Finally it’s happening.
I’m sitting here in front of Gate 9 at Gold Coast International killing some time while we wait for Jetstar to haul our exit-row asses into Narita Airport. Compared to our last trip, already it’s been an absolute journey just to get this far.
I’ve been absent on here for a little while for one simple reason – working with theme parks is a lot of hard work. Don’t get me wrong, it’s totally worth it and i’m loving the fact that i’ve been given the opportunity to do so – i’ve realised a longstanding ambition to capture what I feel is the essence of thrill rides and adventuring to these crazy places and everything that comes with it. What I didn’t realise was just how much paperwork and craziness there would be in the process of getting us into places where there’s a big language barrier involved. Suffice to say we simply couldn’t get into some places for the simple fact that we don’t speak fluent enough Japanese and the parks don’t have anyone who can speak English. After many, many letters, and translations and calls, the language barrier in some places was still just too much to hand on our own. Maybe in another trip it’s something we can remedy but for now our options are limited.
That’s not say we still won’t be hitting up a lot of crazy cool places. The home of Japan’s best thrill rides, Fuji-Q Highlands, is gearing up for us to capture some Ultra HD, 4K goodness later this week, as well as Nagashima Spa Land and Space World late next week. I’m also really looking forward to getting back to Universal Studios in Osaka to experience the new Harry Potter area (not that i’m a fan, but the stuff that’s there looks awesome) and also very keen to checkout Parque Espana / Shima Spain Village. We’ll be staying at the park there too – for what it’s worth, Parque Espana is many, many hours away in every direction from a capital city so we figured we’d just bunker down and experience all that area has to offer.
As for Space Cosmoworld and Sea Paradise in Yokohama, i’m still undecided as to whether or not we’ll end up going there. I’m not that big of a credit whore (for those of you who aren’t into the whole thrill ride culture, a credit whore is someone who will go on anything, from kiddie coasters to random little boring rides in the middle of nowhere all just to say they’ve been on it) instead I want to focus on the experience. I think Blue Fall could be awesome, but they’re one of the few parks we haven’t heard back from yet and i’m just not sure if it’s worth travelling that far for a drop ride that’s smaller than one we have here back at home (Giant Drop @ Dreamworld). In fact there’s a brewery just near there that we might do instead. I think that’s key too – we’ve set out a hardcore itinerary that outlines what we’re doing and where and when it is, but some of the best experiences also come from spontaneity and being able to discover freely.
We’ll be experiencing new places, revisiting old ones, travelling further then ever before and hopefully doing it all with an Asahi in one hand and a GoPro in the other.
Stay classy – let’s chat again after the flight.
