I travel the world riding roller coasters & exploring other cool sights/experiences along the way! Disney Legend (per Bob Iger) because I rode Every Operating Ride (212 total) at All 12 Disney Parks around the world in *12 Days* #DisneyGlobalRideChallenge
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There are the coasters that you ride because they're amazing & exhilarating. There are the ones that are super unique & memorable. And then there are the ones you ride just for the credit and feel silly doing so. That's Mine Train at Finland's PowerPark. youtu.be/r8AEGYeQkBc
And I have made it home. It's been a wild past four weeks. Thank you all for following along!
Safety is super important at theme parks. ESPECIALLY if you have small children. So don't be like this oblivious parent who tried to jump onboard the Long Lines LTD Train at Arnolds Park as it was departing! Nice little scenic view of the park though! youtu.be/Hch5fHiFsAI?...
View from shortly after takeoff, and view some 12 hours later, somehow earlier the same day....
Yup. Left Seoul at 6:50pm on Wednesday, September 3rd, and land in Atlanta at ~7:15pm on Wednesday, September 3rd, some 13.5 hours later. Fortunately the WiFi is working now that we're over Canada. So that's nice.
And after a brief stop in the lounge for some snacks, I have made it onboard my flight, which will be my home for the next 14 hours. I have received a warning that this flight may not have WiFi, so y'all may not hear anything from me till I touch back down stateside. Either way, I'll be home soon!
The last day of coastering on my big Asia Trip was Day 25, with a return to Soul's Lotte World Adventure. I had a great time here back in 2018, but some of the key highlights were closed on this visit. How would that impact my enjoyment of the park on this go-round?
For Day 24 of my Asia Trip, I took another high-speed train all the way down to Busan on the coast for Lotte World Adventure Busan Magic Forest. Their headlining coaster is a Blue Fire clone. But there's rain in the forecast that threatens to derail all my grand plans for Busan!
Day 23 of my Asia Trip saw my eagerly-awaited return to Everland, home to Intamin's T-Express. Would it keep its hold on my #1 wood spot? Would I get super frustrated by all of the insanity with how this park chooses to operate? Would all the cute animals help alleviate that?
On Day 22 of my big Asia Trip, I headed up to Legoland Korea, where (no joke) the highlight of my day was building an excellent spinning top out of Lego. And then I headed to Seoul Land for some evening jank.
For Day 21 of my big Asia Trip, I was out for redemption. Gyeongju World was closed for weather on my first visit in 2018, & I was eagerly looking forward to actually experiencing this park. This park has arguably the best coaster collection of the trip. Very fun! And gorgeous!
Day 20 of my Asia trip was mostly just me traveling from Hong Kong to Seoul and then just largely fumbling around once I got there.
But I made it to the airport, got checked in and thru security and am now on a quest to find some good food.
Then we finally make it to the airport and he just completely botches a fork and COMES TO A STOP IN THE ROAD BEFORE BACKING UP INTO TRAFFIC TO TAKE THE RIGHT EXIT. I can't even. Feel very fortunate I made it to the airport in one piece. One of the worst rides I've ever had anywhere.
It gets worse. Then I start to notice he's speeding up to like 40kph above the limit & then aggressively braking down to below it for no reason. And he's also STRUGGLING to maintain his lane. The car is even beeping at him, but he's not really reacting to it. Eventually other cars start honking.
But whatever. I can tune all that out. And I might have been misunderstanding regardless. But then we hit the highway, and I start to get nauseous. See, he's got an EV, and he's driving in single-pedal mode. So every time he lifts off the gas, the car brakes. So we're constantly lurching.
Driver was an older Korean dude who spoke passable English. Decided to spend the first chunk of the ride talking about K-pop & how he doesn't understand it & all. Fine. Then he starts to go on political rants, and I think he was saying he supported the dude who got ousted + the current guy is evil?
So I decided I didn't want to have to haul my luggage all the way back to and through the train station and end up a sweaty mess again before my flight. So I figured I'd splurge a bit and just take a taxi all the way to the airport. But this ride has been a nightmare on multiple levels.
Day 19 of my Asia Trip brought me to Hong Kong's Ocean Park! The park let me in early to film, which was really cool. I got my Hair Raised, watched baby pandas struggle to get out of a tree for 15 mins, did some sightseeing in the city, & had a Michelin-starred Chinese dinner.
On Day 18 of my Asia trip, I jumped off the Macau Tower. Twice. Then I took a ferry across to Hong Kong and took the tram up to the top of Victoria Peak for some pretty nighttime views of the city!
It is finally Day 26 (technically 28 if you count my initial travel days), and it is finally time to say goodbye to Asia and head home! I slept in this morning, lounged around watching some YouTube videos, did a little work, repacked my suitcases, and now I'm ready to head to the airport!
Popping this out separate from the main thread for visibility:
Modern Vekoma is an absolute miracle compared to what they used to build. And one of their more impressive newer installations is Lech Coaster at Poland's Legendia. It's butter smooth. It's fast. It's cool. And it's *intense*. Too intense? You tell me. youtu.be/8XVaEJ4mb3Y
Thanks for following along!
So if you'd like, feel free to reply below with any questions you may have about the trip. Any rankings or superlatives or tips or advice or other thoughts from my experiences that you'd like me to elaborate on. Ask away. As much as you want. And I'll try to respond tomorrow while I'm traveling.
I had good days, and I had frustrating days. Some days were both. Lol But overall, I had fun. I enjoyed myself. I sweated so so so much. Seriously, it's so hot and humid here this time of year. It's brutal. But it's been good overall. But now it's time to go home. And so we shall.
So this trip has covered something like 23 different theme parks and over 70 different coasters, across 3 different countries plus 2 special administrative regions, which use 5 different currencies and speak 5 different languages. Plus a bunch of cool other sightseeing and non-coaster experiences.
It's been a good trip. A long trip. A VERY long trip. Honestly, this probably could have been three separate ~10-14 day trips. And would probably have been a bit less stressful both to plan and execute. Am I glad I did this trip? Absolutely. Do I have any plans to do another trip this long? Nope.
So I'll probably just sleep in tomorrow, have a nice breakfast, and try to figure out how to pack everything back up to fit in my luggage and not go over my weight limit. Lol. Then head to the airport and just hang out till my flight. Maybe work on some video stuff. And my thread of threads.
So this brings me back to my hotel and the end of my night. And realistically, the end of my trip. I do have some optional sightseeing I *could* do tomorrow before my flight, but right now I'm thinking that I don't REALLY need to see yet another palace or temple.
Seen on the way to the metro station. Didn't Korea actually throw their president who tried to overstep his power into jail? I'll admit that I'm not the most read-in to that whole situation, but I'm pretty sure the rest of their govt. said 'heck no' and booted him the heck out. If only...
Here's the Lotte World Tower. The 6th tallest building in the world. And somehow I'm not at all bothered that I didn't go up it. Weird, right?
The thing is, the path doesn't go to anything anymore! Whatever was on the other side of that bridge is closed up and walled off. So there's no real reason for anyone to be there except for these photos.
So then it was time to actually finally head back to my hotel. And you know what? I did it again! I put in the wrong (but nearly identical) hotel! Except with navigating via the Metro this time instead of an Uber. Fortunately, I caught it before I went too far the wrong way, but still...
Eventually found that Outback that I'd been teased by. Got there at 8:45 and they told me they were already closed, despite their posted hours. But that's fine because somehow their menu is different & they don't have Bloomin' Onions or normal veggie sides? Probably didn't need all that anyways.
Now, is this a park you should rush out & visit? Ehh... Atlantis is super unique as the only Aquatrax, but it's nothing earth-shattering. The spinning coaster is fun but not a destination ride. Most everything else I rode was kinda just filler. REALLY wish the 'Indy' ride was running. And Sindbad.
Overall, I did have a pretty good day at Lotte World Adventure. Despite the worrying lines at Atlantis, the guy at the ticket booth was right, and I didn't need to fork over a bunch of cash for their line skip passes. Very thankful for those single-rider lines. Most other waits were < 10 mins.
I was, however, very relieved to not find any creepy anthropomorphized trees haunting me at this park. The trippy candy dark ride faked me out this morning, but I'm pretty sure those were some kind of candy dripping chocolate, not trees.
One thing I definitely don't understand is the idea of renting school uniforms to wear when visiting a theme park. Makes no sense to me. But I guess this is just a thing here?
I also had to dodge all the people doing photo shoots in front of the carousel. It was *very* popular.
Came out and the show was done, but I *did* see the Indy/Dino-type ride testing. So I'm guessing it'll run tomorrow. :/
Then the last attraction of note I had not yet done, Kartrider! A *very* slow electric go kart that was not at all intended to have grown adults fit in it. The steering was *incredibly* snappy. It just had zero giddy-up to actually *go*. So I ended up swerving like a NASCAR driver under caution.
Here's some video of the show:
Then this thing starts flying around, and I can't find the wires! Eventually, I realize it's not a person in a costume on a wire but just some kind of drone. Lol
So I come out from that and they've got a full-blown nighttime show going on. It seems like a parade, but all the floats are just parked.
Then went down to the sub-basement for Fly Venture, or basically Soarin' Over Random CGI'd Alien Planets. Again, with poorly-aligned projectors. But at least no shooting on this one! Weirdly, even though there were only 10 guests, they pushed everybody to one end of the row. Seemed suboptimal.
So then we had Dragons Wild Shooting, which is a screen-based shooting trackless dark ride. I had a hard time getting my shots to register properly on a lot of the screen targets. But it was fine. Came out to even more colors and smoke and crowds gathering.
Walked out to see the air cloudy and colored. Definitely odd...
I'll give you 3 guesses what type of attraction 3D Desperados II was. A shooting theater! With motion seats! Hard to believe this park would have such an attraction!
In case you were curious what sorts of pizzas Dominos sells in Korea, here ya go:
Not sure if it was clear from any of my earlier photos, but the bottom middle of this entire park is a big ice rink that's not actually part of the park.
I could totally annihilate me a Bloomin' Onion and a big juicy steak right now. But I'm pretty confident that's outside of the park, and I have absolutely no clue how to get there. Lol
This ride apparently also can't be ridden without a child, despite the signs only saying the requirement is for all riders to be > 110cm. I get it if there's a line. But they're not even coming close to filling entire dispatches. And also, it's not posted on the signage. Looked cool. Whip vibes.
Did a 4D shooting theater with a Carnival film and did pretty well.
They all collectively fall under the 'Wild Tours' moniker. All have a 3-projector curved screen with questionable blending. The films felt maybe a little better than PS2 graphics. Definitely cartoon physics. And completely nonsensical plots. Lol
You know how in Roller Coaster Tycoon, the simulator ride had 3 different films, so sometimes you'd throw 3 of them down next to each other, but you felt silly doing it because what kind of theme park would have 3 identical simulators next to each other just w/ different films? Apparently this one!
Got denied for the mini log flume though. Apparently it's only for kids. Or adults with their kids. Oh well.
Ended up waiting around 30 mins for the log flume. Didn't get too wet, but the people in the front of the log got soaked. For some reason poncho culture doesn't seem to be as prevalent here. Also, the beginning of the ride had an Egypt theme, and then suddenly dinosaurs. Lol
Had zero idea what this attraction was, but there was a preshow in one of those rooms with a bouncy floor to simulate movement (plus screens), then a big room with a projection wall & standing positions w/ blasters for a shooting segment, & finally a motion simulator w/ more blasters. Just whelmed.
I did get suckered into this $5 haunted house walkthrough. Not worth it. Felt super cheap. Only a handful of automated effects and then one person who banged a wall with a stick at one point.
This was some kind of upcharge escape room attraction. They seemed very interested in selling me a ticket, but I can't imagine how good I would possibly fare as a solo person who doesn't understand any Korean. Lol.
You'd think a Teacups ride that adds an extra element with a tilting base would be more intense than normal, but unless you were *really* cranking your own wheel, it was actually very boring to ride.
Lotty says "give me your lunch money, nerd, or I'll sock ya right in the gut"
Not a fan of swinging ships. That kind of repetitive motion tends to make me sick.
So apparently this DID use to be a Super Loop back when I was here in 2018. Now it's just a ring with an LED screen in it and a food stand + seating where the queue line used to be.
Good news: I finally managed to convince myself to get up and start looking for things to do. Bad news: the log flume is a 50-min wait.
So, more good news/bad news: Good news: that bulgogi crunchwrap was delicious. Bad news: I have a massive headache and generally feel fairly demotivated to go back and start trying to do some of the other stuff here. Especially with stuff I really wanted to do closed.
Did the monorail next. Unfortunately, for some reason ("inspection"), they're not running the outdoor loop today.
The ride ends with this weird spooky Egypt-themed section (right above the similarly-themed cool closed dark ride). I assume this has some kind of underlying maintenance or evacuation purpose.
You get some nice bird's-eye views of the park from up there. This place is an absolute maze to try to navigate, with attractions spread across a LOT of floors with routes that are hard to find, and a lot of dead-ends.
I got grouped into the Mew balloon. Nothing about the theming of the balloon is at all apparent or impactful to the ride experience once you've boarded. It's entirely a cosmetic thing for people off-ride to look at. But I guess it somehow works?
They feature such notable Pokemon here, like Pikachu, Eevee, Mew, and uh.....Gorapaduck? Naong? Uhhhhhhhh.....
Here's how the balloons raise and lower to go between the load/unload positions and operating up against the ceiling.
The other ride they have up on the 4th floor is this cool balloon ride, which they've recently rethemed to Pokemon for some reason (probably because slapping cute creatures onto things increases demand?). Looks like they still have more balloon conversions to finish though.
So this park has a ride like Disney's Indy/Dinosaur, and I remember it being*really* good. Unfortunately, it looks to be closed. And the fact that it doesn't have posted hours at all for today makes me think it's not gonna open at all. Which is a major bummer for sure.
French Revolution is a Vekoma coaster from the late 80's tucked back into one corner of the park. It has one loop that wraps around a pathway. Look at the track in that first picture. What even is that?? That's whack is what it is. Very much did not enjoy that ride experience. Will not be reriding.
French Revolution is their other big coaster. Like Atlantis, it also has a single-rider line, which saved me over 30+ mins of waiting. Gotta love warning signs like this. Lol. I don't think the start is where this thing is gonna have its jolts. Lol
They have a big LED screen behind their Super Loop-ish ride. Have not seen the ride run. It's possible all it is now is a ring for an LED screen. Lol
What kind of a drummer mixes Sabian, Zildjian, and Meinl on the same kit? Absolute madness!
They even have a Quiznos here. But the menu is weird. Lol. Compare those pics to the marketing poster at the end.
The food options inside look a lot better than what I grabbed outside. Hopefully I can eat better for dinner. Lots of sit-down places, but even this random stall has something I'm curious enough to try!
And then with an escalator journey and a couple bridges to cross, we enter where so many people seem to live these days: Fantasy World!
But before leaving the Magic Island, I grabbed a nice little sweet snack. Strawberry gelato with some bread. Was a little odd but still nice.
I'd also at one point considered trying to do the Seoul Sky Bridge tour at 3:00, but it's not cheap and I would have had to buy an extra admission ticket to get back inside Lotte World after since they don't let you leave. Figured after my bungy jump I could probably skip this experience.
I need a vote for which would be better for my map. Both are around the same size and could work just fine. I like that the coin says Seoul and has the mascots, but the pin is more colorful.
And it looks like the only other rides out here are the kind likely to make me nauseous. So I think I'll skip those. And while I feel like I remember there being more to the outside park from my last visit, they are doing construction on part of it, so maybe that's it? I dunno.
So then it was time to try Comet Express. I remembered doing their underground coaster when I was last here, but not any details about it. Well, it turns out it's a powered spinning coaster. It's *very* long. Paced pretty well. I didn't spin too crazily until the very end, but then I SPUN.
Fortunately, they had a manned ticket booth here, but there are *so* many places I've run into in Korea where the kiosks you're supposed to do will only work with a Korean phone number or a Korean card. At Seoul Land, I had to buy dinner in cash because their register couldn't accept foreign cards.
You had to hold onto a rope to stay together, but they kept refusing to move at all. Then when they got scared, they'd freak out & run into a wall or fall to the floor. It was rough. We were trying to find these two cards. The best gag was a hand jumping out when you tried to grab the 2nd one.
They had an upcharge haunted house experience that I decided to try while I was in the area. Apparently foreigners HAVE to go with a group of Koreans. So I got paired with 3 teenage girls who were NOT handling it well at all. One quit right at the beginning. The others kept flailing around in fear.
Apparently if you don't want to wait to ride Atlantis, you can wait to ride a simulator of Atlantis. Lol I can't imagine this would be enjoyable. Probably somewhere between one of those mall simulators and the Simpsons rides. Not worth it for me.
This was one of the worst meals I've had on the entire trip. Was very excited about the corn as it's been so hard to get a lot of vegetables on this trip, but it was so overcooked that it was completely inedible. And the chicken leg was not good. Dark meat's supposed to be hard to screw up. But...
