Garet

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

Even with reservation, the biggest problems for some parks like Disney/Universal will be how to deal with the crowds that show up before the parks open e.g. one's who want to run to the first rides or snag RotR boarding passes. For example a busy public holiday before opening: Source Source Or parades. You can see they've encouraged social distancing in the actual seating area. But on the other side of the road and along the route people still come over and crowd. Source

I imagine keeping the masks in place and intact on a water ride would be harder than a coaster to be honest. I can't really say since Everland rides don't get you that wet but these all seem to be problems that haven't been an issue the whole time the parks were open. I've seen pictures of the park on the last public holiday with hundreds of people squished together as well. There've been fake social media posts before in previous years to scare people so I won't post until I see a reliable source but it makes me wonder if parks switch to virtual queueing/ making people wait outside, won't this result in crowded streets of people just standing around or busier restaurants as so many people wait out their times. Tomorrow is Children's Day which is normally one of the busiest public holidays so if the photos are real then I'm sure some Korean media will pick up on some tomorrow.

I mean people are wearing them on T Express just fine and that’s full of air time. Although here they’re keeping the water parks closed for now.

I mean masks are supposed to be mandatory in parks in Korea and quite a few people just take them off as soon as they're through the main gate picking and then choosing where to wear them. Others start wearing them on their chins making them ineffective. Parks can't really invest in having security guards in every corner of the park to make sure people comply. Everland also has spaces in the lines and look at the pictures I posted a few pages back. So even if the parks open and masks and social distancing are mandatory, you're still going to have plenty of people who don't care.

That's a great video. It was weird that Disney embargoed it when they haven't done it for rides previously (and everyone seemed to ignore said embargo) but glad to see a TPR quality video finally online.

Sam Lloyd from Scrubs: https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/01/scrubs-star-sam-lloyd-dies-aged-56-tributes-pour-12643065/

With Korea reporting 0 domestic cases (and only 4 imported) as well as with today being a public holiday, and with the 5th of May being Children’s day one of their busiest days Everland has reopened their indoor rides. The children’s indoor playground, foam ball battle house, and VR rides remain closed as do the parades and fireworks show. Crowds for today’s public holiday looked pretty busy. It’ll be interesting to see how Everland does in the summer. The park is normally quiet since most people flock to the water park part of the resort but there's no word yet on when it will open.

Irrfan Khan has died: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52468343

^ You'd be surprised. Before I lost my job I was teaching at a private kindergarten and kids aged 3-6 wore their masks well all day long. I think Asian children are more used to masks since they wear them often when the air quality is low.

I don't think I've seen any penalties except there is deportation for foreigners who don't quarantine for 14 days after arrival. For Korean's, I'd assume a fine for breaking quarantine but again we don't have a lockdown that's purely for people flying in from abroad. I find Korea very different from Japan, Korea is more do what I want (traffic laws are broken continuously by drivers, especially buses and trucks which will plow and cut everything off with the understanding they're bigger and heavier) or pushing in lines and jumping ahead than have the culture of compliance. In our last outbreak quite a few would break quarantine. I'm a prepare for the worst but hope for the best kind of guy so I haven't been out to the parks because even though I have unemployment insurance to cover me, I've been to so many crappy interviews lately, where I've won the job but suddenly been offered lower than what I asked or was advertised or not even offered insurance and pension that was always standard, they always seem shocked when I turn them down 'Aren't you desperate for a job because of corona?' and the pay on jobs right now here is actually even lower than when I started 10 years ago because employers seem to be looking for people desperate to work that we are avoiding all unnecessary spending including gas and snack money if we trek out to parks until the market picks up. That said, looking at some other bloggers I know or youtube Vlogs, rides seem to be loading as usual and at least for Korea no limits on how many can enter, looking at the apps fast passes are still running and I can still get paid ones on the site. The only thing is those footprints in the queue lines to distance people, there's no virtual queueing, and it seems people are just ignoring them and grouping up like always so the queues are basically normal. I don't approve of this video since T Express has a strict no loose items policy, I guess because of the corona the attendants aren't allowed to pat like they usually do. This guy's an idiot for having his phone out on a ride and shooting vertical videos but T Express is filling up fully with no staggered seating. It was the only video I could find right now where I could see if they were staggering seats. So basically the park is running normal, rides are running full, these rides aren't separating seats and others I looked up on blogs aren't either so the only inconvenience is just you have to have a temperature check and wear a mask.

^This article sums up the tracing quite nicely: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/test-trace-contain-how-south-korea-flattened-its-coronavirus-curve I think the other keywords to take away from that are 'Voluntary cooperation.' We didn't have any lockdown but nobody went stupid. There was no panic buying from the supermarkets so that carried on as normal without crowding, and people went to work still but took all precautions they could.

I mean here in Korea we had virtually no lockdown and for theme parks, outside of indoor rides being closed, the parks have been open every single day. Everland and Lotte World never closed and the parks haven't exactly been ghost towns. People have to do temperature checks and wear masks and there is hand sanitizer all around for people to use as they choose but their attractions are cleaned every hour not after every cycle as far as I'm aware and not a single case has been linked back to the parks yet. And this is from a country that was once the second biggest outbreak in the world and we're down to single digits a day increases (although we're still being warned of a potential second wave.) Apart from restaurants around the U.S. army bases (the one group of people who are actually quite restricted) going out of business, the only other big thing affected was schools being closed because they could switch to online teaching. Kids cafes have restricted how many kids can come in but even they are still open. Everything else throughout the crisis remained the same. We never had any lockdown. Most people still went to work in offices or factories. Restaurants and nice cafes were still being packed, people still meet at the bars or walk in the park together. The playgrounds are full of kids again I've even seen a lot of people without their masks lately. This isn't Koreas first outbreak, we had a big MERs outbreak a few years back which lead the government to prepare in case it happened again. Instead of a nationwide lockdown, Korea has a law that you lose the right to some privacy if it's in the interest in public safety. What it basically means is if you are confirmed with corona they can look into your bank records and other things to track exactly where you've been and at what times. They use that to trace who you've been in contact with and then those people get tested and quarantined. It leads to finding the cases very early so the death rate here was low. Although names are omitted, the emergency alerts include age, sex, and location so there were some stories of affairs being exposed when people could work out who the emergency alerts were about. I do think Korea also got lucky in that our initial outbreak came from a giant church group localized in one area and made the government go into red alert early which combined with the tracing meant it got contained before it was too widespread and that early fear kept a lot of people locked up without it being mandatory. I lost my job sadly, due to working in a private school that decided it would rather fire the existing long term teachers who are expensive and rehire new ones when it reopens but for most people life is back to normal for them now. As far as I'm aware, I think apart from China we are one of the only countries to have a full-scale outbreak (10,000+ cases) and come out the other side so far and the only one with no mandatory nationwide lockdowns.

I'm always sad that I missed out on this ride by one year, and then saw the track and station sitting SBNO for my next 6 years worth of trips. I know a lot of videos and POVs were shot in its later life when the trees had really grown in so here's a very early look courtesy of Everland. [fbvideonew] [/fbvideonew]Source

Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit? The ones on youtube all look like they were filmed in an earthquake.

Interesting (and cool) that they added a mega-Top Scan. I was curious if Mondial would sell more after making the custom one for Knott's. For whatever reason Mondial seem to be advertising it separate from the Top Scan and referring to the 6 seat versions as Ventura: http://www.mondialrides.com/ventura-2/

Ocean Park is hoping to gain some baby pandas in their panda exhbit Source....and video

With it closed and getting an overhaul maybe Valhalla at Blackpool Pleasure Beach? I guess it depends on how much of the ride effects they had on. I loved it when it was new and had all the effects but in its later life most of them seemed to be off or gone.

Apparently, the footers for the Blue Fire clone are being poured, I'll be honest I don't usually follow early construction that much so I can't tell from these. Source The park is also pairing with Legacy Entertainment for the design of the park. A lot of the rides at Lotte World come from this same partnership when Legacy Entertainment was known as the Goddard Group. Source

^ My last ride was before it got the overhaul and new lap bar only trains. Heard from some friends it made ride nicer but not sure if it would have swayed my opinion.

Apparently, Surf Coaster actually finally reopened before Corona hit which is pretty rare for a ride that had an accident in Japan. Sadly Blue Fall seemed to get the death sentence instead. Surf Coaster was fun as far as Togo's go but I know which one I'd rather have seen survive.