The day after we went to Inuyama, we took a train south into Mie Ken (Mie Prefecture). It was very beautiful, and even if it was kind of
crazy to go two hours far out of our way just to visit an amusement park, even the train ride there was great! Again, Jane's words are in blue:
The next morning we left early for Parque España. The train went through more pretty scenery - more out in the country with hills and then getting to see the seashore again. We went through one little town where pearl diving is a big tourist draw. It looked like a neat place to visit. We got off at what our directions said was
the correct station, only to be told by an employee at the station that we should have gotten off at the next one. We decided to go outside to the bus station, where a taxi driver told us where to wait
for a bus. After a while a bus came by that was actually a shuttle bus for the hotel or park employees, but they asked us if we were customers and let us on. There were signs in Spanish on the bus. They let us off at the park and there was no charge for the bus! The park was SUPER COOL. We went on the cool rides we had read about, and also the silly ones that were still fun. The "brilliant sparkling luminous carnival" whatever it was called ride was indoors and you sat in a sideways car that went along and turned to face different scenes like
Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, but everything was all sparkling lights with a flower & flamenco theme. The big coaster was awesome, and I lost track of all the inversions. It was also very smooth. It was a suspended coaster like the Batman Ride, and unlike some coasters, it had a couple really cool parts right at the very end rather than being anticlimactic. It looked like you were going to hit your feet on the ground at one point, and had a little zero-G hill, which I thought was unusual for a suspended coaster.
The mine train coaster had nice scenery
and was a lot faster than I expected. It was fun like Big Thunder Mountain Railway but with the speed cranked up several notches. Interwoven through it was the other
Montserrat-themed ride, the log flume ride. It was fun & not too wet. We went to the far end of the park where you walk quite a ways downhill through realistic Spanish village streets - they even had a little chapel and a wine shop. We went on the surprising long and good lagoon ride, and then discovered the “disco escalator” that Rob had read about in a park review: I
wasn't looking forward to walking clear back up the long hill, but there is a very long indoor escalator that takes you back up to the main level of the park. There is fun, pseudo-Spanish music and loads of flashy lights, and if you look closely on the rock-looking walls they have a couple replicas of paintings - something Picasso-looking and a famous prehistoric cave drawing from Spain. The park also has a ride designed for looking at the view - something like Great America's giant donut tower, except the rotating big seating area is
lifted up on a giant arm instead of going up a tower. It had a VERY nice view of the coastline and bay and Spanish-looking buildings and Spanish-looking hotel next door, and in the distance Japanese buildings - that part was a little surreal. Oh yeah, they even had a replica of the statue in the Plaza de Colon just like the real one.
This amusement park absolutely astounded me! It's one of the most fun parks I have ever visited. It's like Disneyland in that everything is impeccably themed (and the theming is actually, I think, more authentic looking than what is usually at a Disney park). BUT . . . it also has a couple of amazing thrill rides, like what you would find at a park like Magic Mountain. So I think it's the best of both worlds. Whatever you go to an amusement park for, they have it! AND, with almost no lines at all-we rarely waited more than five minutes to board anything and only waited more than ten minutes once: at the crazy bullfighting ring indoor roller coaster. That was truly a strange ride. It's an indoor coaster, something like SpaceMountain, but of course has a Spanish theme. Towards the end of the ride you enter a dark area, and the cars STOP. Suddenly, the lights turn on, and it looks like you're in the middle of a bullfighting ring; a trumpet fanfare plays, the cars start heading for a wall, and it opens, sending you into the
final part of the ride. VERY creative (and strange!) The
super roller coaster that Jane mentioned was SO intense, that even I (crazy roller coaster maniac!) could only go on it four times. One other note about the theming-there's a huge building that houses the area where stage shows are performed. Rather than just have the top of a big, ugly building in the middle of the park, they took the time to decorate it to look like Roman ruins
! (You can see that in the long, panorama picture I posted.)
An absolutely fantastic park, but as I mentioned, not many people, so I'm afraid that if business doesn't increase, at some point it may close, which would be terrible for such an awesome park. So, anyone even slightly interested in amusement parks in Japan-please go and support their wonderful creation!
By the way, "Supein" means "Spain" in Japanese (if you didn't already know or figure that out), and "Mura" means village. The park is titled in Spanish and Japanese.
