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.

 

[Rick]

@Tim Big fan of Jeju - great place. In Busan now .... talking of Busan ...

Unscheduled visit to Lotte World Busan today as my good lady tries to shake off some pretty nasty cold. It is a sister park to Lotte World above, in the beautiful city of Busan on the southern coast. Once again, was included in the city pass we bought so it seemed like a no brainer to nip in for an hour.

The park opened just over three years ago and feels 'new' - not necessarily a good thing, new parks - almost no matter how much is spent on them feel new and 'not quite right' - I guess it's largely down to the lack of trees. The same is true for new areas of mature parks also. Not to moan, just feels like the way bar a few notable exceptions and its rarely positive.

The park has two significant coasters, both from Mack. An LSM launch (clone of Blue Fire) and a Power Splash (clone of Pulsar - also Aquaman at SFOT).

There can't have been more than 100 people in the park. The flume and the Giant Swing were closed, although the former was testing.

Entrance plaza. Uber was £5/7USD from the Ramada in Haeundae.

This tree sings, apparently, but it never did when I walked past.

Again, fairly representative of what the rest of the park looks like.

Mainly dads watching the entertainment.

The Giant Digger (not sure if that is a typo or a pun), the Blue Fire clone.

This didn't have the rattle that this platform can be notorious for, which was very welcome.

Each of the areas looks a bit like this - a lot of cash spent, obviously.

An overview of the park

These are great rides, wetter than I recall - but very fun. I wonder if they can programme them to do more passes before the splash - especially when quiet. I read this has had very patchy operation since it opened but bar one row being out of action today, it seemed to run OK.

I didn't have the patience to watch this go round, let alone ride it

 

[Matt N]

Great reports @Rick; it’s nice to see you back!

Is anywhere else on your agenda while in South Korea?

 

[Rick]

Thanks @Matt N.

We have Gyeongju World and Everland on the itinerary (there's a spreadsheet, you'd love it) ... The former is probably pretty doable but the latter is going to scuppered by rain unless the forecast changes.

Win some, lose some - but would really like to have got on T Express. I've done the other prefabs, El Toro is one of my favourites so would be keen to see how that compares.

 

[Rick]

<I’ve written this all over the place so some aspects sound forward looking, they were when they were written, but they are now in the past>

After spending a few more days in Busan, we have started heading north back to Seoul, we fly back from Incheon. Two parks are on the schedule for the next week or so, Gyeongju World and Everland. The former is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, other than knowing it has two B&MS I can’t say I know much about it. Everland is the mainstay of the industry here - it seems to get mixed reviews, I know of it primarily because it has T-Express, an Intamin pre-fab.

The weather forecast looks bad for Everland and EVERYTHING outdoors seems to stop in the rain, so will make a call on that slightly closer to the time.

First up Gyeongju World

TLDR - one of my favourite ‘new to me’ parks in ages. A great selection of rides, well presented in a slightly out of the way location.

To get there we hopped off the train at the town station and got an Uber to the park. We had pre-bought tickets via Klook. The weather was brutal, nearly 100 degrees all day - the older bits of the park are pretty well shaded, the newer bits less so but there were fans everywhere. The high temperatures meant that the park was quiet on the whole, the water park looked pretty busy (our ticket didn’t cover that).

The dry park and the water park have adjacent entrances off the same plaza, but with everything else on the schedule we essentially had to choose and the water park lost out.

Heading into the park, it’s a pretty impressive entrance area - not so much this section, but there were a few parts that felt like they had some inspiration from IOA - or maybe that was just the influence of the giant dragons.

First up was Draken, the B&M Dive - it’s a copy of Griffon but uses 8 across floorless trains, instead of the 10 across. Really solid ride, for closing in on a decade it was butter smooth - really enjoyed it. Mrs. Rick wanted to sit this one out, anything without a floor seems to be the limiting factor.

It’s located in a newer part of the park that has seen a lot of development with most of the more recent investments finding themselves there. I didn’t get a great photo of Draken from the ground but I do have a few aerial ones.

Continuing the theme of large features at entrances (and minimal theming elsewhere) the new for last year RMC single rail Sköll & Hati had this pretty gnarly entrance sculpture. There were quite a few new plants etc, I imagine this will look pretty different in a few years. It uses the Stunt Pilot revision which feels far less crazy than the prototype, I believe the trains are slightly different too. My good lady opted to ride this, I tried to explain that the forces would be far more crazy than the B&M that she avoided - but she hopped right on and largely enjoyed it.

These are such great rides. As above, it feels like these aren’t ripping themselves apart like the earlier ones.

We nearly walked past the Gerstlauer family thing 'Valkyrie', but glad we didn’t - really fun. It’s pretty similar to the Vekoma family boomerang thing, but with the track looping round at the top, you get a longer ride with the train sometimes reversing and sometimes going ‘over the top’. The Vekoma rides feel simpler and perhaps more ‘elegant’ - but this was great.

This was a little Zamperla thing ... 'Wizard Race' , we didn’t ride - also new last year.

New for this year is an Intamin eccentric wheel, as best as we could tell it had opened the previous day. It’s the same as the ride at DCA, Intamin have seemingly sold a few of these now. Great ride, this was brilliantly presented with a nice story, voiceover etc - the ride is called ‘Time Rider’ and everything is presided over by 'Dr Chrono'. (Air conditioned) static cabins are the ‘Time Keeper’ experience, swinging cabins are ‘Time Travellers’.

More to follow.

 

[Rick]

The first of the three water rides was a classic Log Flume, very nicely presented with fountains and a great double down drop. So sad how we (the industry) all turned on Log Flumes and Hey Ya! for that matter, still getting big airplay in Korea.

The park has two pirate ships, I find that these are often overlooked at home but they seemed to be the stars of the show at the Korean parks.

Phaethon is the park’s B&M inverted, with a very cool indoor queue with a lush landscape around the whole ride, this was the ride that first made me aware of the park when it opened back in XXXX. The ride itself is a nice hybrid of Nemesis Inferno, Raptor and Katun. The second train seemed to be nowhere in sight, but they did have one of those cool little inspection ball cage things - what an uncharge that would be. Also, there was a bizarre retrofitted seatbelt on, not seen that before.

Gives you a sense of what the older part of the park looks like.

Some nice angles are possible, but can’t say I had the patience to wait with 100 degrees and single train ops.

The rapids were right at the back of the park, I wonder if some people didn’t even know it was there. It was really fun - some nice waves and a few water features and the like. Bits of it were perhaps looking a bit tatty. My only slight complaint was the seatbelt, I know they are standard in a lot of countries, but being clipped into anything that floats worries me a tad.

Shoot the chutes, a ride I might have skipped on a cooler day but we finished with this. It had some nice side of - very Thorpe Park looking.

Some of the older rides, like the Dodgems etc felt like they could be in a different park vs. some of the newer rides. These were fast - I quite like a circular track.

The water park in the distance looked pretty good, perhaps next time if we ever make it back.

For the life of me I do not understand merchandise in this country. The park gift shops have almost nothing relating to the park, the rides etc. I’d have happily spent a small fortune on t-shirts, hats etc - but nothing. But I could get this hat. I did not.

In conclusion, we had such a great time. The park had a great selection of rides, was clean and at no part did I feel like we were getting screwed - lots of places to buy food and drinks, all pretty reasonably priced. Everything was open and we didn’t wait more than 20 minutes for anything - there was no fast track option if it was busy, which is pretty rare to see.

It’s obviously transitioning from a smaller park with less sophisticated rides to something more akin to a western park - interested to see what they do next, I was pretty enamoured with it to be honest. Another +1 for them is that they still give you a paper map - I don’t care if that makes me sound old, our day was immeasurably improved by not having to navigate/plan via a smartphone.

Back to the train station in an Uber and on the train up to Seoul. Everland later in the week, maybe - subject to weather.

 

[Rick]

<I’ve written this all over the place so some aspects sound forward looking, they were when they were written, but they are now in the past>

Next up was Everland, the forecast was looking far more promising than it had looked earlier in the week. This park is about an hour out of Seoul on the bus which we got directly from Gangnam - very easy.

The park is largely owned by Samsung, but I wasn’t aware of this until after had visited - there certainly wasn’t Samsung stuff everywhere.

TLDR - we had a good time at Everland and we did get on T Express. Some of the animal exhibits did feel very tired and a bit sad, overall the park is a real patchwork of things built over the past 50 years and there isn’t really any cohesion as you walk around a park that feels never ending. Outside of T Express, there are no other big coasters to find - but there are some nice flats if you like to spin. Some of the park looks pretty tired - some of it looked great, I guess is a fair summary.

It was relatively quiet - a Monday, the longest we waited was about 40 mins for T Express and that dropped to a one train wait later in the day. I had read horror stories about how you can wait multiple hours for certain rides - but fortunately not for us today.

There is also a water park which we didn’t visit - but it was another 100 degree day, perhaps everyone was there.

The entrance area is built up like this, but all the restaurants seemed to be closed (perhaps because the park was quiet) - but some of the buildings just looked flat out abandoned.

The park is built on a huge hill, there are (I think) four cable cars - two ski lifts and two gondola lifts that take you between the top and the bottom. This one was really slow but it was pretty welcome given the temperature.

After looking at some of the animal exhibits, we went on the safari truck ride - similar to Zufari at Chessington and various others. The commentary was live (and loud) and all in Korean, so we just politely smiled and looked at the critters. At one point the guide had a giraffe’s head in the vehicle (I just missed this in the photo). I believe the vehicles used to double up as boats (there were photos of this in the queue) - but that didn’t happen on our trip.

At 13:00 T Express opened, most of guests headed that way and the queue was posted as 60 mins. To my surprise, I didn’t have to ride alone - she was up for this ‘because it has a floor’. It’s very difficult to photograph the ride, all the queue is covered and it’s built up on a hillside. The ‘Iron Rebirth’ subtitle has some reference to the fact that they have replaced some of the wood track with steel, this was particularly noticeable on the (awesome) first drop.

This is a very Korean sign and a number of people in the queue duly obliged. When in the queue there was an announcement in Korean and loud groans from everyone around us. I assumed it had broken down, but they announced that they were doing the unthinkable and adding a second train. A feat I assumed impossible in this country.

The first airtime hill after the drop is very cool - very much like the first half of El Toro, but from thereon in its much more similar to Balder. There is a mid course which takes a lot of juice out of the train, worse than the brakes on Colossus - but it is undoubtably a top tier ride. The track being directly below other track following the exact same profile creates an amazing head chopper type effect.

The entertainment was a very curious mass participation ‘show’ which I think may be based on a TV show. All the characters danced in front of the stage with guests following them and water being shot high in the air. A very simple, but fun show - I think a lot of parks could learn from doing something like that. Perhaps not in the UK climate, or maybe - who knows.

Rolling X Train is an Arrow twin loop / twin corkscrew thing. Rode quite well, minimal pain. Very difficult to photograph.

It has quite a rare (replacement) train on it, I don’t think too many of that generation were sold.

Also in this area were a number of spin rides including a Top Spin, Top Scan (open for two hours that day), and a Frisbee. A nice selection of flats if that is your thing. They look very 90s and a bit tired, I wondered what this might have looked like at night if the neon has been maintained.

More to follow.

 

[Rick]

Heading to the other side of the park, it’s hard to explain how big it is - perhaps similar to Alton Towers but with ‘stuff’ everywhere, rather than big gaps. This Vekoma junior was run - it ran backwards and was proudly presented as Korea’s ‘first backwards roller coaster’

Another big pirate ship, a dual one - only running one side, when running both I imagine it’s quite a spectacle. Huge ride, the picture perhaps doesn’t do it justice.

Moving along, we were intrigued by the ferris wheel that was prominently displayed on the cover of the guide, but didn’t seem to be moving. Its design is very similar to those you find all over Japan, I don’t know who makes them and wondered how hot those cabins would be on a day like today.

That thought would prove academic, as it is now seemingly only for decoration and has been for 15 years or so - very odd. This was also true of a Helicopter Cycle Monorail thing (like the one in RCT2) - sat there, looks ready to roll with the cars in the station but that has seemingly been closed for the best part of a decade too.

The Aesop’s Village area was quite nice with a plethora of smaller rides. A number of them seemed to only operate for a few hours on a day like today (the Trabant was already closed at 13:00).

Another huge section, this is the only photo I have of it - I think there used to be a big ride building around here as best as I can understand, but not now. It’s hard to describe how vast the park felt and the layout is really weird.

That airtime will never get old.

Curiously, they have retrofitted some handles to the restraints on T Express which have actual kid’s scooter handles on them for you to hold.

Sorry to end on a low but this rapids ride was a pretty grim end to the day - it obviously used to have lots of waterfalls and the like but not a single one of them was switched on and the theming was crumbling. It also has those awful Hafema rafts that are various mini boats all attached together to create a raft, they feel awkward and they’re not quite big enough for two people. It’s hard to see in the photo, but you exit the boat on the lift, I’ve never seen ops like that anywhere, you walk up the moving lift hill (with water running down it) to exit.

The station was banging out offensively loud techno music whilst the ops barked out instructions over the top of it. Even worse … there is a mandatory cover that you have to wear on a 100 degree day that smelt like a wet tent.

Everland is a curious park, a lot of it feels tired and unkempt with plenty of relics of the past either sat there rotting, or worse … operating. T Express is obviously the jewel in the crown, a great ride - but perhaps the third best Intamin prefab, for me. I think we were lucky with the hot weather, it kept the crowds at bay - I really wouldn’t like to be there on a busy day.

I can’t think of another park that vast, with so few large rides.

It was a nice easy trip back to Seoul on the same bus we took to get there. Glad we went, but it was perhaps my least favourite park of the trip.

I will drop one last post in the thread with some hints that might be helpful if you’re thinking you might go to Korea, for coasters or otherwise.

 

[Rick]

Heading back to Manchester now, via Doha in Qatar.

A few Korea tips …

Firstly, this wasn’t a coaster trip - there are some other parks to visit - some great looking water parks too. We spent a couple of days in parks but were there for a couple of weeks. We spent a lot of time in the cities, around the beaches, in the mountains and a few days down in Jeju - an island off the south coast.

It’s a really beautiful country - essentially an island because you can of course only access it via air or sea because there is no land access north of the DMZ. The population is very much centred around the large cities, with lots of nothing in-between. If you do go, don't miss the DMZ - how that all came together and the consequences of it is pretty crazy - I didn't know much about it all and have been reading a book to learn more about that period, it has some parallels to what has been suggested for other areas of the world today so is pertinent.

Travel

- a T-Money card will give you access to all buses and subways wherever you are in the country. It’s a brilliant system and journeys are dirt cheap - perhaps I can be won over that a publicly owned transport system when done right is the only way to provide the required integration.

- you can only top these cards up with cash, curiously

- you have to plan your train travel ahead of time (not subways) - if the train is full, you cannot travel, therefore you are guaranteed a seat if you are booked on (there are a limited number of standing tickets too)

- you need an International Driving Permit to hire a car. These are often mentioned in rental agreements, but not required - they wouldn’t have given me our Kia Ray without it.

- Uber launched last year, that really helped but there is some resistance towards it. I somehow lost my 5 star rating too, crushing.

- there were a few times where we jumped in a cab - it was then essential that we had the address of our destination in Korean, English wasn’t helpful.

Payments & Costs

-acceptance of western credit cards is patchy. Newer, dare I say ‘hipper’ establishments will accept contactless payments, many won’t and want a physical card. If you hit a spending limit on a card and it needs a pin to confirm that you are you - there is nowhere to deal with this on a credit card - Pin Services don’t exist at ATMs. Fortunately we took enough cards so that when one stopped working, we just used another.

- there are options to transfer money to a Korean compatible pre-paid card, we didn’t - but perhaps should have done in hindsight. The exchange rate wasn’t as good as our credit cards, but it would have saved some faff.

- the exchange rate was very healthy for us, if you buy local food or products they are very cheap. If you eat at western places, it’s still cheaper than the UK, but not as cheap.

Navigation & Language

- Google Maps won’t cut it, it is very much lacking in Korea and ‘Naver Maps’ is the app to use.

- we learnt a few Korean words, but English is everywhere and widely understood by younger generations

A few photos, cheers for reading.

 

[rob666]

Never mind the coasters...did you suffer the South Korean lovebug swarms?