Garet

Legoland was open for pass holders this Monday and Tuesday. Sadly my son had school so we couldn’t attend and I’m currently trying to talk him down from wanting to go opening weekend. He wants to get the pin and lanyard given to the first 1,000 people but I’m not sure how big crowds will be and if he misses out even if we do go I’ll never hear the end of it. Legoland have announced a bunch of events that will run throughout the year. It’s a small change but with this and the announced 9pm weekend closings as well as some more Korean menu options at some of the snack bars we’ll hopefully see a better second year. It felt like most of the complaints and schedules from the first year was Merlin wanting Korea to accept how a Merlin park operates whereas so far indications look like Merlin is now accepting they need to operate like the other Korean parks. We will definitely be hitting the park late April/early May to check out the 9pm closing/Starry Night event but at the rate my son is bugging me I’ll probably have to add an extra trip in the next couple of weekends

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Source Posting this purely as news relating to the effects on the future of Disney, not trying to promote political discussion, hopefully it isn't breaking TPR posting rules.

Quoting the Korean article that has more details than some English ones. Source I remain skeptical on the expansions, considering they keep dodging questions on the attendance, and the park will have to work hard to get around all the negative press from last year, but its nice to see them adjusting to what Koreans expect over what Merlin does, with the late closings. The park being outside of Seoul and closing at 6 was always a huge turn off for a lot of people, we couldn't convince friends to go since it meant facing rush-hour city traffic. Even when we went it was a 2 hour drive there but 3:30-4 hours back unless we made a 60km detour around the capital which still totaled 3 hours. My son is definitely excited for that since leaving kindergarten means busier weekend trips since he can't take days off from school. Also before anyone gets too excited at a Legoland Korea water park: Source

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Why is this suddenly a thing for rides that have been around a while? I've seen more news articles on this issue this week than in my whole life. Is it because these rides originated in Asia? (Mario Kart from Japan and Tron from Shanghai). I know Asia can have pretty low limits, I've seen water slides here in Korea with a 90kg weight limit per rider. Disney's policy is disabled guests have to wait the posted queue time before boarding right? Hopefully they then get priority on those seats. I know some B&M coasters have big boy seats, but I've never heard of a park doubling the accessible seats for that role as well.

^ I touched on it briefly in my Halloween TR about the parks official response to that But I didn’t bring up the articles since a lot of what has happened began because of opposing political parties and both sides throwing blame, I wasn’t sure if it was OK to bring into the discussion here since I think the admins tend to prefer politics be kept off the board.

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^ Lotte World Busan is a year round park, temperatures have been pretty low and as far as I'm aware, as well as looking at the schedule on their site, their Giant Splash is open for the winter season. Looking at it on YouTube, they're running it with the splash though even in Winter.

Good to see that the restriction is now 1.2m for riders, and not the 1.4 stated earlier, it will be a nice middle-ground roller-coaster for children before they can hit the bigger rides at Thorpe Park.

Yep, after running 4 day weeks in the winter season they decided to run one 7 day week in the winter for 25th December to 31st December. Which makes sense for most parks across the globe in that's a very busy week... but in Korea the school season starts in March so instead of a Christmas vacation they have an end of year one instead, this year most schools broke up around 4th January-March, only some private kindergartens tend to close Christmas week. I guess the attendance wasn't great since that 7 day week got dropped on the newly released 2023 calendar but it's a shame the park will be closed during the school vacation and during one of the biggest public holidays, 3 days for Lunar New Year when people will travel to visit relatives. The park is also now running a promotion where if you buy 3 gold annual passes you get 1 free hotel stay. But your hotel stay must be on a day when the park is closed. Actually, I shouldn't keep saying the park is closed when the park just announced a surprise reopening of one ride. Source Has there ever been a case of a park opening (outside of a media day/event) with just one ride operating before?

If this thing turns out to be popular, I expect a lot of similar systems to start showing up at other parks. A moving walkway for a ride: indoors, can run in any weather, and easily changed for themes/ new overlays with sponsorship tie-ins.... Coming soon to most Six Flags.

I wonder if Legoland Korea hasn't been hitting the attendance they were hoping for with their Christmas event. Despite only a few weeks left until the park closes in March they've suddenly updated the map for a 3rd time with more parts of the park open. Although, it looks like they are just adding the small Duplo area, Ninjago button basher and spinners, a playground, and one indoor digital sand area. No actual rides have joined this expansion. I thought the Ninjago ride would be added to boost the indoor avaliablity now the temperature is low, but the actual ride line-up hasn't changed at all. The map on our visit, although the Duplo train was removed from the line-up before the Christmas event had begun. The new map that now boasts of 24 attractions while still keeping the ride count at 7 (counting the 4D cinema) Like I said in my previous post, they're competing against other theme parks that not only run almost all their rides 365 days a year but most open rubber tube snow slopes to entice people to visit in the Winter as well as the ski slopes now being operational not too far away.

Hadn't planned on being at the park so soon again, and certainly not on the first day of the first ever Legoland Korea Christmas event. However, my schedule was emptied on the same day so we ended up heading out. Not really being interested in bragging rights or being 'first', the original plan was just to pop-in in the morning for annual-pass benefits: Use the 30 minutes free fast-pass in the morning, grab the free hot-cocoa and cookie as well as the free lunch for kids then skip out before the ceremonies and do some of the other tourist sites in the area since there a lot nearby. However, despite there only being 6 rides open, my son wanted to try and see Santa, so we stuck around for the Christmas show. However, the theater was running the Ninjago puppet show in the mornings. Since the show was in the afternoon and by the time the show ended, there was only 3 hours until closing we decided to just make a full day of the park. Since my last update, it was nice to see all the Meet and Greet times with the times and locations listed on the app, we managed so many more interactions thanks to this. My son really wanted to meet Santa and although we showed up to every scheduled Meet and Greet, it was always a random character. He was a little disappointed he never got a photo with Santa to take to school but he was happy enough at all the other characters he got to meet. Here was the final ride line-up for the event. Even the night before the list hadn't been finalized since the Duplo Train was originally part of the line-up on the map we downloaded from the site but ended up removed and maps in the park weren't available yet. The Factory Ride was up and down all day. We got a ride on it but a lot of the effects like the mini-figure camera didn't work as usual. For the parks signature attraction, it always is a walk-on and gets overlooked. However, on park closure days but with the hotel still open, they actually open the ride for 5 hours to give the guests something to do. Maybe being the only ride open will finally give it a line longer than 5 minutes. Also since it's the only ride open on the weekdays, that's also the only times the hotel guests don't also have to pay for park admission. What was nice was despite the limited line-up, I never saw anyone complaining or running to guest services, everyone seemed to accept it and enjoy themselves. The only negative I did see was instead of 30 minutes early entry for hotel guests and pass-holders, we were let in at opening instead but given stamps to go to the front of the line for the first 30 minutes after opening. This resulted in most people heading to the Driving School and the fast-lane quickly spilt out of the building. Like you can see above capacity could be as low as 10 people per cycle and although more cars were added you could see the frustration in the standby line that meant people were basically stuck without moving for almost 40 minutes since the priority line was cut at 10:30 and then had to be cleared out. Perhaps giving out 2 free fast-pass tickets for anytime in the day to hotel guests/passholders instead would avoid the bottleneck. Also on that note, despite only 6 rides being open, I was surprised to see fast-passes still sold at full price and people still buying them. There wasn't really much in the way of Christmas decorations to any of the rides except the train. We'd originally planned to skip the ceremony expecting big crowds and grab rides with empty lines while others watched it but we were surprised leaving the Factory Ride area just 10 minutes before the performance that there still being spaces at the front as long as you didn't mind being to the side. My son didn't want to pass up an opportunity to see Santa since we'd sat pretty far back in the stage show so we grabbed a place to the side. The ceremony started and all the characters came out to dance and perform. Since it was the first ever Christmas Lighting for Legoland Korea, the park president said a few words. The countdown begins... Fireworks lit up... And snow came down as the tree was lit up for the first time. The family who switched on the lights with the president are the same ones used on the website and promotional material for the hotel and Factory ride. A final performance... And then the media photos were taken. With the sun setting we did one last lap around the open parts of the park. It was nice to see Mini-Land models all lit up for night-time, too often the park is closed earlier than the sunset to really appreciate all the work the Lego Builders put into for nighttime viewing. This was the only shot I got of the Christmas tree on the way out since a lot of families were taking pictures in the middle and over to the side were the family from the website doing official photos for the website/promotions so I had to crop it to cut out all the faces. Once again, my son had a great day meeting characters and killing time in the build areas between rides and eating. This should be my last TR for a while, although the hotel is open, the park is closing end of December until mid-March (the only theme park in Korea to do this) and since the school year here in Korea actually starts in March (they break up in December here and combine winter vacation with the end of the school year) my son will be in elementary school which will make it harder to do weekday trips since unlike kindergarten, there is an attendance limit but we'll definitely be heading back on a spring/early summer weekend.

There are no post credits to black panther, only mid credits. It’s 2hr40min film so do your bladder a favour and leave early.