Garet

After disappearing at the start of the pandemic, Everland's nightly show/fireworks will be returning. It seems Time Odyssey will not be returning instead the new show will be filled with BTS songs and called BTS Over the Universe premiering March 18th. To give you some examples of the night-time shows since a lot of what's advertised in this picture, are used for every show here's some of the previous summer shows set to music. One year was when the Jukebox show was themed to musicals: Another was themed to movie themes, with Harry Potter, E.T, Pirates, Indiana Jones, and a Superman finale but I have to highlight here the Chariot of Fire segment where they took the fire park of the name literally:

So with Corona still running rampant in Korea, and some of the parks still having reservation policies on rides that sell out instantly, my family and I have taken to checking out some of the smaller pay per ride parks that are littered around the edges of the country while also enjoying the ocean views and fresh sea-food restaurants that are there. It's been something I wanted to do for a while because these parks change rides so often that you never quite know what you're going to find there so it made sense to use 2021-22 to check out these less crowded places. The first TR is My Land located on the island of Wolmi, not too far from the international airport. This area is quite popular not being too far from Seoul and the China Town area for people who want a breather away from the city. The locals seem to realize this because on my way to the park in my car, every old lady was trying to wave me down to park at their restaurant for $2 all-day parking. Honestly, this park was a little weird both for the rides and the systems, it seems to mostly be owned by the same company since looking back at the park on street view the rides constantly change areas, but there were quite a few separate ticket booths so you had to first find the booth and buy a ticket for a specific ride at that booth even though prices were the same. The rides weren't exactly made by well known companies either and cycles could be really short, and though we found some nicer parks later that my son really enjoyed, I'm featuring this park first since it was probably the biggest out of all the parks we visited and for reasons you'll see later. Welcome to My Land. So straight away, you may have noticed something strange about this park. This parks claim to fame is apparently that it's Pirate ships swing up to 110 degrees when you ride them. This first Pirate Ship definitely tries to compete with the others by offering a pretty high swing. I keep saying Pirate Ship but I should be more culturally sensitive. In Korea, they've nearly always called Viking. Remember this if you ever visit, it's on the immigration test. Unlike most rides, this one had it's own ticket booth and sits on it's own outside of the park. I have no proof of this but since this one is named just Viking and sits outside of the park I've made up my own head canon that this was here first before all the others and has refused to move out as bigger and newer rides come in. It's the Carl Fredricksen of Viking rides and since I'm pretty sure no one else is going to trek out here to visit the park or do a TR, no-one can prove otherwise. Although it wasn't running too crazy on my visit, this ride does definitely swing pretty far, to match the posters claims. Onto the main area of the park and there's one of these that can be seen at a lot of carnivals but are actually pretty uncommon here in Korea. However, one thing that is common in Korea are the Tagadas/Disco Pang Pang. These things always attract a crowd, both of riders and people who like to watch people get tortured. This one came with a DJ who would pick on certain riders. They especially like to pick on foreigners. I was a coward and didn't want to ride. If I want to get ridiculed in front of a bunch of Korean's, I'd just go teach one of my classes. So why am I bumping this park's TR to today? It's election day in Korea which means interviews with AI's of previous/dead/imprisioned president's but the one that seems to make the international news is the election results full of the most random CGI situations. Previous elections had candidates on the roller-coaster T Express, duking it out Mad Max style or racing on a ski slope and this park popped up today as one of the graphics. I've instantly dated this TR! I feel like more people would watch the elections if they could watch Trump and Biden enjoy some rides together or duke it out Mad Max style as the results came in. It also seems like the US election in that a lot of people aren't too fond of either candidate. My favorite part is the minor candidates don't even get to ride, they just get CGI'd into observers on the other ride's platform. I wasn't kidding about Mad Max being one of the ways to announce election results. Let's move on, this park also has one of those frog hopper type rides, but it didn't seem too popular. On to the second viking. This one is different from the other one in that it's bigger. If that wasn't clear enough, it's also called Super Viking. I bet your wondering why the park would have two vikings but only one tagada... well don't worry the park balanced it out with a second tagada 50m from the first one. Next is another swinging ride. The park used to have an actual Huss Frisbee called Hurricane, but decided to replace it with this 90 degree swinging ride named.... Hurricane. This one had carnival levels of spin on the actual disc and could be pretty nauseating. There was also a merry-go-round at the park but I completely forgot to take a picture of it, so this is the closest thing for a park index photo. Rounding out the middle area is the chair swings. and one of those old simulators with gull wing doors that still live on in RCT. There was also this drop tower, that operated with a counter-weight and pulley from an unknown manufacturer. Fun Fact: Have you ever ridden a drop tower and wondered, what would happen if the tower didn't actually stop at the bottom? Happened on this ride. There's a 3rd viking, just in case the non-existent crowds at the other two make the lines too long. This one is called Eagle Viking. It's not tall or has a crazy swing like the others, so I guess it's just there for the people who really enjoy riding Pirate Ships but are disappointing there just isn't enough Eagle theming on them. The newest ride to the park was Mega Swing 360. This thing really lived up to it's name. In that on the day of my visit, you did literally a 360 swing and then the power got cut. Not just in terms of the swing but even the pendulum spinning or brakes. The disc starts spinning, you rotate back and forth a couple of times and do the 360 degree swing.... and then the disc locks into place, drop back to 90 degrees and you swing very slowly back and forth for the next 2 minutes until the ride stops wondering WTF just happened. Watching on YouTube, it doesn't seem to be the usual cycle but it definitely was the one given to all riders on the day I visited. Maybe it was a good thing, because the ride also seemed to be a knock off and required an over the shoulder seat belt that was put on after and over the restraints. I bet you're wondering, why does this park have only two Tagadas but 3 Vikings? Well don't worry because this new area of the park (that used to be the car park) also comes with a 3rd Tagada. This is that new area, they also moved the ejection seat from the main area of the park over to the side here. As you can see this park, is very big on its swinging rides. You can get an idea of the size of the park here. They really cram all of it into a very small space. Squid Game cash-ins were extremely common in the area. These used to be only a dollar but with popularity exploding, they were selling all alone the ocean front for $3-5. While at My Land they had adverts for their sister park only 400m down the road. After 3 Viking's and 3 Tagada's, and being so close to the other park I'm sure there'll be completely different rides to experience.... right?

The main website has gone live confirming an opening date of 31st of March: https://adventurebusan.lotteworld.com/kor/main/index.do Soft opening will be from 17th-20th and 24th March looking at the attractions opening schedule but it seems the flume ride isn't ready yet. The list of attractions is here: https://adventurebusan.lotteworld.com/kor/enjoy/atrn/list.do?pageIndex=4&scrollData=Y&ctgry=ATRN&detailsKey=140&orgSrchTag= 16 attractions in total although one of those is a playground and another is a talking tree so 14 rides for the park, most of which are aimed at younger audiences. A one day ticket is 47,000 won (around $38) and the park will sell skip the line tickets: 15,000 to skip 2 lines or 27,000 to skip 4. There are 3 big rides for the park, the Mack Blue Fire clone and Power Splash and the Zamperla pendulum, named: Giant Digger, Giant Splash, and Giant Swing. It does seem on brand considering the sisters parks bigger rides are: Gyro Swing, Gyro Spin, and Gyro Drop.

Still early but the parks could be closed past April. Although total case numbers seem small by other countries standards, Hong Kong has to follow China's policy of '0 Corona' rather than 'Living with Corona' as well as Hong Kong seeing their corona death rate rocket past the average of any other country in this pandemic.

^ Granted the numbers of viewers isn't big enough for Six Flags to care or even have an impact, but it seems kind of ironic that the Bizarro ride existed when the character never really made the jump out of the comic books so wasn't that well known and now the ride goes back to Medusa in the same year Bizarro becomes a main part of the Superman TV show.

Government mandated closure has been extended until at least April 20th.

As expected the deadline has been extended… all the way to at least April 20th.

I stand by what I said a few pages back. I really don't know why the focus kept being on on how steep it was, and aiming at thrill seekers. I really think with very few changes to that layout, maybe an ordinary back spike, and trains without comfort collars/lower height restrictions, it could easily have been aimed at families as 'children's first launcher' especially with the 4 launches aspect.

Honestly, although I thought John Cena as Peacemaker was fantastic, after the characters actions in the movie, I wasn't overly interested in seeing the TV show. But so many people told me to check it out, I binge watched it since I had a COVID positive student and just watched it all while quarantined waiting for my test results. Glad I did because his acting here blows me away, and for a character who I had very little interest in, he can emote with his face so well without saying a thing... the last two episodes especially, you could see so many emotions when he was listening to Economos on the comms. And I never thought the Wolverine F-bomb cameo in First Class would be topped, but damn if they didn't beat that here.

I also posted this in Hong Kong Disneyland thread but worth noting here for discussion considering how much more this park has been struggling than Disney. Hong Kong is being overrun by Omicron so it seems they may be closed for quite a while.

Somehow missed this news but the 2 week park closure that was supposed to have originally ended January 20th was extended and the park is still closed: The new end date is a week from today, however with hospitals overwhelmed right now and Hong Kong's Omicron crisis worsening (there are pictures of people on stretchers having to be put outside the hospitals) it seems likely that this closure could be extended especially since Ocean Parks announcement now states that it's until further notice. Hong Kong is seeing 4,000 a day which seems low but with extremely strict quarantine measures including all cases, no matter how severe, having to be hospitalized and going to quarantine camps for close contacts including for the health workers who get exposed, coupled with the vulnerable elderly, it seems the hospitals are overwhelmed compared to countries like Japan and South Korea that are also seeing record numbers but relatively low occupancy rates on the corona wards and can continue 'living with corona'.

My random collection (My wife calls it the shelves of random crap): I tend to pick up one small thing with each trip, so most of this is from the Asian parks with a little Paris Disney thrown in. Also we see a lot of Japanese animation exhibitions (but also occasionally Disney, Pixar, and Aardman) as well as international musicals pass through Korea so there's stuff from there mixed in. The nano-blocks were from all the trips to Lotte World, Korea went through a phase where they were everywhere so I used to get them off the Seoul street vendors on my way back form the park.

Little curious on this one getting a huge drop. Since Korea still doesn't grant tourist visas due to corona, I'd assume the people who could include it on their polls are mostly unchanged from previous polls. I'm also assuming that since South Korea isn't really high on a lot of peoples destinations list, most of those riders are going to be enthusiasts who are well traveled and constantly gain a lot of new credits. Is it a case of there being a big over-lap of people who have ridden T-Express and have also ridden the 'new to top 25'? Edit: Was looking back at things I voted for and saw Shockwave from Drayton Manor but also noticed G-Force is in the poll, but it was removed 2-3 years ago I think.

^

That's not literal enough for Cedar Fair. However there is another ride that could become Flight Deck:

^ Lotte World Busan will be opening soon and the park will be 365 days a year. They will only have a Blue Fire clone and a Power Splash and temperatures here can be -20 in Winter so I'd assume they looked into whether there would be a dry mode for the coaster to operate because otherwise that park is going to be down to only 1 coaster for 3 months a year. I know before it permanently became just a Trax (they ripped out all the water jets on the track), the sister park in Seoul used to find a way to operate the Aquatrax in the winter to make sure the same problem didn't happen.

^ Honestly, I think this ride should never have been aimed at the thrill seeking crowd with the marketing focusing on the steepest drop even if it was planned before VelociCoaster. With just a normal back-spike and potentially a different manufacturer you could have had a much lower height restriction and focused on the 4 potentially slow accelerating launches aiming to pull in groups of families with younger kids as a gap between the smallest coasters and the bigger launch rides of Cheetah Hunt and Hagrids.

Considering Antarctica isn't that old so presumably, the cars haven't been scrapped, I wonder if we'll see them repurposed for a new ride somewhere either here or at another park in the chain.

Living in Asia with 365 day open parks, I've definitely learnt to appreciate winter rides over summer any day. I did a bunch of parks in Europe in summer with no problems but here when it's 35C and 100% humidity... no thank you. Works out for me though since parks seem to empty out in the Winter. A snowstorm blew through Tokyo Disney around 10am and everyone just bailed on the park. They'll camp out hours before a parade in rain and heat but on that day I could stroll right into the shows and parades at showtime and be front row:

I'm sorry SeaWorld but as an outsider who can only go off your adverts to convince me this ride is 'Anything but Chill'... If you're going to keep throwing up 'STEEPEST BEYOND VERTICAL DROP', '100 SPIKE' etc across the screen, at least switch to a backseat POV at that point or stick an off-ride view at the end of the video because all these front shots do a really bad job of selling me on that.

I'm assuming, considering how everything else is playing out, that they're using Magic Mountain as a testing ground for paying per ride to skip the line, since they just announced it for some of the roller-coasters there already, essentially a Six Flags version of Disney's Lightning Lane, and if it makes them more money they'll spread it out to other parks replacing the merchandise and food credits as they go. I guess this could eventually lead to them phasing out all day flash passes in favor of individual cash grabs.

^ Don't rides with big LIM launches cause a lot of costs behind the scenes as well that a smaller park would balk at? I swear it was on a travel channel show many years ago and they were showing the massive room housing all the systems and electronics, talking about the effect each ride cycle has on the power grid and the costs behind that too.

Not sure if it's come up but Universal put out a official POV of the Hagrid coaster with the audio recently: I think before that, there were only unauthorized recordings which couldn't be shared on this forum. I haven't been on this ride so I'm not sure but it seems like this video has been sped up or has some kind of motion blur effect on it.

^I know the discussion of the USO Twitter poking fun at the other parks was already discussed in the Sea World thread and I was on the side of enjoying Twitter wars when both sides are playing but this is one topic where I really wish they wouldn't joke and parks work together to aim something more scathing towards scalpers than making light of it. Maybe I'm more sensitive because my son was old enough this year to fully embrace Christmas, and yes parents trying to get the latest toy is part of Christmas as a parent, but at least that is against other parents who are just also out for their kids. Scalpers worked so hard to ruin Christmas for us on almost everything this year. Everything that had virtual lines or lotteries were overrun by bots and then on the internet at 100% mark-up an hour later and it sucks how much children lose out on these things. Even Pokemon cards of all things have adults fighting over them....

Just screw Corona. I know everyone's tired of it and it breaks my heart to see horrible stories like the one above and mine pales in comparison, but it's just this last month has totally beaten me. I appreciate that Korea's biggest outbreak total so far has been 7,600 a day and all the strictness keeps us that way compared to other countries but Korea was the first hit country after China so I live in a country that's had it the longest now vs all my family and friend's being in one of the worst hit (The U.K.). We were finally going to take my son back to the UK this winter and do the 10 day home quarantine but as Omicron got worse we made the choice only I would head back, finally see everyone, see a certain musical as a Christmas present (see profile picture). and do the mandatory 1 day stay in the government facilities for Europeans on return and risk it being upgraded to 10 days like Korea did to the African countries. However, Korea does not accept anything but negative PCR tests to come back in. Some friends got Corona and just can't get back because it can take weeks or worse over a month for PCR to not show traces anymore. Most countries you can show you recovered from Corona but not Korea and I can't risk being separated that long. I think it just finally got to me today because the city I work in has become the hotspot of the country. It is home to most of the U.S. soldiers and way back in early 2020, at the start of the outbreak, the cases were separated into soldiers vs the city in the daily totals but that got dropped a long time ago and it became a combined total. A few weeks ago our city's cases began to rise but people weren't sure where. Then the social media of the base said they were in the worst outbreak and highest numbers since the pandemic started but there would be no restrictions. Then this Saturday they did announce restrictions. So today the city decided to restore the divided totals. 425 total for the city. Today Korea's total is tracking to be around 3,500-4,000 tomorrow so over 10% of the whole country in just this one city. 171 citizens of the city and 254 from the U.S. bases. So a very small population of the city make up almost 60% of the city's cases. Looks worse, when you put that against the country total. I'm not American or a soldier and I do love living here but people have been steering clear of us lately and even my son has started to notice. Even the 171 makes the Korean side also one of the worst in the country but with all the secrecy before of combined numbers there's a lot of resentment of where people think it has spread from. Edit: Wednesday's total ended up 4,300 so still around 10% from our city. Edit 2: The city put out Wednesdays numbers. 163 citizens but the number from the US army base and airbase rose to 383. Since my school is located very nearby I had 1/15 students show up to one of my classes and 3/16 another so starting to worry about my job. Edit 3: The media is now pointing the finger at foreigners causing the city outbreak and have already turned it into 'because Americans party during corona' and seem to be setting up a potential narrative of it being responsible for Omicron starting to get into Korea: https://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/A2022011316500001390?did=NA&fbclid=IwAR20Iu3HMlYqyhE63LTRxed0-kOOL6NI9o_Sx05VnghQuWWL5CMjNjYYIVU