Fuji Q Highland Resort

It was the company quarterly outing the last weekend, and a trip to fuji-q highland park was planned. The fuji-q highland is an amusement park with all kinds of rides.
Details about Fujikyu Highland -attractions, map, etc...

http://www.fuji-q.com/fuji-q-en/main/e-main.htm

http://www.fujikyu.co.jp/fuji-q/

The trip was planned on a sunday, so we were supposed to wake up early and get to shinjuku bus station at 9. Thanks to some late night t.v and unexpected calls from India, we barely managed to make it before 9.00 a.m. The Bus ride was a pretty pleasant one, and we reached the place about 11.15 a.m. After goofing around a bit at the gates, doing the usual "I am a tourist, I click photographs everyhwere" routine, we got our day passes, which would enable us to all the rides. The first sight that caught my fancy on entering was the giant roller coaster. I am going to call myself moderately decent at clicking photographs (blame it on the kodak !!! Need to buy a nikon d50). So you can see the pics of the park on the link below.

http://images.google.co.in/images?q=fuji+q&hl=en&lr=&sourceid=tipimg

or type "fuji q images" on google to get search results.

On entering the park, we were left pretty much on our own. We got in line for the first ride on entering the park, which should have been skipped, as it was a go-kart which barely had speed on it. I mean even i could have outrun it when it was running at maximum speed. O.k, not for the whole stretch, but I am sure I would have beaten it at the 100 m dash. And we waited for almost 30 minutes to get into that. All this time, i could hear people scream in the roller coasters.

I am not a big roller coaster fan, never been. It does not excite me at all. Infact, back home you would have to pay me to get in a giant wheel. And they are almost miniature models of the ones back here. I do have a mild case of vertigo, although that has never been confirmed. I first realized that when I went up a water tank with someone during my college days. Heights don't freak me out, but I just kinda start feeling giddy up there. And here I was, in front of one of the largest roller coasters in the world, wondering I must be crazy to even think about. I was later informed by a friend that he has been to this place thrice, but never ridden the big roller coaster. But i say, what the heck, If i am gonna do it only once in a lifetime, let this be it.

So i grabbed a chili dog and stood in line. It was a pretty long queue, as it was a sunday and everybody wanted to ride this one. I was munching on my chili dog, in the hope that it would give me some kind of sickness so that I could chicken out. After a little more than an hour, We finally arrived at the starting option. I actually had the option of riding in the first seat. yeah, right, like I was gonna do that the very first time !!! There was a chicken way at the very top, which seemed very tempting, but I had my mind fixed that I was gonna do this one. I got in on the third seat from the front, which did not seem that scary. The ride started slowly, and i already was feeling the state of things to come. It ended in less than two minutes, much to my delight. I was screaming all the way down, up and whichever way it went. They also have a camera on one point , so you could have a photograph of you on the ride. I sure have a copy of that one.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on roaming around the resort. I sat in the huge giant wheel , but even that gave me the jitters. And then it was time to hit the ice rink !!!. After a few falls ( a couple of really bad ones) and almost 2 hours , i managed to make a small video clip of me Ice Skating. It looks pretty cool on the video, but balancing your whole body on those two blades was quite a task. But as famously quoted "Mein to India ke liye bana hi nahi"
Soon it was dark and time to leave. We got on the bus and i crashed after one beer. My feet were killing me and I had to go to work the next day.
Tip :- Do not try ice skating, if you have to go to work the next day.