Garet

Couple of updates from around the park: This might be one of the funniest failed Facebook translations I've ever seen. The original post was actually about fishing. Lets start with the one negative: The smartline system has been simplified to one tier, instead of multiple tiers to try to spread out availability but I still hate the fact that you have to be at the park so early before opening to stand a chance and then be locked out of so many rides without a standby line on the weekends until 2PM, especially when time slots are sold online for a premium but the system is not going away anytime soon. Due to the reservation system, we've lately been going to the water-park a lot this Winter since it grants free entry into Everland in the afternoons. This is actually usually the tipping bucket slide complex but the park instead of just boarding it up boards it up transforms the whole area into a winter spa with pools heated to 39C so it's not just the indoor pools even when the temperature was in the minus. Heavy rain meant no night entertainment, so the crowds had cleared out by the time we left the water park, but all the rides were running so we managed to get a lot done in just a few hours. On our second visit to the water park, the night-time entertainment was back. In the winter, the park doesn't run the full parade route but instead has a photo party in the main square where 3 floats come out and the characters disembark for photo-ops. The staff at Everland are always incredible, we arrived too late for the photos (completely my fault misjudging a queue line) but despite it being their chance to disappear and go on a break, two characters saw my son at the edges and made sure he still got a moment. That really made his day. I really really wish more parks would embrace the sit-down culture for fireworks shows. It makes it much easier for little children to see and results in no children on shoulders. We got there 5 minute before show-time and despite being at the back of the crowd, this was still our view. The winter show is Romance in the Sky, set to songs such as Marry You and All you Need is Love with heart shaped fireworks (although my timing sucked) Again, this is the view my son had. I can't imagine how much different for my son it would be at just 120cm tall if everyone was standing up. On our final trip the water-park was closed so we did areas that are normally closed at night. Sadly Lost Valley is still no longer using their amphibious vehicles to go into the water, but the giraffe encounter is still a highlight. Decided to check out the new updated zoo area with walk through capybara exhibit. The old cinema is now an indoor butterfly garden.I know I joke a lot about rides disappearing to become SBNO or turned into gardens like Eagle's Fortress or Global Village where, but the old cinema was always empty and this was picking up a crowd. It starts with a pre-show... ...before entering into the garden filled with photo zones. There's also flower bouquets sprayed with honey or cards for butterflies to land on so people can see them up close without risk of crushing the butterflies. The tulip festival was also in full bloom. New this year is the area being themed to fairies. Speaking of SBNO, the upcharge robot arm VR was removed after being closed since corona first hit. and the old bird walkthrough area was relocated so now it's a fenced off concrete wall. It's been this way for a year now and it's next to Everland's collection of dark rides as well as quite a big space, so hopefully something becomes of the area instead of an eyesore like the old Helicycles and track that's sat rotting for a decade. WIth spring, the photo party goes away and the full parade returns, if you don't care being up close, there are vantage points around the route.... ... and gives you the chance of beating the crowd to the fireworks and getting a prime spot on some of the raised pathways, away from the crowd area in the front. Sadly my Iphone 7 camera died after years of being bashed around on Asian roller-coasters for nearly a decade so these were all shot from the self camera. This show is Time Odyssey. Pre-corona, it involved live actors and projections on the SBNO Ferris Wheel but they've both disappeared in favor of using the screen. 027.MOV 028.MOV I've attached the finale of the fireworks that I shot myself. Judging by the sheer amount of tripods and professional gear we saw there's probably daily uploads shot much better but I figured it was better to attach my own videos than just link to someone else's YouTube. I'll be honest it was through the self camera and I got bumped a bit so it's not smooth but I'd rather get bumped by people having fun than get the perfect shot any-day. Edit: not sure how to make the videos show in the forum without downloading so I'll add to my Youtube.

^ My favorite is how long the lawyers have managed to put the restrictions in place Source The king has 7 descendants right now, 2 sons and 5 grandchildren and his current youngest descendant is Prince Harry's kid at around 2 years old... plus 21 years after that.

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.

People have been locked inside of Shanghai Disneyland due to China's zero Corona policy. Source

Due to the Itaewon tragedy, Everland and the rest of Korea are cancelling all Halloween festivities. This includes the non Halloween parade and fireworks while the country has a period of mourning. Most events were planned to run until mid November except Legoland which would have finished Monday. There’s a lot of anti Halloween sentiment now and whether the activities and festivals will return for next year is unknown. Everlands busiest period is usually Halloween as seen by these weekday queue times but overcrowding will be a sensitive issue for a while. Lotte World and Legoland announcements:

Well I chose a bad day to do a TR. Especially considering I said I wouldn't discuss the 'Crisis' unless it affects operations and then one day later a slew of announcements were made about last-minute operation changes and an official notice: Official announcement from the park: Source The park have also announced during November/December that the park will close 3 days a week for ride inspections and only run around 5-6 rides during the open days with the rest being some build areas or shows. It'll be interesting to see the reactions people have considering typically parks here run 365 days a year, with parks fully open except for a water ride or 2. Despite the announcement saying it was pre-scheduled, it's kind of annoying how late the notice is. All these rides and Mini-Land are closing November 1st and won't reopen for 5 months yet this only became public knowledge October 27. Kind of regretting buying that annual pass last week now but just means I will have to cram in a lot more trips in Summer 2023. As far as I am aware, they are the only park in Korea to do this and while the announcement compares it to Europe, some have already noticed they avoid mentioning Legoland Japan which is open year round. Again due to it not being the norm for Korea, it seems a lot of people who bought year passes were blind-sided by this announcement and had assumed they were getting 365 days worth of entry, Edit: Update 28th October. Another day, another update. The news has already been reporting on the closure and the park has now responded with another update and promising compensation for yearly ticket holders despite still asserting that this closure was always planned. Source

Legoland Korea's First Brick or Treat TR: Short disclaimer: I know lots of other sites have posted about the 'Legoland Shock' as the media have dubbed it and while I usually post the Korean news on TPR, I haven't here and won't be referencing it in this TR after this paragraph. The Korean company that helped in the development of Legoland and went bankrupt was backed by the government and I believe TPR tries to keep politics out of the site. Since the president has commented recently, and the opposition leader has commented today throwing blame I'm erring on the side of caution and won't mention it again unless it starts to actually impact the park. For now I will follow Legoland's official statement which is: So my son had a great day, bar one serious incident (hopefully someone can answer my question on the Driving School photo below). Despite the fact Everland is 40 minutes from our house and Seoul Land is 55 minutes, we now have yearly passes to Legoland mostly because,he's the perfect age for the park and the only one where he can ride anything, it's now cemented as his favorite and he doesn't mind the 3 hour trip each way to go there (lucky me who does the driving.) I've talked about this in other TR's but nearly all Korean parks are better to visit on weekends than weekdays and Legoland seems to be falling into that category. Seoul Land alternates certain rides and alternates which big roller-coaster is open each weekday, and Everland can sometimes run half-day shifts on rides in each area, one ride runs mornings and one evenings. Since these parks run until 10PM we sometimes go after school so he's familiar with the phrase 'on the weekend' when asking why a ride he wants is closed. We've made all our trips on Fridays so far. The first trip near opening, everything was open. The second the park was so dead it made sense to run rides at less capacity. This time however, lines were 40-50 mins across the board but the Wave Racers only ran one side, as did the horse track ride and a bunch of cars for the Driving School were roped off. This is also our first trip since paid fast-passes were introduced, but looking online lines seem to be the only sightly longer and in some cases shorter on Sundays when everything is running. I realize a lot of people skim the text but if anyone can chime in on the Driving School picture I'd appreciate it. It's near the bottom and will probably be the one with a word vomit underneath it. Welcome to Legoland Korea's first Brick or Treat. Children friendly Halloween means a lot of pumpkins. For all the negativity Legoland Korea gets about the cost, no one seems to mention it's one of the only parks with perks. One thing I'd forgotten after 10 years of Asian passes, is pass-holder benefits! In Asia, when you buy a year pass that's it, the perk is that you're getting in the park for a year cheaper than buying day tickets. There's no pass-holder previews or ERT or benefits. It almost felt weird to be let into a park 30 minutes early before the crowds. My son, being a Lego enthusiast, despite most of the headliner rides being open opted to have Miniland to himself and walk around there. And take advantage of having the interactive elements to himself. Kimchi flavored cola is not something I would buy. As the park opened, so did the monster houses. 5 of them around the park. 3 gave out candy, one a paper mask, and the final house gave a surprisingly nice bag. I was expecting paper but this bag has gained a lot of use since we've left the park. It was nice to see the park had alternate films and wasn't just running the Halloween film. I'd wanted to see it since it's new and a limited run but my son is a huge fan of the 4D effects of the car-wash scene in the Lego City movie. The Legoland lookout also had a Halloween overlay. My son loves Lego and trains currently, and still has a Lego Duplo train set he controls from an app set up in his room, so this was his first stop since it's a combination of his loves. A boy taking his toy train on a train made to look like a toy. Despite the weather not being too cold, a lot of people seemed to be opting out on riding the Splash Battle. As per all our trips the dark rides had some up and down time. Ninjago and the Factory ride both closed at points. The Factory Ride mirror was just a static image now, and the turning riders into figurines failed again to acknowledge there were riders. We're 0/4 on getting on Ninjago without some break-down, this time the car scoring system wasn't acknowledging any inputs. This is the Korean alphabet. I don't think there's a more Lego friendly alphabet out there. Most Korean names are only 3 syllable blocks as well so don't take up much space so most building areas were covered in children putting their names up. Fun fact: It's a requirement that on the side of every ancient medieval castle, there needs to be a tunnel constructed for a Japanese shinkansen train to pass through. I haven't included any roller-coaster pictures yet so here's the only one I took. One of the pass-holder benefits was a free kids meal at the buffet (on weekdays). This was one of the pizzas on the buffet line. To be fair I've had stranger pizzas in Korea. 2023 addition. I mentioned in my previous TRs despite the website mentioning meet and greets, apart from park opening we've never seen any at all on all our trips or been able to line up for the opening one. The park map listed 9 spots for Halloween and we hovered but never saw any. However near the end of the day we finally came across one. This was the highlight of my sons day. He was hugging, shaking hands and wanted as many pictures as he could before being made to move-on. Hopefully they become more common around the park. More of them please! Stop here! OK, onto the big downer of the day. We have only ever been to Legoland Korea so some more well traveled TPR people can comment. What is the line policy for the Driving School in other parks? Here it's been wildly inconsistent. First time, we could line up but not go into the pre-show. Second time we could go into the pre-show with our children. And this time, we were told the queue was very busy. so we had to let our children line up by themselves. The park even originally allowed adults to drive the cars when it first opened too but it was a capacity nightmare. The line was posted at 40 minutes and as mentioned a bunch of the cars were roped off so only a few children could go into the movie room at a time. I was a bit hesitant about leaving a kindergartner in the line alone, potentially out of eye-sight, in case something happened. A lot of parents were hovering but that was bottle-necking the fast-pass/hero access area. My son said he could do it so he lined up and I kept an eye from the entrance-way. Kids will be kids however and expecting that many young children to behave that long is a big ask. Within 5 minutes, something had happened in the queue and a couple and another dad were screaming obscenities in front of all the children, raising fists and the dad was yelling for the other man to fight him with the only thing stopping the fight was the mom getting in between (but still yelling). Security was called but by the time they came, the worst was over, and neither was removed. What was frustrating however was all the policies instantly changed. Despite the line being the same length, now parents could suddenly queue. So all the parents suddenly rushing through the line to get to their kids while others wonder where their parents were. And although I should be grateful, that it made the line shorter, with those 2 dads from the incident both in the line and close together, all those cars that had been roped off all day magically became available despite it only being 50 minutes until closing. I want to give the benefit of the doubt that the cars were added then because there was a corporate late night event that day but either way, it wasn't a good look and I hope they standardize the policies in the future because that was horrible for all those children to witness. I think my son was a little shook up being trapped in a line and very close to screaming fighting adults although when it kicked off, I made sure he could see me and I got very close to the incident to grab him over the fence if it got worse but he told me he was done with rides after that and just wanted to walk around and check out the subway trains they have around Miniland. It was close to closing anyway...maybe... the park hasn't updated the Korean or English announcements, because despite the 6pm closing, the announcements in the driving school kept saying 7PM... He had a lot of questions after what happened and I tried to answer as best I could. Why did I tell him he had to line up alone but then join him? Why did the line go quicker after parents lined up etc. He'd noticed the closed half's of rides/cars not running and said he wanted to go on a weekend from now on because 'It's slower now' [meaning Friday]. I learn with each trip with my son, and it was interesting to see his reasons for wanting the weekend. Maybe other parents can chime in but I've learnt that for him, time isn't judged on the wait-time of the ride but on progress. He would rather wait in a 40 minute line which constantly moves than a 25 minute line that doesn't move at all if that makes sense. Although the incident might also have something to do with reinforcing that belief. At the end of the day, I'm just grateful it didn't put him off the park. He's only 6 so it's easy to put him off something, and once calmed down, his biggest takeaway is that he wants to go on a weekend when lines will move faster (I think he felt trapped by the argument). He's already making plans that the weekend trip will be when the Christmas event starts so there doesn't seem any lasting damage. Te Driving School is/was his very favorite ride in the park so the big test will be if he lines up there again which is why some-one can tell me the other parks policies so I can talk him through it on the next car journey if he is hesitant. The next trip will probably be when there is a Christmas overlay here. I shouldn't be surprised but the protesters are still camped here. I guess they're protected and Legoland can't do anything because you still have to walk through all the signs. Most parks the last thing you see is 'See you next time' or 'Thank you for coming'. This sign told me I'm a fool for coming twice and not to come again. This was our 3rd time so not sure what that makes me.

Yea, I get that, hence why I said I know there's a pop of air-time there, I just meant in the context of a still image as the promotional shot for trying to sell the concept of the new generation of stand-up coasters you could have had a picture that shows them in a more natural position.

I realize there's probably a pop of air-time here but... "Hey, we're trying to relaunch one of our least popular ride types that a lot of people found uncomfortable, how should we market this?" "Use a picture that makes you look like you have to ride on tiptoes."

Am I the only one who thinks a straight vertical dive is more exciting than the twisting track? Since everyone is throwing wild modifications out there mine would be to put the new launch where the brakes were and vice versa and market it as the worlds biggest vertical drop.

^