Lotte World (Seoul) Mini-TR

[Garet]

I had originally planned to visit Korea's newest theme park, Lotte World Busan. However, after looking at the attraction list and seeing out of 16 total listed attractions, one was a talking tree, one was a playground and 5 were children only I decided to visit the original Lotte World and perhaps pop across the country to the newer park when they've expanded a little.

This was actually my first visit in a decade. Not on purpose but with my son so young it was just easier to drive and park for Everland on quieter nights than public transport into the city for one of the busiest parks in the world. So what new changes have happened in the last ten years? One new shooting ride/simulators, as well as 5 more simulators, bring the total for the park to 9 simulators and 4 shooting rides, an upgrade and downgrade to an existing simulator (added and removed VR), the closure of the indoor rapids and the addition of an indoor go-kart track.

I've mentioned this in other TR's but I think Lotte World tended to suffer more than most. Since Korea parks have high attendance a lot of them have neglected to age out older rides and invest in newer ones and so the average age of the rides can be quite high and it's starting to show. Whereas Everland ripped out older rides and turned them into gardens or screen-based shooters that's a harder challenge for Lotte World. For example Pharoah's Fury, the famous Indy style dark ride seemed to be running only 4 or maybe 5 cars on a Saturday, much less than previous visits and also has to close for an hour every day for maintenance.

 

Into the park at opening, the main entrance line was huge but there are some side entrances and we were actually into the park early enough to see the band and mascots for a change.

Heading over to one of the many new simulator rides....

First there's a pre-show boarding and then crash landing in the plane.

Before entering a giant screen and having a shoot-out. This is just for show, the scores aren't tracked here but it was fun. After that there's a final room with some very small simulators with guns that does track your score (Think of those mini simulator rides you sometimes see in the arcade).

After that was the Flying Theater next door.

Unlike Japan, people don't seem to be flocking to ride it and it was mostly a walk-on all day.

The negative publicity when the ride got stuck during an E-stop didn't help. A rider asked to get off mid-ride last year and the ride became stuck and the fire brigade was called. After that the ride was SBNO and when reopened had one of it's movies removed and all the 4D effects turned off which has continued to this day.

Similar to Lotte World Busan, the park doesn't allow adults onto the rides designed for younger children unless you are with a child.

Thankfully I remembered to pack mine before I left, so we tried out the mini-flume ride. There are 3 new simulators in this area (The Wild Trilogy) but they were operating on different time slots and with only 12 people riding every 10 minutes or so, the line looked to be an hour's wait despite being not too long.

The park has changed a few rides to virtual queueing only. Be warned a lot only had one kiosk to get the tickets and couldn't be done through the app so the wait just to get tickets can be quite long.

For example, we arrived 20 minutes early to the Intamin Spinner to get tickets but the line already stretched around the outside restaurant and along the lake front (some people lined up an hour before) and took another 25-30 minutes to get tickets.

And after entering the queue at 4:00 got on the ride at 4:45. Tickets handed out by default were 2 person tickets so if you're with a friend it may be worth splitting up and sending them to get another reservation...

...such as the Vekoma Looper which was also on virtual line, but we opted for the Intamin Spinner since it's the only one out of all the virtual rides that doesn't have a single rider line. The park has added single-rider to a lot of the rides including the one that will probably be high on most TPR visitors bucket lists Atlantis.

Both this drop tower and the swings behind were also running single rider lines.

The monorail cars have been upgraded, although sadly still no air-con. The outdoor station has also now been closed to it operates purely as a ride and not as transportation between indoors and outdoors anymore.

A disappointed child after learning that viral video of the drop-tower wasn't actually real.

Until our trip to Vietnam, he hated most rides and roller-coasters but he had just hit the height requirement and was very eager to give it a go....

.... which unfortunately led to a tantrum when I veto'd him riding this later. He's never been upside down before and the only way to ride would have been the Single-rider line, and although he said he was ready, I just didn't think this was a good choice for his first experience. If he'd ridden this before or been upside down then maybe but I just didn't think it would be fair on whoever had lined up to enjoy their ride that he would have been put next to if he did get upset.

We had some time to kill before our reservation for the comet so we checked out this Nightmare Fuel for the first time.

And then grabbed some cheese bread snacks.

There was also an Atlantis Adventure Simulator if you didn't want to ride the original Trax itself (the water just were permanently removed almost 10 years ago) but we couldn't fit it in before our reservation.

His first spinning and first indoor coaster, I wasn't sure he'd like being thrown around but he loved this. The difference between our weights made this spin more than any roller-coaster I think I've ever ridden.

Notice the white track? The monorail switches from going outdoors to indoors only when the weather is bad or when the sunsets. If you see people sitting in the queue bail fast. It takes a while to get everyone off, switch the track and re-test it. We rode later in the day when it was indoors only and the line went from 90 minutes to walk-on. The same applies for Pharoah's Fury, if people are sitting it could mean the ride is having it's 1 hour maintenance break.

The Balloon ride was also a reservation-only ride. Since the machines I mentioned earlier just print a time-slot and don't require any scanning of your entrance, you don't get locked out and can grab for more than one ride so we grabbed tickets as soon as we'd grabbed the Comet Express ones but missed out on the Pirate Ship and Vekoma coaster by the time we'd got those two.

Before heading out we grabbed some dinner, this was a tomahawk pork cutlet.

And since the monorail was walk-on we opted to ride it around a few times and watch the parade from above than wait in the crowds before heading out home, although since the new night parade has fireworks this may no longer be an option.

 

[prozach626]

That loop over the walkway looks really cool. It looks to be as aesthetically pleasing for the customers on foot as it is exciting for the riders.

 

I'm surprised the virtual queue option isn't catching on quicker as a standard practice across the industry. I wonder if AI will help with this, especially as food services inevitably get more efficient with less staff demands. It seems like a missed opportunity for parks to expand their retail opportunities from people spending more time loitering in the midways. 

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Similar to Lotte World Busan, the park doesn't allow adults onto the rides designed for younger children unless you are with a child.

Love it. 

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The negative publicity when the ride got stuck during an E-stop didn't help. A rider asked to get off mid-ride last year and the ride became stuck and the fire brigade was called. 

Didn't happen. It wasn't plastered all over the sensationalized news networks and Facebook feeds, like roller coasters stuck on lift hills for 30 minutes.