180423 USJ - Harry Potter, Monster Hunter

now that i've blogged such a long one on sailormoon, i'm gonna separate ff out and give it its own post as well. however, my express tickets were around 4pm so i'll be going into harry potter first.

we went the wrong direction and ended up at the souvenier shop that's near the entrance of usj. i've already taken a lot of pictures in my osaka post super long ago, so i didn't take a lot of pictures here.

 anyway, we're in potter town!

the only ride we went on was the quidditch one because nampyeon felt the hippogriff one was too slow and kiddish so we didn't go on that one. the q time was surprisingly fast (about 50mins). In the morning it was about 60-80mins. the other part of the crowd that didn't go for minions were all gathered here in the morning, so probably avoid it in the morning...??

we didn't get to enjoy the decoration in the q line previously since we got the express pass. this time we could. XDD

the ride was awesome as always... definitely a must go.
i can't remember if i've taken all these pictures before but i went into some stores again and took them since they were rather interesting. owl's post!

there was just a show happening outside. nice. these kids were trying to move the big rock behind and performed wingardium leviosa magic with a lucky spectator.

see the stone hidden in the trees on the right...

i enjoyed the show with my frozen butterbeer. costs 750 JPY. imo the frozen one tastes better than the normal one but both are good in any case.

 we exited potter town since it was almost time for my monster hunter ride to happen. sesame streets performance while we were walking over there. the lady can really sing.

and we are now at monster hunter.

i have mixed feelings about this ride. i bought the express pass not because i wanted to see this, as i thought it was the same exhibition as before. i only bought it because i could not get ff separately. i kind of pity the people who waited in line expecting great things from this ride...

so basically you take a little tool that stimulates an AR weapon on screen, and you pose with the weapon to get great pictures with the monsters. like the following:

the pictures look pretty cool anyway. they allow you to download these for free. however, just make sure you go with people you know? people in the back seem to appear better. i'm mostly covered by weapons since i'm int he front. and you don't really know when the pictures get taken so when a monster appears, just stay really still in a super cool position and don't change it till the monster switches position... if you want good pictures... =_=

anyway... if you felt that the monster slaying wasn't very satisfying - you can't swing the weapon and you don't actually have to kill it, they are programmed to get hit and die even if you don't move - you can always play them on pc near the exit...

not that i will waste my time like that in usj. so let's move on to the souvenier shop. these are actually in the same shop as the sailormoon ones but i separated them out to this post. since i'm not a big fan of mon hun, i shall touch on just ever so briefly.

the merchandise looks pretty well-designed except i've got my eyes on other series so i wasn't really interested.

Do check out the other parts of usj here:

1) sailormoon + minions

2) harry potter + monster hunter

3) final fantasy

160512 USJ~! Harry Potter

so.. i set my alarm for 8am but i didn't know my aka phone wasn't updated so we woke up at 9+am instead and reached USJ at 1030am T_T well, it was still ok except we needed to chiong to our first station at 1050am for shingeki 4D movie. bought the express tickets online previously on the japanese USJ website. if you're keen to go, do follow the guide here to purchase!

here's the theatre for all the 4D shows.

honestly i didn't expect the whole movie to be so bloody and violent because there were kids watching, but i guess japanese has a different tolerance to violence? x.x oh, and we exited through the stage. weird.

anyway some exhibits on the way out. the 3D gear is pretty cool!

just near the theatre there was another area that housed some wax molds of rivai and other team members.

you can queue up to take pic with the cool rivai~ but no touching x.x

just outside it is a titan wall! some japanese even came in cosplay. whooo.

and you can also get eaten up by mr titan.

our next stop was biohazard dungeon, where you explore the 4-5level building to search for clues to solve the puzzle on our device. the ultimate objective is to unlock all the clues and go into this place to retrieve the 'cure' for the zombie madness. it was a whopping 2hr long exploration!

thankfully we were grouped with this other guy from spain if not i would have been totally lost. mr kong on one hand was busy solving his office crisis and had no mood whatsoever to enjoy the whole trip. he even thought of just getting out of usj and flying to korea to solve it. he made my whole usj trip which i was so looking for, a long drawn out pain because he wasn't enjoying and neither was i.

so anyway back to bioshock. we eventually didn't solve beyond the first level and went to this room where it was a GAME OVER for us. haha. only 1 team survived out of 10+. oh, and i was expecting lots of scares but it seems that the 'zombies' were few and far apart, so it wasn't so bad. i'm really bad at such detective games and i wouldn't want to play it again. but for anyone trying... the map you're holding is the key to a lot of things. it's crazy how it's being used.

so glad to be out!

there's some parade going on. not too keen on the characters.

at least there's minions.

we then took the kyary 4D ride. it was pretty fun! you wear the virtual gear thing that looks like an occulus and you travel through kyary's world on a roller coaster. as mr k says, it's just going round and round in the same room if you take the goggles off. our tripod was too big to put in the locker but thankfully we could put it a cabinet at the exit area.

on our way to harry potter i took a snapshot of our waiting times. not so bad!

and we're going into harry potter world!!!

the flying car!! the world!! platform 9 and 3/4!!!

we're really here!!! 

i got my eyes on the butterbeer! they sell the sherbet and gassy version so i just bought the sherbet. SO NICE. but so expensive... almost 2k yen for this. gg. if you get it with the disposable cup it's 700 i think though.

wheee!!!! need to go in every shop!!!

book of monsters~

this place sells the bertie bott every flavour beans

and we go into a dress shop~

what's going in a dress shop without putting on the school robes. hurhur

and trying out the quidditch stick.

there's a mini wand selection performance here and the chosen one gets to walk away with a free wand!! if only i had been more proactive and shouted 'me! me!'...

yay posing with the shops~

went for the forbidden journey 4D ride. very nice!!!

after the longest time carrying the tripod around and setting it up.. selfie is still the most convenient way to take a photo.

some restaurants along the way. 3 broomsticks!

a shop that's closed.

and now we exit harry potter land for a side trip to monster hunter~

there's a mini museum~ they are all so well-made!!!!

there's an inner area where you can also see 2 really big moving dragons

the dragon when it's just sitting still

and when it's breathing 'fire'!

we were fumbling around with our tripod for the longest time with the dragons. lol.

 so the employee couldn't take it and offered to help us take a shot that looked like this..... ok at least a little part of our face is still visible...

our last show was on evangelion, which is on the same level of brutality as shingeki...

a pity, we should have caught the rides instead of the shows. ended our trip with a splash from jurassic... we totally got wet (and cold)!!!

we left around 8pm and everything was already closing. wanted to find a place for a good dinner since we were starving like crazy. in the end because we walked so much and mr k needed to head home to settle his office stuff... we ended up at matsuya near our airbnb.

it's cheap and still delicious! there's really no tasteless jap food (or barely). ooh. saw a limo on our way home.

and thankfully mr k managed to settle his stuff that night if not i really cannot imagine flying to korea the next morning. zzz.