Garet

Could be worse, Lotte World's theme park and water park are at opposite corners of the country from each other, at least 4 hours by car if traffic is kind.

Or Avenue Q

^ This was in a shopping mall I visited (along with heated toilet seats) to help make sure people know how to use a urinal correctly. If it's going to be the Taj Mahal of toilets, I expect every urinal to come with this mat made out of genuine unicorn hair.

It could also be a case of them keeping it as the original version if they are planning new trackless ride in a future expansion e.g. Mystic Manor. I'm sure no-one here would complain if both trackless rides showed up but if the expansion is close enough to Pooh, maybe they wanted them different enough in systems to not look too similar in the GP's eyes.

Merlin do actually take good care of their rides. Name one which is not taken care of. Octonaut's station and it's not exactly old.

^ I really didn't know that. Having never seen a control panel, I think I'd just assumed they said warning or caution or something similar. Trouble does seem a much nicer word though, now I just need to see a control panel that says "making mischief" instead.

^ Just guessing at what ride would have a "trouble" light on it. I guess "here we go again," was too long.

And here is where I disagree the attendance is indicative of profit because I believe many of the season pass holders who frequent the park most often do not spend money in the park. I know families who will spend more in one day at a park than I will spend in 20 visits. Just look at how many times in this thread that frequent season pass holders tell people interested in SFGAdv to leave the park for lunch and eat at Wawa Everland is in the top 20 for attendance and lots of that is made of season pass holders. I do notice a lot of pass-holders (including whole families of my students who go almost every other weekend) tend to just go for a few hours grab a quick few rides and then leave without spending anything. The shuttle buses are always packed even in the evening with families showing up with season passes for a free night parade and fireworks show. The cost for a normal annual pass here is just under 4 trips. I'm told a daily fireworks show and constant parades are actually quite expensive and a lot of the crowd are people in the area who can pop in for the last 3 hours. Attendance with season passes doesn't always mean profit. Most of their money will come from day trippers who will drive for hours to go to "Korean Disney" and will treat their kids to dinner in the park and souvenirs to remember the day, not the locals who will pick up maybe 1 or 2 gifts a year.

My XC operating days were filled with watching the trains stall on the top hat for 10-15 seconds. My favorite thing to do was launch a train that had been sitting in the waiting block during a downpour. Watching all of the water dump out of the train is fantastic. Is the button in your picture from Xcelerator? Sorry if you've answered that many times before.

^ I'd always kind of thought that being Japan, home of Nintendo, and with Potter in Osaka still being insanely popular, that any land for expansion would eventually go to Diagon Alley and Hogwarts Express and Universal would set up a 2nd park somewhere with Nintendo as the headliner to draw crowds, instead of it being somewhere in the already busy current park so I'm quite surprised by this.

I'm kind of curious, what happened to the original dragons? Where they scrapped or stored?

Let's just call it "steepest lift hill on a roller-coaster named Flying Aces" and be done with it.

A Korean blogger posted a great video of Everland's current winter fireworks show, Romance in the Sky, running until 1st March when the usual show will return. [youtu_be] [/youtu_be]

But at least Merlin does seem to invest in the other parks each year or so, so there are updates across the parks periodically. Merlin own 3 of the biggest parks in the country so they probably realize they can get away with adding less without the biggest impact on numbers. Yes it sucks for guests but at the end of the day they are a business and trying to profit while cutting expenses will sadly be their priority if the same money is still coming through the gates. Here in Korea we haven't had a big thrill ride or attraction since T Express almost 8 years ago and a lot of thrill rides from the other parks have disappeared over the last 8 years without replacement. Some parks haven't had anything new added since they opened 20 years ago or have had 1 big investment and a couple of smaller ones in 15 years and the biggest parks have had all their replacements be rides for the whole family instead of coasters or thrill rides. Why? Because they know they can use cheaper investments but still keep the numbers coming in. If they can cut their operations down and still keep numbers up so be it One park alone has removed a Chance Double Inverter, Huss Frisbee, S&S twin towers and a drop ride until their biggest rides are now a viking and a tagada with 0 replacements. Even Everland,one of the highest visited parks in the world, will, in winter and the hottest time of summer when people are in the water park, operate the rides on half day schedules during the weekdays during quiet season so 1 ride in each area of the park will run only in the morning (10-2) and another will run the afternoon (3-8). Feel lucky Merlin hasn't reached that stage when days are quiet.

Isn't this a problem for all Autopias? We had our deadest trip ever to HKDL where everything was walk-on across the whole park including Grizzly, Mystic Manor and Space Mountain but Autopia and Parachute drop still hit an hour shortly after opening and never seemed to drop. We ended up doing Parachute 1st on the 1st day and Autopia 1st on the 2nd day to avoid the lines. When our child is born I guess we won't have a choice but to suck it up later though

Not sure how well known he was outside the U.K. but as for some-one who grew up watching Children in Need every year and his funny Eurovision commentary, he will be missed: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35453541

^ I don't think they like that comparison

Everland's is still running pretty much daily 365 days a year minus the odd rehab days with no real problems or extended down time, the top-scan next door seems to be the one that gets the most closed days of the two.

I completely missed there was a Christmas update with an enterprise and pirate ship. I have a cheap 3d TV that was being cleared out of the Samsung store might have to try the new 3d option with this update.

Probably, when the apartments go for sale here in Asia they open a model house and people reserve them then each company builds around 20 identical apartment towers with about 60 apartments in them each and there's usually quite a lot of companies who will build in the same area at the same time. My wife and I just brought one here before our first child comes along and it cost more than a house with a nice yard and it's not even brand new. Downside of living in a country with not much land but a high population means everything is apartments even in smaller towns. Here's an old map of what was a new town where I lived when I first came to Korea and maybe 40 mins - an hour away roughly from Universal's proposed location, the red circle is the current city, where you can also see what I mean by identical apartments, and the blue circle is where all the new apartments now are that went up at almost the same time. Some are just finishing but but a lot have been open for over a year.The apartments come first and then everything else comes after. (Big supermarket closer than the one in the red circle and cinema in 2017, subway line in 2020) Funnily enough there are 2 big new cities going up in my area and both of them have the permanent name of (town name) 2 instead of getting their own new name. Side Note: I hope these apartment people cause less hassle than the ones next to Lotte World. The gyro-swing and gyro-drop now have scream shields on them which really can take away from the experience. Gyro Swing has slightly more open shields at the top and bottom now but originally they had to install foam covered helmet style shields that blocked half your view and where quite hot.

Doesn't Aquatopia also have it's station in the middle so they can run two sides? On my trips I've only ever been sent to the left side but I've only been during cold months and the line was only 20mins since It was cold (the 3 big indoor rides had 180 min waits though all day). I feel like some-one posted a report ages ago where one side was a dry side and one was a wet side. Well both involve water obviously but one side had the water jets hitting the car instead of missing apparently.

No word on the official opening date outside of "Spring" still but the 2016 addition of the Panda Exhibit can't be too far off, a lot of the outside themeing can be seen from outside the walls and all the panda merchandise has now gone on sale: http://witheverland.tistory.com/1233 . Looks like the merchandise is split based on stuff made based on real panda's, as in existing teddy bears, and others based on the two new cartoon panda characters the park seems to be adding to the roster: http://everland.com/contest/02_sub_02.html, a boy and a girl - same as the two the park will receive. I've also been hearing reports that whatever is happening with the Global Village (Small World knock-off) refurbishment might be more extreme than first thought. Last I heard, they've dismantled the entire building. Based on Everland's post about come back to see a new look (date tbc) and last years Thunder Falls (a new 2 drop flume with bigger boats and turntables to replace the old 2 drop log ride), it looks like they could be completely ripping out the old ride to replace it with a newer ride system/experience of what used to be there.

Apparently there'll be a Korean version of Newsies this April.