Universal studio day

This morning we woke up happy and with another magnificent view out of our rooms.  We over look a harbour and at night it looks very glamorous with all the lights and reflections on the water.  Breakfast was great - again a wide variety of foods to choose from; salads, fruits, pasta, pickles, sausages, eggs, and even fries and fizzy drinks!

At 10 o'clock we boarded the ferry that was to take us across the harbour to universal studios.  The trip only took about ten minutes and we all sat at the top enjoying the view.

Aaron, Matt and Eli chillin' on the boat.

Universal studio was alive and humming by the time we got there and after a not so long wait to get the tickets we headed in and started to absorb all the sights, sounds and smells of this amazing place.

Its very easy to make new friends at universal studios.

Ms Spencer with her new beau, Shriek.

Unsure of where to go first we just wandered around admiring all the styles of buildings and themes from movies.  We soon realised that although we had all day here a lot of it would be standing in huge queues up to 2 hours long if we wanted to go on any of the rides.

Watching some action at water world.

After wandering around a bit we decided to take the plunge and join the shortest queue we could find. We ended up watching a show and brief demonstration about how they did all the fire stints from the movie Backdraft.  It probably was really interesting having all the special effects explained but as none of us understood Japanese we relied upon our other senses to pick up what was being communicated.  The last part of the demonstration was a little scary as you felt as if you were inside a burning building, so quite relieved we scuttled out and headed into the fresh air and open space when it finished.

 Deciding to take more care in what we went into, we decided to split up as not everyone wanted to go on the next nominated ride which was Jaws.  Fires and a very big shark one after the other was full on but not to be perturbed everyone decided to take on the hour and something wait for the Jurassic Park ride.  While the wait was long the ride was worth it and enjoyed by all - not that you could tell by our faces.

Rose, Aaron and Olivia feeling very relaxed about the ride.

Has anyone seen Eli or Richard?

 Because of the long wait for rides we spent a lot of time just looking around, did a bit of shopping, ate some food and watched in amazement at all the people who had dressed up in costumes as part of their visit to the studio. You could even get your face painted. Many people that we saw chose zombies and they looked really gruesome.

Olivia, Aaron and Rose managed to get to the new Harry Potter area.  This had only opened last month and was very popular and very busy.  You had to get a special ticket that would only let you in at a certain time to try and stop it becoming overcrowded, but it was still very crowded.

Eventually our time had to end and our weary feet took us back to the boat were we gladly sat back and watched the night of Osaka pass us by.

A cruise ship - one that visits Dunedin had made itself at home by our port hotel.

We did a quick dump of our goodies at the hotel then headed into the food hall where we could choose what ever we wanted for tea.  Olivia and Ms Spencer opted for the last meal in Japan to be Japanese by going to a sushi bar, others choose subway which was finished off with ice cream for all!

We shall sleep well tonight and tomorrow we shall partake in the traditional Japanese sport of Sumo wrestling with our suitcases being the opposition as we try to stuff everything in.

This shall be our last blog for our Japan part of the trip as it will take us 2 days to get home.  Tomorrow we have to catch 2 trains just to get to the bullet train station, catch the bullet train to Tokyo and then another train to get us from Tokyo to Narita airport.  We have some hours to spend in Auckland as we wait for our Dunedin flight so will go to Butterfly Creek to see nature before returning to our lovely families who have missed us heaps (as we have missed them.) 

Thank you for following our blog and we hope you enjoyed it.   We all thank our parents and the school for allowing us to go on this amazing experience.