Garet

Everland's pandas successfully mated again resulting in twins (2 girls): Source Source Popped by the park a few weeks ago: t There's a weird tipping point end of may/start of June where the park will be rammed and the water park pretty quiet, and then the next weekend it'll completely flip. In the background is the ticket office, not the entrance... ... and the line also curved back around and down the road. Like I've said before, you have to be scanned into the park to get a reservation for some rides and the biggest rides you need to be in the park within 5 minutes of opening, with the line that long and being locked out of 10 rides until 2PM we ran back to the car for swimsuits we'd packed just incase. The indoor pool was open but outside was just the lazy river and one slide, the park's main slide Mega Storm pictured in the background. We waited 40 minutes for our 2 rides on Mega Storm and maybe 20-30 for the indoor tube slides. Maybe I'm the minority but I'm ok with just having the signature attraction open and getting in re-rides on one slide in the quiet period, since the summer can be crazy busy when the park is now fully open and lines can go up to 250 minutes and tickets at $80. We did our usual after water park tradition of food and fireworks in Everland, here's how the tree looked after the fire. The Monster Family sign has been replaced with this sign to represent the new attraction. And the old Robot Arm VR was now this exhibit. And as usual we caught the fireworks before heading home.

Legoland has switched their rides to the 'split' style on weekdays with one ride per area running morning only and another next door afternoon only on weekdays. Everland also uses this style on weekdays, although in their case it's due to their water park absorbing most of the crowds to the point that water park guests can go into Everland for free. Legoland also announced their water park expansion will be a water maze from next Friday along with the return of Legoland's fireworks shows.

Korean news was reporting on this and showed the man on the beam:

Just to add, since I don't think that many people visit the Everland TPR Thread, but it also contributes to the issue here in South Korea that's different to Disney or other parks: Everland offers the chance to buy reservation times to skip the line as a paid upgrade, but the standby lines of the rides are actually closed until 2PM from the 3 headliners on weekdays (T Express/Safari/Lost Valley) to 8-11 rides on weekends. You can get one of those time-slots for free when you enter the park, but you have to be actually scanned into the park and they can run out 10-20 minutes after opening so to be scanned in early enough, you need to arrive at the park very early to be at the front of the entrance and get scanned in ASAP. Throw in that the Safari ride closes at 6PM so you have a short window to join the queue... but also runs a night safari for $20 a person that sells out online super fast. The new cars that were added to the ride were supposed to have 2 carriages a jeep but only have one so capacity is low which also has a big effect on availability. Last weekend was one of the busiest for the park and the line hit 300 minutes once the standby line opened 2PM. It must make huge amounts for the park though. Example here: Saturday is already sold out, and Sunday literally has one ticket left for the Safari and these are about $90 a person to get 2 out of 3 headliners (T express and the 2 safari rides) and 3 smaller rides:

We had planned to go out to the park this weekend and check out the night time event but the weather forecast was bad, and next weekend is the busiest public holiday weekend for theme parks so we ended up visiting the park last Sunday, the last weekend of 7PM closings. I wasn't going to take too many photos but my Iphone 7 after 7 years of bumpy roller-coasters died, so decided to test out my new Iphone 14. 1st anniversary banners and theming was all around the park. An opening ceremony was added to hype the crowds, with dancing, lego characters and one lucky child getting to open the park and get a certificate for doing it. My son tried his best to get noticed but with the amount of children there, I think he has more chance of winning the lottery lol. A new stage has been added this year near the train and fire station to boost the entertainment offerings. Was surprised to see the Driving School gift shop had been ripped out, it's now just a big building hosting the license print out area. The water effects on the 4D film had been turned off. We checked out the Mythica film for a change and were completely lost. The police movie seemed to utilize the 3D much better and held the children's attention but during Mythica a lot of kids were getting bored in their seats. There were a lot more meet and greets than last year, and were well marked and advertised in time on the app. We got in maybe 6 or 7 meet ups in one day which left my son a very happy customer. Sadly the same couldn't be said for the buffet. There were no times posted for any restaurants on what their operating hours were. Maybe we've just got too spoilt on Asian park operations but we walked in just after 4PM (there was no barrier on the door), 3 hours before closing, thinking there'd be a dinner buffet we could eat before the Ninjago live next door to find an empty diner, half the lights off with no-one there for information apart from one cleaner far away. Even just a sign or notice somewhere with the operating time would be nice when we planned our day. It was impossible to tell if it was just a break gap between dinner and lunch or if they were done for the day. At least switching to another restaurant meant we got a good view of the stage show. We'd heard a lot of people weren't fond of the restaurant and the majority of people sitting down had their own food they had brought in since Legoland have relaxed their ban of outside food after a lot of negative press and complaints last year. Crowds were extremely manageable on a Sunday. The biggest line was probably Royal Joust. which may have been due to it only running one side as well as allowing adults to ride it. This was the car park at the busiest point of the day. Legoland have talked about their expansion plans in the next five years, there were two areas of clearing. One near the Dragon coaster and another at the back left of the park which already had construction walls up. Presumably one of these areas will be home to the swimming pool in July that was announced. The apple fries had a cherry blossom theme here. It was nice to see effects returning after being pulled out during the winter event, but a lot were either completely removed in the off-season or still not fixed. The glamping for 2023 sign was removed and presumably cancelled. It'll be interesting to see how many people will stick around when the 9PM night time closing starts, the park has announced they will sell afternoon tickets for 3PM-9PM which has been successful at the other major Korean parks, we tend to see a big crowd at Everland gates with those tickets when we drop by there after school finishes on the weekdays. At least for this day from 5PM-7PM we had the park almost to ourselves, with walk-ons and rides half empty. Rides were still operating but most of the cars had left before closing. My son had another fantastic day at the park so it shouldn't be too long until we return again.

Everland are adding a 2nd movie to their 4D cinema. They'll run a new extended cut of the current movie Monster Family in the mornings (a short film set at Europa Park and made by Nwave studios/Mack Media starring the characters from the movie of the same name and it's sequel) and a new movie Return to the Lost World also from Nwave studios. They're the company who made a lot of simulator films. If you've ever been in one of those old style simulators with the gull wing doors and rode the Astro Canyon Coaster movie that seemed to be the default since the mid 90's that's them.

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: