Movie Animation Park Studios(MAPS) @ Ipoh, Perak: Live Your Dreams on the 1st Day (26th June 2017) of Soft-Opening

Last Monday was the country's festive public holiday, Hari Raya (Eid for the Muslims). 

So, da boyz suggested to visit this theme park a week earlier and to my surprised, he pre-purchased the tickets (costed RM131/person at promo price for this soft-opening week that comes with free 1 day visit/person for the next visit that has a due date by 30 Sept 2017) almost immediately! :D 

Then only he decided to inform me on that~ Yayy~ My mixed reactions were half excited, half disbelieved and feeling cool. LOL~

This is Asia's First Animation Theme Park which costed around RM520 million for the construction of the theme park in Ipoh (capital city of Perak) to attract tourists and locals to it. It was supposedly scheduled to open in 2016, however there was a delay and had to postpone to 26 June 2017. 

Anyway, here it is, the much anticipated theme park has opened its door. :)

All pictures are without filters. The weather was so fuming hot and sunny, so, there isn't a need for a filter ;)

On the day itself, we decided to drive down early in the morning at 7-ish from Penang to Ipoh! Luckily there wasn't any traffic :)
We reached there around 9am. The journey took us around 2 hours by driving with an average speed limit.

Here we are! We've reached MAPS @ Meru, Ipoh!
Upon exit the Ipoh toll, drive around the bends for 2min before reaching. It's really at nearby the highway.

The sign says it all! ;)

The queue before the counter opens.

Literally with the map about the MAPS and the Smurf entrance ticket!

After entering into the theme park, one needs to go through bag checking point. I usually just equiped myself with a pouch, my identity card, some money, a pack of tissue papers and my mobile phone. I'm there to enjoy and play not to go for some shopping! :P 

If you would to bring a big bag, it would cause you a lot of hassle as the staff may need to check your belongings thoroughly.

Next, exit checking point and you would walk past a bridge surrounded by an artificial lake before reaching the Animation Square Zone.

You can see the centre stage once you stepped into the Animation Square Zone.

Another view of the Animation Square Zone.
As it was a soft-opening, the operation of the theme park wasn't 100%.

First we tried this 4D Adventure Theatre. It's a motion theatre with D-box seatings whereby when the animation comes to live, your seat will move according to the animated movie, they featured #Boboiboy , a local kid's cartoon..
One needs to wear their 3D glasses too which will enhance 3D film effect while watching the screen with physical effects such as water splurting at your face when the spaceship immersed into the water, wind blowing and something sweeping or hitting your legs. :D

Do you have a need for stunt? Something interesting and extraordinary whereby legal mat rempits will be showing off their moves: cars screeching and motorcyclist doing stunts professionally at Stunt Legends, Live Action Zone.

Mini Coliseum Water Play at Fantasy Forest Zone.
Picture effect was perfecto with its sunny bright day without any filter! ;)

Overlooking the artificial man-made lake from the tree house at Fantasy Forest Zone.

A painting of the Pharoah at the Upside Down Pyramid(Fantasy Forest Zone).

Teamwork table board game whereby we need to team up with 4 people and then try to roll the metal ball from the starting point into the centre hole with teamwork along the maze @ Upside Down Pyramid.

A kiddy and adult ride. Zugo's Crystal Quest @ Fantasy Forest Zone.
We even spotted a senior citizen lady and uncle sitting on this roller coaster. 

Variety of animals carousel @ Fantasy Carousel, Fantasy Forest Zone.

Red Baron @ Fantasy Forest Zone.
Looks like a kiddy plane ride but it was pretty fun as you get to choose when to fly higher, above the ground or lower by pressing the yellow button. You could get to honk like a kid too. ;)

The Frog Prince & I :)

Had our late lunch at Coral Kingdom.

Late lunch: Blueberry Velvet.
Remember to request for discount if you happened to go during this time. The guy forgotten to give us a 20% discount.

Sea-like decorations on the ceiling.

A huge Starship! It's actually a restaurant but yet to open.

It a sunny day! #nofilter
This Asteroid Attack is a thrilling ride where it could turn 360 degrees. We were supposed to try it out before we were stopped by the staff as he was concerned on our spectacles and belongings. For safety reason, you're not supposed to bring them along. Luckily he stopped us. Otherwise, we would have peed in our pants during the turning. LOL~

So real yet so unreal with the hugeeee Starship! #nofilter

Hyperspin! My kinda relaxing swinging coaster. #nofilter

Smurf Theatre.
A very much kiddy theatre for interacting with the kids. Apart than that, i love singing the Smurf song, "La la ....la la la la...la la la la la...la la..la la la la...la la la...la la.".

The Adventurous Bumper Blast @ Blast Zone. I love this although had to queue for like 1 hour.  The legal hit & run! hahaha~ The only time you could hit and then run without being committed of any offences.:P
They closed a few rides especially the Wormholes and Dream Zone. Thus, the crowd mainly will focus at certain rides at certain zones.

Our teabreak before leaving the place. With burning Hotdog and Coke Zero @ Pit Stop Cafe.
Inside here, the lady told us that we got to enjoy a 20% off because of our day pass ticket.

Before driving back at 8pm, we went to have our dinner, steamed chicken rice, beansprouts and fishballs and porkballs soup at Lou Wong, Ipoh! It is about equivalent with HotBowl's steamed chicken rice too, located in Penang. I approve of this. ;)

I journey back took additional 1hr 30min on top of our 2 hours drive. >.<

Live your dreams with Asia's 1st Animation Theme Park~

Verdict: It was a bright, sunny hot day at the first day of the soft-opening! Wish that there was a cold windy weather just like in Hong Kong and Britain during summer. hehe~ 

I would say that it was better than the Lost World of Tambun, Perak. Quite comparable to other international themeparks (of course, it is franchised from international la) but on a smaller scale. However, I still do prefer the large Alton Towers in Britain and Disneyland Hong Kong. However, maybe after all of the zones and rides have been fully operational, then we could review on it again. 

We didn't expect to have a delay at the ticketing counter when we presented our print out receipt as we pre-purchased out tickets from the online website. Anyway, the staffs seemed clueless to whether to let us pass the counter and they did discuss among themselves what to do next. Probably, as the day goes by, after this first few days incidences, they did realise and improve on this. Expect some technical errors happening to the rides and my Dream Zone that has more interesting thang inside was close on the first day (Casperrrr....where are you friendly ghost) T.T

Anyway, I felt awesome to be one of the first few thousands to get to enjoy the soft-opening of this theme park although not all zones are fully operational! 

I hope by the time when I'm back again, all other rides and zone that weren't operational have begun operating~

All in all, this theme park creates jobs opportunity for the locals, increases tourists visit to Perak state and also allows families and friends to live up to their dreams of having fun in here! Killing all 3 birds with 1 stone. ;D

How to get here:

MAPS 

@ Persiaran Meru Raya 3,

Bandar Meru Raya 3,

30020 Ipoh, Perak,

Malaysia.

Opening hours:

10:00 - 18:00 (Mondays to Fridays)

10:00 - 22:00 (Saturdays, Sundays, Public Holidays & School Holidays)

Day 5 (Last Day): Central Japan (Tokyo & Sayonara Japan)

Good morning, Azagawa, overlooking beautiful Lake Kawaguchi during Autumn season!

The morning view of the lake, drizzled thereafter~

More beautiful pictures of the lake.

1. As usual, we woke up early to get ready for our breakfast at the ground floor of the hotel. We tidied up all our things and took it down along with us and spent most of our time having breakfast at the cafe.

Selfie with the lake before departing.

2. We departed to Tokyo with the first plan of visiting the Asakusa Kannon Temple (Sensō-ji), Tokyo's oldest temple! This is an ancient Buddhist temple. This temple worship to Goddess of Mercy (similar to the Chinese Guan Yin Ma). The main entrance to the temple lies a huge lantern which is known as the Thundergate or Kaminarimon.
In order to get to the temple, our bus pastby the bridge (Yi Tian Chuan) and one could see the Asahi beer building with the huge gold horizontal-like Olympic gold flame symbol and Skytree Observation tower from here. We were told that when it was being built in the earlier days, the structure was in a vertical position. However, the structure fell down after that and thus the Japanese just secured the position of the horizontal-like structure which made it looked very unique to them.
Indeed~ It is like the saying goes, make lemonade out of lemon! Ain't it interesting and looks creative too? ;)

Hello Tokyo!

A very crowded city!

Passing by one of the bridge to get to the other side.

The Asahi beer building and sculpture.

When we've arrived at the temple, we were given around 45 min to roam around or do some prayers at the temple itself before gather at the entrance. We only prayed and then we thought we just gathered at around the entrance to wait for them. However....we didn't think that we would receive a misinformation and misinterpretation and then we ended up waiting at the wrong mini entrance and wasted our precious 30 min. Had to contact the tour guide by sms-es and phone calls. Worse, the temple was super crowded with tourists and worshipers.

Communication shows us that it is key to everything! Next time, we should all confirm again and again in whatever we are doing if we found ourselves not clear about anything in life, be it at work, home or travel! This kinda thing happens at work as always~ I fancy my colleagues loved to nod everytime the bosses gave instructions to them and then by the end of the day, they'll be asking around what to do.

Asakusa (Sensō-ji) Temple

Beer storage and cup?? No idea of it.

With the weeping willow tree

 Asakusa (Sensō-ji) temple from another angle.

Landscape around the temple.

Nice landscape and mutated bluish Koi fishes~

Overlooking the Skytree Observation Tower in Tokyo!

Prayers for success, health, wealth and happiness in life :*
(hope that we were not wrong though.We followed exactly what the Jap tour guide's instruction):
1. Cleanse each of the hand and rinse the mouth by following the instructions which are hung on the beam,

2. Get nearby to the incense and try to sweep it over to your body.

3. Get to the altar and pray.

The tour guide bought us this polo bun (poloupao) from Asakusa area to try! So kind of her!
Similar to the Hong Kong polo bun style! Yummy indeed! I can never forget the yummy taste of the bun in which I will never find this in Malaysia. Almost similar to Roti boy, but more special and without the coffee flavour~ I dislike coffee, but not to the extend of hate la~

This paper packaging of polo bun.

The look of the yum yum polo bun.

Yum 
3. Then, we had our Japanese bento set lunch at one of the restaurants, located just few shops next to the temple's thundergate.

I was more enthused in the sashimi. Too tired from searching around for the group.

On our way walking back to the meeting point of our express bus.

It rained heavily suddenly and we had to stand nearby a public hall. Saw this umbrella holding area with keys to lock. OMGGG, precious umbrellas! LOL~

4. Next, we departed to Ginza Street, a Western-style shopping street!
On our way there, the bus just drove pastby the Japan King's palace. We only saw the huge palace garden. We were given around 1 1/2 hour to shop around the shopping street. Woahhhhh, such a huge 12 storeys high Japanese Uniqlo clothes building I've seen!!! We were told to pronounce it as "uniq-ku-lo" and not "uniq-glo" although it is spelled as Uniqlo itself. Brand is originated from the Japanese, thus, respect that kind of pronunciation.

Actually, we were told to only shop around the Uniqlo building. We obeyed stupidly but then at the end of the day, we found that all our other travel mates roamed around at the whole street and into many other shops. Most of them were just crazy for this Japanese branded bags known as Anello. The tour guide teased us by saying that only Malaysians are into this brand, and thus this brand is not crazy at all by the Japanese cause she had asked us if we have seen any Japanese using such brand at all so far in our trip. LMAO~ The design looks quite unique as if it looked like a hybrid of an auntie styled handbag that is extended into a backpack.

The palace garden.

The 12 storey high clothes building, Uniqlo!

5. After Ginza street, we visited this huge Aqua City in Odaiba (also known as the Olympic city). The Venus Fort Shopping Mall is located inside this huge building. There is also a themepark which is adjacent to the mall, Toyota showroom display. We were given around 2 hour to roam around free and easy.

We were brought to this cheap and affordable 100Yen shop :D

Visited the pet shop too. Cute Shiba Inu pooches!

Mini poodle! Damn, the price is super expensive. Guess how much? equivalent to buying a car (~RM30,000) here. OMGGG!

Pugs pooches!

There is a vintage car showroom too. Most of it are Japanese made cars like Honda, Toyota, Nissan..

I love this vintage style sports car and it's in white colour.

A unique and stylish vintage and at the same time cute lil' red 3-wheel cabin German scooter from year 1953 by Messerschmitt.

This sporty vintage car, reminded me of a cartoon back in the days (forgot about the name though).

Green vintage car.

Greek like fountain deco inside the mall.

6. Before we departed to Narita Airport (also known as the Tokyo's International Airport), we stopped by to have our dinner at the Chinese cuisine restaurant, Long Yuen- Dragon Garden Restaurant in Tokyo.
Damnnn, it was sooooooooo yummy to the tummy for all of us! We started with this lobster abalone spaghetti with thousand island kind of sauce flavour. Such a sumptuous dinner indeed! We finished all of our 8-course dinner in within 30 min. *jeng jeng jeng jeng. LMAO~
I guessed that we were quite sick with all those day in day out Japanese food at that moment. haha~

Part of our Chinese course cuisine. e.g. spaghetti abalone crab, tofu stew, sweet and sour deep fried prawns, chicken, steamed fish, chicken soup and etc.

This is the restaurant we went to.

Overlooking the moon in Japan, which was round and big! Our last night in Japan~

7. We've reached Narita Airport, Tokyo! Awaiting for our midnight flight to fly back home~ Therefore, we had a lot of time checking out their duty free shops.
We got ourselves matcha green tea Royce Nama chocolate and matcha green tea drinks (from the vending machine-trying to finish off our loose coins). The price for the chocolate was so much cheaper than the same chocolate we could buy from at our local mall after imported it to our country.
Therefore, a necessity to try since it was cheap, right?;)
Anyway, we had the Royce Nama chocolate immediately after purchase (it was kept in the freezer but I don't think it could last for 6 hours throughout our journey although it was possible to buy dry ice) from the duty free shop and so to keep them fresh, they were all melted in our mouth yummily~ ;)

We also bought ourselves Tokyo Banana cakes to try. Heard that it is only sold at the airport though. Strange~
We bought other snacks too, such as green tea mochis.

The next time, I've been wanting to try and miss out in buying was the Sake flavour Kit Kat (saw it at outside the airport shop but not inside the duty free shop, after security checkpoint though). T.T
We initially arrived in Japan at Haneda Airport (another site of Tokyo) but we were departing now in Japan from the Narita Airport.

Japan is so fast to host the Olympics Tokyo 2020. Therefore, one could see the poster being placed in 2016 Autumn.
Damn efficient :)

Banner by the Haneda Tokyo Japan.

Green tea matcha drinks and Royca Nama Choco.

Time to bid farewell (sayonara), Japan! Lucky for us, we escaped the typhoon at around that time which hit Taiwan and Japan.
Thank youuuu, Japan, you've treated us very kindly~

My loot from Japan! :D

My self- declared souvenirs from the hotel(S). LOL~ *green teas and coffee; made in Japan)

Tokyo Banana. at ~RM40 after conversion for 8 packets.
One must try this! It has a real banana filling inside the cook. Cakes that weren't cloying though.

So, see ya again next time!