Saturday, December 12, 2015

Day 8: Osaka - USJ!

the most anticipated leg of the trip by the boys! ever resourceful me managed to purchase the entrance tics + express passes for the family before the trip on USJ jap website! yes, the english website doesn't offer the purchase service. so with some guidance found online posted by helpful fellow travellers and translation features by Chrome, we got the online tickets.

read that the park is open at 9.30AM daily and people started queuing up an hour before that! so being ever kiasu singaporeans, we arrived at 9AM and this sight welcomed us:
@_@ 

the park is open 30mins earlier for those staying in USJ affiliated hotels but luckily that queue is not horrendous. we were considered rather ahead in the lines and actually once the crowds dispersed inside the big park, it is not that bad. though of cos the crowds congregated at certain attractions and that's when express passes come in handy.

to be honest, we only need to use 3 out of the 5 express passes since we took the popular rides earlier in the day. but the 5 rides express pass is worth it simply of the fact it allowed us entry and fastpass queue for harry potter castle/ride saving us up to close to 120mins of time!

first stop - spiderman 4D ride!

we rushed for the spiderman 4D ride for once we were in. :D
so little crowd that for our ride capsule, it was only us occupying it even though it has 3 rows of 4 seats. we took the front row and it's every bit as good as transformers 4D ride in USS albeit a little shorter and spidy shouting in jap ha. 
only the younger boy didnt enjoy it so much so that he cried at the end of the ride! LOL. too scary for the poor little fellow. for the rest of the day, his question for every ride is "is it as scary as spiderman?". HAHA.

lovely backdrop. i want to attempt mary-ann and spidy kiss but there's a queue behind us waiting impatiently, so no.

this is the only photo we bought from USJ cos apart from us looking good in it (the official one not this one taken with hubbi's camera though we look not too bad here too), the frame was pretty with pop-up effects! it was like 1500 yen? 


minion parade!

en-route to back to the future ride, we managed to catch the minion parade! minions never fail to make anyone smile! :D

buying stuff from minion shop! someone got himself a minion cap while the elder one deemed minion too kiddish for him and didnt want to get anything #growinguptoofast
we had minion waffles here too! banana chocolate flavoured! what else?

clockwise from top left: back to the future car, jurrasic park, jaws area, backdraft attraction, fooling around at jaws shop

for the rest of the morning after minion parade, we took the back to the future ride which is the elder son's personal fav after spiderman ride. it's akin to omnimax theatre, just more exciting! we were at jurassic park area but deemed the ride too scary for the little ones and didnt want to risk getting wet so nah for that ride. we went for the backdraft attraction which wasnt too bad. quite impressive to see how different fires can be created and the heat felt was no joke. the boys kept asking if the fire was real, ha. 

on board jaws!

we settled lunch at amity village (jaws area). and after that, we went for the jaw boat ride! it was mostly harmless though the boys were taken aback when the (very) fake shark surfaced.. ha.

next up, we headed to the wonderland zone! it's paradise for the kiddos! all the rides are kids-friendly and i think we managed to do 80% of the rides here! the boys had a blast here though towards the end, it was a lil' boring for the husband and me.. heh.

@ wonderland!
the snoopy great race (roller coaster) and elmo go go skateboard are pretty impressive! 

and by 3+pm, it's time for us to enter harry potter land! it was unfortunate that it started drizzling then but with the overcast sky and greyish clouds, it did lent a suitable vibe to the place. 

lovely!


YR didnt make the height for the HP ride and hubbi and i did the child switch thingy. the HP ride was the most awesome ride in my opinion! it's the only ride out of all the rides i took in USJ that i was really scared! not to mention feeling some motion sickness after it. i was half-worried about the elder boy next to me being scared out of his wits and i was trying to hold on to his lap while trying to stifle my ahhs.. and whoas! LOL.
in the end, he had his eyes closed half the time and he ended the ride half-shaken as compared to me...

after HP land, it was dinner time so we dined in one of the eateries at main street and for the rest of the evening until closing time, it was shopping time for us!
it was a good thing that there's shelter almost all over the main street for us to catch the fireworks without being affected by the rain.

top: shot with pink panther!

we cant resist the cute spidyman cup noodles with spiderman face-shaped veg bits! that's our supper with the boys back at our airbnb after we made our way back at night.
pipping hot cup noodles is the best to have on cold rainy nights! *yum*
it's the first time the boys tried cup noodles. :P not very healthy but an enjoyable experience for them im sure!

last day in osaka tomorrow before flying back to SG the day after!

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