Hi all. I just left Japan after 11 days of Tokyo, Takayama and Osaka. I have got a lot of inspiration from this sub tysm 🙂
I went to USJ on Thursday May 30 with my son 9 yo and my parents 73 yo. We had a great time!
Planning/Passes – we got both the day pass for the park and the express pass. These were bought separately so I had to make sure the express pass were available before buying the day pass. I chose 4 rides express pass with timed entry for SNW and Harry Potter.
1st & 2nd were minion mayhem and jaws. Both were non specific time slot which means you can enter express lane anytime you want
3rd was Mario ride/koopa challenge (specific time slot of 30 mins) this time slot is after the time entry specified for nintendo world entry
4th was harry potter forbidden journey (specific time slot for 30 mins after the entry time for harry potter area.
I bought the express pass around 1 month-ish and many days were starting to be full. I had to choose btw express 4 on the Thursday or express 7 but going on Friday, I didn’t want to deal with Friday crowd so I picked Thursday.
Stay – I chose to stay near the park (Singulari hotel – next to JR) there are few others even closer but I found this one super convenient, next to train station, 5-7 mins walk to usj entrance.
USJ App – great to download to look at the waiting time and where things are (attractions, restaurants, toilets!) If you want additional time entry on top of you express pass, you can use the app to book it
Morning – I am not an early person, we actually decide to have breakfast and leave hotel at 8 am to enter the park even though many post seem to go much earlier but I was afraid that my kid would get too tired by 6 pm when we have harry potter time entry. There were a lot of people at the entrance and we got waved toward the right side where the queue were shorter. Within 10 mins we entered the park.
By 10:00 we did 3 attractions(my hero 4D, freeze ray sliders, minion mayhem – not using express pass) all had wait time less than 25 mins, first 2 we waited 5 mins.
I glanced at the nintendo world time entry at 10:00 and there were slots available for 1:00pm which is close to my express pass so I didn’t reserve additional slot. After this we had a short break at the happiness cafe, food was so so, there was little wait and table were empty at 10:40 but started to fill up around 11:00 however when we walked around the park around 12:00 pm we didn’t really see restaurants so packed, many places had spaces to sit.
At 11:30 we queue for 30 mins the conan detective show which runs every 30 mins. We could have arrive 15 mins later and still get in though.
Afternoon – At 1:10 pm we went to SNW per our time slot, it was packed!!! We got the power up wristband at the first stall but there are few stalls after that. The queue was 5 mins, this feels cash-grab but it is needed if you want to do more things in the SNW and the band look really cute. We went straight to the Mario ride with the express pass. After we come out we waited for the yoshi ride which showed 55 mins wait however I timed the wait and it was more of 30 mins but the ride was pretty kiddy. We stayed for 2 hours in SNW. By this time, I checked the roller coasters and they were 110 mins wait
Afterwards we did Jaws and back to minion mayhem using the express pass – had some snacks – queue were ok around 3-4 pm but started to build up at snack stalls
At 5:30 pm we went to harry potter area – there was no time entry checks but only at the ride (forbidden journey ride). The staff tell us to come back at our ride slot (6:10 pm) so we had early dinner at 3 broomsticks, 5 mins queue
At 6:10 pm we did harry potter ride and it was probably the best one we has so far
Net as we did not do the popular roller coasters (hollywood back drop/kimetsu/flying dinosaurs most of which having 100 mins wait time after 10-11:00 am) we made total of 9 rides with 4 on express pass. I think being Thursday non school holiday/no long holiday helped a bunch though the park was by no means quiet! We were really lucky that it didn’t rain and weather was Tshirt weather and not humid.
My son loved the experience and I am glad we made it to usj. I have been to uss in orlando (10+ yrs ago) and in singapore and I still enjoy usj very much. For my son this was his favorite spot for japan.
by ConsiderationEven802