and now it was the turn of some park mascots to act out dance songs. I always feel sorry for the people in the suits, especially on hot days so it was not a surprise to see the heads being ripped off as soon as they had left the stage.

It was also amusing to see the bear attempt to punch the head off the giraffe as they approached the end of their routine. He only managed to rotate it around a little though.

O-Land was much like Kumdori Land. Just a filler park really.

Daegu & Suseong Land

2009-10-17T00:44:00.000-07:00

Daegu Metropolitan City is the 4th largest city in South Korea with almost 2.5 million people living in it. We were staying there for one night, along with the Hashin Tigers, a well known South Korean baseball team. It was a little disappointing to discover autograph hunters congregated outside the business weren't wanting our's :(

The morning jaunt on this occasion consisted of just myself and David. Jeppe had decided on a lie-in. I hadn't really researched where to go whilst in Daegu putting it down as another built up city but the hotel map had indicated an amusement park a short walk away, which we decided to check out.

A weird sculpture that we passed on the way down. (The majority of pics were taken on the way back as the light was better, the downside to going out at silly-o-clock.

Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.

Red sky in the morning, shepherd's morning.

Mince and mashed potatoes, shepherd's pie.

At the end of the main road that our hotel was on was a small waterfall, which looked really cool. Under the tree and not really visible in this shot was an old dude, doing his Tai Chi.

A couple of groups of elders were really going for it in this workout. It ranged from the usual slow stuff to DDR level 7 tunes where they were really going for it! Their fitness rate made me feel very lazy and whilst I thought it would be cool to join in (and they wouldn't have minded) I wouldn't have kept up and been the subject of ridicule.

This is Suseong Lake, a large man made lake in the South of Daegu and the magnet for those wanting their morning constitutional.

A gaggle of guard-geese patrol the lake from foreigners. Fortunately for me they must have had me down as a local as foreigners wouldn't be out so early in the day...would they?

Fans for blowing sand off your shoes. I'd not seen that before. In the background people play badminton...at 6am.

To the West of the Lake we could see this plane peeking out above the trees, which is a little odd as there is no way it could have flown here.

The same is true of Thunderbird 1, which appeared to have touch down close by.

At the back corner of the park we came across a powered coaster, which was quite a nice surprise as there was no record of it being here. When I got back home a little research had shown that the park historically had had a mouse coaster. The park was pretty open to the public even considering the time of day and we were able to walk amongst the rides.

The rest of the park was full of rides of varying quality but clearly all aimed at a younger audience.

The haunted attraction looked better than most of the attractions but it was locked so can't say if the inside is as good as outside.

A punching game for girls. Shouldn't it be a slap game?

A rather delapidated ticket booth.

Thunderbird 1 turned out to be a spin ride, still looks cool though.

The aeroplane turned out to be a restaurant but I don't know if they only serve flight-size meals.

Another sculpture on the way back. Telescope or small spliff.

More staircases to nowhere...

Even bullying looks cute!

Acieeeeeeeeeed!!!

Just where is that girl's hand going?

A bizarre version of hopscotch perhaps?

No idea what Mulmangi is but their logo is cute.

Back at the hotel but notice that there's no fourth floor. That be bad luck see!

The sound of 4 in Cantonese is similar to the sound for word "death". If we abided by the same rule in the UK would we have no hard-of-hearing people.

So, it was a simple jaunt but a worthwhile one. Any time you come across a new coaster that nobody has catalogued on rcdb is always a bonus on a trip. This had been the third time I'd done this, having done it previously in Moscow and Guadalajara.

Woobang Towerland

2009-10-17T00:43:00.000-07:00

Woobang Towerland was a park that I was quite looking forward to and not for the coasters either. The park has a vertical zipline attraction and a small group of us were going to leave the rides to go and do that. However because a contact had managed to arrange for us to jump for free the interest level in it increased, which meant that most of the half day would be spent there instead.

The park's mascots had very creative names, names that could be misinterpreted if used in the west perhaps.

There's the tower and you can just make out the walkway protruding out to the front.

But before doing the jump we still had to do the rides.

The first was a small kiddie coaster with a spiral lift hill, which made it a little unique.

The boomerang coaster was down due to a ride inspection. This would have been the only Boomerang coaster on the trip, some may have considered it a blessing that it wasn't running.

It was closed due to a ride inspection and would open later in the week.

The third coaster was open and not too bad really. One of those large coasters with mostly gentle drops rather than steep ones.

The final coaster, which was the large looping one was also closed. It would have been open the next day :D But unlike the coaster at Childrens Grand Park there would be no opportunity to head back and ride it. After Woobang we were heading out for the next city a few hours away.

The park was pretty desolate really with no people and a small number of rides spread out over a large area. The tower wasn't due to open until 11 so some of the group chose to kill some time on the spin rides.

This attraction was closed so I can't tell you if it was any good or not.

Is there no escape from the American Fast Food chains? This chicken can't be healthy, look how pale its made the Colonel?

A view of the Boomerang taken from the cable cat that was taking us up to the tower. Another Thunderbird 1 ride can be seen in the bottom-right.

Strangely placed Western mural. I wouldn't have thought the Koreans would be into Westerns, but then earlier in the year I saw a crazy Korean film called "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" which was set in the West. Good film if you're interested!

The park has a small zoo area. Here's Even tormenting a cockatoo that could say hello. Not that amazing you might think until you remember its saying it in Korean and that "An nyoung ha seh yo" is a little more complex than our two-syllable greeting.

Not the best name for a great-tasting pancake chain perhaps...

Atop the tower now and people getting into their jumpsuits. Some members of the group decided to put themselves first and jump the queue for the suits, of which there were only so many. This left a few of us with no choice but to wait til the end to get our jumps in. One individual also decided to come back up after his jump and tell us how disappointed he was by it before we'd done it ourselves. Some people just don't think beyond themselves, and they wonder why they're not liked...

Andy preparing to jump. He made his way down with a Superman pose.

Another group pose before jumping.

The jump itself was great. Being 123 metres up (around 400ft) certainly made leaving the platform a challenge, and some people couldn't jump out first time. I was bricking it on the walkway and tried to take the edge off the jump by agreeing to jump out backwards for the sake of a good photo (most people dove out forwards). The drop itself was scary but controlled, and once you knew the cables had caught you the fear quickly subsided and I was able to enjoy the fall down.

Team member David Ellis kindly posted up some youtube footage of some of us jumping and landing (some better than others I might add).

The best "exit" sign of the trip.

So getting out of Woobang it was time for the long drive East to Gyeongju resort.

Woobang, nice park but a dead one. This H1N1 rule must have been killing the theme parks revenue streams, but it was nice of them to stay open.

Gyeongju World

2009-10-17T00:42:00.000-07:00

Gyeongju resort is a large complex of hotels surrounded by burial mounds and other archaeological sites and is referred to as the "Museum without Walls", which gives you an idea of what to expect. But our little group wasn't here for the history, there's a theme park to visit which has been around for about 25 years only.

Arrrgggggghhhhh!!!!! Get the cute pink stuff away from me!

First coaster was another of the Dragon powered series. Rather disappointingly the "2 loops" referred to are of the horizontal variety :(

Second one was this corkscrew coaster and I think this took the title of worst coaster of the entire trip. It was truly horrible, so bad that I think most of us had hurt our necks just leaving the station and engaging the lift hill.

The big coaster and reason for visiting this park was Phaethon, which has nothing to do with snakes. According to mythology Phaethon was the son of Helios who upon entering heaven and being asked what he'd like requested to ride his fiery chariot for a day. Unable to control it Zeus kills him to save the Earth. Once you understand that story you understand why they chose it for a coaster...except for the dying at the end bit.

The theming on the ride is astounding and with the exception of DisneySea probably had the best theming of the trip. What I found a little odd though is that its clearly a massive investment in what is a pretty mediocre park. Perhaps the park strategy was to invest significantly and hope for a Babe Ruth "If you build it they will come" mentality, which by us being there had clearly worked. Or maybe they came by a little extra money one year and decided to indulge. Basically the ride doesn't fit with the rest of the park at all.

Now this reminds me of something...just a shame you've only got one choice on this ride.

Phaethon like all B&M inverters was a great ride and it had a custom layout which made it pretty good too.

Nina finds the haunted walkthrough too much whilst Even looks for another cockatoo to terrorise.

Garden statues show us how big the fish they just caught was.

The last coaster in the park was Space Tour an indoor flitzer type coaster. This was closed when we got there but the park got it up and running for us.

Here's a view from the lift hill. This was without a doubt the darkest ride I'd ever done with no trace of light or Emergency Exit light to pierce the darkness, and I was genuinely uncomfortable riding it. However once the car left the lift hill and turned the first corner it entered the main room and there were traces of light. Just a very teasing lift hill, which was amazingly effective.

I understand the principle behind this ride logo. It's the hare and the tortoise story previously seen at Everland again. However the position of the animals gave this a second interpretation. I just wonder how fast the resulting animal would be?

Phaethon made this park stand out and the group spent most of their time riding that. At the end of the day we made our way to the hotel, just 5 minutes away and having checked in, a few of us decided to head out for a Korean Barbecue.

You order your meat from a butchers just inside the entrance and then you make your way to your knee high table where you cook it along with vegetables and other stuff. The food was delicious, the only issue we had was with the cooking where we couldn't figure out how the extractor worked and we were generating quite a bit of smoke in our corner of the room.

A large water wheel we passed on the way back.

Gyeongju

2009-10-17T00:41:00.000-07:00

Before leaving Gyeongju I decided to take a morning stroll around the area.

Here's a view from the hotel room overlooking Gyeongju Lake. The plan was to walk over to the Hilton, which is the hotel over on the left. In researching the area I'd found a sculpture garden in its grounds and thought it might be worth heading to.

The hotels all line the East bank leaving the view to the West untouched...well with the exception of the theme park.

The same wheel we passed the night before.

This is our hotel. Hotel Concorde, called so because it was built in a joint-collaboration between France and England. Or was that the plane? It's a nice hotel actually.

Not sure what this tree is. Part way between a normal tree and a bonsai.

The remains of last night's rain still hanging around on the plants. (Just me playing with the field of vision again)

A small van advertising some very big handguns. Check out their website to see what I mean.

Like a circle in a spiral. Like a wheel upon a wheel. Never ending or beginning on a never ending reel. Now why am I thinking of windmills?

A very wide exhibition centre. Too wide even for my wide angled lense...

Cute chicken!

The hotels all have nice hotel grounds, perfect for the morning constitutional.

Just playing with the camera again.

The sculpture garden. Most of the pieces were a bit too clever for my liking, where are the ceramics when you need them?

Making my way back to the hotel now and passing the baby duck boats. How do I know they're the babies? Because you can see big momma duck in the background, that's how!

Random building done in a modern yet traditional style.

The original plans for today were to go back to Gyenogju World Park before heading out to the ferry but as we'd nailed that park in the afternoon previously a little replanning took place and we were able to squeeze in another park that wasn't in the original plans; Tongdo Fantasia.

Tongdo Fantasia

2009-10-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

Tongdo Fantasia had been visited by a couple of members in the lead up to the main trip starting and they'd recommended the park hence it being squeezed in. It was only ever going to be a quick stop as we still had a ferry to catch.

Inspired by Disney methinks...

Not a bad job on the theming. This was a walkthrough attraction. Again the park was dead due to the Government banning schools groups from leaving the schools. The park staff clearly not stretched today were keen to invite us onto their attractions and were a very friendly bunch.

First coaster was a rollerskater type ride with a weird first drop that is taken with a slight lean to the right.

A rather peculiar looking wheel but which offered some decent photo-opportunities.

This was the main reason for hitting this park. The corkscrew is one of a small number of triple-corkscrewing rides. How small exactly? Well its the only one.

The ride was built in 93 and being 15 years old expected it to be quite rough, but surprisingly it was pretty decent. Hard to believe in a corkscrew ride that sends you upside down 5 times (the 3 corkscrews and 2 loops after it)

Some of the group enjoy the first drop.

Behind the corkscrew is a dry ski slope, alas not open today.

Old woman doing an amazing job sweeping the leaves, completely oblivious to the dumb tourists around her.

Another strange sculpture passed on the way out.

Tongdo was brief but quite a good park. The corkscrew is a surprise especially given the reputation these rides have around the world.

On to Japan

2009-10-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

Having made our way to Busan it was time to say goodbye to South Korea and make our way over the sea to Japan.

Busan is the second largest city in South Korea, after Seoul of course. It is the largest port city in South Korea and one of the largest ports in the world.

We were making our way over to Japan on one of these jetfoils. Supposedly the one we were going to ride used to do Channel runs between Dover and Calais before being moved over here.

Bye bye South Korea!!

The journey itself was fine once I got used to the boat banking when it turns. Not something I'd experienced before. The in-flight entertainment was "Lassie Come Home" which rather weirdly went down very well with everyone. A big cheer went up when Lassie escaped from the dog-catchers fence on his third attempt. All very silly indeed!

3 hours or so later we arrived in Fukuoka for the start of the Japan leg. One week in and three to go.

Fukuoka Tower

2009-10-17T00:38:00.001-07:00

Having made it to the hotel the main place of interest that night was the Fukuoka Tower a small metro ride away and quite a lot of us headed out there.

Some seats in the carriages are for people who've eaten too much.

If you're too distracted by your mobile phone you might miss the ninjas.

From the metro station its about a 15 minute walk to the tower. Just head North...

Exactly as you'd think. A cafe for dogs. Only in Japan.

This is the tower, standing 234 metres high took just over a year to build and is the tallest seaside tower in Japan.

Most of the tower is just structure with the only floors with floors being those at the top, two of which are observation platforms.

Due to the amount of glass the tower has the nickname of "The Mirror Sail". The reflective surfaces were being put to good use by the local street dance crews. Saves paying for a studio I guess.

Random statue outside the tower.

Some views over Fukuoka from the top. The windows made it hard to get any decent photos, reflections of the observation tower getting into the shots.

Having gatecrashed the second observation floor and realising it was the dating floor full of couples we made our excuses and left heading into Fukuoka for something to eat.

We ended up in Canal City (an entertainment and dining district) just as places were closing and we were unfortunate to not get to eat here. Part of the problem was compounded by us being in a large group and not being able to please everyone.

A few of us ended up eating in a small noodle bar where you order your meal from a vending machine and then hand the ticket it produces to the chefs who cook it.

The sort of art a school kid could come up with.

Fukuoka City Walk

2009-10-17T00:38:00.000-07:00

Myself, Jeppe and David were out once again for another morning walk. This time the plan was to walk to a nearby park with a large buddha statue on it.

Walking alongside the Naka river. Soon after this pic got taken I got to speak my first Japanese of the trip by stopping a business man, pointing to a map and asking "Sumimasen. Koko wa doko desu ka" roughly translated as "Excuse me, where are we?". We weren't totally lost, just wanting to clarify our precise location as the overpasses were confusing our map reading :) He understood what I meant and we were soon back on our way.

This was the Buddha statue I was looking for. It was in use with a number of men walking laps around and clapping.

Another statue close by. This had a couple of men sitting on a bench beneath it who were wanting to pose for our cameras.

Suspicious looking plants. :)

We could hear drums and chanting from this building and from a quick peek through a window we could see that an early morning service taking place.

Having walked out we decided to take the first metro back, and as David hadn't gone to the tower the night previous we agreed we'd take him. The logos beside each station make it easy for the school kids to know where to leave the train. A nice idea but one that would only work on small networks.

I have absolutely no idea what this is advertising but I think the woman is using the guy for his boat. I don't think there's genuine interest there. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it :)

Beware those pesky ninjas and their roaming right hands.

Bad ass moth on the floor of the metro subway.

Dinky van parking solution en route to the tower.

Paving stones showing the route to the tower, completely overlooked on the walk the night before.

Morning shots of the tower.

Crab sculpture.

Back at our hotel, the Miyako.

Uminonakamichi Seaside Park

2009-10-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

The first full day in Japan was going to be a busy one with 3 parks to visit. First up was the not easily pronounceable Uminonakamichi Seaside Park.

With our coach parking a mile away we started the visit with a nice walk in the blazing sun but we were soon at the park which was dominated by a large wheel and impressive looking light blue coaster.

The park is part of a much larger park complex that contains loads of open space and a huge Marine Wildlife centre, which we wouldn't have time to explore. It was a fair distance away anyway.

Lots of big hungry fish awaiting one of the group to fall in. Where is Matthius when you need him?

Bizarre topiary. Kung Fu Elephants?

The coaster was pretty impressive actually and quite a fun ride. However as in Korea we seemed to be the only people there. There is a water park close by and we suspect the few locals we did see were off there.

Some quite long roller slides at the back of the park.

A view of the coaster taken from the wheel. Martin looks to have it to himself.

The park itself was tiny and the big coaster seemed completely out of place. The only slightly amusing attraction was the bridge-themed playground. This is a shot of it from the wheel. It's basically a number of different ways to cross the river that you get to muck about on.

We'd tried to get Andy to fall in but he wouldn't play along.

We think this must have been the station for another coaster at some point but not now.

Having had our fun and me almost flipping Tim into the walk following a fight on a rope bridge it was time to head off to the next park. I think we spent more time walking to and from the coach than we did in the park.

Kashiikaen

2009-10-17T00:36:00.000-07:00

Second park of the day Kashiikaen is in the Eastern part of Fukuoka. It's aimed at young kids and is full of sickly sweet Sylvanian Family animals. I think the park had been run down a few years ago but it had had a recent rebranding and scrub up.

First attraction was the Fresh Pretty Cure stage show. It's a popular anime show in Japan and this live action production was just bizarre. I had no idea what was going on but it seemed to feature 4 girls beating up a bloke. The young crowd seemed to like it though.

Next to the stage show was an indoor attraction themed around the power rangers. Young kids get to see if they have what it takes to become a ranger by trying to complete some small games. We weren't allowed to play any of the games because we'd likely break them being way too big. They didn't have a problem with us taking pics though, which was nice of them. I didn't realise that the Power Ranger shows have been running since 1975 as shown on the gallery.

Some of the sickly sweet Sylvanian theming.

It hasn't changed much in the 30+ years its been running.

The park was reported as having 3 coasters. The biggest one dominating one end of the park is Pegasus. It was not too bad at all but it'll be interesting how the owners of the park get this ride to fit with the rest of the kid-friendly theming. I guess there are no plans to get rid of it or else why invest in the fresh coat of paint the ride had been given (it used to be white).

Cute floor paintings.

The second coaster is a kiddy ride called Bun Bun coaster. It's themed around a bumblebee.

The third coaster was nowhere to be found. Whilst some members tried to find it I merely asked the ride operator how many coasters there were and was told only two. This Japanese language training was paying off. If I hadn't picked up a few phrases I'd still be lost in Fukuoka.

I spent a good 10 minutes running around the gardens trying to take a photo of this moth. It kept eluding me however, and I eventually gave up.

Back to the stage show for more silly stage shenanigans. The costumes were quite good but the manga face masks were a little sinister.

Having read pretty disparaging reports of this park in the past it looks like it's turned the corner and benefited from some decent investment but its not a park that I'd revisit unless they do get a third coaster.

Dazaifu Yuenchi

2009-10-17T00:35:00.000-07:00

The final park of the day was buried in the mountains south of Fukuoka and I was interested in this area, not for the small theme park that can be found here but the shrine next door.

The entrance to the park. The queue line is not for the park but for the Kyushu National Museum next door.

This is the museum. Built in 2005 and being the first new national museum to be built in 100 years it had a massive amount of interest with really long queues that I estimate would have taken a couple of hours to get through.

Park map showing how small the park is. Just a thin long collection of rides really.

The park is fairly small with just the one coaster. That blue track isn't it. That's a powered people mover.

Drinking water is on tap.

This is the coaster, a rather strange mine train variant. The helix is the best bit.

The spiders here were fairly large!

The go-kart could be found at the back of the park. I didn't stick around here as the whole area smelt like a sewer. Not nice at all.

The little big wheel at the back of the park.

One of those super fast spinny mad house rides. The operator was keen to get people into it, almost as if the staff are paid commission. I'm joking, she was just being friendly.

The seven dwarves and some generic Disney Princess meet Baloo.

Anpan Man and friends commandeer a train.

Follow the white rabbit Neo.

These tigers looked like they'd seen better days.

Having had enough of the park it was time to head into Tenman-gu shrine next door.
(The following comes from the official website)

It is a shrine built over the grave of Michizane Sugawara who was venerated by the Japanese throughout the country as the Tenman-Tenjin (the deified spirit of Michizane), or the God of literature or calligraphy.

Michizane, who had been a high-ranking government officer, was demoted because of the slander and political chicanery of his rivals, the Fujiwara clan.

He endured a life of extreme hardship and misery in exile at Dazaifu, yet preserved his character continuing his scholarly studies and never developing the hatred for those who had exiled him. He died in 903 at the age of 59.

His funeral procession was a melancholy occasion, attended only by his faithful follower Yasuyuki Umasake and a few neighbors. The coffin was carried on a cow carriage led by Yasuyuki, according to the legend the ox suddenly came to a halt and refused to budge despite threats and entreaties. The burial therefore took place on the spot, and this became the site of the Tenmangu's main shrine visited today by so many admirers.

Michizane is celebrated as a man, pure in heart and deed, and after his death he was deified and worshipped as a God.

So now you know why there is a statue of an Ox.

The main gate into the shrine.

Prayer walls. Leave a message and the monks will read them during their morning ceremonies.

The shrine at the back of the complex. Rather disappointingly our tour guide tried to get the group to pray for happy coaster riding and the majority of the group played along...sigh!

The shrine complex was beautiful and popular, I guess with those that had finished with the exhibition or had given up queueing to get in.

The main street leading up to the shrine is full of souvenir shops and food stalls. I bought a box of Japanese sweets which I ate later on the trip. Very weird jelly things but nice.

Leaving Dazaifu Yuenchi we had a long drive south to Mitsui and the Greenland resort.

The view from the hotel window overlooking the park that we'd be hitting tomorrow. Mitsui Greenland

Mitsui Greenland

2009-10-17T00:34:00.000-07:00

Mitsui was one of the biggest parks on the trip so you get a lot of photos today. Having made our way into the park we decided upon the classic clockwise way of navigating the park. Partly because we're wired that wire but a bonus was that we could get the SLC out of the way first.

As expected it was a bit of a headbanger but quickly forgotten and not a ride we went back for.

Close by was a small kiddy ride, positioned in such a place to quickly re-convince park visitors that the rides were worth doing.

Grampus Jet, the parks swinging coaster was great, despite its lack of theming and "just stuck in a field" look to it. The cars swung out a decent amount, which has to be the measure for rides of this type. With Eagles Fortress out of the running this was my favourite swing coaster of the trip (actually it was the only one I did so it wins by default). For those that don't know a Grampus is an old name for a killer whale, so now you understand the paint job on the trains too!

Grampus left the group upbeat, the Milky Way coaster even more so. The ride is a racing pairing with one side a conventional sit down coaster and the other was like Bill Hicks, a great stand up. It was comfortable and offered plenty of airtime and not the sort that would drop you on the seat too hard as happened the last time we visited Japan and endured that killer ride Fuji Raijin II.

This is the main entrance, not the one we entered. This is on the south side close to the Killer Whale Swing Machine.

The 4d cinema had a very Japanese movie about a girl looking for her sister after she gets abducted in a haunted house. The tale was quite beautifully told and the effects were nicely synchronised with the movie, enough to scare a woman a few rows in front. The ending was quite poignant too. "Beautiful", "Poignant" not words usually described these sort of attractions.

Continuing our circular tour of the park we came across the shuttle loop, well make that part of it. It had been rumoured that this coaster would no longer be running, so it wasn't a surprise to see it down. It was, however, a surprise to see it reduced to just the loop. Whether its on its way out or being rebuilt isn't known, but we didn't get to ride it.

Snow White looks like she's been out in the snow too long!

Up next was the Egyptian themed terrain coaster. It was just alright.

I hadn't realised that the park, along with its 10 coasters also had a toboggan run, but it wasn't open :(

The park is vast but not steep so very easy and comfortable to get around, but for those who wanted to save their steps a land train can be ridden to get you about.

and for those even lazier people a people carrier can take you over the centre of the park back to the side entrance that we entered.

The newest attraction to the park looked to be this chair-o-plane ride. So new was it that it wasn't open and so we couldn't get to ride it.

Mouse coaster was a mouse coaster that moved like a mouth coaster, rode like a mouth coathter and was comparable to every other mouth coathter out there.

This was a quite bizarre simulator on rails ride where you could pick 1 of 3 films to watch as you went round. I can't remember which one we chose, it might have been a space flight. It certainly wasn't the cute manga animal one. IOA's Spiderman on a budget perhaps.

Having nailed half the rides and park we decided to ride the cable car up to the hill that overlooks the west end of the park. Note the lack of safety restraint of any kind whatsoever.

A view overlooking the park

Atop the hill is this haunted walkthrough tower. I'll save you wasting the energy in ascending the stairs. It's not worth seeing, unless you like seeing a teacher splatted against the classroom blackboard.

The good news was that the toboggan was open, and it looked quite fast in places. At least we had an easy way to get back down.(and yes there were a small number of locals in the park today, which made a change)

This dark ride was one of those shooting ones, I should have realised from the guns on the wall but I wasn't paying attention.

and this dark ride was a bit different in that you had to wear headphones whilst on it. Mostly kids screaming etc..

This was the mostly indoor coaster, which wasn't bad. A sort of Vogel Rok on the cheap.

The park has an Ultra-Twister coaster. I'd ridden one before in Nagashima Spaland on the last trip here and quite liked the ride although there was a bit of a bang when it stops on the outwards leg. This one was much the same. A quite nice feature the park has done is that if you ride this 10 times you get to sign a piece of wood forever immortalised in the station for others to see. I didn't like the ride that much!

This was not the most intense ride in the park.

The final coaster in the park is Gao, a massive coaster with a very amazing looking second hill structure that has you going over the back of a dinosaur. The ride looks better than it rides, although having said that once you knew you were going to get smashed on a couple of turns you got used to it. I'll be putting this in the same category as the Usual Suspects film. You enjoy it more on a second go.

Here's a view of the hotel from the very large wheel. Our room was there, that's right, just there.

Lee regrets ordering the large slushy.

Having nailed the park I decided to escape and check another little park close by, just behind the hotel in fact. These random animals have nothing to do with it.

Ultraman land is a small indoor park for the little kiddies who are too short to ride the rides in the main park and I had a hunch that a small kiddy coaster would be found in it.

This silver spandex guy has been around entertaining kids since the 60s and the park is completely themed to him. Even the drinks in the vending machine are Ultraman branded. Alas I wasn't allowed into the indoor section due to it being booked for a kids party (lucky kid) but I was allowed a quick peek inside and there's no coaster.

The gentlemen and ladies look very young. Must be all the soy sauce in the diet.

Andy hanging with his mummy and uncle Frank.

The first, and I think ended up being the only, ice box walk through on the trip. It's exactly as it sounds, just a big freezer that you walk through (you're not allowed to run). Very bizarre and very cold, especially in the final room which seemed to be 10 degrees colder than the rooms prior.

More shots of Gao the big gay dinosaur.

Having nailed the park pretty much, quite an achievement given its size the last hour was spent on the archery range. Yep! They have a full on range to play on, and boy did we make good use of the free goes on this. Our targets ended up looking like a porcupine as we stubbornly tried to see who could get the bull first. None of us could, our excuses all being that the arrows weren't very straight. We ended up with a nearest to bull and I won!

My celebratory lap of honour.

Mitsui Greenland is an immense yet enjoyable park. Again we were fortunate that it was fairly quiet. It's also strange that given it has nine working coasters by far the best one is the stand-up. There aren't many parks you can say that about.

Beppu

2009-10-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

Beppu is a major city over on the East side of the Kyushu island. It's famous for it's hot springs (its twinned with Bath in the UK coincidentally) and I was looking forward to giving them a go. But it wasn't to be the case. Japan still has a stigma towards people with tattoos. I'm clearly not Yakuza but not wanting to offend the other people in the baths the hotel staff wouldn't let me in. This was a pattern that continued for the entire trip :(

So I had to make other plans for the night and three of us ended up in a small arcade where I destroyed a Pachinko game by winning so many tokens that I blocked the machine. We also had to physically drag Jeppe from a Donkey Kong coin game that he couldn't stop playing.

So overall, a fairly disappointing night.

A view from the hotel window. The scale of the hotel was vast and contained a number of springs, shopping complex (that's part of it lit up) a large food court and video game complex. It took us 10 minutes of walking down the lengthy corridors to get to the end of it.

The hotel room was stunning with half of the room done in a Japanese style. I chose to sleep on the floor on that side rather than in the bed.

Beppu in the morning. The cloud of smoke coming through the trees behind the building to the right is one of the many natural spas in the area.

From here we were headed to two parks. Harmonyland and Kijima.

Harmonyland not Kijima

2009-10-17T00:32:00.000-07:00

Following a mistake from the driver we found ourselves driving out to the overly cute Harmonyland rather than the close by Kijima.

Harmonyland is a Hello Kitty themed park which means everything is splatted with vomit inducing cuteness.

We were welcomed to the park by a Hello Kitty. Later we saw another one being decorated by visitors who'd brought their own fashion accessories in. Those guests were grown men...just a little bit creepy!

The village theming was pretty impressive though.

Sick yet?

I can't imagine how awful the stage show must be with all those cute animals. Fortunately we got to miss it as we'd only be here for an hour and a half. Instead we got to enjoy a 3d wacky races cartoon which featured a guy who stuck his arse out the back of his car and farted flowers.

Even the gardens were given an overdose of cute.

As was the video game hall (all the games were Kittified too)

The park has a big wheel but you already knew that from the pic earlier.

There are two definite coasters in the park. The first one is just a dragon coaster but themed in lurid colours.

The second was a rollerskater, where the staff upset some of the group by not allowing them to take their camera on the ride. We have a constitution that says the most important rule is that you follow the park rules, no exceptions and some of the people should have known better.

An even worse display came in the queue for the parks train ride (is it a coaster or not?) where the testing was taking a little longer than some liked to the point that they decided to boo the ride staff. I thought this was atrocious behaviour towards a people who were just doing their job. Japan is a country where the people are civil, especially towards foreigners and as ambassadors of the industry to boo these people I thought was just wrong. I'll put it down to the people needing to counter the over-cuteness on display everywhere. The ying to the yang so to speak.

The train is quite long and runs on coaster track. It does use gravity to get down the mountain and lift hills to get back, but its braked most of the way down. Some people counted it, others did not.

A view of the lower entrance to the park.

One of the pictures in the lower station.

This park was like most Japanese girls, small and cute and friendly. From here we headed back towards the hotel to visit Kijima.

Kijima not Harmonyland

2009-10-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

The second park today was Kijima, which had been included in the itinerary for one reason only...a wooden coaster called Jupiter. But before enjoying that we had the rest of the park to explore with no more than 4 coasters and a bunch of side-attractions to keep us entertained.

First up was Gold Rush a lengthy mine train ride with no queue. Whilst the track looked nice and big the same could not be said of the trains. There was no leg room whatsoever, I think thalidomide victims would find this a bit of a squeeze.

The second coaster was much more pleasant to ride, although the layout was a little dull. It was nice to see some locals in a park though.

Yet another dragon, this one was a little different to those previously ridden in that it went round for 4 laps as opposed to the usual 2.

Coaster number 4 is a looping corkscrew ride where you're not allowed to enjoy yourself if you have black eyes.

The ride itself was fine and with not competition was the best of the four so far, which isn't usually the case with a corkscrew ride.

The park has a rather unique splashdown ride in that the boat has had a roof retro-fitted onto it. Not sure why when the point of the ride is to get wet.

The downside to doing that is that the boat is carrying much more weight than normal and hits the water far harder than anything out there. One of our group broke two and bruised two other ribs on this when someone else on his row kept a backpack across his chest leaving a gap between the body and the restraint. When the boat hit the water the guy without the backpack was thrown into the restraint. It was so bad that he left the trip and flew home that night. We had spare ribs for dinner in his honour :)

Onto Jupiter now. The coaster was built in 1992 and has aged quite badly and it is one of the longest wooden coasters in the world which means you get beaten up for quite a long time. But having said that I couldn't stop riding it although that might have been because my legs were so beaten up by the experience that I couldn't get out.

A lot of the group hated this ride but for a small retarded minority, me included, it offered a decent challenge and a good hour of enjoyment.

Not surprisingly given what the area is known for the park has a small hot spring in which to relax and warm your feet, if that's your thing.

Tim enjoys dinner with the King.

Snow White and the lego dwarves.

The park's big wheel is a little unusual in that 2 of the seats have had the cabins replaced with totally exposed cable car seats with just a lap strap to stop you falling to your death. Surprisingly it wasn't that exciting, perhaps if the seats tipped a little forward at the top the park could have had the scariest ride of the trip.

A view of Jupiter from the top of the wheel. I was hoping for a shot of the car going around the track but the despatch wasn't that great and none arrived for the entire duration of a wheel revolution.

Random park characters.

Having done the coasters it was time to try some of the other unique attractions. First up was a haunted walkthrough but not themed around the usual characters (Jason, Exorcist, Freddy Kreuger etc.). This one was themed around masked Mexican wrestlers. Now because I've done a few haunted walkthroughs before I know what to expect most of the time and the only thing that scares me now is stuff I've not come across before...like masked Mexican wrestlers. Yep, I got scared...a lot with some of the statues coming to life and jumping out when I was least expecting it. The final room was also quite cool with another masked wrestler who put us into various camera poses.

The other cool attraction where we spent quite a bit of time was the Segway ride area. None of us had done this before so thought it would be quite a laugh. After a quick induction where you learn how to balance on it you're then let loose in a little enclosure where you quite surprisingly get more and more comfortable with the ride and end up clowning around.

Some clowned around more than others.

Some couldn't control their rides properly and crashed into the barriers.

and one or two required extra supervision.

Kijima is an OK park, where the wooden coaster will be the reason foreigners visit but it would be the walkthrough and Segway that most will enjoy.

Kokura

2009-10-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

Kokura is a city in the north of Kyushu and it is famous for being the original target of the bomb that eventually hit Nagasaki; the city's people must have been grateful for the bad cloud cover that day. We were staying there as a base to head out to Space World the next day but we had the evening to explore the area.

A view over the river, the place was quite lively with a lot of it lit up.

A nice Bavarian looking restaurant on the riverbank.

That's the Riverwalk complex, a large collection of food places, shops and entertainment centres. It was also the main destination for the evening.

Very strange statues on a bridge with Penne pasta for heads, and here comes perhaps the worst pun of the trip. These people are called pastafarians.

Whilst some of the group rushed to McDonalds before it closed (why?) some of us found a nice Japanese restaurant where we enjoyed noodles. This crouching on the floor does hurt the knees after a while so I didn't mind standing to take the photo.

Arty shot inside the Riverwalk looking up.

Cute Halloween toy in one of the video game centres.

The Riverwalk complex is very modern look and surprisingly enjoyable to photograph with lots of lines in the structure that make good photos. The complex was pretty much closed at this time of night so playing with the camera was all we could do.

The Kokura skyline taken from a nice open bar atop the Riverwalk. The reflection is due to a large water feature with perfectly still water on it.

The balcony also offered a perfect vantage point of Kokura Castle, right next door to the Riverwalk.

Escaping the Riverwalk we explored the area and thought we'd try a little bar on the third floor of this place but it was closed so all we got from it was a lift ride.

Cute looking brides.

Another dinky police car.

After a good night's kip we decided to head out in the morning again, retreading our route to get some shots during the day with a focus of the castle grounds, which were closed the night before.

The Riverwalk and a coaster track looking fence on the bridge.

The pastafarians again.

This is our hotel, very nice it was too although I didn't like the idea of the young female bellboy having to carry our luggage, so I spent the lift journey having a chat with her instead.

Kokura Castle was originally built in 1602 and like a lot of prominent buildings burnt down in 1865. It's restoration didn't fully finish until the 1990s. The effort was worth it as the castle looked great.

The main Torii gate leading into the grounds of the castle. At first we weren't sure if we could enter. The paranoia in me was convinced the men that were working in the area were secret agents keeping an eye on wayward tourists.

Various statues and stuff within the grounds.

A Torii tunnel?

An advantage of being up so early in the morning is that you can catch the sunrise beautifully.

I didn't think much of the guard dogs.

Thirsty dragon was cool though.

Weird igloo shrine thing.

Views from the highest floor we could reach in the Riverwalk.

Artyfarty shot.

The castle was stunning and I love this Japanese architecture. I was so pleased that the hotel was literally just across the river. It meant this morning's walk was the shortest of the trip.

Space World

2009-10-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

Kokura is home to Space World, a park I recall seeing years ago and wanted to visit ever since, I think the same was true for the majority of the people on the trip.

Some far off shots of the park with the infamous Shuttle theming over to the right. Like throwing a midget of a yacht the park had gone just a little overboard :)
To the left was Zaturn, a copy of the Stealth ride in Thorpe Park back home and in between them the park's big wheel.

Perhaps not a surprise the park is space themed, which meant that in addition to the usual park food you would be able to get foil packed food like this...for a price.

The park mascots are these two lunar bunnies.

Like Verne Troyer heir Halloween theming was a little unusual.

First coaster, and in fact the only one open when we got there was Clipper, a Rollerskater ride hidden nicely in an overgrown garden.

Second Coaster was the ridiculously named Boogie Woogie Coaster, odd for two reasons. Firstly some of the rows had had their seats turned around for a backwards riding experience and secondly the ride staff had the riders perform some weird dance before they'd despatch the train.

The Venus coaster still had a little while before it opened so we thought we'd kill time by visiting the space museum and watching a Space 3D show nearby. The museum was great but it was a big mistake to watch the show. It went on for too long and sent most of us to sleep.

By the time we'd got out of there a small queue had formed at the Venus 5 ride and we joined that. The ride was a lot of fun with a very unique tight layout and a very loud ride operation team that had another pre-launch ritual.

The rapids ride was supposedly pretty good but we chose not to do it.

Seeing a small crowd gather in one of the auditoriums we decided to join and watched what had to be the most bizarre show of the entire trip. Japanese Cheerleader Bingo was its name and its exactly as it sounds. The audience can buy bingo cards and the cheerleaders between doing their routines call out numbers. Very very odd indeed but fun to watch :D

No sign for a disabled robot unfortunately.

Black Hole Scramble is the park's indoor coaster buried away at the back of a large play area. It was alright.

Beneath that building is a full sized ice rink. The photo is a bit blurry because it the whole thing is a giant freezer and I was shivering.

A rather strange sign to have for an exit but it could have been "See You Next Tuesday" I suppose.

The large coaster called Titan wasn't open today, supposedly it hasn't been open for a while. Perhaps a victim of the post-Expoland legislation changes.

The log flume rides in front of it were open and having been recommended to ride it by others gave it a go. It has some unique elements including an entire enclosed section with no flume, just open track.

Cute robot.

Even the coin operated animals were space themed.

and the elevators.

The only coaster left to ride was Zaturn, the launch Stealth copy. This ride was a blast with superb ride operations, a decent sized crowd with an excellent attitude. Earlier in the day some of the group had spent an hour over here riding this non-stop. That would have been fun but sometimes its better to ride it with the public too and with just two of us in amongst the Japanese throng we were the ones outnumbered.

Because we were repeat riding, trying to ride in every row, we were getting some odd looks and it was cool of the ride operators to explain who we were and how stupid we were.

Back to the auditorium and another show was taking place, this time with pirates, and yes you've guessed it...more bingo.

Don't stare at this for too long, it'll move. It's the floor to a very cool haunted walkthrough with a couple of genuine scary moments. One involving a floor filled with sponge and another with a large full sized mirror. I'm not going to spoil them here. You'll have to go and find out what I'm on about.

Inside the big wheel the park have added a nice touch. A guest book for riders to sign.

A view of the Venus coaster. You can see how twisted the layout is.

Leaving the park and another shot of Zaturn.

From the park we made our way back to Kokura this time to catch the bullet train to Osaka. A nice quick ride, as you'd expect and a bit of a laugh in getting off. The train only has one minute before the doors close and two of us decided to get deliberately stuck in the door. After a little manhandling from some others we were thrown from the train laughing.

Osaka

2009-10-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Osaka late in the evening and immediately dumped our bags before heading out to the Dotonbori area in the Namba entertainment district of Osaka. I had been there the last time we came here but as others were visiting for the first time I got to play tour guide for the night.

The view from the hotel.

Of all the neon in the district, the Glico sign is the most famous. The runner has been in place for decades and is the most popular photospots in the city.

Last time here I got a late ride on the strange shaped big wheel. Not this time however, just as we got close we could see other club members looking dejected and leaving the Don Quixote building in which it resides.

With the wheel down we decided to go and get something to eat before the restaurants closed.

We decided tonight should be sushi night and found a restaurant that served some amazing pieces.

Close to the restaurant, missed by the majority of club members, but not missed by us was the Hip 5 drop tower. (Hurrah for pre-trip research). Despite the nice light show the tower drop, like the wheel, was down and when we asked when it would be open we were told "never". Somehow I don't think the translation was flawed either.

But they did kindly let us go out onto the station platform and get a couple of photos.

Inside the Hip5 complex we spent the remainder of the night playing the games. I've seen horse racing gambling games before but not one featuring a real track where the horses move around. You can see them here on their parade lap, they then moved out into the gates and then raced properly around the track. There must be some sophisticated magnet system under the baize.

Whilst not the exact same game you can get an idea of how it works here.

This video game plays like a House of the Dead shooting game but there are no guns. Instead you have to throw balls at the screen.

More footage carefully picked from the Youtube world :D

Back at the hotel and time to get some rest. Tomorrow will be Universal Studios.

Osaka Castle

2009-10-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

Before heading out to the park I decided to drag Jeppe and David out to Osaka Castle. I had been blown away by Kokura Castle and knowing the one here was even better this was a definite must do, regardless of how tired I may have been.

Rather than walk it I chose to be sensible and took one of the first metros of the day. Osaka-jo hall is the main sports hall close to the castle compound.

A rather isolated skyscraper.

One of many moats surrounding the castle grounds.

and here's the completely stunning Osaka Castle. Like Kokuro Castle this was built in the 1600s before catching fire, this time lightning being the cause. It's restoration also completed in the 90s.

Completely amazing!!

Making our way back down from the castle we could hear men screaming, like proper screaming so being the curious tourists that we are we decided to head towards it and check it out.

This was the hall that the noise from emanating from.

Inside a Kendo session was in full swing and we were very kindly invited in. As we sat and watched an elderly man came over and asked us if we'd like to take part. Now we were completely blown away by the request but complete chicken-shits and kindly rejected their offer. These guys were not holding back and the idea of having some untrained bodies to bash senseless filled me with dread (but of course I'd tell people that I wouldn't have time to get into the garb). Another man challenged Jeppe to a fight and he declined too. Only on the way out did we discover that the class was for the over-80s; they didn't move like 80 year-olds that I know. An amazing morning!

Nice statue close to the hall. Clearly there's some sort of kendo/sword fighting history here.

Hard to make out but that's an old man running up the stairs on the left. He did this continuously without getting out of breath. I got tired walking the descent :)

Nice water feature close to the metro station we'd take back.

Jeppe has a "The Birds" moment.

Back at the hotel. Nice busy skyline spoiled by the Colonel.

Festivalgate

2009-10-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

Before heading out to Universal Studios we arranged a quick detour past Festivalgate, a shopping mall that is home to a pretty decent coaster called Delphis.

Like the wheel and the drop tower, the coaster was down too. I don't know what is happening in Osaka but the pattern of things not running here was not good.

I don't know if this is advertising a new ride or not (I suspect the latter) but it looks like a lot of fun.

The stop at Festivalgate was brief we were soon on our way to Universal.

Universal Studios Japan

2009-10-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

Time for the first super big park of the trip. This park had recently opened when we last visited Japan in 2005 and a small minority were able to escape Expoland to go and ride the Snoopy coaster. I didn't so this was my first time here.

We had been fortunate with the crowds so far on the trip but not today. The schools were here in their droves. Seeing as it was so busy a few of us decided to purchase queue jumping tickets, behaviour that seemed to upset some of the group. But they served their purpose beautifully getting us around the park without the stress that some others were exhibiting.

First up was the big coaster in the park, Hollywood Dream the Ride. The entrance is down there on the right. Bags aren't allowed in the station so no photos in there. In fact nothing is allowed in the station with rides being delayed for someone having so much as a tissue in their pocket. Nicely dressed ride ops, just a shame you can't see 'em.

The ride itself is great but safe with gentle hills and OK forces. It had a very long queue (I reckon around 12 hours) so we used the tickets to jump the queue and rode together at the back of the train. It was a little weird to be chastised for doing so by some of our own group who hadn't bought the tickets and were making do with the single rider queue, but c'est la vie. The ride has an on-ride system and I got to bop my head to Eminem.

Following the B&M coaster we headed down to the kids area to ride the Snoopy coaster. This was just a rollerskater ride but had some nice effects along the way, the best being the sweeping camera as the ride enters its final helix.

The park had done a good job on its Halloween theming. Not surprising considering the budget a park like this must have to spend.

From kiddy land we headed towards Amity, a small seaside community that was being terrorised by a giant shark.

Jaws was great and using ticket number 2 we jumped the queue and got to enjoy this. I'd done the one in California and Hollywood and now Japan. Much the same as the other rides but this had the cutest boat pilot who was outsized by the shotgun she was wielding.

Having escaped the shark we then headed to Waterworld. No fast pass this time but we'd saved plenty of time already and had the time to fit this in.

The pre-show was a blast with the pirates not holding back on the water throwing.

The show itself was exactly the same as the one I'd seen in America, with the same Russian stunt team (probably). Plenty of stunts and even more explosions and the same plane throwing finale that took my breath away the first time I'd seen it. Not this time though, I remembered to inhale.

Jurassic Park is again the same as in California and Orlando (supposedly a mirror image but I can't recall), with the same technical issues that meant you don't get to visit Hydrasaur cove here either and are again knocked off course. The T-Rex ending is done to perfection with the jump out of darkness being the best I'd seen.

Back to the main lake and another shot of Amity.

Hollywood coaster across the lake.

Backdraft was next and as well as having plenty of explosion effects I also managed to dry some of the excess water that my clothes had picked up in Jurassic Park. Be wary of this ride if you're pushed for time. It has 2 long pre-shows before you get to the best bit.

It was busier than these photos make it look.

A little more indicative. That's the crowd pouring out of Terminator 3D. Still a good attraction. The only difference in Japan is that the blonde "super" woman is replaced with a Japanese woman who judging by the crowd reaction was taking the piss out of the audience. I have no idea if we were part of her act or not.

Nice OTT Halloween theming. The area was being used for a stage show that mixed Ghostbusters with Sesame Street.

Back to the Future now only resides in this park with the American ones having been replaced with Simpsons. This was likely to end up the same way so I took a last chance to ride it. Not bad but I understand why its on its way out.

Spiderman is my favourite dark ride in Orlando and with the only other one (to date) being here I had to ride it. The ride is exactly the same, the only differences being that this one had a dual loading station and the 3d glasses were a different colour.

Having done all the rides it was time to enjoy the park's Halloween parade, which was great.

Lots of sexy costumes and dancing going on :) My head was also filled with a terribly addictive version of "I want candy" sung in a Hello Kitty voice.

With the parade over I spent the final 30 minutes getting some more photos. Adrian looks like he's having a good time on the coaster.

Outside the park, the B&M runs over the ticket booths.

Finishing with the infamous globe.

Universal is a cookie cut park with little unique to Osaka but its still a great park. The only downside was the over-zealous ride ops on the Hollywood coaster. Did I have any regrets about spending extra on the queue jump tickets? Not a jot, it turned what could have been a stressful day into an easy one.

Nagashima Spaland

2009-10-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

We arrived late at the Nagashima Spaland park and the park was closed and the only things open were the Spa (denied entry) and a small restaurant. In fact I got the strongest response at this hotel over the spa thing. The girl behind the desk couldn't understand what I was asking for so I showed her some of the tattoo, to which she started to cry.

So I took a few photos of Steel Dragon and then went to bed.

The group had visited this park on the last Japan trip and Steel Dragon was down. Also half of the duelling mouse coaster was not running so in terms of new rides that was all I had to do. Everything else in this last park had been ridden previously so 4 of us had decided to just do these rides before heading off to another park nearby.

In the morning, being hotel guests we got a jump on the public and made our way over to Steel Dragon.

Well the Spas not liking tattoos I could handle but the park has a similar disdain for them. Great!

Some bad and good news, only half of the mouse coaster was running. The good news was that the side that was down was the side I'd ridden before. So one missing credit achieved!

Steel Dragon was also open. Superb! But more bad and good news. Whilst the ride was open and running it wasn't actually that exciting. With Daidasaurus now closed at Expoland Steel Dragon is the longest coaster and the fifth tallest coaster in the world but it rode like a childrens ride. Just too gentle and safe. There was little thrill to it at all.

With a little time left before our taxi to the next park departed I also managed a couple of goes on the park's Bobcart ride. Something I managed to miss the last time I was here.

So I'd done the rides I'd wanted to and whilst Nagashima Spaland is an impressive park, it was time to leave the group here and head off to Japan Monkey Park.

Japan Monkey Park

2009-10-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

Japan Monkey Park is about 90 minutes away from Nagashima and about 60 minutes to get back. The difference is due to us having a clueless executive driver on the way out and a much more savvy local cabbie for the return leg. Four of us were going on this little side trip.

The park is mostly gardens with the amusement park located at the back end of it.

The park is home to a trifecture of coasters. The main one is called Highway Coaster, named this because from the top of the lift hill you can see a Highway. Why they didn't call it Refinery Coaster, or Petrol Station Coaster I don't know.

The second is called Monkey Coaster and has the most open layout of the coasters. It has a weird train.

It also has the smallest astro-turf pitch in the world. Not sure what was going on there. Somewhere to brush your feet before you boarded perhaps?

In addition to the coaster the park has a good number of different fairground rides and because they're all close to each other you can get around them fairly quick as we could have done had we not lost time getting there.

One of those flying rides that Blackpool is famous for.

The final coaster in a little separate section that looks newly built (in fact some construction behind the coaster would indicate there's still some growing going on). This coaster has the best name of the eighty or so I'd be riding on the trip; "Go Go Banana Coaster". A cute ride with a very friendly elderly ride op who seemed more than happy to keep sending us round until his retirement came through.

Another Hello Kitty presence.

As you can see it was another busy day with just us in the park, and bear in mind there were only 4 of us at this place.

Not sure what this was. You couldn't climb inside it, which I was hoping you could do.

If you do visit this park then you must do this dark ride, which was great using mirrors and candlelight to great effect. It's quite a long ride too so don't think you can squeeze it in in a few minutes.

Having nailed the park pretty quickly we asked the gate staff to call us a taxi and we made it back to the hotel and coach with half an hour to spare. Had we had the same driver bring us back who took us out we might have missed it!

Fuji Q

2009-10-17T00:22:00.000-07:00

Fuji Q was another park that we visited on the previous trip and it took the wooden spoon in terms of service with me not able to get onto everything that I wanted to and the club actually making the National News by breaking Fujiyama, the park's big coaster. (Not me personally, I was just about to board the next car when it happened). So for me, this would be a mop up trip.

Last time I had a hotel room that overlooked the park, this time I had the mountain and once again the cloud spoiled the view.

Like Universal the park was pretty busy with people queueing up in anticipation of the gates opening. In fact we were anticipating quite a crowd for the next few days as Japan was having a week of National Holidays. Being guests of the hotel we were allowed to sneak in ahead of the public and made our way to the first of the coasters.

First coaster of the day was Eejanaika, which has a colloquial translation of "aint it great" and it was very apt! Knowing that this ride would have pretty awful throughput due to its design the majority of the club headed here first and waited patiently for the ride to open, the time being spent with the locals.

We were first to board and made our way to the rear of the train. I'd ridden the only other 4D coaster in California back in 2002 (X at Magic Mountain) and found it an extremely confusing ride. For those that don't know how it work the seats are on arms sticking out of the train and they rotate whilst the train navigates the track so you might be sitting up, flying, upside down etc.

Rather than trying to explain it's perhaps better to watch it, although you still might not comprehend it. Here's some footage who managed to smuggle a camera onto the ride.

So how was it? Hilarious! Everyone was coming off with that adrenaline surge that is hard to get when you've ridden hundreds of coasters. Unfortunately having gotten off the first train there was a healthy queue so rerides were out of the question.

Up next was Fujiyama, the ride the group broke last time! Did we get to ride it this time? Yes we did! Was it a lot of fun? Yes it was! It's not a stellar coaster but it's sheer size made it worth the queuing. The best bit for me was the half pipe ending where you hit a succession of banked hills weaving from left to right.

After Fujiyama there was just one major ride left to ride. Dodonpa. This ride blew me away back in 2006 and I couldn't recall the launch at all (it does 0-108mph in under 2 seconds - a literal being shot out of a cannon) so I was going to make sure I remembered it this time, and it is just as exhilarating as I remember with the launch spectacular and the most insane airtime on the hill. The trains have had new paint jobs, but they still have a "no glasses" rule, which disappoints. It also took a few hours to get through the queue line on this one, but it was worth it.

Another local smuggles a camera onto the ride.

Following Dodonpa I decided to ride the mouse, the last of the coasters I hadn't been on before. Being the largest of the family orientated rides this also had a queue but compared to Dodonpa, Eejanaika and Fujiyama, 30 minutes didn't seem that bad. Fortunately the throughput was pretty good and ate the queue line. The ride was actually not too bad. It has a custom layout and is quite large for a mouse. I guess that makes it a hippopotamouse coaster then.

The park has some hilarious adverts for Power Rangers playing around the park that illustrate how to be a good park guest. These clips included the classic "it's not good to ride the big wheel naked" with the part of the lead being played by the masked Red Ranger wearing just his mask, cape and boots (I kid you not). Some of the rangers could be found around the park. I couldn't find pink and green but boy did yellow look bored!

Very bizarre theming in the toilets.

An even stranger advert for a new coaster featuring mating grasshoppers.

So whether this advert for a new airport is serious or not I wasn't sure. A check when I got home showed that it was true. Shizuoka Airport opened earlier this year. It's 50 miles away though.

Fuji-Q is a busy park that has such unique rides that the throughput can take a hit. If you're visiting the park plan for two whole days and you might manage to get around everything. Last time I did the Haunted Hospital and I was keen to do it again this time but didn't have the time in the end. That is a must-do, as are the majority of the rides.

Sega Joypolis

2009-10-17T00:21:00.001-07:00

We left Fuji-Q and headed into Tokyo for a few days there. First park was actually done before we'd even got to our hotel.

Sega Joypolis was a brief stop on the last trip and an even more brief one this time.

Located on Odaiba island the park is a large indoor complex full of Sega games and rides. It's also home to a strange coaster and a large pair of red shorts.

The coaster used to be a sideways ride but they'd changed the cars to spinning ones. Note the restraint system that looks more like strappings that would restrain psycho patients than the public.

Escaping from the park I thought I'd go and see the Odaiba Gundam, a massive moving statue that had been located down the road. Alas it was only a limited appearance and a conversation with a member of staff had revealed it had been dismantled earlier in the week. A pity!

A view from the back end of the Decks complex overlooking the magnificent Rainbow Bridge.

Meiji Shrine

2009-10-17T00:21:00.000-07:00

The first morning in Tokyo and I decided to take David and Jeppe to the Meiji shrine, a place I'd visited the last time I was here.

Some new additions to the walk into the park were these large wine barrels, a gift from abroad. I don't know if it was the low light or the alcohol fumes that caused this image to come out slightly blurry but I do know there were no fumes.

The world's largest Torii gate.

Inside the shrine area. Beautifully tranquil and the emptiest park of the trip so far :)