Tokyo Dome City

The ThunderDolphin ride must be great but the service and infrastructure is insanely poor.

I have arrived at 17:45 at the ticket office and they told me that the wait time was 90 minutes and the last ride is at 19:00. Seeing that it was 75 minutes until 19:00, I asked if I could get a chance to ride if I stand in the queue before 19:00. They said yes so I bought the ticket and went up to the queue.

I stood in line for 60 minutes and was like 1 ride away when I realised that the staff set a halt after the first 20-30-ish people in the queue and they did not let people further. In these minutes they made an announcement on loudspeaker every 2-3 minutes in Japanese only. The majority of the people in the queue were Japanese and they did not leave the queue so I guessed that the announcements were not about informing people about the stop of the ride. Then after a ride, they stopped letting the people of the next round near the cars so it became more and more evident that they were about to stop the coaster for the day.

Then at 19:00 they did just like that, they made another announcement, and the whole staff (who, by the way had an average age of 20) left without uttering a word in English. They did offer a refund of the tickets but that information only reached to me when I specifically asked TWO staff member what had just been announced, even though it had to be evident for them that there are people in the queue that do not speak Japanese because the girl at the beginning of the queue talked to every foreigner with the use of a translator machine.

Overall, very very very poor service. I understand that the ride has to stop after a certain time but giving misinformation to your guests (I asked in particular if I get on the ride if I start queueing before 19:00 and the answer was yes) then not informing your guests at all and wasting their time is unacceptable. And I am not only talking about foreign guests, Japanese people were all left there standing in the line without the information that "hey, three more rounds and finish" or something. At least that's what I suspect because I saw at least 50 people in the line behind me and none moved after 3-4 announcements.

Shame, would have loved to try this, especially because it is most likely the first and only time in my lifetime visiting Japan.