As promised in our other article, here is our second article about Super Nintendo World. Before we ever set foot into Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan, our minds raced with excitement. Sort of like Donkey Kong racing in Mario Kart. It would be a very long article on what Nintendo has played in our lives.
While we await the opening of our own Nintendo World in Orlando at Universal Epic Universe, this was our first visit to a Nintendo-themed area, and oh boy, what an experience it was! We purchased express passes to enter the location which you can read about in our first article on Universal Studios Japan. We want this article to be Super Nintendo World centric.
Before entering the area at your assigned time, we suggest picking up a “Power Up Band.” They have a kiosk outside the land where you can purchase this. Now, we bought these in Japan with the hopes they work here in the US, which we won’t know until 2025! Armed with our power-up band, we entered the green pipe to be transported to Super Nintendo World!
Entering Super Nintendo World
Strolling through Super Nintendo World, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the choices vying for your attention, leaving you to ponder your first move. Crucial to this experience is having the universal app at your fingertips. As if living inside a video game, your interactive power-up band collects points as you journey through the land – points that can unlock items or grant you exclusive access to secret areas waiting to be discovered.
Walking around this land is like any Mario game you have ever played. Universal Creative really hit this feeling out of the park. From hitting “?” mark blocks multiple times with the coin sound to sequenced puzzles for you to figure out. I found myself quickly trying to complete the challenge in the app to hit all “?” mark blocks in the area. Man I can still feel the sting of my fist from doing that!
Part of our express pass included entrance onto Mario Kart Koopa’s Challenge. This ride is the main ride in the area for now and is quite the experience. You put on a helmet and glasses that act more like a VR experience than a 3D experience and put you right on the Mario Kart course. You aim at opponents on the course and you take them out just like in Mario Kart! The technology for this ride is superb! If you have been playing Mario Kart since the 90s you will feel like you are actually racing here with them and taking out the baddies!
After Koopa’s challenge, we were hungry and decided to wait in line for the sit-in restaurant, Kinopio’s Cafe. Looking at the menu it is so hard to choose just a couple of things to try, but at least they did us a favor and sold out of the Princess Peach cake before we got there to relieve of us the pressure to order a whole cake and eat it! All of the food was great and of course cute in presentation!
After we ate, it started to sprinkle a bit, which made the Yoshi’s Adventure ride line shrink to a walk-on. While this ride doesn’t get enough love, we do feel that if we waited more than 30 minutes for this we would have been disappointed. You get inside a Yoshi themed car which is awesome and then you slowly make your way through more cute scenes picking up points looking for 3 Yoshi’s eggs. One thing of note is Super Nintendo World in Hollywood does not have this ride, however Universal Epic will feature this ride and also the new Donkey Kong Coaster!
Conclusion on Super Nintendo World
As we near the end of our night, we will focus on completing some of the tasks in our universal app that require you to do things around the land with your power-up band. As we started completing tasks, we opened up a few areas in the land where we previously needed a certain number of points. Just like a video game! One of them is even the equivalent of a boss fight; how amazing is that!
Our tips for enjoying Super Nintendo World are to buy an express pass to ensure entrance into the area, buy the power-up band, download the app, and link the power-up band so that you can get fully immersed in Super Nintendo World.
There you have it. Our experience in Super Nintendo World was nothing short of amazing. Being avid Nintendo fans, this area really tugged at our nostalgia strings. As you can see below I didn’t want to leave when the park closed! Have you been to Super Nintendo World yet at any of the Universals? Are you waiting for Epic to open? Remember to check out our ultimate Japan planning guide and YouTube channel for all things Japan and more!
What fun. Loved it.❤️❤️👍