Japan Trip - Fuji-Q

Disclaimer:

I had previously submitted this on another very popular website, and was immediately banned for it, without any warning. I didn't realize that my behavior was that extreme, If I have offended anyone in the coaster community for my behavior, I want to seriously apologize. However, since the manager had seen me the night before, I don't feel that I "pushed my way in", nor did I "sneak into the ride session anyway" as the moderator suggested, There was no early ride session to begin with! Only a chance to queue up early before the rides began operating for the day.

And I also don't think I was "smug and rude to the person who told you no" as the moderator suggests either, since I didn't even say anything to him that morning. I simply joined the line and walked through to see if it might work. If he had stopped me, and told me I couldn't join the group, I would have easily complied with him. But he saw me, he didn't say anything to me, and in my opinion, he let me through since I had already spoken with him the night before,

The moderator from the other board in his response to me was extremely rude and unprofessional, using vial language such as "a** c**t", which quite surprised me. I had been a fan of his for many years, and had been posting for many years, and therefore his response was very sudden and unexpected.

Upon doing further research, I googled his name and discovered that there is a lot of negative feedback about dealing with him, and had always wondered why so many people didn't like him, since I had never had a problem with him. To be honest, I'm a little embarrassed that one of the leading spokesmen for our hobby exhibits behavior such as this. On his website, you can see pages where he openly complains about the coaster community, saying things such as "In 2012 we were on the road for something like 120 days that year. That's a LOT of time putting up with horrible people. And we just aren't going to do it anymore. Sure, we'll still do trips, but we'll pick and choose the people we WANT on our trips.

Anyway, if I did anything wrong, I want to apologize to the coaster community for it. I didn't intend to be rude or obnoxious. Maybe I just got a little bit too over-excited.

I wanted to reiterate that by the time I got to the entrance booth, the ticket window was already open, and the gate attendants were openly willing to show me where to exchange my voucher, and let me into the park. There was no early ride session, but simply chances to queue up early before rides opened.

Anyway, I had a good time, and I hope that you can enjoy my trip report. In addition, if the moderator will allow, I am happy to once again join the Coasterbuzz community after so many years!

__________

Trip Report Starts Here:

I did a lot of research before I went on both this site and tripadvisor.com, and the general consensus was that the park in the summertime would probably be overwhelmingly crowded. The general advice I discovered was to stay at the on-site hotel (Fujikyu Highland), as they offer early admission to the park. I didn't do this because the cost was too expensive, but I discovered another hotel down the street called West Inn Fuji-Yoshida. This street (along with the hotel exterior) looked peculiarly American to me.

I walked down the street to talk to the manager at the Highland Hotel to ask him if I could buy a ticket from them, and join them for the early admission the next day, even though I wasn't staying at the hotel (maybe I shouldn't have told him that part). He said no, so I bought a ticket from my own hotel instead. Upon walking around the park that evening, it seemed that there were not "droves" of people leaving as the park was closing. It seemed to me like an unbelievably light day. Talking with some people, they had told me that the waits were only on average about 20 minutes.

However, I wasn't going to take any chances the next day (Friday), so I woke up early, and went to the Highland Hotel to join the rest of the early-bird admissioners (I figured it was worth a shot to try to get in early anyway). I joined the lineup, and as I passed through, I saw the same manager who had denied me a ticket the night before. I just waved at him and passed on through anyway (albeit with a reluctant expression on his face).

I was worried that I wasn't going to be let into the park because my ticket was different from the hotel-guests' tickets. And as I walked up to the entrance booth, I thought the attendant was saying "no". But it turns out that she was pointing to the ticket booth, where I needed to exchange my voucher for a real ticket before entering. Happily, the ticket booth was already open, and I was able to exchange my voucher and successfully enter the park early!

From all the research I had previously done, I heard that the first thing you need to do is to run to the priority-ticket kiosk and buy up your priority passes for the day, as a way to avoid the so-rumored abominable queues. Therefore, I bought about 8 tickets (there was a limit of 9).

Looking at the queue for Fujiyama "King of Coasters", as the park opened, it seemed as if the queues would indeed be long for the day. However, I quickly discovered that the coasters had simply not yet begun operation, and that the park would be practically empty this day!

I guess you can say that I don't regret buying the priority passes - I tried to get a refund, but of course there are no refunds. And the priority booth stayed open for the duration of the day. But even though the queues seemed very light, the operations of all the attractions were quite slow (particularly Eejanaika, the 4-D coaster).

It seems that the Japanese are highly concerned about safety, and therefore quite thorough with their pre-check operations. You have to put EVERYTHING into a locker (which I can understand). But they also check you to make sure you have taken all your loose articles off (at one point, I had to proove it by turning my pockets inside-out). In addition, they check each restraint one-by-one, and even ask you to check it yourself before moving on to the next person. You also don't have a choice to where to sit - they assign you, and if you're sitting alone, you have to sit on the inside seat. For Eejanaika (as well as Tondemina, the "Big Pizza"), they even require you to take your shoes off! Therefore, lines that seemed would be 5-minute waits actually turned out to be 20-minute waits.

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

[image=]

I don't know about others here, but you got in early, kudos for your plan working out. It's not like you jumped a fence or violated a rule without oversight from the park. Should you have done it? Not really a concern of mine. Sounds like they had a few chances to turn you away had they wanted to, they didnt, life goes on.

Here your likely to get picked on, corrected, argued with, belittled, or have overly explanatory responses that make you feel like an idiot, but it's a right of passage. In the words of the great Taylor Swift "Shake it Off".

Continuing a thought from another thread, sounds like the moderator of that site needs to rent the third "F" and get over it.

The only thing we ever bounce someone for is being a name-calling dick to other members. If you're only guilty of doing stupid things at parks or having goofy opnions, to ldiesman's point, you'll just be shamed into self-banishment by everyone else.

Carry on. :)

It's a non issue for me. Good pix. I'm supposed to go next month but our stupid president is making it hard to want to go to that part of Asia.

I'm still confused as to what would cause you to be banished and called names.

Just prepare another underwear.

The coaster community confuses me sometimes...

Love me some Fuji-Q, your experience sounds similar to ours, but we were fortunate that the park was completely empty so the terrible operations were more comical than they were frustrating.

I have read and heard "horror" stories about how this park is run... but maybe lots of those stories are not always true?

What did you think of the rollercoasters? Any suprises there?

I am really intrested in that Gerstlauer and the Dodonpa ( or what is called now?)

Did you use a second pair of underwear for that one horrorhouse?

Nice pics... but you went the whole way to Japan and had Auntie Anne's Airport Pretzels?!

What were the walk-throughs like? Typical of a Halloween time haunted attraction?

The stories about Fuji-Q are true. It's the worst park in Japan with regard to queues and operations.

I'm about to do another two week trip to the country and I am *not* going despite the recent changes to Dodonpa.

Pieter Peeters said:
I have read and heard "horror" stories about how that other site is run... but maybe lots of those stories are true?

Fixed it for you

I somehow managed to get a "great day" at Fuji-Q last January. Mind you, I was wearing winter gear and there was snow around the park, but even the water rides were open. The weird Suspended Coaster was closed for its annual refurbishment, so I am still missing that credit sadly. Due to the winds, Fujiyama opened at 2pm (for a 5pm close!) with one train. I really enjoyed that ride back in 2007, so I shelled out my 1000 yens and got an express pass for it. I ended up riding Eejanaika 4 times since it went down to a single train walk-on in the afternoon.

For the water rides, picture riding Hersheypark Tidal Force in barely above freezing temperatures. The river rapids is an odd Hafema (the one at Wild Adventures is from them) creation with multiple drops and a whirlpool. How did they run them then? The park, like many in Japan, created clear fiberglass roofs around the boats. You ride, drop and don't get wet. For the river rapids, high fiberglass sides are installed on the rafts and the park turn off the waterfalls at the end.

Line wise, the worst I have ever seen is Universal Studios Japan. Think of it this way: put the crowd of an average day at the Magic Kingdom inside a Universal park and that's the result there. They beat Tokyo DisneySea in attendance last year and it showed. I had to spend 175$ on Universal Express booklets in order to ride all the new rides in a single day. Else, riding each direction the B&M Hyper Coaster would have been a 2 hours line. They run both Forward and Backward trains on it and each train has their own line. The Flying Dinosaur (B&M Flying Coaster) line was 3 hours long.

Universal does indeed draw crowds, but the lines move efficiently. At Fuji-Q they don't, and that's soul destroying.

Regarding horror stories about "that other website":

Yes, the horror stories about the other website are indeed true. It took me years to find that out, but once I was quickly banned without warning, I dug deeply into the website to find all kinds of crazy things (just check out his post about how he feels about all the "haters"). It seems to me as if he now treats his website more as a business than as a fan-site. In my opinion, he is not even truly a coaster-fan, and hasn't been for many years. He has simply found a niche that he is able to make money off of. And if he really is a coaster fan, he is truly the "villain" of our community!

Regarding Fujikyu and Universal Japan:

The park was almost completely empty on the day I went, too. But as you saw in one of my pictures, the waits for the coasters were still quite long, just because of the operations!

To be fair, I remember the operations at Nagashima Spaland being almost exactly the same, though the queues were even more empty than Fujiyama (Steel Dragon 2000 looked like a very short wait, but in fact took 30 minutes).

I have a tip for everyone who is planning to go to Fuji-Q: the kids in Japan continue to go to school for nearly half the Summer [even through July]. So find a schedule online for when they are in school, and go on one of these days. Definitely not a weekend! (though you can splurge and buy express passes if you're early enough).

Just curious about the poster who went to Fuji-Q in January: were the rides still fun in the cold? I'm a little shocked that they are open in the Winter!

Because of park operations, even if queues are light, express passes are still worth buying. Dodonpa, for the record, is a great (and yes: comfortable) ride (because of the seating and restraints), but Takabisha is even better! It's the most unique coaster I've ever ridden, with spins in the dark, vertical lifts, the works!

Regarding Universal: I have some pictures of Universal from above I can share, if you're interested (top floor of the hotel) - I spoke with the manager, who gave me the chance to view the park from one of the top-floor hotel rooms. But I didn't go inside the park for the following reasons: (1) it's too similar to Universal Florida, which I live 4 hours from - anything I need to experience can be seen on youtube, and (2) the queues for the rides and attractions I've already experienced would be too long. The entrance looks great, though!

Totally not interested in talking about other sites or who runs them here. Thanks.

Richard Bannister said:
The stories about Fuji-Q are true. It's the worst park in Japan with regard to queues and operations.

I'm about to do another two week trip to the country and I am *not* going despite the recent changes to Dodonpa.

When you heading there?

When I spoke to Hafema, who built their River Rapids attraction, they were utterly confused by a request from Fuji-Q: its like November and you're asking us... how to prevent the boats from slipping on the cold conveyor belt and lift hill? I feel a lot of the winter operation is beyond the manufacturer's scope and parks in Japan have for some cultural reasons stay open year round.

The visit was great fun and it was quite a different atmosphere. This was not my coldest park visit though: Toverland in January take the cake! We drove through a snowstorm to get to the park and even the indoor-outdoor flume was running.

Tekwardo said:

Richard Bannister said:
The stories about Fuji-Q are true. It's the worst park in Japan with regard to queues and operations.

I'm about to do another two week trip to the country and I am *not* going despite the recent changes to Dodonpa.

When you heading there?

Next month.