Garet

Are people really going to flock to the park just because it's open if they didn't limit attendance? The parks in Korea had no restrictions and never closed throughout the pandemic and Lotte World was seeing only 2,000 people on a Friday and about 4000 on Saturday. Before the closure Sunday they only had 1,100 people by 1 PM. It seems fear itself kept enough people away. And this is a country where people are taking off their masks because it's hot as soon as they're past the bus driver or station master on a mandatory 'no mask, no ride' policy on public transportation. Some predictions put it at least a 90% drop in attendance without any restrictions just by people staying away of their own free will. I wonder how many people will attend now the parks had a confirmed case once it reopens tomorrow. It'd be a perfect time to visit the parks but I seem to be getting so many restrictions as a teacher. I know my school was interviewing students and teachers and any who had been to Lotte World on the weekend (none as far as I could tell) would not be allowed entry. I already got made redundant once due to COVID 19 and a school closing down so sadly I have to jump through the paranoid parent's hoops and avoid the places for a while

Yup, we've also been watching the 'number of hospitalizations' figures as I feel that's probably most important. Also, I hate when people quote total cases over active cases. People telling me not to travel to this part of the country because it had 7,000 cases when their outbreak was 2 months ago and only have about 60 active cases, only getting a handful of cases a day, and yet seem to think places, where numbers are going up much faster per day and in the middle of a wave, are safer because they only have 1000 total cases...

Source An English article (non-translated) just went up with details, turns out the park closed 1 PM today and will be closed all day tomorrow. Obviously, the infection is the main part but look at those numbers for a Friday and the weekend! The park hasn't had any restrictions or reservations in place so most people stayed away of their own free-will, but that is an insanely small amount of people compared to pre-corona.

It's funny all the people expressing outrage haven't said anything about Lotte World or Everland being open for the last 3 months but only speak up once a case happens. More information: Source I think there are a few translation errors from google, sorry. From what I can gather on the tracing he took the subway line number 2 and visited the park on the 5th from midday to 9 pm so obviously the park didn't close 1pm on 5th. From what I can work out myself in my limited Korean since the park was open yesterday on the 6th what the article means is that the visitor from the 5th contacted the call center once he was confirmed infected or the contact tracers contacted because of him and once Lotte World confirmed this was a genuine call, shut down the park at 1 pm and refunded the guests (I'm going to assume this was the 6th after his visit or maybe 7th.) If Tim or another native speaker could check that's correct I'd appreciate it. Also not to confuse anyone with the translated name, the children's ride is this and not the little tracked car ride nearby:

I have to wear one for about 9 hours straight in Korea as a teacher and it's been 30C here. We have air-con but it's a central unit that goes to lots of classrooms and the education office asked we have windows open as well. Not sure that'll have any effect but we got to follow the rules so it's really hot in the classrooms yet I've had no problems breathing and I sweat easily but it's been easily manageable and I have to wear a big filter mask, as a teacher, we can't really use cloth or paper surgical ones.

^Yep, thanks for that, I didn't notice it at all.

Earlier in this thread, it was mentioned the park was building a second Vekoma Family Boomerang, it could be for that. Unless the family boomerang is mixed in that blue track. I'd assumed it was all the one roller-coaster but trying to follow the track it could be two.

Everland will open its water park from tomorrow. The water park will be closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the time being. I should also point out even though the outside park is 'open' Everland has a habit of staggered openings until summer. At the time of writing the biggest attraction, Mega Storm is open and that's it. Not even the wave pool or lazy river. The indoor park's wave pool and lazy river is open but their slides are not. So for the grand price of $50 you can ride... 1 flume. The outdoor wave pool will be next to open on June 11th.

I've always liked having options at parks to skip the lines. Even when they're out of my price range *cough* so far only USJ *cough* it's nice the option is there if I want it (USJ is only an hour flight away and not a once in a lifetime so it's not the end of the world to stick it out in single rider lines than shell out I think we saw over $200 a person for a Flying Dinosaur 7 when the school vacation was on). Judging by reactions I see on some sites or social media celebrating about Disney Fastpass+ being suspended there's way more anti fastpass people than I thought.

Everland has now delayed their water park opening indefinitely since Korea may be in the early stages of a second wave of Corona. After relaxing social distancing and switching to 'everyday quarantine' the numbers have been rising and outbreaks have popped up in and around Seoul.

I hate both of you. I roll my eyes when I see this argument come up again in an email notification. Then I notice the usernames of who posted it and all is well again. I have no idea where this idea that park anniversaries are a big deal even started. Has there ever been an amusement park that made a huge deal out of one with a giant roller-coaster? I feel like even Disney is mostly just decoration and merchandise. I was at DisneySea for its 10th anniversary and it was just decorations and logos around the park and merchandise with 10 on it. For all I know it was the same merchandise they always sell just with 10's on the packaging.

I always get a kick out of the #notanaquatrax because I honestly don't get the obsession with them. I love Atlantis but I got one water ride back in 2010 and then it was turned off after that all the time and they even ripped out all the water pipes a while back after that. Without the aqua part, you're just left with a very fun small launched coaster that was unique back in 2013 but now I feel a lot of companies can offer something similar. I always thought it would make a nice middle coaster between huge intense launched rides and smaller ones like Pony Express but the one here at Lotte has a 135cm height restriction (and a 38-inch waist size restriction) I feel like either somewhere on this thread or on a TPR DVD riding Atlantis there's even a joke somewhere that 'Maverick was supposed to be an aquatrax.'

The park has reopened but only to local residents: Source By the looks of the schedule they're running split shifts on rides again e.g. Eejenaika 10:00-11:00 and 14:45-17:00 with Takabisha and Do-Dodonpa in between at 11:45-14:00 or the Sky Roller running 13:30-15:00 with the Star Flyer running before and after.

Apparently it's going to Fantasy Island, whose old Top Scan used to run a pretty intense cycle, so hopefully they may run a better cycle with it than Blackpool did.

^ I rode the one at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and it looks worse than it is, the ride experience was mostly pretty tame with the seat only completely flipping once or twice, a lot less intense than a Top Scan ride for sure.

From Disney's own site: Source And yet people will still go running to be 'first'.

OH SCMP. You must hate when you have to post a straight forward article on Ocean Park just reporting the news. We've already discussed SCMP, in the HKDL thread, and their views to the parks but as usual 4 days after they put out this article they put out an opinion piece titled this: Source That on top of this article from May 11: Source and all the ones I posted in the HKDL thread.

The water park will open for the season on May 30th:

The aquarium areas are still nice. Honestly, I always felt the main draw was the aquarium and the rides were just a little extra to make it stand out from some of the aquariums in Tokyo. With 3 aquarium areas to visit, I saw a ton of crowds watching the shows and trying to touch the belugas and dolphins in the open area but not really that many people on the rides. I know it's got a great roller-coaster with it's mega-lite but I kind of feel Tobu Zoo is kind of the same. Less than Sea Paradise since Tobu Zoo also has a water park to make it feel more of a complete day out but with Regina now closed and they removed their Intamin drop tower a while ago, it feels like they're winding down their theme park to smaller, less expensive to run/maintain rides too. I remember getting off the subway and the exit towards the zoo had a timeline of rides and they had removed and replaced a ton of rides over the years looking at the pictures and dates.

R.I.P. Fred Wilard: https://news.avclub.com/r-i-p-fred-willard-1843493333

It was confirmed closed a while ago. The park had a lot of bad press last year from a red panda dying in the new exhibit, the whale shark dying and Surf Coaster having a collision in the station in August 2019. I had assumed Surf Coaster would get the axesince even small collisions are a big deal in Japan but on February 20th Sea Paradise put out a statement about it reopening: http://www.seaparadise.co.jp/file/202002surfcoaster.pdf

I went out to visit some American friends on Windseeker's opening year and they surprised me with a trip to Cedar Point. It was the middle of summer vacation (last week of July) and I remember Raptor had a 90-minute wait at opening and some of the rides at the end of the midway including Mantis had a 60-minute wait. Although we did both late afternoon after lunch and they were walk-ons when most of the crowd had moved on. Speaking of lunch, is there some unspoken rule that coolers are sacred things not to be touched? I was warned multiple times that visiting America would be nothing like Japan/Korea and I couldn't leave anything unattended but everyone seemed to have packed unlocked coolers and reserved tables by placing them on the middle of tables in the picnic area next to the entrance and considering all the warnings I was surprised to see no-one touched or moved them all-day as people would leave the park to go eat and go back in.

It's perfectly fine for a park to open this year and pretend their big decade birthday is actually next year, my wife does the same thing every birthday. 29 forever.

So here in Korea we were down to single digits the last week or two and most of those were declared imported cases. There was no lockdown here and I've been seeing so many people not bother with masks everywhere. We now potentially may be facing a second wave after 1 person went clubbing without a mask and unknowingly spread the infection. We went from him to 12 to 18 cases and though tomorrow's numbers aren't announced until tomorrow there are already now at least 40 cases with 1300 people still having to be traced and tested from the clubs he visited. When the parks reopen wear your masks. You don't want to be the one who feels fine but shuts down the parks for everyone else.

Source