Kidzania Koshien — Attraction in Nishinomiya

I took my class here on a field trip yesterday and it was really disappointing. Although the facilities and activities were all very cool and interactive, it was totally disorganized and the staff wasn't the least bit helpful. The system is really flawed. You need to sign up for activities one by one and the child needs to be present to do so, so you can't sign up for them on their behalf. You can't sign up for your next activity until the previous activity has finished, but there was a wait time of thirty minutes to an hour for each activity. In the mean time, while waiting there is literally nothing for the kids to do. I asked multiple staff members for help figuring out something for the kids to do while they waited, but no one gave me any real help. They just kept suggesting we do a "part-time job" (an activity that takes 15 minutes instead of 30), but none of them were available unless you waited an hour to get in... at which point it was too late. Another big problem was that the activities all had a capacity of somewhere between 3 and 6 children. I suppose this wouldn't be an issue if you came with only one child, but with an entire class it was impossible to get all the children in activities at the same time. I understand that limiting the capacity of each activity adds to the overall quality, but it would have been nice if Kidzania had warned us about this ahead of time, or provided a list of the capacity of each activity. Better yet, they should have organized a schedule for each of the school groups there to follow ahead of time to avoid this problem altogether. Overall I was really unimpressed with the place and my school will not be...

Such a great unique place to take kids while on vacation in Japan and very reasonable given the amount of things to do.

Kids can choose from over 70 'pavilions' which are activities themed around professions. The level of detail in these pavilions is incredible. For example - the police pavilion revolves around a story where the kids act as detectives to investigate a crime. There are custom produced videos integrated into the experience to guide the kids through the story (note: because of this, this pavilion is offered in Japanese only - but my kids were able to follow along regardless).

Every pavilion also provides uniforms for the kids to wear for the experience - which makes for great photo opps.

Wednesday is 'English day' where a subset of the pavilions are conducted in English (just look for the sign in front of the pavilion).

One tip is to go to the pavilion you want to do the most as soon as you get there. Space fills up quickly - and while you can make a reservation to come back later - you can only have 1 reservation at a time so the optimal strategy is to go to pavilions with the shortest wait after your first activity. Think of this place as a series of kid-friendly classes that you book on the spot: its not like Disneyland where you're trying to do every ride in a day.

My advice to the management of Kidzania is that an orientation video explaining how the reservation system works would be very helpful for first-time visitors. This was quite confusing and took us a couple hours to get used to - which detracted from an otherwise...

I couldn’t give 5 stars because I was truly disappointed with the fact that, for such a large and well-established institution, there is no backup system for photos beyond the shift. We attended the first shift from 9 AM to 3 PM and, as we were rushed out with the crowd after completing the last job, we completely forgot to purchase the photos. When we realized this at around 5 PM, we quickly returned, only to find everything already closed. Since there was no second shift, we sought assistance from three very helpful staff members and even sent an email. Unfortunately, the result was the same: the photos were gone, and I couldn’t purchase them.

This was extremely disappointing, especially as everything happened within 24 hours, before the next opening hours or closing inquiries. Despite our efforts, there was no way to retrieve the photos.

I must say KidZania takes the most beautiful photos—I’ve been to many of them, and they’ve always been a treasured part of the experience. However, this time, I left empty-handed, and it was truly disheartening. In a high-tech country like Japan and at such a renowned establishment, it’s hard to believe there isn’t a system to back up photos for even a day or two.

As travelers, we hope for flexibility and options in situations like this, instead of having doors shut on us. I hope KidZania can improve this process to avoid leaving other families as...