Our latest tourist attraction adventure was at Skytree, a massive tower built to view Tokyo, and taller than Tokyo Tower.
After an hour wait to buy tickets to the main level and a few minutes to buy tickets for the top level, we experienced a sugoi moment with many others at the vista that spread out before us.
I love modern cities, with Tokyo being one of my favourites, so seeing these amazing views was worth every yen.
The second section is a separate price (much like the second and third sections of the Eiffel Tower) and requires a second ticket to be bought at the time, when you get to the main level. The lift will then take you to a sloping area that means you can look out one end with the other end either above or below your view. You can then pay to get a photo of yourselves from this window taken from the other side! This part was something I hadn’t seen before in the towers I’d gone up in around the world, so that made it unique and worth the visit.
However, the design of Skytree did not take into account the queues of visitors and, while an hour wait to buy a ticket was bad enough (we could have done it online), 2 hours wait to take a lift back downstairs was just unacceptable. If anyone had to get a flight or return to school (or had another meeting to attend, like us) then it was incredibly inconvenient. Elderly people were standing with no support rails or available seats, there were only two toilets, and this was in the middle of the week. Imagine what it might have been like on a weekend with a lot more kids!
People should have been informed of the lift delays before joining the queue to buy a ticket so that they could perhaps choose a different time or day to come back. We didn’t see the queue until after we’d got to the main level. When we did, we immediately canceled our plans to a) have a drink at the local snack bar on the main level where you could sit, eat and drink, and look at the view, and b) visit the glass floor section and have our photo taken standing on it.
Oh well, at least we had some nice windows to look out of while we waited.
