Everland Discussion Thread

[Garet]

 

So Korea has a new trend here to try and boost the economy and get more people to get vaccinated and it's 'Vaccination thank-you discounts.' The cinemas are offering cheap tickets to 2 people if one of them is vaccinated ($5/6 a seat) and some expensive hotel buffets are now offering up to 50% off a table of 4 if one of them is vaccinated. Everland is now getting in on this and is giving 35% theme park and 40% water park discounts to any citizens of Yongin who get the vaccination.

 

Not sure how people feel about these discounts since Korea was pretty late to the vaccination game so I believe only people 60+, 1st 2nd grade teachers, healthcare, soldiers and emergency services workers are eligible right now so there's a lot of people who do want to be vaccinated but can't yet. There is an app for leftover vaccines if there are no-shows to avoid throwing away unused doses but vaccines have been pretty much 100% booked up by eligible people since the app went live two weeks ago.

[Tim2009]

https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=001&aid=0012488346

https://www.everland.com/web/everland/now/news/1222075_10436.html

Everland just announced they will be no after-shows (where people come out and get hit by water right after main performance ends) in 'Shooting Water Fun' performance, due to the media article, revealing that authorities alerted the Gyeonggi-do and Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to investigate, fearing there is serious risk of virus spread due to lack of social distancing and masks becoming ineffective after getting wet. 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Tim2009
adding link to Everland announcing no more after-shows

[Garet]

 

Everland are introducing a paid fast pass to the water park for the summer season, limited to 300 a day for roughly 40 dollars you can skip 3 lines: Mega Storm, Wild Blaster and Tower Boomerang or Tower Raft. The water park and Everland is currently pretty dead due to record high corona numbers but pre-corona these slides could get 2-3 hour lines each in the summer.

[Garet]

Due to corona still spreading Everland has closed the water park already for the season. Typically they would run the smaller indoor section in the winter months but the whole park will be shut from tomorrow.

[Garet]

I really don't like Everland's new smart line system. A bunch of rides are reservation only until 2pm, but on weekends they're all snapped up instantly so you're locked out of 7-8 rides for most of the day. It's like Ride of the Resistance except it's a third of the park and you can only choose one. I assume it's a corona control thing but then why until 2pm? Hopefully it goes away considering 91% of the adult population here have got vaccinated. And since people are locked out of a bunch of rides/in a 3 hour virtual line it pushes up lines and crowds on the other rides. I get Halloween is busy but if it's for crowd control, it's not exactly working:

 

 

In the spirit of fairness, Lotte World which doesn't have virtual lines does also look like this at Halloween though:

Everland have announced they'll open the gates earlier and give more space to wait before the official opening of 10am for people to reserve a ride, but it just means most rides will be gone earlier. I feel lots of parks have tried virtual queues this year due to corona, but nowhere seems to have cracked the code on making it successful. T-Express is running an all day virtual line but since everything else is sold out and it's the only line left it has resulted in some big lines....

 

[Tim2009]

Indian multinational news channel, WION, just released a video report featuring Everland. 

 

[Garet]

^One of the cubs, Kangsan the youngest of the 5, sadly passed away yesterday. The park has introduced a bunch of merch and new characters based around the 5 cubs and pushing them hard on social media to coincide with the year of the tiger, and had even been running some dance competition based around Kangsan specifically just a few days ago but it's been removed from the site.

[Tim2009]

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2022/01/113_321998.html

It's extremely tragic event for Everland...

[Tim2009]

https://news.naver.com/main/read.naver?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=214&aid=0001173931

Everland just got hit with the disaster, which is criminal case. 

Woman (who was the guest) detected suspicious activity in the woman's restroom near the Snow Buster (sled riding area). 

It was revealed that someone was filming secretly with the phone, from the next room. 

According to victim's statement, culprit was covered with the coat, while trying to act like a woman. 

He tried to flee to man's restroom, but arrested. 

According to police, it is assumed that the man used the backdoor of the woman's bathroom to get in there. 

It was revealed that the culprit was a part-time employee of Everland. 

According to media, Everland had another incident of spycam last month (for this incident, culprit escaped undetected, and case remains unresolved). 

[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:

 

 

 

[Nrthwnd]

^ That "Chariots Of Fire" segment (second vid) was a - may - ZING!!! Great use of fire AND movement.

Thanks for sharing the videos!

[Garet]

Stopped by the park last week and finally rode the Safari upgrade to do a mini-TR. My son had a great time and that's the main thing for us and why we will keep showing up to the park and he's been asking for us to get annual passes so we'll probably end up getting them now he's over 110cm but there were a few dampeners behind the scenes.

 

Reservations are required for the 3 big rides on weekdays (T Express and the 2 Safaris) and 10 rides on weekends until 2pm. You have to be scanned into the park to use the reservation system but even on the Friday we visited, the safari ride sold out in 10 minutes and T Express shortly after. That doesn't sound too bad but we were at the park 9am and maybe 7th in line at one of the many many scanners which opened 10am exactly. We were scanned in around 10:05 and grabbed some of the last reservations. The English announcement said 'Mobile phone app isn't just recommended, it's essential'. We stopped near the entrance as soon as we entered to grab reservations and my wife said some family who were 2 behind us missed out because the people in front of them were in the middle of updating their app.

Weekends, the park gets around this by opening the scanners earlier and letting people wait on main street but it means most rides are sold out 10am exactly. It was a corona thing but I'm not sure how it helps when being locked out of 10 rides drives up lines considerably elsewhere, both of people with nowhere else to go and people with time to kill with virtual passes who would usually be in the other lines.

I think also people tend to grab reservations just because they can. The indoor kids area was sold out instantly but when we went in there with our tickets we saw only one other mom and child. Capacity with the system seemed to be an issue as well. T Express was running one train the whole reservation time, but once it ended they added a second train and I waited only 25 minutes.

 

I don't have many pictures this time, people who've seen my TR's over the last decade plus know the park hasn't really changed in 15 years or so but more rides have disappeared since Corona hit or have been downgraded (The Vekoma Mad House has become a shooting ride with some light rocking back and forth next to the horror house which also became a screened shooting ride) so we didn't spend that much time doing things outside of the children's area.

 

 

So here are the 10 rides that are reservation until 2PM on weekends. Weekdays are only the A-tier rides. You can grab one ride from each tier but A tier will sell out 10am as soon as reservations open. But at least the train is available...

And gone 10 seconds later so now most of the crowds are locked out of 10 rides for the morning.

Indoor areas or rides are also reservation only from the app.

As are shows.

Here's the train waiting time for the rest of the day once the reservations ended.

We usually go to the park at 2PM when all rides are open and reservations have finished but since we were at the park at opening for a change I snagged some panda passes.

A depressing indicator of how long Corona has been around. The baby panda was born just as Corona hit. I figured when Corona finally ran its course, I'd trek out to see the baby panda. Now we're seeing record numbers of cases and that baby panda is now just a panda.

A second red panda has joined the exhibit.

Onto the main reason we came to the park early... To see the filming of Back to the Future 4.

Not sure if it is just a weekday thing or a problem with the cars but despite the press photos showing two car trams, all of them were only pulling one the day we rode.

All of them have the vents but also the trunks were open on all the cars as well, it was only 20 degrees when we rode but summer heat can hit 37C.

The new trams are very nice and open though. You can see how much vision you have when riding.

Approaching the first gate.

The view wouldn't have been this clear from the old buses.

Apparently the new low to the ground trams make for good scratching posts.

More views from the new trams.

I can't show you what happened next since TPR is PG-13 but there was quite a lot of it happening on this tour in the lion area.

Unlike the bears who were all passed out.

So that's the new Safari World Tram. I'm not sure if they run two trams on weekends or there's maybe a design or overheat issue but it does mean this is the hardest ride to snag reservations for and even on a quiet weekday lines were over two hours all day.

And the park was quite quiet on the day we visited as well.

On our way out I grabbed a snack. Seemed kind of funny to put cute faces on something you're about to rip apart.

The reservation system is really hard to deal with, there's a lot more SBNO rides covered up, and the ride part of the park is unchanged so there isn't too much to do.

I've written most of this TR as an enthusiast. However as a father, I'll always have a great time. My son doesn't care if the park is a time capsule. He loves it there, and it's still his favorite park so the park will keep getting my money. When we are there early, there's always also the zoo and multiple gardens (that replaced Eagle's Fortress and another that replace the Small World boat ride) to walk around in until the reservation times have finished and queues can spread out again.

[SharkTums]

I think it's going to be a problem moving forward that a lot of the parks instituted annoying "covid" procedures and policy's and they're just going to stick around cause it's easier and cheaper!

[Garet]

Quote

Today ( 21st ) around 1pm, a lion collided with a safari tram for viewing at Safari World in Everland, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, and the door was broken.

No one was injured in the accident, but the lion's head and legs moved inside some of the trams , leaving about 30 passengers in panic for a while.

Everland explained that the accident occurred when a group of lions in the cage had a physical fight and one of them bounced off.

However, as there were several more lions around, it was a situation that almost led to a major accident. Some passengers on the tram said they took out a fire extinguisher inside and prepared for emergencies.

The accident appears to have occurred during a 'fight', that is, a fight for rank, between a lion that recently joined the group and an existing group of lions. Recently, Everland said that it would introduce a late-night safari tram and enshrined 5 rare white lions.

Today's safari tram with a broken door is different from the existing safari bus, and it was found that it was newly introduced in May of last year.

The tram manufacturer explained, "The glass is broken, but there is a double safety device inside."

Yongin City Hall explained that the safety review and safety check on the tram had been completed.

Everland announced that it plans to suspend the Safari Tram service until tomorrow ( 22nd ) and take supplementary measures after safety inspection. In addition, priority to use Everland was given to over 1,000 waiting passengers.

Source

So far Everland's only acknowledgement is that the ride will be closed today and tomorrow.

[Nrthwnd]

"...a lion collided with a safari tram...."

That alone, was worth reading about.

But I'm glad they had a fire extinguisher, handy.

[Garet]

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

 

[Garet]

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.

On 4/13/2022 at 5:17 AM, SharkTums said:

I think it's going to be a problem moving forward that a lot of the parks instituted annoying "covid" procedures and policy's and they're just going to stick around cause it's easier and cheaper!

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.

 

[Nrthwnd]

^ The night time parade looks wonderful! Thanks for sharing your visit.

[Garet]

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