TR:Korea

[davidm]

So the observant will have noticed that I was off in Korea recently. I'd been thinking about doing this
trip for a few years but never quite got around to doing it so I just booked a flight one evening a few
weeks ago whilst in a proactive mood and I was committed.

The trip wasn't really about getting lots of silly coasters (there aren't "lots"!), I wanted to see some
of the country and culture and stuff, so there'll be that in this TR too... (and some coasters of course!)

Day 0 : Saturday

Trip down from MAN to LHR

first time I'd been to T5 at LHR actually ; all very posh but involved far too many bus trips for my
liking

Day 1 : Sunday

Flight was uneventful, if a little long (10 hours from LHR to ICN) and the +8 time zone difference
meant I arrived mid-Sunday morning at the rather impressive* Incheon airport.

(* - Bags turn up pretty sharpish, barely any wait at immigration/customs and I walk out of the terminal
to the bus stop and the bus I need to get turns up 30 seconds later right where I am standing)

After some confusion with the bus driver whether this was the right bus (I was convinced it was, he was
a bit unsure - there is a really extensive Airport bus service so that you can get a direct bus from lots of
different places in the city) we are off and its about an hour to down town Seoul.

And the bus drops me off just near my hotel place... I do hope I get a high floor...

Rather annoyingly (since I have not slept for a day by now) they will not let me check in for a few hours
so I leave the bags and set off for a random wander around the locale.

Hotel is next to a metro station (Seodaemun) but only about 10 minutes walk from the main station and just
a bit further on is the central Myeong-dong shopping area so I head off (in truth a little randomly) in
that general direction.

Spotted a cafe for Tom;

Ended up at the not-at-all-over-the-top City Hall

Which had a big public space outside of it that had some sort of fair going on - but since I can't
read any of the signs I was rather non-plussed.

Just across the road from this public space appeared to be a bit of culture so I wandered over there
just as some "stuff" was starting to happen - sort of a changing of the guards type thing. The place
turned out to be one of the palaces that dot the city "Deoksugung" and so I watch the stuff happening
for a while...

When they are done they all hang around for photo-ops...

I spotted some of them loitering "back-stage" too...

After its all finished I wander around the palace itself for a while (1000₩ to get in - about 60p!)

Start of a long series of "Daves pictures of Korean roofs" - less interesting than it seems, they are
quite nice but do get a bit repetitive after a while...

I'm dead on my feet by now, so head back to hotel place to check-in ; it seems I've booked a
rather large suite (the place is more serviced-apartments than hotel), its all a bit tired and
slightly run-down; probably quite impressive when it was new.

And I got my high floor (18th), cool city view.

Keep myself awake (up for ~32 hours by now) with coffee and some dinner to try to get myself into the
right time zone and I manage to make it to 10pm before I find myself asleep on the sofa.

Some coasters tomorrow though...

 

[Gavin]

Your pictures make Seoul seem quite cultured, when in actual fact it's a cultural Hiroshima. You stayed in Seodaemun why? Did you at least go to the prison? Hilariously anti Japanese.

 

[davidm]

^ hotel was just a random, fairly cheap booking not far from Seoul Station - figured that was central... didn't go to
the prison but found quite a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in a number of the museums (can't really blame them either
given the history!).

--

Anyhow;

Day 2 : Monday

So first full day here and straight off I head to Lotte World - easy trip across the city on the subway
(in Seoul they have a rather groovy Oyster-like "TMoney" card to negotiate all aspects of public transport,
so you just load up the card with a few thousand won and swipe in in/out of whatever subway/bus you need to
use and you never have to work out any complicated ticket-buying issues - the card worked in other cities as
well but was harder to recharge there for some reason) and make your way through a shopping mall and you
arrive in the rather bizarre (and huge) indoor zone.

Once I'd got my bearings (I'd entered on the -1 level of the indoor bit and took a while to find the
stairs to the main level (mainly because I'd walked straight past the main stairs in my goony-enthusiam).

Dumped my camera in a locker for most of the day so the pics are probably rather out of sequence or taken
on my phone but we'll see how it goes...

There was this its-not-a-coaster-but-looks-like-one-loop-thingy that I rode first up - not quiet as painful
as I imagined it would be but not very interesting either...

After that I found my way to the outside section (which is out, over a road and onto an island in a lake) where
the real reason for attending was located - the rather good Atlantis Adventure, there was not much
of a queue but they were also distributing fast-pass things so I grabbed one of those and then did the
normal queue.

15 mins later I am on and get the first real bizarre-Korea experience when whilst sat on the train ready to
go, the ride-ops lead the punters through a little stretch-exercise to get you all limbered up for the ride.

I join in as best I can by following along but miss a few instructions and then we roll up to the launch tunnel...

...ride zooms down the tunnel then straight up into a hill inside this huge themeing structure. Its a really
good ride with plenty of speed (probably accentuated by being inside/close to the walls of the structure)
and some good drops and stuff. Halfway around there is a big room full of giant dragon thingies and then
you are off again for the second half. Cool.

Since the Q was only a few minutes I rode it a few times - great fun. They were running it "dry" though - so
no water sprays on the track, not sure what difference they would make to the ride experience though? Its
not as though the weather was cold either ; high 20s and T-Shirt weather - must have to get really warm by
the time they turn the water on!

Next up was the drop tower I think ; they seem to have latched onto "Gyro" as a brand-name for their attractions
since they have "Gyro-Drop" for their drop tower, "Gyro-Swing" for the swing ride and "Gyro-Spin" for their
new disko.

Rather huge drop ride anyway, rotating around you gets some great views of the area as you ride - I do like
these drop rides.

Did the Gyro-Swing as well, but this was rather spoiled by having stupid "scream-shield" things on it, which
were not only claustrophobic but utterly filthy and I could hardly even see through the one I was on.

The one in this pic I snapped as I came off is actually quite clean, mine was all covered in green-crap that
meant I could only see out of the bit facing straight ahead. Ugh.

They have a shot-tower there as well "Bungee Drop" which did surprise me slightly, not only by launching
straight from the loading position (the S&S ones move you up a metre or so before they launch) but also
by launching twice - so that was fun.

Still out on the outdoor island bit, there are a couple of large rides hidden in the island itself - which
I really liked since I did not realise this before. I had seen the entrance to the Comet Express
coaster since but it was just a building on the ground level on the island, once inside the building you
go downstairs into the substructure of the island and there is a rather large coater there. How cool is
that!

The theme appears to be that we are on a comet and all being dragged arouns outer-space by said comet ; to be
honest I didn't even see the comet until my second ride - heres a really bad picture of it

The ride itself is great fun; the 2-seater cars spin around seemingly independently as the train makes
its rather speedy journey around three big underground rooms, completing a couple of circuits of each room
as it goes. Since I was sitting on my own I seemed to spend most of the time spinning uncontrollably, to
the great amusement of the people behind me who were hardly spinning and waving at me every 1/2 second as
I span around.

So a real surprise that was - enjoyed it a lot.

The other subterranean ride was a kiddy trainride through candy-crush-saga world (or something like that)
which was as you would expect, but all rather psychedelic...

I did what I thought was going to be a haunted house in one of the buildings outside too - except it turned
out just to be a spooky-3D film but was rather bizarre as it was all cat-related - the film (which was
of quite high definition/quality) was all to do with this POV of you being a cat and meandering through
this haunted house avoiding the spooks - quite good actually then.

Theres a couple of kiddy rides and the aforementioned disko outside too ; didn't ride the disko but heres
a pic from later...

Back inside I started to explore ; I still hadn't worked out where the Indiana-Jones ride was (once I found
it, it is quite hard to miss though) - its all quite hard to get your head around since rides are all on
different floors and often have rather hard-to-find small entrances, but once you do get the geography of
the place you can start making sense of it.

So the Indy-clone ride "Pharaoh's Fury" is right at the top floor (and the ride itself goes even higher) but
was closed when I eventually got up there ; hmmm not happy; since I also knew that the large indoor coaster
French Revolution was under rehab and would not be running for a while (weeks).

But there is plenty of other daft things to do there ; most impressively I guess was the indoor rapids ride.
Yes you read that right; on the third floor of this shopping mall-like structure there is a full sized
indoor rapids ride. Not very wet one I'll grant you, but to see that amount of water making its way
around the course inside a building was quite bizarre.

There was a few shooting rides - one was the same film as we had at Fun Park in Finland - this bloke down
a mine shaft and you sat in motion-seats, another was a Desparados ride where you sat on a horse like
thing and the movie took you through a wild-west setting (same movie/mechanism as at BonBonLand in Denmark
except I recall the movie being much longer in Denmark). The best was a new ride through "Dragons Wild
Shooting" on the main level (just near the the kiddy play area) which was a bit more hi-tech with lots
of interactive video screens that you shot at dragons upon. Rode that a couple of times as it was
pretty well done.

I fancied doing the balloon ride that takes you on a circuit of the indoor space at roof-height so grabbed
by camera and joined the first real Q of the day for 1/2 hour or so. Whilst Q-ing you could see the blokes
who's job is was to maintain the windows up on the ceiling - scary ride that?

Just as I was boarding the balloon they started turning on the lights

THATs Pharaoh's Fury - the building with the dome on top and all the stuff off to the left behind the coaster
track from the non-running French Revolution.

The TGI's that Jordan needs to transfer to overlooking the park there

Boo...

Pharaoh's Fury was running by now, a healthy Q had built up but I grab a fast-pass as well and join
the Q. Much has been made in other TRs I have read of Lotte World's policy of making people Q outside
the attraction rather than in the Q itself and this is very apparent at Pharaoh's Fury as the building
contains a load of themeing stuff that you just wander straight past once they let you into the place
(after waiting 1/2 hour outside) - whether the policy is down to graffiti prevention or because they
can't merge the fast-pass queues without it I don't know, but it was a bit daft.

Ride was ok - not as good as Indy but shared a few of the same effects - puff of smoke thingy and a big
ball at the end - it missed the big room that Indy has at it's centrepiece I think (had a room with some
huge crocodiles in it though).

Spent a while taking some pics outside in the fading light (not processed any yet though so not a lot
to see so far)

Lotte-Skyscraper they are building next door;

Think the last thing I rode was this other balloon-themed thingy (they had to have lots of signs dotted
around it to tell you that the Q was not for the balloon ride in the ceiling but for a movie-thing - ha silly
people not thinking that through!). Ended up being a somewhat lame circle-vision type affair that
was a bit over-complicated I thought - this is shot after the film finished as they are ushering us out;

Anyway I hung around for the laser-show at the end of the day (was a bit lame to be honest)...

So I quite liked the place, perhaps not as much as I thought I was going to. Atlantis and Comet Express were
great, a lot of the other stuff was quite standard but locating it in this bonkers indoor space made it
a bit more interesting. All felt a bit more shopping-mall-with-rides than indoor-Disneyland though.

Good long day then, another one tomorrow as I try to work out how to get to Everland...

( didn't do the Fork musuem either!

)

--

EDIT : Processed one of the fading light pics now;

 

[davidm]

Day 3 : Tuesday - Everland

It seemed to me that getting from central Seoul to Everland (which is out in the hills on the outskirts
of the city) was a bit of a chore... its not on the subway, there is a new elevated railway that gets
you close to it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everline) but the railway doesn't really go from anywhere
convenient in Seoul, there are "tour" buses that will take you there from Seoul Station (but seem to leave
to come back far too early) and the instructions on the park's website on how to get there by bus were
a little unclear.

Anyway I prompted for the latter - which involves getting the subway to Gangnam and finding a bus stop ; which
turned out to be ridiculously easy. The bus doesn't quite take you to the park (which caused me some
confusion when after seeing the park from the bus, it started going in the opposite direction) but drops
you off at a transportation centre in the local town (where that 'everline' terminates as well) and then you
get another shuttle bus the last 10 minutes up the hill to the park itself. Bit of a faff to be honest -
can't imagine what its like when the park is packed!

Anyway, I got there round about opening time and waving my "discount for foreigners" coupon made my way in.
Dumped camera in a locker by the entrance (which turned out to be a schoolboy error as it was a trek back there
later to fetch it) and set off in search of the rides.

What immediately struck me about the place was that it was BIG and had a rather painful layout. Theres an
entrance "street" as you come in with the usual tat shops / eateries and a show building or two - all this
is on the same hill-top level that you come in on, then the park starts to go downhill (literally, not
figuratively) as it slopes off down the side of the hill with various plateaus in the hillside with a few
rides on - in places this hill is VERY steep as well. By the time you get to the bottom (pausing only
to ride the powered Zamperla Dragon Coaster) you have seen the rest of the park and realise you still
have a bit of trek to get over to the woody which is built into the side of the next hill on the other side
of the small valley.

So T-Express is off to the left at the bottom of the valley and there is some other stuff off to the right
(which I'll come back to in a bit) - so obviously off to the left I go and find the entrance. Theres a
Q to get a fast-pass just before the entrance so I join that and notice that they seem to be giving a lot
of fast-passes out - my fast-pass time is a 90 mins away so I think thats OK and make my way towards the
regular Q. Only there is no regular Q. What?

Turns out they are not running a regular Q and what I had actually just picked up was not a fast-pass but
just a ride-reservation slot. What?

Basically during the day there is no standard Q, you have to have a ticket (for a half-hour slot) to even
Q for the ride - hmmm I've NEVER seen this sort of system before.

What is really annoying is the rest of the park is relatively quiet, so like a good enthusiast I've turned
up nice and early to get on the big rides before the crowds build up and I have been denied - annoying much?
And the ride reservation ticket said on it "only one per person" so was this system designed to give me
one ride per day? More annoying!?!

So I do a couple of the rides nearby - a awful haunted house dark ride (reminded me of Alton's before it
was Duel-led, but much worse) and some 3d movie thing I think.

My ride time was coming up for T-Express so I join the large Q outside the entrance full of people with the
same ride time as me and they eventually let us in - probably a 20 minute Q once inside the actual Q structure
before you get on.

Fearing this might be my only ride I get the front set and we set off - the lift hill is huge and you get
a great view of the hilly park from the top as you turn around for the drop and it all starts getting a bit
good after that...

The drop and first large airtime hill are great - if I could criticize it a bit you come out of that first
big airtime hill a bit too early, would be nicer to float on down a bit further I think - and head back
up around to possibly the earliest MCBR I can think of, after which the ride drops into its second half
which is great fun ; loads of mini airtime hills, lots of speed, tons of wood structure racing past.

So rather glad it was a great ride after all that Q-faffing!

I join the Q again for another ride-time ticket rather suspecting that since I probably stand out a bit
from the locals that they might recognise me and say that I've had my ticket for the day, but they don't
and I have another reservation for an hours time - OK so thats how its going to be is it? Faff. (Oh and the
Q for these tickets is probably 15-20 minutes as well each time).

I must have just wandered around for a bit then as I don't recall doing anything else before my next T-ride-time
came around - so same score except back row this time and that was better I think - great ride.

Pick up another ride-time ticket and then join the allegedly 30-minute Q for the nearby Safari ride. After
about 10 mins they let us into the building where there is about an hour's worth of people ahead of me. Great.
I stick it out and eventually board the bus (much like a normal bus rather than the Disney or Busch safari
vehicles) - its ok, not anything great until we get to the final animal zone which is full of black bears.
Then, the bus driver winds down his window and starts to get the black bears to do all sorts of "tricks"
for the punters - NOT really what I expect from a "Safari" ride at all and really quite unpleasant.

OK, so because of the long Q for the animal-teasing-Safari I had actually missed my next T-Express 1/2 hour
and was a bit concerned that they wouldn't let me in... luckily as I wandered up to to the ride I found
another ride-ticket on the floor so kept that as a back up. True to form, when the guy saw my ticket
had expired he wouldn't let me in and was trying to explain to me (in Korean) the horrible timing error that
I had made. I just looked at him blankly and didn't move. After a few minutes he gave in and ushered me
into the Q - ignorant tourist 1, Q-guy 0.

My "found" ticket gave me another ride straight away - so I had managed it 4 times by now but it was all
a faff and meaning that it was afternoon by now and I had hardly been anywhere else in the park - not very
impressed by the system to be honest - however I guess if it had been "normal" Q protocol I might not have
got as many rides in by now as I had.

I went off "to the right" of the valley then to see what was there - really oddly on the valley floor
there is a rather big formal garden area and at the back of that a European-themed street with loads of
bars and eateries - odd because all this is is away from the rest of the park and right at the back of
the place (think that there is a hotel up there too).

So I wander back up the main hill of the park from the other end than I came down it earlier and there]
is a few rides and stuff up that way too ; their Ferris wheel is there, but closed and due for removal
it appears.

I come across their family-coaster Racing Coaster and after about 20mins Q I get my +1 - its OK
for a family ride I guess, racing around amongst the trees is effective.

I must have rode the remaining coaster shortly after that Rolling X-Train (whatever that means) I was
aware that this was not meant to be a good ride so braced myself a bit - it wasn't awful but it wasn't at
all good. +1.

So having slogged all the way back up the big hill (there are a couple of cable-car type options to get
you back up the hill, but these all had big Qs) I eventually retrieve my camera and you can have some pictures
now...

Lots of the place is quite well turned out;

Some of the "American Adventure" section of the park;

A moment's silence please...

Enthusiast photo...

Don't ride these...

Or these...

Hmmm nice...

Steep!

There was lots of Halloween stuff I guess - it kinda passed me by a bit I suppose; I did see a bit of the
parade though for a few minutes

Somewhat confused theme going on here I think (this was the movie-thing I saw at the start of the day)

Clearly I only am really interested in the one thing at this park though

Some Halloween stuff

After 5pm they open the "normal" Q for T-Express...

I rode their haunted-swing/madhouse ride - it was smaller than most (Vekoma) ones I've been on

Place did start to get pretty as it went dark

SBNO wheel here

As well as cable-cars & chair lifts to get you back up the hill, they had an escalator-the-ride too.

--

I left about 7 I think - I had easily not "done" all the park (suspect there were a few areas I had not
even walked through) but I knew it was going to take me 2 hours to get back to the hotel and I was a bit
zonked out by then...

So a good, if annoyingly layed out park - its as if the park has just kept growing in random spurts on bits
of land without much of an overall plan. The 'best' park of the trip and the best ride in T-Express - if
my timing had been different I may have come back for a second day I think (but I didn't). The place probably
needs another standout ride (which probably was Eagle's Fortress) for it to be really great park - it was
pretty busy the random midweek-in-October day I was there so it must be doing something right.

I got the bus back to the transport centre and then the city bus back to Gangnam, wandered around there for
a while and git some food before the subway back to my hotel - long, but good day!

--

I'll finish off for a while with the only processed pic I have done from this day so far;

 

[davidm]

(right I wasn't going to do another day but the work I was going to do this afternoon, didn't work
so here we go...)

Day 4 : Wednesday - Seoul Land

The last park I was going to in Seoul (since the others in the locale were either shut, under rehab or tiny)
was the unimpressive looking Seoul Land - which was very easy to get to, it just being a stop on the subway
40 mins or so out of the city.

The subway doesn't quite take you to the park but to the entrance to the Great Park in which it sits alongside
the city zoo an an Art Gallery of some sort (as well as the Great Park open space itself), so you can either
walk up from the subway around a lake to the park or get a 1000won shuttle bus up there - I opted for the
bus since it had started to look like rain was coming...

So the (amusement) park is on the edge of this Great Park - and there were plenty of Korean OAPs out for an
organised ramble through the Great Park rather than a day on the toys at the amusement park.

(I had my camera with me all day, so these pics are about in order this time)

As I got into the park, the rain did materialise (so far I had had only good weather, mostly blue skies
and warm weather) and I sheltered for a while to let the storm pass ; once it did the weather was OK for the
rest of the day.

First up was the the rather crazy Crazy Mouse - crazy because its not like your normal mouse and
appears to have been built with left over track from the bigger rides at the park - that surely can't be the
case can it?

It wasn't great - more unusual I guess - definitely "strange" at any rate!

Just up from the mouse is the first big ride Columbia Double-Loop;

But this was hanging in the Q line, so I was spited

A little further round the park is the rather imposing looking Black Hole 2000 which is a rather
overcomplicated simple corkscrew effort - overcomplicated because its all on quite high supports but doesn't
really do anything with that height...

Ride was OK ; nothing very exciting though - the corkscrew high in the air was interesting I guess.

The rest of the park was OK, they had quite a few rides but nothing terribly exciting...

Luckily this was shut otherwise I would have had to ride it

Next coaster was another powered Zamperla Rudolph 2 Loop Coaster

Which was popular with the hoards of small, identically dressed children that were roaming the park

They have a geodesic dome thingy here as well trying to be all Epcot

And a Disney castle too

(which was tiy, just a bit of themeing on a upcharge-tank-shooting-ride-thing)

They had a proper kiddy coaster too, aptly named Kiddy Coaster but there was some extra themeing to it
too which I didn't understand, so ignored.

The "Den of Lost Thieves" is nearby, quite possibly the worst dark-ride shooter I've encountered

So thats a lap of the park done and I am back at the dome

There appears to be some exhibition thing in the building behind the dome, but its not marked on the park
map at all - slightly confused I wander in anyway and it some exhibition from some third-world charity.
they have an audio-guide that I made them set to English (apparently that had not occurred to the girl
handing it out) and wander through the exhibition in which I am meant to imagine myself as a 14 year old
African child - OK we'll give that a go.

After some scenes when it turns out my mother is dead, my brother is off fighting a war and my little sister
is sold into prostitution somewhere I get the idea that this is not a happy story that I'm partaking in.

I get sent off to the medical centre for a check up, passing a sign that says "Watch out for the AIDS"...

and reach the medical centre;

place hand here for your check-up...

*SIREN GOES OFF* "You have AIDS, You have AIDS" - how unsettling is that!

Next scene is another happy one, the voice-over encourages me to try out my coffin for size...

and my dead body is floating above me...

final scene is a visit to my mother's grave, what fun.

The dome itself was a big lecture hall that some charity-related lecture was happening in, I skipped that
bit of the exhibition since I figured I wouldn't understand much!

So that was all a rather bizarre experience - I get the idea of a charity doing exhibitions at places people
turn up at, but it was a bit of a downer tone, perhaps they could have focussed a bit more on the good work
that (I assume) the charity is doing rather than killing me off with some AIDS in a theme-park?

Luckily elsewhere in the park there were some more Korean roofs to keep me happy for a while...

Few fountains too

Their shot-tower was also under maintenance, got the impression that it was an upcharge as well?

Bits of the place were rather run down

Other bits well-kept, and they had a parade thing in the afternoon with some good themeing

This is the entrance to some mirror-hall, optical illusion house which kinda fell in the middle ground between
well kept and run-down

Selfie!

Some bits did look nice though

Managed to spend most of the day there though, so thats not bad. Was the only person in a 3d theatre at one
stage and there was a subterranean haunted walk-through thing that was quite unusual (and that I didn't understand
what was going on apart from some chap in a mask shouting lots of Korean at me in the dark)

Got the subway back to Seoul and stopped off for a pizza at Seoul station

Before going up on the roof of my hotel (there is a "Sky Garden" there) to take some pics of the city at
night unencumbered by windows...

 

[Darren B]

Fantastic trip report Dave! It's been a fab 30 minutes read.

The last park is ridiculous, with the left over wild mouse, giant corkscrew with ten tons of wasted steel, and AIDS the ride it's actually amazing haha! NEVER to be seen in the UK.

 

[Gavin]

They were running it "dry" though - so
no water sprays on the track, not sure what difference they would make to the ride experience though? Its
not as though the weather was cold either ; high 20s and T-Shirt weather - must have to get really warm by
the time they turn the water on!

It makes a slight difference, but not enough that it's still not a great ride without the water. It's strange that the water was off already. They used to wait until around mid-November to turn it off.

Much has been made in other TRs I have read of Lotte World's policy of making people Q outside
the attraction rather than in the Q itself and this is very apparent at Pharaoh's Fury as the building
contains a load of themeing stuff that you just wander straight past once they let you into the place
(after waiting 1/2 hour outside) - whether the policy is down to graffiti prevention or because they
can't merge the fast-pass queues without it I don't know, but it was a bit daft.

Graffiti. That's it. They started doing it when Atlantis Adventure first opened and continued it with Pharaoh's Fury. If you look at how disgusting some of the other queue lines are, not just in Lotte World, but in other parks as well, and then think about the level of theming in the Pharaoh's Fury queue, it makes complete sense. That queue is easily the best I've seen.

Next up was the drop tower I think ; they seem to have latched onto "Gyro" as a brand-name for their attractions since they have "Gyro-Drop" for their drop tower, "Gyro-Swing" for the swing ride and "Gyro-Spin" for their new disko.

I think it's more to do with the model name. Gyro Drop and Gyro Swing were both the first of their type in the world, and that's the name that Intamin gave the ride model. Lotte must have just continued the idea with the disco. Where have they put that? It looks like they've taken out their Waikiki Waves and shoved it in there.

Everland's a weird one. Apart from T-Express, it's actually a rather **** park that doesn't deserve the visitor numbers it gets. For the year or so that both T-Express (the new queuing system sounds retarded) and Eagle's Fortress were running, it was actually something special, but as a "whole park" experience, it's all a bit crap now. The new "transport hub" sounds bloody stupid as well. The buses used to run to a car park very near the entrance.

Seoul Land looks like they've changed nothing for years, accept for AIDS: The Ride. The shot tower's not an upcharge, at least it didn't use to be. but it is ****, so you missed out on nothing there. It's the same model as Bounce at Oakwood, so if you've done that, you'll get the idea.

 

[furie]

Brilliant cheers Dave. Darren's right, great 30 minutes well spent getting through it all

 

[davidm]

(OK, after a short delay caused not only by trips to AT and DMP but also having to rebuild my laptop
after some "technical issues", we shall try to continue on...)

Day 5 : Palaces and Towers

So I've done 3 days of parks in Seoul before today's national holiday in South Korea (their National Foundation
Day) so you'll have to excuse the lack of roller-coaster actions for a bit and put up with some vague
bits of "culture" and "sight-seeing" for a while...

Seoul has a few "palaces" in its city centre, having wandered around one of the small ones on my first
afternoon here, I now made my way to a big one to see what was going on.

This one is "Gyeongbokgung" and you can read all about it on Wikipedia here ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongbokgung

I'd arrived at "show time" so watched some more changing of the guards stuff in the big courtyard just inside
the grounds

After they had finished up, headed into the palace proper

Weirdly from that ^ pic you'd think we were off in the hills somewhere rather than slap bang in the middle
of a huge sprawling city. (Just Seoul has a few large hills/small mountains sticking up out of it)

A few fairly picturesque (and standard tourist) shots are available...

This "temple looking" thing is actually a folk museum just outside the palace grounds; it was diverting for
a little while...

Back inside the palace...

Managed to spend quite a while wandering around taking pictures (of Korean roofing mainly), but they are
all a bit same-y I think.

--

Wandering down the street afterwards I happened to find myself outside the National Museum of Korean
Contemporary History (http://www.much.go.kr/en/mainen.do) so wandered in on spec.

Turned out to be really very interesting - its a new museum (just googling it now it appears to have been
open only since the end of 2012) and covered the history of the country from ~1900 onwards. Now I knew
the basics of this history - Japanese colonisation / World War 2 / Korean War / '88 Olympics but I
learned a huge amount that I just didn't know (or realise) about the place and how it got to where it
is now.

Start of the Korean War;

Mock up of the president's office

Yay - I made it to Japan, but not Korean back then

Bit of modern history

So I really quite enjoyed that random unexpected museum stop!

--

One of the things I had to do in Seoul was go up the N Seoul tower. So after wandering the streets for a while
I headed up to where you can get a cable-car to the summit of the hill upon which the tower sits. However
possibly because of the national holiday (or just its always that busy at dusk) there was a vile huge Q
for the cable-car (sign said 90 minutes) and so I took the path up the hill instead - which was a but of
a nasty trek up lots of steps but certainly more interesting than standing in a Q for hours.

Had deliberately aimed for dusk, so got some shots on the trek up the mountain

There it is...

Obviously once I had got to the top, there was ANOTHER huge Q for tickets up the tower itself and then the
"reserved time" I had was another hour away (them Koreans and their reserved timeslots!)

But I finally got there after dark...

and rather impressive the view was too...

Took lots of pics up there as you would expect - have not done much with any of them yet though.

Walking down the hill afterwards was significantly easier than the the trip up I can tell you.

Culture/tourist day one done.

 

[davidm]

Day 6 : Fish and Trespassing

So for my next day of tourist-trekking around the city I had wanted to go see the remains of the Olympic
Park - I think my earliest memories of what "Korea" was were centered around watching M*A*S*H on the TV
(which was filmed in SoCal so thats hardly relevant is it) and then the 1988 Olympics.

But before I got to the Olympic stuff, I stopped off at the local aquarium (those of you familiar with
my TRs might recognise that I do tend to do aquariums in all the random places that this hobby takes me to
as well as their amusement parks!). This one was at a big mall/convention centre (COEX) not that far from Lotte
World - only the mall was undergoing renovations so was all walled off with construction walls and full of
empty shops - bit odd wandering from the subway to the aquarium through what amounted to a big long tunnel
between the construction walls.

Anyway the aquarium wasn't great - I tried taking pics of the fish (succeeded to some extent I think) but the
place annoyed me a bit; it had lots of non-aquarium type stuff in it (monkeys - whatthe?) and some
pretty small cages to keep said unhappy looking monkey in. The place wasn't that big and was pretty uninspiring.
The big pool at the end was OK, but even then it had some large fish locked off in a small space at one point
and that doesn't make me happy.

This is "great"

Not a fish;

Also not a fish;

Fish? No (but at least there's some water involved);

OK, they do have fish;

These always make me very sad;

Show pool at the end;

Yeah so, I don't really recommend the COEX aquarium.

--

But just down the street (and across a bridge) from the aquarium was what I really came out to see today,
the Olympic Stadium from 1988.

I didn't really expect to see much here since I knew that the Olympic Park was a few miles away and I planned
to go there next.

There was a warm-up track / footy pitch next door, some locals were doing some weird things there involving
lots of drumming and they appeared to be deeply involved in some shady (gambling maybe?) behaviour. Odd.

Anyway I was getting a few pics of the outside of the stadium, which is rather all I expected to do.

You could see through to the inside through most of the structure...

Apart from the people hanging around the warm-up track and a couple of ground-keeper types, the place was
rather deserted and all the ways into the stadium were all locked and chained up.

Then I noticed a few chaps wandering out from underneath the stadium, from what looked like an service
entrance... so, feeling brave, I thought "lets have a go there" and strolled through the tunnel from whence
they came (wandering past a couple of guys having a ciggy brake) and came out in the service "trough"
around the edge of the track.

Had to step up some stairs and I was track-side.

Cool!

Cauldron;

Goon!

I was rather pleased with my guerrilla-tourism, but I didn't hang around to get thrown out by security and
nipped back out the way I came in (which looked like it was the stadium administration entrance - there
were a bunch of offices (and security stations!) either side of the passageway I came through (it was more
a passage than a tunnel).

After that excitement I then stumbled upon a proper tourist-sight tucked unceremoniously under the walkways,
being a little Olympics 1988 Museum thing (which had seen better days I think).

--

A few miles stops down the subway (on the other side to Lotte World from the stadium) was the Olympic Park
where a few of the other Olympic venues and the Athlete village was. The place is now a big park full of
sculptures and stuff.

And today there was some tourism-exhibition-fair-type-thing going on (which I really didn't get the gist
of)

But the park was quite nice

And there were some sculptures, so that was nice.

This was my fave I think;

This is the athlete's village (now flats obv.)

No cred's though;

Right, after all that Olympic-goonery I headed back into the center to pick up a couple of sights I'd managed
to miss and get some food...

Tried to take a clever shot of a flag and the "sight" (didn't really work though);

Thats it for Seoul then... onwards South tomorrow!

 

[davidm]

Day 7 : to Daegu

This was a Saturday, and a travel day, but fear not - there will be coasters today...

Drag my bags down to Seoul station, and (despite the automated ticket machines with helpful English interface
not actually letting me buy a ticket so had to conduct a very sub-standard conversation in Korean that consisted
of few words ; "Daegu" "KTX" and a winning smile) get a ticket on the next fast-train South.

And very swish the KTX were too (why don't we have any trains like this (oh yes, politics thats why, and shoddy
old, overcrowded crumbling infrastructure) - what we needed was a dictator to build all this infrastructure
rather then that "democracy" that we have been enjoying - go figure!)

After a little while HURTLING through the Korean countryside (place is full of fields and mountains interrupted
by small towns full of large skyscrapers) I get to Daegu, locate my hotel, hang around for 1/2 hour in the
bar until they let me check-in (seriously EVERY hotel I stayed in would not let me check in until the official
check-in time, sticklers for "the rules" it seems).

Weather was OK but I had planned to just look around the city for the rest of the day and go to the park
the next day, but the forecast for the next day was grim and the park was open until late - so I just
headed up there mid-afternoon...

"There" being Daegu's "E-World" - formerly "Woobang Towerland "(no idea what a Woobang is, but the Tower bit
should be obvious) a few stops down the subway in one of the city parks...

Bit of a trek up the hill from the entrance to the park (there was a cable-car, but again a big Q) and I
get to the park.

First up was their Boomerang ; not the worst I've been on (old style train too) - interesting because the
whole thing was run just be one young girl ride-op ; she'd open the gate, let the queue fill the train,
check everyone's restraints, despatch the train (just by leaning through the window into the control booth
and hitting the "Go" button - a button that could easily be reached from someone standing in the Q line!),
when the cycle finished she would release the restraints, cross the track and open the gate, wait until
everyone had exitted, cross the tracks again and start again. All the time looking very bored by the whole
experience. Very efficient process, but obviously not the quickest in terms of throughput. Luckily there
was not really a Q then...

Next up was the only Q of the day really, I 20 minute wait for their Camel Back - some better pics
later - which was the biggest coaster at the place. Nothing very exciting, some rough transitions and a
bit of "up and down" (hence the name) but nothing great.

I rode their Hurricane next, which is just a loop & corkscrew effort - surprisingly wasn't too painful
(and no Q) so had a couple of rides on that. (again pics later)

Finally their powered kiddie - Magic Castle- only interesting because of the spiral "lift hill"

But I did like the ride-ops

There was a fair menagerie of those coin-operated sit-on animal thingies;

POV;

In the background of those you can see the Ghost House walkthrough - this was awful, the majority of
the walkthrough was just dark corridors with posters from scary-movies on the walls. There was the odd
scene (badly done), but it was just rubbish (albeit quite long).

Giraffe is the best (because giraffe's are the best)

The park isn't that big, but being on the side of a hill was a bit burdenous to navigate. They had some
odd themeing but mostly was just rides plonked down rather than any "theme".

All over the park was a fair amount of "Grand Open" posters and stuff

I think that the gist of that was that they had just been re-furbishing the tower that looms over the park
(and is included in admission), so I headed up there next.

Headed straight up the tower to get some daylight shots of the park, this is the Camel Back;

Hurricane;

and boomer (all next to each other as you can tell)

The Sky Jump was not running (luckily, else I would have had to find some excuse not to do it)

But it was a pretty good view from up there (not as spectacular as Seoul's tower though)

I'm sure that was not the original configuration of the tennis stadium...

Even the toilets had a view!

The Tower appears to have been rebranded as "83 Tower" (from whatever that Woobang stuff was) as part of
their re-furb;

So my timing was somewhat better than my trip up Seoul tower a few days before ; in that I was up there
in daylight and waiting for dusk and night to fall whilst up there;

Yep, dark is coming

and the lights are on

They had lighting on the coaster trains, which was really quite cool to watch. This is a 15s shot of the
train on the boomer going around...

The Tower itself was lit up from the plaza below with some of those projection mapping things. There
didn't seem to be a theme to the display though, but was churning away for quite a while.

The inside of the tower "base" was quite a big multi-floor entertainment venue thingy - what I assume was
the bit that was the "Grand Open" one floor was this huge posh food court place

Another floor has an ice-rink, another some photo-exhibition and another a posh restaurant. Was all
quite nice (and pretty busy on a Saturday night - was a lot of "date night" couples out for the evening).

Wandered around the park in the dark for a while - was all very nice all lit-up.

So an odd-place overall - the amusement part of the park wasn't great and was all quite old looking; few
coasters, few generic rides, kiddie area, few shows, the usual. The tower was great though - really modern
set-up in the "base" and rather impressive views from the tower itself. I had a really good afternoon /
evening though - suspect that was more due to the night-time atmosphere etc rather than the park though.

--

Back to the hotel... view from my room of central Daegu;

 

[davidm]

Day 8 : Rainy Daegu

Bit of a wash out day today - as predicted by the previous day's weather forecase it was just uggg and raining
all day.

I wandered out in the rain for a while, explored the city centre (not very big, easily navigable, couple of
big department stores) and some market that was meant to be famous (was just dull and smelly).

Uggg weather;

How many people can you get on one of these?

The city has two subway lines, they are building line #3 but its a not-subway above the streets rather than
below;

Smelly market

Famous sign (in the same way that the market that the sign belongs to was apparently 'famous')

So I retreated indoors, watched the Korean Grand Prix (which seemingly noone in Korea gave a hoot about) on
the TV and worked out how I would approach the next day (and park!).

Day 9 : Gyeongju World

Gyeongju (spelled variously, pronounced like john-joo) is about 35 miles [strike]West[/strike] East ( ) of Daegu - working out how
to get there was a little confusing to me as the internet didn't seem to help with the finding of the (actually
pretty efficient) inter city bus network - I knew there were buses from Daegu to Gyeongju (the town) but there
were a variety of different bus terminals in Daegu, so I opted to take the train to the station outside
of Gyeongju and then a local bus into the town itself (and then another bus up to the park).

This is the modern (new) KTX station on the outskirts of the town

But as I said, you still have to get a 20min bus ride into the town from there

The bus station in the town is rather pretty (ok, not)

After hanging around for a while, the right bus turns up

and I eventually get to the park (one subway, one train and 2 bus trips)

So as you might tell from the above pic, its raining and the day is very grey. The girl on the ticket
booth tries to tell me that no-rollercoasters are running today - she is very insistent about this (lots
of shaking of heads, crossing of arms, pointing at her laminated sign-for-foreigners and saying "no
rollercoaster ; rain" so I figure she knows what she is doing, but frankly what else am I going to do now that
I have trekked all this way here on a rainy morning. So in we go.

The place is empty and I fear the ticket-booth-girl is right... but then I see the Space 2000 coaster (also
known as Atomic Coaster for some reason) is running and so I rush over there. There are some kids ahead
of me and the train is cycling... but after 1 lap (and I would be on the next train) the ride-op starts
fiddling with one of the restraints, then locks the train up and closes the Q. I think - "well if I had
not been discussing whether the rollercoasters were running or not with the ticket-booth-girl I would have
made that train" - pah!

Opposite Space-2000-Atomic-Coaster is another powered kiddie ride Dragon 2 Loop Coaster, just like
the one at Seoul land a few days before. It _is_ running so I +1 it, still thinking that it and maybe the
indoor ride (which can;t be rain-affected can it) will be the only coasters for the day.

Rather dominating the park is the reason that I am here - the country's only B&M the rather splendid looking
Phaethon invert. I assume that this is really what the ticket-booth-girl was trying to tell me, that
the BIG rollercoaster would not be running due to the rain (and it isn't running) so I just take a few pics
of the themeing...

I wander down the Q line - some kids are coming back the other way, so I figure I'll get to a sign or
a ride-op sending me back at some point and carry on...

But I get into the building without any signs/ops...

and the blooming thing is just sat there open...

So giggling away to myself I get settled in (back row since front is full) and sit there. And sit there.
And sit there. So clearly they are waiting to fill it up a bit before running it and that rather explained
why I had not seen it cycling from outside. Ha ha.

Anyway, I get to sit there for about 15 minutes and maybe a dozen other peeps have appeared by then and they
set it off.

Its good. Very good actually. Not particularly intense but really fun. Good drop, loop, zero-G, cobra roll
stuff and then some wingovers and helixes as the momentum wears off - great stuff!

So I spend an hour or so riding it. That is 3 rides!

I think that I then saw Space-2000-Atomic-Coaster running again, so headed up there and snapped Phaethon in
action from the Q (which since I thought I had ridden every cycle the thing had done so far that day amused me).

So Space 2000 (Atomiccoaster)

Possibly one of the worst, most painful, borderline dangerous rides I've been on.

Dangerous because its transitions (into its corkscrew) were SO bad I felt my spine crack. Was very happy
to get off that ride still walking.

So well maintained too.

The place has a couple of those silly animals though

Since Phaethon was trying to run, I tried to take a few pics - but it was still 10 minutes+ between trains
so had to be a bit quick

It failed to run when I had a ride on the big wheel though

There might have been a decent view from the wheel, if the weather wasn't so uggg

Awful, just awful

Few flat rides dotted about the place

Ironically the indoor coaster "Space Tour" was not running at all (but I was happy to take that trade-off
for the splendid B&M!)

So the park itself, was a bit schizophrenic; some bits were awful (Space2000 and the junk beneath it), but
some bits were well done - Phaethon's theming, a quite nice kiddie-area in the middle of the park

The water park attached to the park looked quite modern and clean as well (off season though so closed).

The splash-ride-thingy was well done

The drop-tower was a good ride, sat in amongst Phaethon's track, but the restraints were all moldy/falling
to pieces, uggh.

I got wet on the rapids, but that was because it was raining...

A show started up. They were playing to a huge crowd...

(in fairness, once it started a few more punters appeared; maybe to get out of the rain?)

All in all, one superb ride, one truly awful one and a lot of "meh" inbetween - glad I went though, and glad
that the ticket-booth-girl was wrong.

--

I left the place about 3:30 and got the bus back into the town - now the town itself is pretty famous as
a tourist sight ; originally I thought I'd spend 1/2 day at the park, 1/2 day in the town, then I thought
that if I like the town I'd come back there for a full day (so I spent more time at the park), but I still
had a couple of hours of daylight left so figured I'd have a bit of a looksee then. Grabbed a tourist
map from the train station and set off in the direction of the nearest concentration of tourist-tat I
could see on the map...

This turned out to be Anapji Pond and a 15 minute or so walk out of the town from the train station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapji

It had Korean roofs and ponds!

(Most of the building with the splendid roofs are all modern reconstructions though - not just here
but at those palaces in Seoul too - that what you get for building wooden buildings and heating them
with fire I guess. The sites here are a lot older than those in Seoul though.)

This is a model of what this site would have been like

Yeah, all quite nice, move on now...

Across the road from this site was a big park, apparently full of other historical sites

No idea; historical apparently...

An ancient observatory (historical it seems)

But most of these historical sights were burial mounds for the local rulers of olde. Unfortunately they
all just looked like the telly-tubbies set.

World Heritage SIte dontchaknow;

I know I had only done a bit of the local culture-sights here, but to be honest I was rather underwhelmed
by them - some of the ones I saw were meant to be key sites (but were just that telly-tubbie stuff). I
rapidly lost any enthusiasm for coming back here for a full day - the town itself was a bit ugly (the modern
bits I mean) - more Kyoto than Nara and I had thought it was going to be more Nara-like (if any of that
means anything to you!).

So I found the bus-station again and got the inter-city bus back to Daegu, this was easier than the "train
and 2 buses" trip of the morning (and cheaper) - the advantage I had coming back was that I knew where I
was going to!

Thats it, Daegu-done, off even-further South in the morning...

 

[Gavin]

Gyeongju (... pronounced like john-joo) is about 35 miles West of Daegu

No, it's not, and no, it's not.

The more impressive (for Korea at least, which is crap for cultural stuff) sites in Gyeongju are outside the city centre, which is vile apart from Tumuli Park.

Glad you got to ride Phaethon. I ended up having to do a second day at the park, purely to whore Phaethon, thanks to rain. Space Trip is just an enclosed Chinese jungle mouse, with the Star Wars soundtrack playing, so you missed nothing there.

Space 2000 is my all time worst coaster. There's someone else on here - can't think who at the moment - who's labeled it the same, and I'm "glad" that someone else has finally got to ride it. It was disgusting back in 2007, so I can only imagine how bad it is now. Even the lift hill was rough.

 

[davidm]

West/East whatever! ;-)

--

To apologise for my glaring error in geography, have a couple of processed versions of some of those pics of the nice beemer...

 

[davidm]

Day 10 : Rainy Busan

Bit of a wash out day today too - there was a typhoon wandering up the sea between Korea & Japan and that
had the effect of dumping lots of rain on Southern Korea (i.e. where I was headed).

Got the KTX down from Daegu to Busan though (a short trip really) and found my hotel in Busan - true to
form they wouldn't let me check in for a few hours so had a wander around the city for a while - MUCH
bigger than Daegu, but not a patch on Seoul for size.

After they let me check in the typhoon really started getting serious - it was stupid heavy rain for the
rest of the day and I was really not going to be doing any sight-seeing in that.

I even bailed on exploring anywhere local for food that evening ; opting for the hotel restaurant - however
that did give me the opportunity to eat some weird stuff; some octopus (I've had octopus before though), some
cuttlefish (never had that) and some jellyfish (nor that). To be honest it all tasted much the same - chewy
seafood (if you've had calamari it was all like that), but could feel the suckers on the octopus legs as
you ate them!

Day 11 : Tourist Busan

Weather was still suffering a bit from Typhoon Danas (but the heavy rain had moved off) so the day was still
overcast and a bit rainy - I figured I'd take the Busan tourist bus for a trip around the city in tourist
mode rather than coaster-goon mode (although there is some tenuous coaster stuff in a bit).

First stop on the tourist bus was the Busan Museum...

Which was 1/2 shut (something that was not apparent until I got to the steps). The place was ok (what was
open) and occupied an hour or so.

Nice themed bins though

Next stop was the beach ; a bit Bondai-like curved bay in the middle of the city "Gwangalli Beach".

Has a headland you could wander up

And whats that - a coaster?

Being a geek I had to wander over to the closed "Me-World"

All locked up though

Next beach up the coast was bit nicer "Haeundae Beach" and a bit more touristy (the first beach ended up
in a big fish market (where Me-World was) so was a bit more functional than tourist.

That headland in the distance was notable apparently for hosting an APEC meeting at some point - they seemed
quite proud of that on the tour.

So anyway there is an aquarium under the beach - literally ; the entrance is on the boardwalk bit between
the beach and the road right in the middle of the beach and then you go down 3 floors into the underground
aquarium - cool.

Was much nicer than the COEX one in Seoul I thought - just had a much nicer feeling to it

YUM!

These are my favourite "big fish" (they are 4-5 feet long); Maori Wrasse - I've scuba-dived with these in
the past and they are really friendly and inquisitive, coming up and swimming around you seemingly just for fun.

Busan is proud of its film-industry and there was some film-festival happening at the time - the aquarium
had joined in on the theme by having lots of fish-version of movie posters dotted around

At the end of the aquarium there was a ride ; so I had a go. It was a motion simulator with a crappy
Ice-Age film. Never having seen the Ice-Age movie I was a little non-plussed. The experience was all rather
rubbish and the 3d projection was bad.

Little did I realise (until last weekend) that it was the same film as running at Alton Towers' Ice-Age 4D
thingy - Alton's film quality (and 3d-ness) was MUCH better than this one though. Thats obviously what you
get with that extra "D".

Heading back on the tour bus towards the city you past that first beach again, but this time over the
huge bridge that spans the bay - which was quite cool actually.

And the next tourist-stop was the United Nations Memorial Cemetery which (since it was on the tourist route)
I figured might be interesting...

It was a cemetery though, so not many lols to be had...

It was very specifically for the UN-soldiers killed in the Korean war, there were lots of brits...

Quite a striking Wall-of-Remembrance memorial with the names of the 41000 UN soldiers killed in the Korean
War carved on (~2000 of which were buried at the cemetery).

So yes - quite interesting, not so much fun though.

Wandering back through the city, I was most impressed to see that the Blade Runner like go-go girls were
out entertaining the traffic...

Near to my hotel was a branch of the Lotte departments stores. They had a bread counter that seemed
rather popular...

"popular" in that it had a Q to be served...

A Q that stretched outside the department store into the subway outside...

and just kept going...

Must have been some nice bread!

 

[davidm]

Day 12 : Tongdo and another Tower

Allegedly getting to Tongdo Fantasia is relatively easy from Busan ; go to bus station, get bus, done. And
in fairness (to Gavin's park guide) it is - the only real trick being that "Busan Central Bus Terminal" from
where you need to get the bus, is anything but "Central" - being at the far North terminus of the subway
system and about 40 minutes ride out of the city centre (but at least it is on the subway and heading
in the right direction).

There are two bus networks at the station so make sure you go to the right counter (I did!)...

...grab a ticket to Tongdosda...

...and get on this bus...

...25 mins later...

...get off at the Tongdosa bus station (it was the first stop so pretty obvious)

and there is the park up the hill a bit (OK well at least the condos next to the park)

I'm a bit early so wander around the town a little - theres nothing to it, the reason it (and the amusement
park is here) though is the local temple place ; the "Tongdosa" that everything is named after - I didn't
get any further than the gate though

The condos next to the park (that you can see from the bus station - in fairness you can also see the
ferris wheel thing from the bus station so the park ain't hard to locate)

I still have to loiter around the entrance for a while though

There are a few large groups of school-kids hanging around, in fact the only other people going to the park
are those in these school groups ; so much so that noone is even manning the normal ticket booths and I have
to go to guest services outside to get them to wake up and sell me a ticket.

So its initially fairly pretty - the entrance street looks ok ; few signs out celebrating the fact that
it is the 20th anniversary for the park.

However I soon notice that the place is rather run-down - I suspect that perhaps it has not any significant
investment done in those 20 years?

I walk past the mini-coaster Fantasia Mini Special and have a go on it - not a lot to say, zooming
around amongst the trees was ok I guess

The real (only!) reason I am here though is a bit further into the park over a lake

The rather impressive looking (for an arrow looper) Fantasia Special

Theres a little queue of local kids - and the fact that the first half of the train is roped off and
the seats loaded with weights doesn't fill me with any confidence that this will be a good experience...

The ride looks like its seen better days, all rusty looking, half a train and the ride-op doesn't even get
out of his chair to despatch the train - no restraint checking, he says something in Korean over the PA and
we are off - I am seriously expecting the worst (I mean have you seen it, 3 corkscrews and then 2 loops
for crying out loud!)

Only its GREAT! Not rough at all! The transition into the 3 corkscrews is smooth and once you start
twisting you just don't want it to stop!

So I ride it a few times (the Q full of kids having dissipated by then) and it wasn't a lucky ride, the
thing is really good - surprise (pleasant) of the whole trip that was!

Theres a few other substantial flats

Condor;

Ship

Disc-spinny-thing-of-suspected-nausea

Wheel thing

Next to the wheel thing theres a crap mini-zoo ; they have some chickens and goats in the zoo - several
empty pens (its awful really) but most awful of all, one really sad looking Bengal Tiger in a enclosure
thats really not very big.

View from wheel thing

Oh yeah, the cars on the wheel thing were filthy - all scratched windows - uggggg

The castle holds a spooky walk-through thing "Invitation of Dracula" (yes, me neither) which was substantially
better than the one at E-World but still a bit rubbish.

The castle itself was falling apart - 20 years since any maintenance was done?

No idea what this is, but I saw the same statue on a street corner in Seoul - probably "means" something

Worst 3D dinosaur film ever - 20 year old CGI I suspect.

To complement the awful dino-film there were some rotting 20 years old dinosaurs models in the wooded area
behind it

The eateries on the main street were open, but empty and really uninviting - I left the park and bought
something at the local 7-11 instead.

There was a reasonable amount of construction going on outside the park - new car parks and (according to
the odd local I was talking to later) more condos being built

So the park as a whole - easily the worst of the trip, run down and sad in most places - the one standout
ride was unloved and looked fit to fall apart. There is an associated water-park, which looked modern enough
from a distance so perhaps the summer season water-park custom is enough to keep the place running?
If there wasn't that water park or the apparent investment from the owners going on outside the park (in
the condos) then I'd predict the whole place was on its last legs and next for the chop.

--

I spent a while chatting to this local bloke sat outside the 7-11 for a while - he was very
odd ; he grew up in Tongdosa and still worked in his parents meat-restaurant in the town but was married to
a Japanese girl (who lived in Japan) and seemed to spend his time in Busan chasing the local girls,
he'd never been to Tongdo Fantasia despite it being right there in his town because he needed a girlfriend
to take with him as he didn't want to go alone, he had no money (thats why he lived back at home) but
needed money to be able to move to Japan to get a job (why he couldn't do that with a Japanese wife who
already lived there I don't know). Anyway, odd and I rather struggled to get rid of him - eventually
resorting to a "I need to get my bus now" tactic and I headed back to Busan.

The last tourist-thing I wanted to do was Busan's tower which was a towards the South of the city, got a
bit lost in the hectic city streets after exitting the subway (honestly, I'm looking for a big tower, how
hard can that be to find its just going to be sticking up in the air for pete's sake!).

As you might tell, not as impressive as Seoul's or Daegu's towers but still a good view of the port area
that is the reason why Busan is where/what it is

The tower itself was a lot smaller inside than the other two on this trip

And I had done my dusk-timing trick again so I got the last of the daylight and then the night time.

Had to hand around a bit for the light to go though so amused myself for a while...

But eventually the light went;

This is the only shot I've processed so far from up there though ; its 32 separate images (one taken from
each window in the tower) to make a 360 degree panorama. The full size image is a bit big (click though
to that if you feel like it!)

 

[Gavin]

Now's probably not the time to mention that there's a non-stop bus, roughly one an hour, direct from Gyeoungju to Busan, which takes about an hour.

It would've saved you going back to Daegu, which is a total dump.

Fantasia Special is still my favourite Arrow looper, even after having ridden some of the much bigger, more complex ones in the states. The corkscrews are easily the best on any "traditional" style coaster. I'm glad to see it's still running really well. I can't argue with the park being a dump though; it looks like they've done literally nothing with it since I was there over 6 years ago.

 

[furie]

Finally caught up Dave and great stuff. I especially love Gavin's commentary on what you've done wrong - it's amusing me greatly

 

[davidm]

Day 13 : Nothing to see here... move along

So really yes, didn't have anything to do today apart from get back from Busan to Seoul for my flight home
the next day, wandered around the downtown Busan shops for a while in search of some tourist tat (didn't find
what I was after so ended up buying some tat at the airport instead).

The high speed KTX does the Busan-Seoul job with ease (and stupid cheap too compared to UK trains) so theres
no drama in that - was convinced that I spotted the ex-park in Daejeon (Kumdori-land) out of the window as
we left that stop (not at full speed but still quicker than I could take a pic of it to examine later).
The KTX trains get up to 300kmh (186 mph) which is pretty swift - they don't do that for extended periods
of time though, so I think the Japanese Shinkansen is a bit more of a "super-train" journey on the whole.

Theres also a relatively new train line that joins Seoul Station to Incheon direct, so even that bit of the
trip is easy (albeit 40 minutes to go 36 miles is not KTX speed).

I'd booked a hotel at the airport since my flight was in the morning - amused myself in the evening by
wandering around the airport taking pics.







They have built this super-swish looking maglev system to transport people around the artificial island
that Incheon airport is constructed upon ; the maglev takes you out from the terminal building off out to
some other bits of the locality (a water park and some leisure stuff apparently). Only the whole thing
has never opened - the signs said "opening in 2014" but that was pasted over the sign saying "opening in 2013"
(etc).

So, SBNO;



Day 14 : The End

Get up, get plane, home by 5pm (time difference working in my favour this time).

My luggage - not so lucky, had to faff around filling in delayed luggage forms and the like, but it turned up
the next day so no great problem.

--

The Final Score

Lotte World
Atlantis Adventure
Comet Express
French Revolution Down

Everland
Dragon Coaster (p)
Eagle Fortress SBNO
Herky & Timmy's Racing Coaster
Rolling X-Train
T Express

Seoul Land
Black Hole 2000
Columbia Double Loop Coaster Down
Crazy Mouse
Kiddy Coaster
Rudolph 2 Loop Coaster (p)

E-World
Boomerang
Camel Back
Hurricane
Magic Castle (p)

Gyeongju World
Dragon 2 Loop Coaster (p)
Phaethon
Space 2000
Space Tour Down

Tongdo Fantasia
Fantasia Mini Special
Fantasia Special

+19

--

Best : T Express / Phaethon
Honorable mentions : Fantasia Special / Comet Express
Worst : Space 2000 (by a mile)

--

 

[furie]

Love that first picture of the travelator thing - very cool in a 1990's ray-trace kind of way