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

Day 3 00 USS Sentosa

i can't remember if i ever tried to get up so early for USS. we were meeting at 9 so i had to get up at 7am O_O|||

thank goodness there was time for some KFC breakfast before we took the train over. had some toast with the guys (they are really hooked on kaya toast) before we took the tram to USS.

and we chionged for transformers for our first ride, and waited for about 1.5hrs T_T ugh. there actually isn't a lot of people on a sunday, unexpectedly, but i guess everyone thought going for the best ride there would be the right choice!?

the good thing was we got the front seats! whooo!

in any case, after the long queue, we decided to get express tickets for $60 each. the price was a little high due to the weekend i suppose, but seongju paid for all the tickets *double O_O|||* i felt it was a little wasted as the wait times of all the rides really didn't exceed 50mins and most were at just 20mins, surprisingly for a sunday.

went for Cyclon next which nare didn't really like (but we got to sit on the front row!), so only the 3 of us went for Human. Human was so popular the waiting time for express took 15mins, while the normal one was 80mins... wow. next up was mummy. we got the front row again - what's the probability?! it seems it was all due to nare's luck. we only got 2nd row when we went for Human without nare. haha. the board indicated 5mins but when we went in... it probably took 30mins so we jumped to the express queue for a quick ride. after mummy we quickly hopped to the waterfront show, before having lunch at goldilocks.

took the splashy jurassic rapid ride and again, mr kong got super wet. lol.
next up was the cat in puss ride, which i hadn't seen before at all!

selfies in the coaster while departing...

and on the way back..

shopped around in the shrek shop, and found our new future babies and mr kong's alter ego! look at the daddyyyy. love all these pictures!!!

there's also cute shrek headgears. btw i gave mr kong an english name - shrek kong (sssseregie in korean, means dustbin), hence the 'love' for all shreks.

then we went for the madagascar water ride, which was so slow, i don't even know why the employees told us to take our hats off =_=

funny dragon headband spotted

we went to relax at the theatre showing sesame street. previously it was monster rock, but now it became sesame street. sad.

unfortunately it was really boring so we got out within 5mins of the show starting, after we've seen all the characters getting out.

but, we still took photos with the characters outside (cos of the rubbish bin greenish character)

spotted transformers cosplay!! they look so awesome!

transformers cafe?

went shopping at minion town and bought the couple minion ezlink card holder for $18 a pair (after masterard's 10% discount). nare got the minion popcorn holder, so cuteeee

we tried out 90% of the rides, including canopy flyer and treasure hunter, which is not part of the express pass, then it seems time to go.

view from the tram

last few minion shots by seongju since we are so yellow today~!

and the minion mooncake, woah.

it was about 7+ by the time we left, so we had some time for the big merlion view. took the tram to the next stop to view it. the iridescence at night is pretty nice~

wanted to eat at din tai fung but the queue was 30mins, and they say food will only be served in an hr after ordering which seems ridiculous so we went to imperial treasures instead. they loved the xiaolongbaos there so we ordered like 3 servings ($7 each for 5 pieces only!)

too busy eating and didn't take the rest of the pictures, which is the gongbao chicken, 3 colored egg and the xiaolongbaos....

took the tram back to vivo and had dessert at the chocolate bar. waffle was awesome, but 18.50 for this is just a tad too ex?

shopped a little at cold storage, then we went home for the day about 10+pm. tiring but fun day!