South Korea advice

[Rastuso]

I'm finally getting an international business trip. I'll be in Seoul, Korea for 6 weeks for a project safety review. Obviously, I'm planning on hitting coasters. Everland and Lotte World are no brainers. as is Seoul Land, since they're all in Seoul.

 

Other parks I'm definitely looking at are the Korean Folk VIllage (no coasters, but it looks like a good place to visit for history, and they supposedly have a dark ride) and Gyeongju World (B&M invert). Beyond that, there are tons of little parks, but operations seem unreliable at some of them, and I don't know how easy others will be to find. The engineering company I'm visiting should have people to help me with travel plans, and who knows, maybe they have a coaster geek working there.

 

Any tips from Koreans on the board for other places to visit, or other parks that have cool stuff at them? I'll obviously have quite a bit of time to do stuff. But, I'm a bit hesitant of traveling alone. I will have a DS with a Korean translator program with me to get me out of trouble, hopefully.

 

Are there any areas of Seoul that have big arcades, or crazy shops like Japan? My son's begging me to bring back lots of Nintendo stuff. I'll be in Japan for a week on the way home, on personal time, but I'd rather knock out some of that stuff in Korea, leaving more time in Japan for coasters/parks.

 

Are there trains to get you to most larger cities, like the ones on the Southern coast with parks? Will I run in to many folks outside of Seoul that speak English?

 

What dark rides exist in Korea? I"m just as big of a dark ride fan as a coaster fan, and hope to write some DAFE articles on Korean rides. I know of the one at KFV, a Sally one at Seoul Land, and the hopefully really cool Indy type ride at Lotte World.

 

ANy help would be fantastic.

 

-RO

[TPDave]

Moved to ask Alvey