Rusutsu Resort

The main park on the island of Hokkaido is the Rusutsu Resort, primarily a ski resort but to attract a crowd in the Summer they'd built a fairly decent theme park with eight coasters. Getting to it isn't easy as there is no train station nearby and we had to go by bus, but more on that at the end.

The Kamori shuttle was the bus that took us there. You catch it from a small office a couple of blocks south of the station, and a five-minute walk from our hotel. I discovered that the Kamori company own a number of parks in Japan including the Rusutsu Resort and Teine Olympia, which we'd visited the day before. The coach today wasn't even half full and if you have difficulty finding the pick up point chances are you'll spot the coach.

Some shots taken en route. The fog looked a little off-putting. The final shot shows the Rusutsu Tower, part of the complex that also has the resort.

A while later we arrived at the resort and the weather could have been better. The rain was torrential and having not envisaged anything but sun had travelled up in a t-shirt. So I bought a Rusutsu hoodie, which is now my only piece of park clothing that I own (I'm not a merchandise fan)

There's a small indoor section in the park that contains a number of rides but the majority of us walked past them in favour of the main park. The Daniel Dixie band was a bit odd though in that it was playing an English soundtrack so I doubt the majority of visitors wouldn't understand it.

Some Halloween theming but not too much.

Errrrr......WTF!

Into the main park and we were dismayed to find most of the attractions had fallen victim to the weather and were closed. Two of the coasters were running however.

First up was Go Go Sneaker which sounded like someone provoking a ninja but was rather disappointingly a mouse coaster with trainer themed cars.

The second coaster was another mine train ride. We managed to break this one when the ride op pulled a bit too hard on the restraint and the whole came out in his hand. So we had to hop into the next car. The ride itself was not bad at all.

With not much else to do coaster-wise we headed up to mountain to the top of the park. Perhaps expecting some unfit visitors to the park they'd installed a travelator to help with the ascent.

The fog was rolling in.

The park has one of the first-gen drop towers. This one didn't open today however.

and due to the fog the wheel didn't open til it had receded.

At the top of the park, along with the wheel and drop tower the park has a duck racing game. Not sure I approved of it to be honest and I didn't see anyone else playing on it either.

The top of the park also has one of those crazy modern chair swings. It did open but we didn't ride it.

The land train has 3 stops, one just inside the entrance, one close to the SLC and the last one at the top of the mountain. It did come in useful when we found ourselves doing more than one lap of the park.

Looking back down the mountain at the shuttle loop and the mouse. At the bottom of the park we could hear the stand up coaster running so we headed back down towards that.

The stand up coaster wasn't the worst I'd ridden but it wasn't the best either. Fortunately it wasn't overly rough and I came off it with my bits intact, which lets be honest is always the concern on these sort of rides.

We discovered that the same group of engineers that had opened the stand up were making their way around the park opening each coaster in turn. Good news! As they headed over to the corkscrew coaster we ventured into the rest of the park to see what we could find.

This was the haunted walkthrough attraction which we weren't sure was even open as there was nobody running it. But we went in anyway and it was actually pretty decent and the only attraction where I did feel a little bit uncomfortable only because they had the sound of a crying child for most of it; nobody likes that.

Really impressed with this simple little illusion where the floor doesn't appear to make sense until you see it reflected in that cylinder.

The corkscrew was open and we headed over to that. Like the stand up it wasn't bad not was it a stand out ride. It just did things well, which I guess is the least you'd expect. This ride did feature the best platform music though with the young guy running the ride playing some great psy-trance, the first time I'd heard that on the whole trip.

Er, this just looks wrong and the ride-op was a little confused by us taking pics of it.

I'd seen the drumming game on the right before but this was the first time I'd seen the Japanese take on the rock band franchise with a Shamisen variation.

The SLC opened next, and earlier in the day we'd feared the worst for this ride when we heard some engineers smashing it with a hammer but I guess they'd sorted out whatever the issue was. The ride was OK but no different from any other SLCs. We'd noticed from the Stand-up coaster onwards that other guests would only ride once we'd been on them. I'm sure it was just coincidence but we found the idea of being a guinea pig quite amusing.

Next up was the large yellow coaster. Much like the majority of Meisho coasters there are no really steep hills which takes the majority of the enjoyment out of the ride. Something this size shouldn't rely on gentle gradients, but that's what they do.

Best news of the day was that the Shuttle Loop opened next. This ride has the most awful uptime reliance and I know a lot of people that have come here and found it not open. So we were quite chuffed to see it have its test runs and even more excited when we got to ride it first (although I think that's because the others were waiting for us to go first again).

The only coaster left to open then was the Ultra Twister, tucked away in the trees at the back of the park. This one is a little different to the others I'd done in that instead of featuring a return leg in backwards, this has a half-twist, half-loop dive element. It does mean that the ride also needs a turntable section so that the car can engage the lift hill facing the right way.

We got very lucky with this ride in that having ridden it, it closed immediately after for reasons I don't know. So it sucks that I didn't get any photos of it running but I can be upbeat that we got to ride it and complete the set.

Although the park was dead and everything was a walk-on we did find ourselves occupied for the 6 hours or so that we got to spend there. Not wanting to miss the coach back to Sapporo we made sure we were there in good time.

Rusutsu is a strange park. It could be really frustrating if its busy, but I don't know if it ever is. It's a long way to go for a gamble, which we're fortunate worked out in our favour.

The park is well served in the winter time with buses running from both Sapporo and New Chitose Airport. It's not so easy in the Summer. I eventually figured out that by contacting the park directly through their website they can reserve you seats on their coach and provide the details of where to get it, and the best news is that its free. To help with the pickup point the Google Street View is below (you'll need to face it south, for some reason it defaults to north).