Garet

So Korea has a new trend here to try and boost the economy and get more people to get vaccinated and it's 'Vaccination thank-you discounts.' The cinemas are offering cheap tickets to 2 people if one of them is vaccinated ($5/6 a seat) and some expensive hotel buffets are now offering up to 50% off a table of 4 if one of them is vaccinated. Everland is now getting in on this and is giving 35% theme park and 40% water park discounts to any citizens of Yongin who get the vaccination. Not sure how people feel about these discounts since Korea was pretty late to the vaccination game so I believe only people 60+, 1st 2nd grade teachers, healthcare, soldiers and emergency services workers are eligible right now so there's a lot of people who do want to be vaccinated but can't yet. There is an app for leftover vaccines if there are no-shows to avoid throwing away unused doses but vaccines have been pretty much 100% booked up by eligible people since the app went live two weeks ago.

If you can't think or say this, is it even really a French film?

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^ So due to America doing inches vs Uk's cm, Montu was my first ever big roller-coaster since I was 138cm I narrowly missed out on Alton Tower's coasters but just made the height for Montu. This was Montu's opening year and I remember my family and friends trying to talk me into Python or Scorpion as a introduction but after watching both I couldn't do it. Someone suggested Montu because, even though it was bigger, it was an inverted coaster, as long as I was not in the front row, I wouldn't be able to see anything if I didn't look down and get spooked by the height so my first ever big coaster was sitting in the second row middle seats and just staring at the back of the front row the whole way and I rode Kumba and Scorpion later in the day (Python was skipped for repeat Kumba rides and although I'll never have that credit I have 0 regrets there).

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I had honestly forgot that this attraction even existed. That's not supposed to come across as an attack on the ride itself, it just seems somehow this got overlooked and not talked about enough and I'm not sure why considering now I've looked it up, people who actually do bother have great things to say. Somehow Universal have marketed enough and enough people have talked that I know a Jimmy Fallon ride exists, yet had no idea T2 had become this. Although now, thanks to you guys, when I eventually get to do the once in a lifetime Florida trip, we won't accidentally skip it for something else.

Disney will sell web-slingers for the Spider-Man ride that will change your ride experience. Source

Due to an increase in corona cases in Singapore, Universal Studios will now shut Monday-Thursday and run only on Fri-Suns 12pm-7pm until the 13th June. Source

Turntable confirmed, it was on the blueprints but still nice to see confirmation, it's an older picture since track work for both coasters is now complete: Source Castle has been topped off: Source And the Giant Swing has been installed, someone more knowledgeable than me can probably identify it, looks like the park has gone for a Zamperla rather than another Intamin Gyro Swing like the sister park. Source

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I was visiting friends I made in Korea, first some in Niagara, and then a couple days later when I met some friends who lived in Pennsylvania, they offered to take me to a park for my birthday and my choices were Knobels, Kennywood, or Hershey's but they also threw in the option of Cedar Point and grabbing a cheap motel to make it two days there to justify the drive. I chose Cedar Point but still regret not getting a chance to try Skyrush or pretty much all of Knobels.

Lotte World owns pretty half the Intamin catalogue, most of which I don't think Intamin even lists anymore, including an extremely unique one of a kind coaster, and they run 365 days a year without ever having extended downtime. Likewise for the other big park in Korea, T Express runs constantly 11 out of 12 months a year reliably (One month in -20c weather it'll have its annual rehab). and these aren't quiet parks either, both parks have to run their rides full capacity, non-stop for 10-12 hours a day.

14 months later and I still have to explain to confused Asian students that this is actually even a thing.

Fuji Q have announced the closure of the Evangelion exhibit: To those not sure what it was, it was a walkthrough area with models, cockpits etc from the anime. Reportedly the closure is to free up space for the new rollercoaster. Some random pictures I took inside when I went in the exhibit once when the other big rides had already closed the queue lines for the day:

The official reveal of Everland's 2021 addition, Safari World will now become Safari World Wild Tram Source

Everyone focusing on the record-breaking, and talking about most inversions just reminds me of the original Smiler rumors that the first section of track would be a washing machine style spinning piece of track that could be adjusted to make sure the ride never lost its record of most inversions. I know marketing loves the word record breaking but it can be anything, look at Hagrid's coaster. The fact it's a Harry Potter roller coaster sells itself but they jumped through so many hoops trying to justify the 'biggest free-fall' or ' first story based coaster' so they could stick some records on there. Everyone's going to end up very disappointed when this record breaking coaster is just the washing machine spinner, a 5ft lift hill and drop and then a turn back to the station and the challenging location is the corner of a giant arcade.

I recently played the re release of the Lion King since it's one of the few, if not the only game I never beat when I owned it on my mega drive. Now i'm older and the internet exists, I can see that was intentional since there are a lot of articles online that say that since it came out when Blockbuster and other rentals were everywhere, the difficulty was ramped up outside of Japan to force people to buy instead of rent. I'm curious if Robb has any insight on this since he's listed in the credits.

Everland have announced the water park will finally reopen May 21st after being closed down in August last year due to corona, although the park will have a reservation only system in place for the foreseeable future. They've also announced the new Safari World (same ride, jeeps and trailers instead of the buses) will open May 14th. The park has virtual queues that they allocate to the rides depending on the day and how busy it is so I probably won't be heading out to ride anytime soon. Wednesday was Children's day, one of the busiest holidays for Everland, and some virtual queues had 4 hour waits... if you could even join them, with the most popular rides selling out 20 minutes after opening and all of the rides operating them booked up by lunch leaving most people having to wait until 3PM when the real lines opened up.

I know that people always talk about Universal vs Disney but I always feel like Universal knows they're basically the Disney add-on for once in a lifetime visitors with their pricing for tickets and passes. Have a high priced day ticket for the families that take a day or two from Disney knowing they'll splurge on express passes, 2 park tickets for the Hogwarts Express etc, and milk them for everything knowing they'll be trying to cram it all in but put the passes at a tempting enough price that state-side people who will be in the area now and again will pop in to justify their spending, grab a couple rides and then get money from them drinking butter beer or going to City Walk to eat.

Everland will be switching to tiered pricing for their entrance from June 1st with summer weekdays mostly being the C catergory, autumn weekdays/summer weekends the b catergory, and fall weekends the A catergory. Although the water park is closed due to covid, the park is normally very quiet in the summer due to the intense heat and humidity to the point water park guests used to get in free in the evenings to boost the numbers, so it'll be interesting to see if the cheaper tickets have any effect.

^ Yep and a lot of Asia was super late to the vaccination race so for places like Japan and Korea (Japan is sitting at 2% vaccinated and Korea 5% right now) who are fighting to not have their 4th waves be bigger than the initial outbreak, while also watching other countries slowly reopen places and relax restrictions, 2021 is looking worse to them than 2020.

^ I don't even think it's that. Anti-Olympic feelings are quite high in Japan lately, with more and more seeing it as an unnecessary risk so it's a bit of a political hotspot right now. Damned if they do cancel for all the money wasted, damned if they don't because if the numbers spike during the event people will say it shouldn't have gone ahead. I think it's more a case of each area has an acceptable limit and if that limit is passed they go into instant shutdown since this is what they did for the previous waves and the numbers went down, it's more a case of if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Osaka's passed that limit so USJ has shut down. If this was a case of being extra cautious before the Olympics, like they said was the reason for the last big lockdown, they'd have shut down nationwide to err on the side of caution and currently places like Tokyo Disney, Fuji Q and Nagashima are all still open.

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Source Spotted in the Everland car park.

They don't exist, they're just a myth. You must be confused by the less exciting Trax at Lotte World.