Sounds awful, and not worth the trip. Tbh I mostly wanted to go for the haunted house and maze there.
Currently on a bullet train to hiroshima. Tokyo tomorrow
I've been to both Universal and Nagashima this week so some thoughts below.
Universal
The park opened at 9.30 and we arrived at 8.30 and the queue to enter the park was already massive. By the time the gates opened it was insane. We had a pass called 'universal cool japan' which provided timed access to some of the popular attractions as well as entry to the Biohazard escape room.
Our first attraction was the escape room and the entry was timed for 9.30-9.45 so we went straight there and queued up. When in the first room we were assembled into groups of 4 made up of people who could speak the same language. The actual event didn't start until 10.15 but when it did it was fantastic. The placed was filled with actors playing the part of zombies, umbrella corp staff and soldiers.
The basic premise was some terrorists (I think) broke into umbrella Corp and stole and released a virus which turned people into zombies. The players are all infected and have to find the three pieces of information to assemble the vaccine and escape. All the puzzles are answered on an ipad in multiple languages, some were quite easy but there were a couple of really tricky ones. The event takes place on 4 floors so the space is quite large. The whole thing was really well themed and actors playing zombies were everywhere and would jump out at the players randomly, there were a lot of screaming girls. One of the guys on our team was convinced that the first zombie we saw was a model and went right up to it, it then jumped off the floor screaming. I've never seen anyone run that fast in my life.
You have about 45 minutes to solve the puzzles and escape, my team got to the last puzzle but couldn't get out the final door because we ran out of time. Of the 80 or so people in the event only 8 escaped (2 teams). They then assembled everyone in a final room before the last battle was played out (with explosions) before we saw a screen saying 'you are dead'. All in all this is probably the best thing I have done at any theme park.
The ticket also entitled us to two 4d shows (attack on titan and evangelion). These took place in the same theatre and both did the usual blowing air and spraying water. They were both OK but since this was completely in Japanese you'd be lost if you didn't understand the language or hadn't seen the shows.
Between 2 of the timed events we managed to sneak a ride on the Hollywood Dream coaster. The main queue was 120mins long but the single rider queue was 30. This is the trick to doing anything at the park although how quickly the single rider queue moves seems to depend a lot on the attendant at the top, it appeared to me as though they tried to slow it down a bit. This coaster allows you to select from one of five songs to listen to whilst on the ride. Most of the people I could see selected One Direction (described as modern rock???). This was quite fun as you had people clapping and singing all the way round the track.
We had timed entry to an XR ride based on Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (jpop singer). This had a huge queue so I was glad to be able to skip the line here. It's a roller coaster which you ride whilst wearing a Samsung gear vr which puts you in a cartoonish world which is timed to the coaster. I quite enjoyed the ride but found the headgear heavy and it put a strain on my neck whilst going over the bumps and drops. I also found the resolution of the display to be a little low for me. My girlfriend enjoyed the ride but got motion sickness afterwards.
The final timed entries were to the Harry Potter world and the 4d fantastic journey ride. The Harry Potter world is a themed area of the park that gets so popular that they have had to put a queue line to get in (60 minutes on some days). The level of detail here is really high and the whole area looks fantastic. There are shops that you would recognise from the film and books although we didn't go in because they had 20 minute queues.
The Harry Potter ride was probably one of the highest quality ride themings I have seen. You sit in a car which is on an articulated arm which runs on a track. You get moved through different scenes from the films which are in 4k and 3d (using glasses) as well as recreations of the castle and forests. This made both my girlfriend and myself (as well as about half the people coming off the ride) motion sick.
The final ride of the day was the flying dinosaur, a flying type ride with a huge queue (single rider to the rescue). My girlfriend loved this but I'm not a fan of coasters where they move you into a flying position, they tend to hurt my neck.
This was a pretty expensive park to visit, entry was about £45pp and the special passes probably another £30pp. The food and drink was expensive and there was a boat load of cool stuff to buy in the shops (again very expensive for what it was).
