A Space Fantasy at Universal Studios Japan

Universal Studios Japan has opened their new Space Fantasy The Ride indoor roller coaster, and some videos of the ride have appears on YouTube. Aside from a rather complicated story line and the fact that it's a Mack ride with spinning cars, we didn't know all that much about the new coaster until now.

Well, I decided to take some screen shots of the videos and share what seems to be going on in them, even though I'm sure I'll be wrong. What's the harm!

You enter the queue and are briefed on what's going on by this animatronic computer arm thing, G-Bot. The animatronic itself is nicely done, and very fluid.

You then enter a room with a huge crystal thing hanging down in the center, and here the Princess of the Sun, Kosumia, explains that the sun is losing power and human energy can be used to restore it.

There's these cute little flame guys that are projected on the walls of that room, which seem to interact with the guests. I'm not sure who exactly they are but they look fun!

Finally guests walk through several hallways that have holes that look out into deep space, and also some that show videos of how to sit on the ride vehicles. The weird flame guys help out in showing how this is done. Here's video of that with English subtitles. It's all pretty cute.

The station itself has conveyor loading, meaning that the cars don't fully stop while passengers unload and load. This helps greatly with capacity, I'm sure.

The actual rides is, of course, rather dark but you can see that here are plenty of cool looking star fields and other outer space encounters along the way. The lighting on the attraction appears top notch. The on board music works really well also, and is a nice little score that fits great with the ride.

Near the end of the ride, which I'm assuming is when guests encounter the sun to provide it with power, there is a tunnel of sorts filled with lights that looks incredible. The shot above shows a guest inside it, looking rather pleased at the light show all around them.

And then as quickly as it all started, it's over and you return to the station.

It's interesting that Universal created another ride not tied to any preexisting movie theme. While I somewhat doubt it, I wonder if they will ever clone the ride at other parks?

Here is a link to the video that is of the queue, and here is the one of the on ride.