Garet

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You see them pretty commonly on the menu in Asia. Mcdonalds uses Mozarella sticks in their chicken burger: But most have patty style. Here's Burger Kings current one: And Lotterias:

I'm just glad that more of these are showing up. When I was a child, the only place I can think of that had this type of attraction near us was Center Parcs.

So this seems a good place to ask since a lot of people do cruises here. My wife and I really want to try a cruise. We keep getting ads offering $300 cruises from Singapore and it always says the boat Spectrum of the Sea. We aren't really too knowledgeable on the difference between boats but for our 7 year old, the pool would be the main draw and the slides look a bit lacking compared to some others. We have some friends have told us that if we are going to do a once in a lifetime cruise, it shouldn't be from Singapore. That we'll have a good time and be treated nice but despite the cheap ticket price that we are definitely not the target audience, cruises from that area are after Chinese and business families with deep pockets. E.g. some examples we've heard are cruises designing those boats with less activity areas or restaurants, only one small pool for the children to use etc to have bigger casinos or other places for the high-end clients. Thoughts? Our other plan is to do one perhaps on the end of the once in a life time Florida trip we keep saying we will do or when we visit family in England. Also just because my wife is curious, and we're from Korea where tipping doesn't exist, is 18% gratuity on everything normal for all cruises or is that again because of the clients they are after?

Updates seem to be posted here: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/notices/travel-updates

And conveniently don't mention T-Express since it doesn't fit the narrative: A roller-coaster in one of the worlds busiest parks and one of only 2 coasters there in a 12 hours open, 365 day park. Throw in the structure has to endure 35C humid summers and -20C winter. Also, it isn't Six Flags, so those 2 trains are constantly dispatching as soon as they're back to the station 10:30am-8:30pm. The rides/parks guidelines prevent it running when it's too cold so the park usually announces a months maintenance every January when the temperature won't hit the minimum for running but apart from that I can't remember ever seeing the ride down for unexpected maintenance. I know it's the newest but I wouldn't be surprised if it's total cycles is higher than the other 3 Intamin Plug N Plays so Everland must be doing something different.

Welcome to another 'The Other Side of Everland' TR. We rode a fair amount of stuff but as you've seen just on my TR's on this page, the ride side of the park hasn't really changed in a decade and I've already posted so many photos in previous TR's so I didn't really see any need to include them here. However the park has always been clear it's supposed to be more than just rides with new gardens (bye-bye Global Village and Eagle's Fortress), new zoo areas, shows, parades, and parties. Having a child means I've got to spend a lot more time seeing parts of Everland I usually skip past and appreciate more. I know I say this most TR's but Everland is one of the few parks where I find we get more done on the weekends than weekdays. There are occasionally dead days but we did a bunch of stops over the summer vacation and school days and found we had a more enjoyable time visiting on weekends, although disclaimer we always went in the afternoon once the rides were no longer locked behind the mobile app. I'm always thankful to live so close to a park open 10:00am-10:00pm 365 days a year. Makes for very easy staycation plans. We tend to visit the park in the afternoon just because the humidity and heat are pretty bad but a lot of people have the same idea and the shuttle buses were packed in the afternoon. This picture was during high season for the water-park which was open 8:00am-10:00pm so luckily for us most of the crowds headed there instead. Construction update: The right side of main street is getting an upgrade with a bunch of named restaurants, It's been so long since I had Mexican food so I was happy to see something is coming. I am pretty unfamiliar with this chain. I asked some American friends but responses were all over the place from 'It's pretty good and the guacamole is nice' to 'A step above Taco Bell but that's it' Can anyone guess why this KFC is so famous? Sadly, the new Safari World cars are still only running one tram per car. At this point I don't see it returning to the 2 trams per car they planned when they retired the buses, especially since the ride is locked behind the mobile app until 2PM and has a lot of premium add-ons for this ride on the site, from private safari cars at $200 for a group of 6, paying to get one of the reservation passes in advance at around $80 (with 4 other ride skips) and with the ride closing around 5:30 the park has now just announced a Night Safari at $15 a person. Decided to take a quick stroll in the garden since we had tickets for the stage show next door at 5:30 In all honesty, apart from the Madagascar 3 show from almost a decade back, I've never bothered to see the stage shows since it's another locked behind the app reservation ride, but we were surprised when we arrived at the park at 4PM to find it wasn't sold out. It's for little children but it was nice to get out of the heat for 30 minutes. There were even screens either side of the stage with English subtitles which was pretty surprising considering the number of English viewers must be tiny compared to how many Koreans but it's another case of Everland going above and beyond. There was a surprising amount of wire-work in this show for the actors. Aww, I hate shows that always do dragons or other threats and use projections for the fire. It's always lame and not scary.... ... I stand corrected! And it wasn't a one time thing either there was quite a lot of fire. It's pretty close to the disabled seats too. All in all a charming little show, a lot of effort must have been put in both by the 8 performers and the behind the scene workers. Things I never thought a young child would want to do: Attend a dance party full of crowded adults dancing and jumping. IT looks pretty quiet form the back where it was drier... ...but make no mistake the main party area was packed. Out of all the new things my son has made me try at Everland, the Summer dance party might have been the hardest. It's been 15 years since I graduated from university, I don't have the energy to party and jump up and down, singing, and bumping into people dancing for 30 minutes anymore. We had ponchos but it didn't matter. Every 30 seconds we'd get hit and be soaked completely. Even after one hit I'd have been dryer riding Pluto at IoA 5 times. Taking a quiet stroll to the start of the parade route to catch the night parade. It's a tradition for us to end the night with the parade ever since it returned after a long corona hiatus. We tried to add fireworks to the routine, but whether from weather, tiredness, or Joe Biden, we always seemed to miss them since they'd run the non firework wet version. Remember how I mentioned Everland runs a ton of premium add ons you can buy online. And that even though they can be pricey, they tend to sell out so often that the park can even advertise when the next batch will open to reserve? Well, you can now ride in the night-time parade. This one isn't too highly priced at $100 for 2 people. We interrupt this TR with a picture of a Quokka. Why? Just to slow down your scrolling. And also my son had popped off to the gift shop to spend his money on some new merchandise from the zoo small animals upgrade and came back with what I assumed was a beaver but I was corrected and after a quick google search, have discovered the happiest animal alive. So we had before had some bad luck with the fireworks. No-one in our family is big on BTS (son is too young and my wife and I are teachers so we get over exposed because of our students) but with the yearly Halloween overlay coming (although as of writing, it's already started) and no guarantee the BTS show would ever return, we decided to check it out. Title screen: BTS Over the Universe There was a lot of fire and laser but only a few fireworks for the first few songs. More fireworks kicked in during some other songs especially Permission to Dance. But the big finale was where most of the fireworks were. The music video for Dynamite that was shown on America's Got Talent, that was filmed here at Everland. To answer the earlier question. The KFC building (disguised as a drive-in restaurant) is where BTS filmed the video for AGT. The show has now been retired and the yearly Halloween Ghost Mansion show has taken its place. Perhaps it will be back next year but with BTS going on hiatus, maybe next summer will see the return of the usual musical jukebox. After a hard day following a child overlord orders ('Can we get an ice-cream now?' 'How about after the train? Everyone's watching the parade near the station, and it's almost finished so let's do the train now. It's been sold out all day and closes at 5PM' One ice-cream holding child later 'Why is the line 50 minutes?') time to end the day (and this TR) with the new Everland beer '482 Safari'.

Is this allowed at Disney? I can't see my son doing a 3 hour line for a meet and greet, but I also don't want to end up getting attacked by some very angry people if I ever lined up on his behalf.

Which are a myth, they don't exist. You're confusing it with the slightly more boring Trax.

Since Screamscape is now also jumping on the 'serious track issues' of Intamin woodies and how rough El Toro is, and it's just a matter of time before T Express gets hit because it's newest, T Express is in a park that is: One of the world's most attended non Disney/Universal Parks Open 365 days a year for 12 hours a day, I think it's even one of the only parks that didn't close a single day of the pandemic 35C heat and 100% humidity summers and -20C winters which must be tough on the structure Runs T Express from 10:00am to 8:30PM, constantly cycling and is one of only two big roller-coasters for all those crowds. I'd gather even though it's the newest of the 4, it's probably seen a lot more cycles than the other 3 and although not butter smooth, is still very far from rough. The park does 3-5 weeks maintenance in Jan or Feb every year when they can't run it anyway because the temperature never hits the minimum to be allowed to open, so they must be doing something different from Six Flags/Merlin.

Someone asked years ago so I took this picture in the queue line. of how they divide it up. Someone told me what each means but I completely forgot what.

Couple of mini updates now Legoland is fully open and operational and since we popped by the park: I took my wife with me to get her opinion why Koreans haven't taken to the park to much when Lego is so popular here. Every town has many 'Lego Cafes' where you pay a per hour price and then can pick any of the Lego sets and go to a table and make them so it isn't like the brand isn't big here. I think weirdly being an enthusiast, especially one from the UK, has made my expectations lower. It's a Merlin park and pretty much comes with what you'd expect from that so I walk away with expectations met. Whereas as my wife pointed out, Koreans are used to places like Lotte World, Seoul Land, and Everland, where for the same price you get 10-12 hours in the park but they all come with parades, night shows, photo ops with characters (Legoland despite having many on the app in actuality only has one brief meet and greet at opening) , gardens to take photos etc. It seems Legoland seems to get targeted a lot in the news from accusations of unfair contracts in getting the park built, rides being evacced, and expensive costs. The park was dead on our trip which does make for a great visit but with all the negativity Merlin gets compared to the other parks which are owned by big Korean companies, I see it making future companies more hesitant to build here in a country that has been pretty stagnant for new parks and additions. I touched on this when Shinwha World opened on Jeju island but it also kind of applies to Legoland. Despite the park being in an area that sees a lot of tourists, I think the park suffers from having a high cost that warrants a full day experience in a are that is known and full of cheap drop in for a couple of hours tourist places everywhere. Shinhwa World suffered a lot from this and changed from day tickets to allow people to drop in and pay per ride. Legoland seems to have noticed because they've started running on summer weekends $30 tickets to enter the park from 3pm-7pm and changed the parking lot to a per hour charge. Final update, the park has now launched it's fastrack tiers priced at $40/$80/$120. Protesters are still here despite the park being fully open a while now. You have to walk past them and a lot of signs between the car park and the park. Like I mentioned in my previous TR, one of the big complaints about the park was expensive parking. Legoland has now lowered the price and switched to a per hour cost for people who don't want to spend the full day. Opening hype and experiences have truly worn off now. Just to give you an idea of how quiet the park was, that was the car park on the day of our visit. Even with only one side of the Wave Racers running, it was walk-on and the Coast Guard Academy was having to pull most of the boats off by 3PM to make room in the station for returning boats because nobody was around to fill the empty ones. One of the reasons we visited was to check out the signature dark ride that finally opened. My son loved it which was the main thing, but a lot of the effects were out of sync on the ride. The mini-figure scanner failed to detect people maybe 2 out of 3 rides for my son and wife and refused to recognize my existence at all. The mirror at the end would show our car but show the previous riders which means it was either out of sync also or a weird design choice and some of the videos would start too early. Our first two rides we went into a pitch black room before on the final ride it synced up and we could see we're supposed to be getting shut into a truck for transportation. My son is very young and I think this ride serves as a perfect introduction to dark-rides/motion based rides and it'll be easier for him to transition to bigger rides like Mystic Manor or Spider-Man/Transformers having been on this and it was a fun ride but I think out of all the motion base dark rides I've done it's my least favorite so far. The ride also has a huge queue line and is advertised as the parks signature attraction but seemed to be pretty ignored on our visit. We rode throughout the day and not only walked on but the cars that went with us were always devoid of riders as well. Once again, despite this post being doom and gloom, my son and I had a blast. Corona took from me being there on his first ever cinema trip but we did the 4D Lego City Police movie and seeing him experience 3D that comes out of the screen for the first time or his delight at the bubbles or getting splashed by a movie as well is a memory I'll treasure. He still loves here and spent maybe 2 hours marathoning the Driving School since there were no crowds so I really hope the park does gain more success as Merlin adjusts to the Korean market/media/expecations. Yes, we popped by the park on a weekday but friends who went on the weekend also experienced light crowds. Funnily enough the route home always takes us 2KM from Everland, and since we have year passes and it's open until 10PM, we always stop in to eat, catch a few night rides, and the parade and fireworks and that park still pulls in the huge crowds.

Hong Kong's new night time show:

Yea sorry, I just found hidden phone footage on Korean rides uploaded less that 24 hours ago in a single Youtube search.

There's always Tokyo.

The carousel is closed until further notice after a fire broke out while the park was open. Unfortunately I can't copy the article and there's nothing official on the official site but here's the link: https://biz.insight.co.kr/news/401292

Going to post this here instead of making a new thread since it's not really a full TR since I was mostly there with my son and although we rode most things I didn't photograph a lot of the park since it was mainly a father-son day out but I'll do my best to structure it as a TR. I'm not usually a first kind of person and will usually wait off opening hype, we'd heard enough stories of the park being quiet that we decided opening hype had died down and we'd go out before the hotel and factory ride opened and could potentially lead to a busier park. It's worth noting as of writing the Factory Ride had it's first operational day today (29th June) and the hotel is scheduled to open on Friday (1st July.) We'd heard a lot of negative things but I think a lot of it is just people not knowing what to expect from Legoland or who it is owned by. One of the biggest complaints we've heard is how childish the park is and how older children are bored. Personally, I expected Legoland to be aimed at children but I kind of get the point whereas most have 1 or 2 rides you could argue are for bigger kids this Legoland does seem the most full of young children rides out of all the parks. The other complaints we heard was pricing for parking and photos. $18 was parking but even I winced when my son begged me for a $28 ride photo. At least for my son, the only negatives for him were that despite the park advertising multiple meet and greet areas on the site, in reality, there is only one scheduled and it's park opening on main street. By time we made it through the ticked booth, they'd already cut the line off and that was the only chance for the whole park. No later meets and none in other areas such as Ninjago or Lego Movie characters etc. The other one was the Ninjago ride seems to be up and down constantly. The doors got shut just as we reached the entrance on the first time, second time we got to station platform and had to leave (but got a skip the ride pass at least) and 3rd time as we were about to board I joked to my son if it breaks down at least we're in the air con..... and it broke down, but at least we made it on eventually. Thankfully a 10 minute breakdown let us skip an hour since Wave Racers and Coast Guard Academy seemed to be the busiest rides of the park, never dropping lower than a 40 minute wait. We ended up using the queue pass we got for the Coast Guard Academy because loading was painfully slow for that and the line really crawled and never really died down compared to the other rides. My son knew I wanted to try out the Wave Racers and was willing to use them there but I knew he'd been eyeing up driving the boats all day and he was already tired. I figured we'll be back pretty soon to try the factory ride and at least the Wave Racer line moves compared to the Academy. Kind of bummed since it looked like a fun ride but dad points over being an enthusiast any-day. Anyway, despite hearing negative things, we had a fantastic day and will be back soon. Although there is a shuttle bus from the car-park, it's really not a long walk. The only weird thing is you have to walk past signs and protesters who are angry that the park was built on an old historical ground. The hotel opening July 1st although at $800-$1000 rooms it can be pretty pricey. Lines were pretty manageable all day. The park is pretty compact and you're never more than 10 minutes walking distance from any attraction. The Duplo area is thankfully shaded considering even in early June it was 32C heat. It wouldn't be Legoland without funky figures all around the park. Instructions said " Stack a skyscraper and shake it! Send your bricks flying thru the skies..." So we did. And got told off for making it too high and making the bricks fly onto the ground.... lol Turns out toddlers aren't too cooperative when you want to wait for the ride vehicle for your picture so here's an empty tower. Quite a few playgrounds around the park. With the heat it's kind of a shame one like this couldn't have been a water playground though. My son had been quite excited about this one before we arrived at the park. I think I underestimated how much physical labor there would be with me being the only one pumping for him This one had digital screen for the fire as opposed to holes in the wall from my trips years ago to Legoland Windsor. We'd heard horror stories about multi hour waits for the Driving School because this was the only one in the world that let adults also ride meaning a lot of people riding. At least, for the day we visited, and I presume from then on, they'd changed it to match the other parks and have it be children only and as soon as whole families couldn't ride it became walk-on all day. Apologies to the staff. I wasn't allowed in so I never saw what the safety video said but my son took it VERY seriously and didn't bring the car back when the ride finished because, and I quote: "The traffic lights all went red and you can't go through a red light!" despite the staff telling him it was OK to go through the reds. I don't think he was too popular when the ride was in moti0n either and he would stop for the lights forcing the other kids around him to blow through the light. The Ninjago ride apparently can been up and down a lot on most days. My son was excited for this one so he got a little bummed that it broke down a 3rd time on him. I want to say the staff were fantastic, although he was waiting calmly on the 3rd time on the platform, disappointment was all over his face and one of the staff brought him a Lego Ninjago mini-figure which really meant a lot to him. He got his ride in the end and was extremely happy, on the one hand I'm glad he got his ride but I would have been more than happy to sit in the air-con, and get another queue pass for an outdoor ride and try for a 4th time. 3rd time lucky, we eventually made it onto the ride. As an enthusiast being evacced to me is a cool way to see the ride, but I forget how confusing it must be for young children to have the ride stop on the track and screens turn off, even with lights on and having to wait 5-10 minutes for someone to get t you. Since this was the 3rd time and it was on his mind what would happen if he was on when "it was broken" I explained to my son what was happening in case and to prepare him but it backfired because a week later he had a bad dream where he was trapped on a ride. The apple fries are also located in this area of the park as Kai's Apple Fries. Some shots of the Korea themed Mini-Land. There were a few more exhibits but I was too busy keeping an eye on my son to snap pictures. He wasn't too interested in models he couldn't physically touch and check out. The Legoland Factory ride opened today but wasn't open on our visit but here it is on the backside of the hotel. The whole park is located on an island just outside the city. A look towards the back of the park and the car-park. The Ninjago area, and Pirate Splash Battle although strangely the Ninjago live theater is not in this area. Unlike other parks, adults are allowed to ride on the horses here. I never got this credit. Mu son kept trying to build up the courage, but I could see he was very hesitant. I'd rather ride it later when he's 100% ready than now and him have an awful experience. The full Korean Mini Land. And I'll round out this TR with some pictures from the peak of the Legoland Lookout ride. Hopefully, if somehow all my clients cancel the same day again (which can happen on a Friday when they're all from the same company) we'll be back out to the park in the next month or two to try out the Factory Ride and then hopefully I can finally try out a Wave Racers ride as well.

Source Since the discussion about tourist visas happened here I figured I'd post it here. Borders are reopening but you need to go through a tour group for now.

One of the things I haven't really mentioned in my TRs are potentially why the zoo and gardens gets additions while the park hasn't changed in a while. On the Korean site there's a whole premium side (https://reservation.everland.com/web/el.do?method=productMain) of behind the scenes zoo tours or doing a family jeep for the safari rides (e.g. $270 for 6 people), in the spring/autumn night time safaris, cabanas in the garden or premium restaurant meals etc. These are extremely popular, the safari rides have quite a few cars for the private tours but even with the cost and fleet, especially now the rides are locked behind the reservation system, the premium stuff sells out fast enough to the point that they advertise when the next tickets will go on sale. So from the previous TR I mentioned you have to get to the park an hour early to try and secure your choice of one of the A-list rides: T Express or one of the Safari rides to make sure you're scanned into the park at opening. Well, the park has quietly added a plan-it program to the reservation site where reservation slots of rides have been allocated. Since it seems the standby lines being closed until 2PM will be around a while, I guess if people ever visit the park from abroad you should grab those to make sure you can do everything. Looking at prices it seems, they are selling the 5 pass online for $80 for 2 time reservations of the a list rides and a anytime pass of 3 out of Hurricane/Thunder Falls/Shooting Ghost/Magic Swing/Amazon Express or the 3 pass for $46 (one A list and 2 of the others) but they can also sell out. It kind of leaves you with no easy day to go, weekdays the park is slammed with students on trips everywhere, but weekends you'll hit a lot more rides locked behind the reservation system. In other random news: The Safari ride has reopened. The park cancelled the fireworks last Friday-Sunday even though the weather was good. Although no reason was given a lot of people noticed the fireworks cancellation matched perfectly with they days Joe Biden was in Korea so the rumor is the fireworks were cancelled due to that. Korean theme park fireworks cancelled due to American President's visit is one of the weirder rumors I've ever heard. Due to toddlers not coming with built in crowd calculators we were in the park during blossom season, a time I usually avoid so I want to end the park with some nice pictures. Like I said before, we like the park, all the staff are incredible and the park has long opening hours so I guess on the plus side, not being able to ride forces us into parts of the park such as the parade and gardens that we would usually skip.

As a huge fan of Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers as a young kid I'm curious, has anyone watched the movie that dropped today? My young son spotted it and recognized it matched the figurine above that I got in Japan, but judging by the trailer I'm pretty sure it's probably not suitable for him/most of the jokes will go over his head. Probably won't have time to watch it this weekend/week to see. It's Disney+ so I'm assuming not too adult but who knows.

So like I said above, Legoland scheduled their grand opening on the busiest holiday of the year for theme parks.... Source

I think it's going off discussion but i'll try and put a cap on this since Osaka is only a 90 minute flight we've been checking in quite often: The country is very likely to be opening up in the late summer or fall months but it's pointless debating until there's some kind of official announcement. In terms of this discussion about closed vs not closed, yes tourists still can't go in. Bert is also right that you can go for business through his work. HOWEVER, you need a sponsor and Japan as a culture are pretty respectful of rules. If you've gone on a business visa and someone be it a person or company have put their name and reputation out there by sponsoring you, you're expected to try and be a part of the corona fight by limiting what you are doing to business. I'm sure you could do a trip to TDL while there but your sponsor might not be too impressed.

So maybe blasphemy here but since I know people like original Space Mountain.... but If they want to make Space Mountain more thrilling, I would love to see what Tokyo Disney could do if they aren't limited to the original's design and can just go nuts. Paris Space Mountain has a bad reputation but I hated Indiana Jones at Disneyland Paris and yet enjoyed Raging Spirits at TDS and Vekoma has been killing it lately with their new rides. I'd love to see the minds of Tokyo combine with a (smoother) ride like Paris'.

Running: When something has more open days than Dollywood's Lightning Rod. I have no idea if SFGA's ride meets that definition though.

Unsurprisingly, Safari World will did not reopen today and will remain closed for a while: