UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN
Osaka, Japan
Comcast NBCUniversal
---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----
(5/11/2025) New Attraction Details Announced for Universal Cool Japan 2025
(5/1/2025) Universal Studios Japan Wins The Industry's Most Prestigious Award
(4/25/2025) Universal Studios Japan to Open New Villain-Con Minion Blast Attraction This Summer!
(3/28/2025) Universal Studios Japan To Open SPYxFAMILY XR Coaster Ride
(1/5/2025) Universal Studios Japan Sets Reopening Date for Jurassic Park: The Ride
Ride Rehabs - These dates are not guaranteed to be 100% accurate as refurbishments are subject to change.
Space Fantasy - The Ride - June 2 through TBD
JAWS - June 5 through June 25
Jurassic Park: The Ride - June 28 through July 18
 Park News - (5/1/2025) Congratulations to Universal Studios Japan. The theme park has officially been awarded one of the amusement industries highest awards as the recipient of the 2025 Applause Award. The announcement came earlier today during an IAAPA event being held in Germany.
For for those not aware of the history of the Applause Award, it was created and given out by Liseberg, a small theme park in Sweden, with the intention of only awarding a single park every two years, following a lengthy review and a small group of nominations the year prior. The award itself, a statue of two clapping hands, is widely considered to be the Academy Award for the theme park industry.
The first Applause Award was given in 1980 to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, and to date the award to Universal Studios Japan only marks the 21st Applause Award ever given, with the last award given to Tokyo DisneySea in 2022. Universal Studios Japan was selected as a semi-finalist for the 2018 award, along with PortAventura, but that year’s award went to Xcaret Park in Mexico. Follow this link to see the list of previous Applause Award winners and finalists.
(1/5/2025) Universal Studios Japan has announced on Twitter than the park’s Jurassic Park: The Ride will finally reopen to guests on January 8th, 2025. The water attraction has been closed since September 2023 for an extensive refurbishment. A video preview of the ride can be seen below in the social media post.
While many had hoped that the Japanese version of the attraction might be undergoing a similar transformation to what we say take place in the Hollywood park, where it reopened as a “Jurassic World” themed attraction, the Japanese version will maintain it’s classic Jurassic Park name and theming.
Fans of the park will be glad to see this large attraction finally reopen, as too many other park attractions have been retired over the past few years, so this should help spread the crowds out a bit more.
(12/21/2024) As with most major attraction in Japan, space is always at a premium, so typically when they want to build new attractions, old ones must close to make way. Universal Studios Japan is no stranger to this concept, as the park was built very close to the waters of Osaka Bay and is surrounded by either industrial buildings or hotels on virtually every side, making expansion outside the main property line nearly impossible.
Parking for the theme park appears to be limited to a single large parking structure located near the back side of the park (behind the Waterworld and MarioKart attractions) which gives guests who drive a rather long walk to get around to the park entrance.
What is interesting is that Universal Parks News Today reports that the President of Universal Studios Japan mentioned in an interview that the park is possibly exploring the use of the parking lots to become future expansion space for the theme park “within the next decade”. In order to do so, they would obviously need to source a new parking lot location, but if they are willing to even bring this up right now, I’m guessing they may already have some sort of plan in mind.
Universal Cool Japan 2025 - (5/11/2025) Details about a new attraction coming to Universal Cool Japan 2025 from July 1 to January 4, 2026 have emerged. It is called “The Apothecary Diaries Mystery Walk - Investigate the Mystery Drug” and is sounds sort of like an interactive scavenger hunt style experience. Guests will pick up an ‘investigation book” and look for clues and hidden messages around the park. If you find the right clues, you’ll get to see a scene play out between the characters, Maomao and Jinshi.
Other attraction already announced on the slate this year for Universal Cool Japan 2025 include:
Detective Conan: The World (NOW through June 30, 2025)
Peril at the Masquerade (NOW through June 30, 2025)
And SPYxFAMILY XR Ride (July 1 through Jan 4, 2026)
(3/28/2025) Universal Studios Japan has confirmed that an XR Coaster attraction is on the way themed to the anime series, SPYxFAMILY. Look for the new experience to open on July 1st, 2025. I can only assume this will replace Space Fantasy - The Ride as a limited time run.
2025 - Villain-Con Minion Blast - (4/25/2025) Universal Studios Japan has confirmed that a new attraction will be opening this summer as an expansion to the park’s popular Minion Park. It turns out that the park has secretly been busy building their own version of Villain-Con Minion Blast. This is expected to be a copy of the same attraction that was built in Orlando, that allows players to arm themselves with a crazy power blaster and test out the different powers and power-ups on an assortment of target ranges, while standing on a moving-walkway that will take you through the attraction’s many rooms. In short, the experience is very much like walking into a video game, which will probably prove to be very popular in Japan. The addition, which will also feature some new stores and snack-stands, will expand the overall size of the Minion Park area by 40%.
Construction Walls featuring the Villain-Con logo are said to already be in place around the former “Ghirardelli” building that lies on the right side entrance to Minion Park. You can already see the work walls up around the building in an aerial image from Google Maps.
2025/2026 - Snoopy Sound Stage Update - (11/11/2023) According to an update Universal Studios Japan is expected to begin removing the park’s indoor kiddie coaster, Snoopy’s Great Race. The small coaster closed down with the rest of the park in 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, but unlike the rest of the park, Snoopy’s Great Race never reopened and was removed from the website long ago.
Digging a little deeper Universal Studios Japan website has confirmed that they will be temporarily closing the entire Snoopy’s Sound Stage Adventure building on Nov. 13th to begin a “Major Renovation” of the attraction. With the removal of the coaster inside, this will open up a large amount of space to allow for future new attraction development.
???? - Pokemon or Detective Pikachu Dark Ride - Rumor - (1/17/2024) It’s hard to believe it, but in just a few short days the Adventures of Spider-Man will close forever at Universal Studios Japan. While the park has yet to announce what will replace it, the adventures of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man will all come to a sudden end on Monday, January 22, 2024.
(5/17/2023) Universal Studios Japan has confirmed that The Adventures of Spider-Man ride will close forever at the end of January 22, 2024. As the attraction first opened in January 2004, it sounds like Universal is running it though to the very end of their current IP licensing agreement. Now before you argue and say that Universal has a never-ending agreement to use the Marvel characters, that agreement is only for Universal’s use of the characters in the eastern half of North America, and was really only used in the Islands of Adventure theme park in Florida. The agreement to use the Spider-Man IP for the attraction in Japan had an entirely separate contract, and only for the IPs used in the Spider-Man attraction itself.
While nothing was said about what might replace it, the rumor we reported back in 2021 still holds water… that Spider-Man was expected to close down sometime in 2024 in order to make way for some kind of new ride with a Pokemon or Pikachu theme about 18 to 24 months later.
(1/22/2023) While sorting through a large number of open positions that Universal Creative is hiring for currently, I noticed an interesting trend. A number of the open positions involve working on an unknown project in Orlando through 2024 and then require “relocation to Osaka, Japan for over a year.”
This essentially confirms that something big is planned to open in 2025/2026 at Universal Studios Japan, and based on the previous rumors we’ve been hearing since 2021, this will very likely involve the closure of that park’s Adventures of Spider-Man ride. While nothing has been confirmed yet, the most likely scenario would see Spider-Man closed in 2024 to be transformed into an all new experience 18-24 months later.
Based on all the previous rumors, the new attraction is expected to be a Pokemon or Detective Pikachu themed dark ride experience.
(10/8/21) According to press release, Universal Studios Japan has officially entered into a long-term partnership with The Pokemon Company “that will immerse guests into the world of Pokemon with with innovative technology and creativity beginning in 2022.“
So what exactly does this mean? If you recall, back in May we posted a report that the park was likely preparing to retire their popular Adventures of Spider-Man dark ride, and if the rumors hold true, it would evolve into a new Pokemon themed attraction. While 2022 is to fast of the timeline to transform the dark ride into something Pokemon themed, especially since it hasn’t even closed yet, I suspect we’ll see Pokemon added to the park in some other new way as a slow build up to the eventual announcement of the Pokemon themed dark ride project. Given how rapidly the park has been able to add various highly themed temporary attractions over the years as part of the Universal Cool Japan series of events, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of this magic put in place throughout 2022 to add several temporary Pokemon attraction, possibly including an VR overlay on the park’s Space Fantasy indoor coaster.
In the meantime, if you love Spider-Man in Japan, get your last rides in now, before it’s too late!
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