South Korea - June 2025

[Rick]

I already wrote this but thought I would pop in here and share in my old stomping ground too. Hope everyone is keeping well

Friday - Had a fairly disastrous trip to Lotte World in Seoul, we can see it from our hotel and it's included in the Discover Seoul Pass, so we figured we'd pop in & check it out, ride the Aquatrax and then head off to do something more cultural.

No dice ... turns out everything outdoors stops in the rain and yesterday the rain was absolutely biblical - with government weather warnings to boot ... but the impressive (yet slighted dated) indoor section remains open - it was an absolute zoo. With the Aquatrax (Atlantis) closed, we opted to do a few rides before heading off :

• Pharoh's Fury - A budget Indy Adventure, solid - good fun and cavernous.
• Sindbad (sic) - Similar to the DisneySea ride, indoor boat ride - the drops were impressive but the big boats felt awkward
• Dragon Shooting - usual shoot screens thing.
• French Revolution - Indoor Mk1200 Vekoma thing, not bad - they have put a lot of padding on the restraints, I guess it needed it - some forces

Would like to have got on the indoor (underground?) Intamin spinner which is supposed to be a bit of a gem, but it was broken(!) for a while and when it did open the queue was all outdoors and the weather was still miserable.

The park is a large cavernous hall, with four levels and an outdoor bit containing the Aquatrax, Gyro Drop, Gyro Swing, Disko etc) (see this aerial shot from Wikipedia) - there are weird corridors to navigate around the edges and rides can be pretty hidden. It reminds me a bit of MGM Grand fused with the Adventuredome. It's a big old place, until recently it used to have a River Rapids indoors.

Food was OK, although it's not easy being Veggie here. Interestingly, it's common for adults to dress up in their school uniforms to go to amusement parks. We passed ...

I was fascinated by the balloon ride (I thought that they were just for decoration, but you can ride in them) - they seem impossibly high, it's an Intamin suspended monorail with cars that lower to the ground for loading and then head back up and round the park. It has a Pokemon overlay at the the moment. Wouldn't like to have to evacuate that thing.

We have the option and the time (here for three weeks) to do a couple of other parks, but if the weather doesn't cooperate it perhaps won't be worth it.

Some photos :

I think this roughly translates to 'there's going to be so much rain, even water rides can't operate'.

French Revolution, the Vekoma

The areas off the main hall, with shops and a smattering of rides

There is an ice rink below, see the balloons above

It plays a very painful tune as it drives around nearly running people over

More Vekoma

Vast place. Cute Monorail (left hand side).

More balloons.

Outdoor section.

The Aquatrax is over there.

Lotte World Tower, the tallest building in South Korea (and the OECD) since 2017.

 

[Rick]

Sunday - After dinner this evening we went up Lotte World Tower, figuring that we would see more than we would have done the other day in the rain. We got a discount with our pass (see above) - it was a fairly standard tall building with sky deck experience, a couple of bars on top, +1 for it having an outdoor portion, that is always a win. It did suffer from that slightly soulless 'all the walls are painted black' thing that Burj Kalifa has as well - it's impressive, but has very little class unlike the albeit shorter art deco masterpieces of NYC. It also has the perennial problem that you're observing the skyline ... from the most interesting thing on the skyline.

Seoul is interesting because it's so samey, if that isn't a contraction.

Then, with Mrs. Rick heading off to the shops and doing unspeakable damage on the Mastercard, I headed off to Lotte World again for the last couple of hours. It closed at 9pm, I arrived at around 7 - because I was paying with an aforementioned Mastercard - I actually got an unadvertised discount getting entry for £23/$30USD.

What I hadn't realised was that the 9pm close was the time the park closed, the attractions closed much sooner so that they had run off their queues by 9 ... which wasn't helpful. First up, the Aquatrax Atlantis Adventure ...

I waited about 40 mins in the single rider line - great ride, really fun, the straddled seating with the seatbelt means its that that is restraining you - so the pops of air in the nutty (indoor) section really are great - I wonder why Intamin didn't sell more of them, especially in that period where Six Flags and Cedar Fair were buying anything and everything that they were pumping out.

Slight mea culpa ... I have been seeing photos of this ride online for 25+ years and as an "Aquatrax" I assumed that there was some aquatic element to it, like Pilgrims Plunge etc - a flume even. No. Nothing - it's 'just' a coaster- as per the last photo, the water sprayers have also been removed (see rcdb photo here) - irrespective, I don't think that they could have added to the experience very much.

Next up was the Gyro Drop, a tale of two towers this evening. Solid ride, not huge - maybe 180ft. They're such great rides, really elegant in their design and operation. I wish we had one in the UK.

Then, my last ride of the evening was on the crazy underground Intamin spinner, Comet Express. I had heard it was good but my expectations weren't particularly high - but it was nuts. Being a lone rider seemed to balance my car in a way that it span A LOT, like a Tilt-A-Whirl.

Photo from the queue gives you a sense of the general vibe.

The train has a very 90s looking lead car.

The cars are quite unusual - I had read that "fat foreigners struggle with this ride" but didn't seem to be an issue for anyone I saw loading, nor me.

And that was Lotte World ... was the trip back worth it? Probably not ... do I regret it? No.

Comet Express was perhaps the highlight, Atlantis was novel but it was almost the same as riding any other roller coaster built over water. Maybe I should start watching POVs.

Off to the island of Jeju now. The 'Hawaii of Korea'.

 

[Tim]

Your trip to Lotte World reminds me a lot of my own. I also only managed a few rides, although in my case it was because I only had a half day to see it and it was very busy.
I also remember those public safety alerts well. We got them daily as it was during Covid and they treated every day as if it was a major incident! Stopped paying attention to them after a while.

It's quite the maze in there, and I missed out on Commet Express mainly because I thought "indoor coaster, it must be inside" and never thought to look for it outside. But it probably would have had a 2 hour queue anyway. That's the reason I didn't get on French Revolution.

Did get on Atlantis Adventure. My thoughts on that mirrored yours. Great coaster, and had a lot in common with Gardalands Fuga du Atlantide, although while that is a water coaster that is missing the coaster elements this is pretending to be a water coaster but missing the water sections.
Shame to hear the water features have definitely been removed now. I went towards the end of the year and couldn't tell if they'd just be turned off for the winter.

Would like to know what Jeju is like. Took an interest in it while working on the cluster we did for it in Legoland. The Hawaii of Korea was also how I heard it described then, but I never had the chance to experience it.