Korea and Japan - Part 4: Lotte World Seoul

[Gavin]

I’ve just had my Easter holidays, haven’t I? I rode some coasters, didn’t I? I’ve just taught a class on tag questions, haven’t I? I’m going to write a report that I’m going to quickly get bored with, aren’t I?

This trip ended up not being exactly what I’d had in mind. My original idea had been to just spend the whole holiday in Japan, getting some parks done on my own and then meeting up with the boyfriend in Tokyo and hitting up Disneyland and DisneySea since I hadn’t been the latter since 2009, and the former a few years before that.

The bf decided he’d rather hit up Osaka instead to check out the Expo and Nintendo World at Universal. Yep, that’s fine. I was planning to start up in Hokkaido with Rusutsu Resort – a personal vendetta of a park that I still haven’t got to – working my way down through a couple of new-to-me Japanese cities and ending in Osaka.

Rusutsu doesn’t open until the end of the month though, does it? That’s that plan f**ked then.

Instead, I decided to hit up a couple of new parks in Korea, get some new stuff at a park I’d been to before, and catch up with a couple of people in Seoul before heading to Japan.

Robotland

I flew into Busan on a horrible flight which left at 2:30 in the morning and landed at around 7am, but this gave me the whole day. Korea now has that Japanese system of being able to send your bags from the airport to the hotel, so I sent my luggage and got on a bus for Masan, a city to the west of Busan and just north of Robotland. There was supposed to be a bus option to get to the park, but none of the three map apps I was using could give a time for the next one. Seeing as how they were infrequent, I sacked off waiting and just got a taxi.

I got there pretty much at park opening. None of my credit cards would work. It was definitely their crappy machines since I had two different Hong Kong cards and two UK cards. It was the same inside the park as well when I tried to buy some food. I had some cash on me luckily.

First up was Thunderbolt, my first Zamperla Thunderbolt coaster. I was semi-dreading it, but it was actually really good! It wasn’t the smoothest, but it was far from rough. Some of those elements are excellent and there was really strong airtime. The trains/restraints aren’t the best, but I was massively surprised by how much I liked it.

The drop tower with the slowest ascent in the world and which holds at the top for ages.

They had a bunch of indoor “attractions” based on robot stuff. I tried one of them, which was just a massive faff for no payoff involving some kind of RFID ball, stuck my head into another one and decided I couldn't be bothered with whatever it was and left it there.

This one was a flying theatre though. It was pretty decent, but the system was quite weird. The seat were literally those MX4D cinema seats – complete with cupholders – which moved forward into the screen area.

The watersplash thing is, unfortunately, a dubious cred, I hate these things since they’re just so stupidly wet, but I bought a poncho, sat as close to the middle as I could and didn’t get too soaked. The dinosaur thing was an upcharge, and based on the quality of the animatronics outside, I decided not to bother.

I didn’t do any of the flat rides, but got a couple of rerides in on Thunderbolt. Despite it being a Saturday, it wasn’t very busy, but it was picking up a bit by the time I left. I quite liked this place. As a regional park outside one of the smaller cities (talking about Masan here, not Busan, which is very big), it’s pretty good. There are a decent number of rides, but their interactive robot stuff was outdated within weeks of the place opening. I don’t know why parks insist on trying that sort of stuff honestly; there’s no longevity in it whatsoever.

It had been easy to get a taxi here since it was from the main train station in Masan, but there were none to get me out and no cars appearing on Uber either. The bus stop nearby had an electronic signboard though, and one of the seemingly once-ever-two-hour buses was only 10 minutes away, so I accidentally timed that perfectly, getting the bus back into Masan and then another bus from there to Busan, followed by a metro ride to the hotel, which was nice but in a very dull area.

 

[Gavin]

I checked out of the hotel, but left my s**t there and headed out to Lotte World Busan. The original Lotte World used to be my home park and was partly responsible for getting me into this stupid hobby in the first place, so I was interested to see what they’d do with a new park.

It’s all very pleasant, with some decent theming.

There are three coasters here, the most substantial being a Mack Blue Fire clone, so not really something to get massively excited about even though I really like the model. It’s a good job I wasn’t overly-excited since it was closed.

This was apparently because there was “strong wind”. There wasn’t. Some Facebook experts/muppets have been very quick to point out that the wind 100 feet up might’ve been stronger. Yeah, no s**t. They weren’t able to explain why the gyro swing next door was shut for the exact same reason, as was a kiddy train ride and this log flume:

Total bollocks in other words. All of those rides were close to each other, so there was clearly something else going on. Wind for a coaster that has a small chance of stalling (all of them)? Fine. For everything else? No.

Anyway, not a disaster since I’ve ridden a few of them now, but coming about a week after a trip where I’d done nothing but ride crappy Chinese +1s, it was annoying. Another coaster then. It was so mysterious:

And the final one. They had a vending machine for ponchos, which was empty, so I just went bareback, doing a couple of quick rerides rather than taking a break between since I was wet anyway. Turns out they have loads of ponchos in the shop near the entrance (total opposite side of the park), but I guess moving some of those over to the vending machine of the ride that needs them was too much bother. It wasn’t too wet really, but it was really cold. The sun and the huge amounts of wind that had closed down three major attractions and a kiddy train helped to dry me off quickly enough though.

I’d only done one other of these at Walibi Belgium. I quite like them; I’ll take them over a regular Mack water coaster anyway. There’s one just across the border at Happy Valley Shenzhen that I still haven’t got around to doing; I’m holding off while some newer creds go up.

Some other random pictures. Switched-off water features are an extreme and inexplicable pet peeve; they just demonstrate a lack of giving a f**k.

The castle was lovely. Maybe there would be something interesting inside? Nope.

Having planned for a half day, I was out in not much more than an hour. I debated hanging around for a while to see if they’d get stuff open, which was always a possibility given that it was early in the day, but decided instead to cut my losses and head t the next destination early.

I really wanted to like this place, but I just didn’t. It’s all very “nice”, but there’s just not much to do. Even if everything had been open, it would still struggle to be a half-day park. My other gripe with it is the total lack of imagination when it comes to the rides. The original park is quite well-known for taking a few risks on new ride types. They built the first ever Intamin Gyro Drop and Gyro Swing as well as the first Intamin Twist and Turn Coaster (still a very rare ride type) as well as, infamously, an Intamin Aquatrax amongst others.

The Busan park just has a bunch of off the shelf rides. Sure, they’re presented nicely, and for 99% of guests that’s not going to matter at all, but I just found it all a bit disappointing given what Lotte did with their original park. Meh.

Next up, some stuff that’s not disappointing.

 

[Gavin]

As previously mentioned, I was done at Lotte World much earlier than expected. I thought about doing some sightseeing in Busan, but I’d been a couple of times before and couldn’t be bothered to look into whether there was anything new worth seeing.

Instead, I just headed to Gyeongju a few hours earlier than planned. I’d been to Gyeongju twice before, once in 2002 – very much pre-enthusiast days – for general sightseeing, and again in 2007, specifically for the theme park.

The original plan would have been to arrive that evening, do a sightseeing day the next day, then do Gyeongju World the day after that, heading up to Seoul that evening. Since I arrived mid-afternoon instead, I did a bit of sightseeing. Nothing new to me, but it’s all very nice. It’s the old capital and now basically consists of a bunch of old tombs (those Teletubby-looking things), temples, palaces etc. If anyone ends up heading there for Gyeongju World, it’s worth spending an afternoon in the city. You could very easily fill a few days in the area if you wanted to.

Photo dump:

The plan had been to do the stuff above the following morning, followed by heading down to a nearby temple, Bulguksa, and the surrounding area in the afternoon. I’d obviously got some s**t done already, and realised that I wasn’t that bothered about a revisit to Bulguksa. It had been almost 25 years since I’d been, and I’d really liked it, but I’ve seen a whole s**t ton of Asian temples since then, so did I really need to go back? No. No, I did not.

There was only one thing to do in that case: head to the park a day early.

Gyeoungju World

Fun Fact: I kind of “discovered” that a huge new B&M had just appeared from nowhere in this place back in 2007. I can’t remember the exact details now, but somebody had seen a stock image of riders in invert seats in connection to a “new coaster” advert, and I ended up getting a Korean friend to call them and confirm that there was actually a huge new f**k-off inverted coaster fully operating and the manufacturer was B&M.

Back then, it was very much a rides-on-concrete kind of place – including one of the worst coasters I’ve ever ridden (Space 2000) - but with a very out-of-place, huge, and very well-themed B&M. I seem to remember there might have been some kind of government funding?

I’ve just dug out some old photos. This rather innocuous looking thing was a serious piece of s**t. People rag on Togo all the time, but if you want to talk about s**t Japanese manufacturers, you should really look at Meisho and Senyo Kogyo, the latter of which built this:

Anyway, since then, they’ve kept adding stuff, a lot of it pretty major. The B&M invert, Phaethon, is now the oldest coaster there and the place is borderline unrecognisable.

I was there for opening, and it wasn’t too busy, being a Monday. All of the four new coasters since my last visit were very close to each other in an area of the park that had taken over the old Space 2000 spot and surrounding areas. I skipped the Zamperla powered thing until later, heading first for Skoll and Hati, a single-rail RMC.

I’d done Wonder Woman at Fiesta Texas and really liked it. This one was the “stunt pilot” model, but it was so long since I’d done Wonder Woman that I didn’t really know what the difference was. It was excellent though; maybe slightly sluggish first thing, but it was hauling later in the day. Single-train operations weren’t ideal, but even when the park got busier later, I didn’t have to wait more than 3-5 trains worth.

I knew they’d added a dive machine (Griffon clone, but with 8-across seating), but didn’t know they’d built one of the most impressive station buildings ever – from the outside anyway.

The final of the four new-to-me coasters was a Gerstlauer shuttle coaster, but not really. The two spikes are actually joined by a turnaround, so the ride sequence is: get pulled backwards from the station up the first spike, drop through the layout forwards, continue forwards up the second spike and around the turnaround, then completing the layout forwards again. On the second visit to the second spike, it stops at the top and drops backwards.

This is the new addition for the park’s 40th anniversary, due to open some time in May:

The drop tower was closed, which was a shame because it’s excellent. It’s the same type as Detonator at Thorpe, but it’s about twice the height. Not sure if it’s on its way out or not.

And onto Phaethon. As mentioned/humble-bragged earlier, I’d ridden this when it first opened and really liked it, especially the zero-g roll. It’s clearly huge, but has had complaints about it being forceless. It was definitely on the tamer side of B&M inverts back then when it came to forces, but I wouldn’t have gone as far as to call it forceless, and I definitely wouldn’t now. Sure, the layout is quite uninspired, I guess. It’s definitely roughened up a bit, but still rides pretty well.

The area around here mostly hadn’t changed much. I don’t think the larger splash boat thing had been here before (checks old photos – confirmed), but the log flume and rapids were.

I was surprised to find Space Tour – or at least the building - still here. This was an indoor jungle mouse coaster, back before I’d ridden dozens of the f**king things.

At some point it started raining, but it didn’t seem like it was going to last, so I holed up in a coffee shop for a bit. The whole few days around that area had been unseasonably cold. On both days in Gyeongju, it didn’t go above 10°C, so the rain was far from welcome. It didn’t last too long though, so I got some rerides in on the three main coasters.

I’ll just check in the rest of the repetitive photos I’ve uploaded:

I’d really liked this place on my first visit, and liked it even more this time. That initial investment in Phaethon clearly must’ve paid off since they’ve added quite a lot since, and all of it of decent quality. It’s not a big park – it’s very easy to get around – but they’ve packed quite a lot into it, especially when you take into account the flat rides and water rides (which I skipped). It might seem to be in a strange location, but Gyeongju is extremely popular as a local tourist destination and increasingly so with international visitors. I’d seen almost no other foreigners on my previous two visits, but there were loads this time (in the city itself I mean; not so much the park). Also, it’s easy day-trip material from Busan, the country’s second biggest city with around 3.5 million people, so there’s a very decent population in the local catchment area.

Anyway, it’s definitely a must-do for a Korean coaster trip. In terms of coasters, Everland has the best one in T-Express, but this place definitely has the strongest overall line up.

Seeing as I’d been planning to be here the next day, I’d booked a train ticket for Seoul for the following evening, but I really didn’t need that extra day in Gyeongju anymore. I considered heading to Seoul that evening instead, but that would mean pissing about with hotel bookings, losing money on the hotel in Gyeongju that I’d already paid for and having to book an extra night in Seoul. Instead, I just changed the train ticket for the following morning, so it still gave me most of an extra day in Seoul. That’ll be up next then.

 

[davidm]

I’ve just dug out some old photos. This rather innocuous looking thing was a serious piece of s**t. People rag on Togo all the time, but if you want to talk about s**t Japanese manufacturers, you should really look at Meisho and Senyo Kogyo, the latter of which built this:

Seriously the worst (non-kiddy) thing I've ever ridden. The transition into the first corkscrew felt like it broke my back and I was in fear for my life for the rest of the course - good riddance to it.

 

[Gavin]

Seriously the worst (non-kiddy) thing I've ever ridden. The transition into the first corkscrew felt like it broke my back and I was in fear for my life for the rest of the course - good riddance to it.

I remember even the lift hill being rough. Awful, awful thing.

 

[Gavin]

I wasn’t going to hit up any of the parks in Seoul seeing as there were no new coasters at any of them. Then I remembered that there was a new Legoland park, which wasn’t particularly close, but doable as a day trip. Luckily, I looked into the opening hours before just getting on a train. Unlike every other park in Asia, it was only open at weekends. Thanks, Merlin. Oh well, I don’t the places anyway.

I did a bit of a sightseeing day of some stuff I’d never bothered with when I lived there (a handful of palaces basically), but I can’t be arsed to go into any details there or upload any more pictures. I had another couple of days free, toyed with heading to Everland, but settled on Lotte World. I used to go there fairly regularly when I lived in Seoul, and had been back when I visited in 2013, but Atlantis had been closed for maintenance and the whole place was just too busy to enjoy. They’ve put a few things in place since then.

First up, there’s now a paid fast pass option. It’s all very simple as well. You can either get a 5-ride or 7-ride pass, which you can use on anything, but only once each on the three coasters. There were a lot of people waiting to get in before opening, so I opted for the 5-ride version, figuring that there weren’t a huge number of “must rides” and being able to skip five queues would be enough of a time saver.

I headed straight to the outdoor area, figuring that I might be able to get some rides in before it got too busy, and then use the fast pass for a reride later. It seems everyone had the same idea though.

I just got in the regular queue for Atlantis since it was “only” posted at around 40 minutes. 5 minutes in, I saw that they now have a single-rider queue. It’s literally just the ride exit. Using that, I got on in around 15 minutes. The best aspect of it being the same as the exit is that you can just jump straight back into it without having to leave the station. I did a couple of rerides before moving on, waiting for about 10 minutes each time while the queue was now up to an hour and would stay that way for the whole day.

I was worried about reriding this since I’d always really liked it, but I’ve obviously ridden loads more coasters since 2009 when I’d last done it. It still really holds up though. It’s too bad that they’ve seemingly completely got rid of the “aqua” element of the aquatrax coaster – the "pool" looks pretty grim – but that was only ever aesthetic anyway.

I used the fast pass for Comet Express since there was another long queue and no single rider option. I got an absolutely mental ride on it, spinning ridiculously for pretty much the whole thing.

I did the Fantasy Dreams dark ride, a ride that a lot of people don’t even know is there. I’d had no idea for years when I used to go regularly. It’s very easy to miss the entrance to it. Like Comet Express, you have to go down a escalator and the ride is underground.

Gyro Swing was down for the day – no problem – and Gyro Drop wasn’t open yet, so I headed inside, using the fast pass again for French Revolution even though the queue was only at about half an hour.

It’s not the smoothest coaster, but I was surprised to find that at least it hadn’t deteriorated in the 12 years since I’d last ridden it. It would massively benefit from new trains/vest restraints though; it’s still using the original ones. It’s all really nice to look at anyway.

Pharaoh’s Fury had been one of my favourite dark rides for a long time, but on my last visit, I’d noticed already that it wasn’t really being maintained all that well. Now, it’s even worse with so many effects just not working. There used to be a “rolling ball” finale like Indiana Jones, but now there’s just a projection that doesn’t move at all. It was the most expensive ride they’d ever built (and must still hold that title), so I really don’t know why they’ve let it go to s**t like this. So disappointing.

I think in all of my previous visits, I’d only done the balloon ride once (maybe twice) due to the ridiculous queues it always gets. There’s now a Pokémon retheme to it. I was about to use a fast pass on it, but they also now have a single rider option. That’ll be a walk-on then. Excellent.

The indoor rapids ride has been completely removed from all signage and maps with the whole entrance area now boarded up. This has freed up a HUGE, if not very tall, space for something new, assuming that they’re not just overhauling the existing ride. There’s a new family coaster coming next year, but I’m pretty sure that’s going outside (picture of that site later).

There’s a new flying theatre since I was last here. The queue area was more interesting than the ride itself. I was in the top of three rows of seats and there’s no attempt to hide the top of the screen unfortunately.

Their Intamin Giant Loop ride is also gone and they’re using the old structure as a frame for a big LED screen.

I was trying to head to Sindbad, the park’s huge “Pirates” style water ride, but got trapped by a parade.

As soon as that was done though, it meant that the ride was a walk-on, though I don’t remember having to ever really wait for it before either. It’s the same as it’s always been. Everything seems to still work, but there haven’t been any upgrades.

I did a second ride and filmed it, but I’m now typing this having not uploaded the video and not currently having access to it, so here’s somebody else’s for you to not watch:

Adventures of Sinbad Dark Boat Ride - Lotte World Theme Park

[4K] The Adventures of Sinbad Boat ride at Lotte World Theme Park in Seoul, South Korea. It's like you are riding a Pirates of the Caribbean Ride at Disneyla...

www.youtube.com

They’ve also added a “Wild” trio of off-the-shelf simulator rides, commonly found at various Joypolis locations amongst others. Horrible addition. They were already grossly outdated years before Lotte added them. People seemed to agree since not one of them had any queue whatsoever.

I don’t know when this became a thing, but there were a couple of different locations within the park where you could hire these school uniform outfits, and quite a few people were doing it, especially couples. All a bit creepy/paedo to me.

I did the shooting dark ride – decent for what it is – then headed back outside for some Atlantis rerides (used the fast pass for one walk-on ride and then did some single rider) and a ride on Gyro Drop.

When I’d bought my ticket – I think through Trip.com – it had only been an extra couple of quid to add the aquarium, so I did that in case I ended up having time later. Turns out you’re allowed to exit and reenter the park once as long as you have the aquarium ticket since it’s a whole different part of the complex (in the lower levels of the massive building). Fairly standard aquarium. Not bad as an add-on, but not worth bothering with as a standalone attraction.

I ended up not going back into the park, opting instead to head up to the observation decks of Lotte Tower since I hadn’t done that before. You can see what is probably the construction site for the new coaster. It’s a decent size, so hopefully they’re adding something significant.

I had another day in Seoul but didn’t do much with I, then had an early flight to Japan the morning after that, so I relocated to a hotel near the airport (it’s pretty far outside the city) to make the following morning slightly more bearable.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

The indoor rapids ride has been completely removed from all signage and maps with the whole entrance area now boarded up. This has freed up a HUGE, if not very tall, space for something new, assuming that they’re not just overhauling the existing ride.

Had to go and look this one up, rapids closed forever in September 2023 apparently.
Shame, it was there since 1989, same year the park opened. Always thought it was a really impressive bit of engineering for the location and it had a bit of a magical vibe to it.
Hope there's a worthy replacement.

 

[Gavin]

Had to go and look this one up, rapids closed forever in September 2023 apparently.
Shame, it was there since 1989, same year the park opened. Always thought it was a really impressive bit of engineering for the location and it had a bit of a magical vibe to it.
Hope there's a worthy replacement.

Absolutely. It wasn't the best rapids ride, but it was themed really well, and the fact that the whole thing was near the top of that huge building was really impressive.