Universal Studios Japan 4+

This app helped me through my two day stay at Universal in Japan. It was the best experience I ever had because of this app. It showed us all the rides so we didn’t have to search for them. Waiting on line was hard but I couldn’t blame the app. This made walking in the hot sun fun instead, because USJ made it possible for us to have extremely lots of fun. It really came up to my expectations.

Regular tickets, express passes, timed entry, “standby” situations, in-app physical ticket registration, physical entrance lottery registration booths in the park, etc. Terrible experience. You go to Osaka only to find a multi-tier, multi-step purchase process for entering the park and your area of interest. You may not be able to enter your area in the end because those tickets are “sold out”, meaning you’ll find yourself walking around unable to do much in the park after you’ve paid for entry. Looking to buy tickets in the app on the fly? Sorry, the app loads a heavy, extremely slow ticketing web site instead of giving you lightweight, low-bandwidth purchase options—thus defeating the purpose of having an app at all. In addition, the functionality in English is different from Japanese. For example you can buy an express pass separately in Japanese, while you can only buy them coupled with tickets in English. Makes the experience infuriating when trying to figure things out with a multilingual family. Wifi coverage in the park is spotty, not that wifi helps the ticketing site load anyway. In general the experience was terrible for my family of 7 in the summer heat.

I cannot finish my order. I have been trying for an hour to buy tickets and it keeps failing. It won’t accept any of my American credit cards (and this is freaking Universal Studios, an American company) nor Apple Pay. And every time I have to restart and fill up again the information all over again! It’s the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced when it comes to purchasing tickets online. It also doesn’t work on the website. Plus the express pass time slots are ridiculous! There’s barely enough time to enjoy the different areas because they schedule them so close.