Thursday, October 21, 2010

FUJI-Q Highland- the land that is of a much higher quality than DisneySea... Which is shithouse.

***First of all, updates will be in no particular order as we're short on time and net availability!***
~Keep an eye out for youtube links, easy quick and a good idea of what happened!~

The day began horrifically early with Sarah giving us a stern and unfriendly “7 minute warning”. After the 7 minute warning expired and I was still attempting to sleep, Sarah started with “Get up. Now.” So then I kind of had to, or she’d turn into a giant mutated Sea Bass and take over Tokyo.
Beno was surprised that we actually made the train- ALL our trains- on time, (yeah dad, I know, be surprised. Twice that week I got up at 5:30am and been ON TIME. Hopefully the world isn’t ending) and the train reminded Beno of the Adelaide Uni Library- lots of Asians sleeping! It took a while to get to Fuji-Q, but I enjoyed the ride as we all hit play on the ipods and literally bounced along the whole ride. Two stops before our destination, the train paused and as the door was open, we got our (only) shots of Mt Fuji! We were lucky it was that clear; as we later discovered the old man Fuj likes to hide behind the clouds and he does it well.







^^Last photo is Mt Fuji!^^

Anyhow, at 9am sharp (actually I think it was 9:06 but 9:06 sharp doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?) we got off at Fuji-Q Highland and bought our tickets to pure awesome. We were directed to put our ticket in machines, which Sarah quickly figured out actually took our photos to give our own personalised free day pass. We then came to a vending machine which held plastic envelopes for your free pass and came in colours. Inadvisably, I accidentally bought a pink envelope (I say inadvisably because I was wearing a red dress) thinking it was a deep purple. We later realised they were coloured for each of the Fuji-Q “rangers” (think Power Rangers) who represented the rides and generally appeared to get up to a lot of strange things. One of my favourite things in the park was actually just watching the rangers be weirdos, which they excelled at. They did some strange dances (one with fans, one with clapping) and fought people in black costumes who seemed to be lead by a green painted old Japanese man. Yes, I did say weird.








Fuji-Q Weirdo Rangers
(I particularly love how the hotel just falls over)


Red Ranger!
The red ranger was a bit of a character; he was introduced in the video as the guy who tries to elbow the Green ranger out of the way (gives him a nice shoulder bump). The red Ranger’s ride was what I like to refer to as “McCrazy Red” because the actual name was in Japanese and I therefore have no idea of the actual name. McCrazy red (also McCrazeh) was a hell of a first ride- we basically picked the coolest looking rides first to make sure we didn’t miss out (piss off DisneySea!) We got to watch the Red ranger do the ride (You’ll see in the video when available) and grew steadily more nervous. (It probably would have been a good time to take out life insurance, is all I’m saying). Super mega intense. McCrazeh had a massive drop, two loop the loops, lots of ups and downs and a sneaky corkscrew. The seats also rotated upside down like the zipper. I insisted Beno had to go on the outside, not that it really helped, and Saros was in front of us. The staff clapped us as we left- BACKWARDS! We went up the giant hill unable to see where we were going. Beno and I thought we were at the top about 5 times.
I was muttering “oh shit… shit…. Shhhiiiiittt” and Beno was laughing nervously beside me. Sarah in front was mentally thinking “gettin’ a bit high now… gettin’ pretty high… nice landscape…. Getting’ real high…. AHHHHHHH”. I’d forgotten there was a tiny drop before the main fall, and I thought “hey, that’s not so bad” before we rolled over backwards upside down, dropped down the biggest plunge face first and we all screamed the whole way down (and actually, I think we screamed for the whole ride) and then straight up the loop the loop while still spinning in our seats! Basically from the first loop the loop I couldn’t tell up from down and the only thing I knew is I was going upside down regularly and I was screaming like my life depended on it. We finally got our bearings back a bit and were right at the end of the ride when the sneak corkscrew happened- a tight curl magnified only by the lightspeed twisting of our seats (I know I heard Beno swear) before we pulled back in, rather dazed, to the clapping staff.
It was a bit of a wobbly exit.








Eejanaika - The Red McCrazeh


Blue Ranger!
The Blue Ranger was Beno’s Ranger and seemed to be the ladies man (Pink was heartbroken by his wandering ways) but also had in my opinion, the best ride; Fujiyama.
I’ve said many times before I’ve a fear of heights but can now clarify to include ascending see through elevators (oddly specific, I know). For some reason, it’s the slow rising sensation that scares me more than the drop and this held true for the Fujiyama.
First off, there’s no upside down parts so after McCrazy red ride, we mistakenly thought it would be tame. I repeat, mistakenly. Fujiyama has won Guiness World Records for height and speed. The ride only has a lap bar, and the seats have quite low backs, which contributed to my nerves as we slowly inched up to the first huge ass drop. Helpfully, there were signs pointing out “20m”, “40m”, “60m”, “79m” as we rose.
I’ll interject at this point that each ride had more than one car; luckily enough, we got the Bling Fujiyama, the pure gold cars rather suited to our pedigree. The first drop we paused just enough to appreciate the yawning chasm below before we all screamed the whole way down, gaining some air time (ass rising off of seat time) before heading straight back up almost as high! We stayed at that height and got a nice view of Mt Fuji as we did a u-turn and then properly saw the rest of the ride for the fist time. I think it may have been Sarah who muttered “Oh, shit”. (That might have been me, in which case it was Sarah who later muttered “This ride never ends!”, I did hear a few distinctly higher pitched “woah”s from Beno) Fujiyama is the longest coaster I’ve been on, and from that point it was another drop and then ups, downs, sharp side turns and … well repeat for a few minutes! When the photo was taken, I looked like a total minger with my head looking like a demented Rav 4 add and my dress actually pushed off my shoulders! In short, Fujiyama = Fujiawesome.








Fujiyama


Pink Ranger
The pink ranger had no discernible purpose except to be a female and love the blue ranger. She carried food for both of them, only to drop it dramatically in the cafeteria when she saw Blue flirting with a group of girls in the park. Fail! (I wanted to return my pink envelope, quite unimpressed). Her ride was quite similar to the Tower of Terror at Dreamworld- a high speed roller coaster. Instead of running up the side of a tower, it had a very steep arch (90 degree drop!) which was very full on! The line for this one was fairly long, and had an indescribably French sounding song which seemed to go something like this…
“(In French) I’m excited… I’m impassioned… Don Don Pa. *Breathy voice* Don Don Pa. *Girl breathy* Don Don Pa.” This song looped for about an hour and a half while we kind of wanted to die… or kill whoever invented the “Don Don Pa” song. Please, when you see me next, ask for a rendition of don don pa.
This time I was on my own and was blown back by the fast take off. Heading straight up the arch freaked me out to the max, and the drop was, in Sarah’s words “hurty”, and as Beno mentioned, we did again get airborn, totally leaving our seats if not for the lap bar! (To clarify, Sarah smacked her head on the way down) . Then it was back to the boarding shed, with a quick bombshelter photo (aww yeah) which actually sucked for me- I leaned forward for the photo, only to have my head smacked back too when we sped up again. At this stage, all of our hair was pretty much irredeemable (Beno’s not quite so noticeable) as you can probably see. We got a lot of airtime, which did not bode well for hair time- when I tried to brush the knots out. Be glad I’m not bald- I know I am!





Dodonpa

Green Ranger

The green ranger was quite the character- a clutzy, often unconscious type. Whenever the rangers got on the rides (leaving smiling and waving, returning off balance and wiped out) the Green ranger usually returned unconscious or limp as a noodle. His intro had him see a young boy fall over, rush to help him, fall over himself, and be helped up by the little boy.
He was Saros’ Ranger (I was jealous she’d gotten Green first) and luckily for my envy, had a kind of average ride-basically the claw at Dreamworld, just slightly smaller. Again, it was a top 5 ride so there was indeed airtime to be had (we had the best angle, though Fuji was covered in clouds by this stage) and spent a lot of time screaming or exclaiming “woah!”.




Yellow Ranger
The yellow ranger was again quite the eccentric chap- in the intro he was seen crawling along the ground, exclaiming in delight when he found a coin. He also was a major star in a video when the other rangers stole his suit! The Green, Red, Blue and Pink rangers were sitting at a table, when the Yellow ranger, only in white underwear and his helmet, creeps out of some sort of cupboard and tries to find his suit, getting quite agitated as the others share lunch and laugh at his misfortune! He does however, find a solution which the others aren’t so keen on…
The Yellow Ranger’s ride was the Lucky Cat boat ride, which was a lot cooler than we first thought, figuratively AND literally. The temperature was pretty cool, and the water was freezing so we decided to get cheap raincoats- which we needed!
For whatever reason, no pictures were allowed which sucked. It was a bit like the 5-6 seater round boat ride at Dreamworld, first we went up a big incline, then dropped into a slide. We got sucked into a whirl pool with a surprisingly steep drop. It was enjoyable but not too scary.






Other rides we went on were the Great Zaboon, a rather disappointing water boat-drop, without much awesome to it but with a LOT of splash (which onlookers from the bridge regularly got caught in to our amusement), the Ferris wheel, Beno and Sarah went on the Mad Mouse which they didn’t rate, Beno went on a swinging chair (yellow builder video)ride, a sky cycle one (fun) but in the end… the worst part of the day was…


…missing out on the last ride for Fujiyama by 3 people. They literally let the people in in front of us then closed the gate. McCrazeh Red was already closed by this point, disappointingly. After stopping to buy some cool things (I bought blueberry cheesecake flavoured kitkats in a special MOUNTAIN BOX) and some pretty gross icecreams (that was NOT white chocolate!) we headed back on the train. It was actually a bit of a fiasco, as we caught the local train (not knowing when the next rapid was) and the next rapid passed us! Probably added an extra hour to our journey! Also, we saw the most hilarious man who actually looked like he’d had a car backfire in his face. No kidding, his face was quite a bit darker around the edges (I don’t know whether he had coal dust on his face or his skin was just like that?) and each time he looked up, he wore an expression of such surprise it was comical. Not once, this guy would look up from his book as if to say “Why did a cannon just explode in my face?”








After that, we pretty much just headed home (occasionally affecting looks of utmost surprise and cracking each other up) to get some well deserved sleep. If you do one thing in Japan, it should be… well probably Kyoto. But right after Kyoto… Fuji-Q. Fuji-Q is the bomb… (the bomb that exploded in that guy’s FACE! Ha ha… yeah. Right. Anyway)




Miss you as always, miss Fuji-Q, miss the weirdo rangers.
Kisses and all!
Shout out to Georgelocation for the comment- we are not impressed stupid DisneySea!
Beno’s home now, but at the time, he missed you too.
xx Carly

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