Lotte World

The second park of the day would be a little kinder to us weather wise with most of it being indoors. The Lotte company seem to be one of these large umbrella organisations that have their fingers in many different pies selling products across many markets. Having re-read that you might conclude that they just sell umbrellas and pies, and I hope you know what I mean.

Some of the group gathering outside the main entrance. I rather stupidly asked the question "In what year did the park open?". Not one of my cleverest moments admittedly given that the answer was splatted all over the park.

A slightly more obvious clue.

It became quite obviously very quickly that this building was vast with a full-sized ice skating rink on the bottom floor and the theme park on the 3 levels overlooking it. They even have a rapids on the third floor! The giant pumpkin was part of the Halloween theming that Lotte world were putting all around the place.

Giant Loop is one of those "is it a coaster or not" sort of rides with the track consisting of nothing more than a single loop that the train is powered around. I'd never done of these before and it was quite fun although a moment of panic saw me thinking that my wallet had fallen out of my pocket. It hadn't; this goldfish had forgotten that he'd put it in his bag prior to boarding.

French Revolution is definitely a coaster but isn't as fun as the previous looping ride. The restraint system had some very large cushions on the overhead restraint that would smack your ears quite hard. It's never a good sign when you see people coming off the ride holding their ears. Imagine what I must have thought when nearly every passenger was holding their ears, some of them crying.

Theming or a strange seat for the occasional weary traveller who found the walking around the massive complex a bit too much?

Bonus points if you can figure out how Tim was able to get these 3 happy prisoners behind bars. A clue - it didn't involve lubricant and a shoe-horn.

Lotte World has one of the coin-shitting donkeys that is more famous in Efteling. Oops! Did I just use a bad word? Sorry, I meant a coin-shitting ass. Now, which one is worse?

I don't think Efteling has pumpkins quite as cute as these though.

Lotte World doesn't just have a massive indoor theme park. It also has this outdoor section. I'm guessing in Korea you can't patent fantasy castles if you don't have a Disney park here already. As you can see it was also quite empty today, the rain keeping the locals at home.

The Lotte mascots are these strange assortment of raccoons, cats, pigs and I have absolutely no idea what that kid on the left is supposed to be.

By far the best coaster in the park, and arguably in the country was Atlantis Adventure. This ride is built by Intamin and uses a ride system called Aquatrax which is designed to mix a water ride with a coaster track, using LIMs to power the coaster around the track.

This was the only part of the ride I'd seen prior to riding it, the majority of it being enclosed inside a well-themed volcano. Because it hadn't been spoilt for me I had an amazing first ride with a great launch section into a top-hat start that totally caught me by surprise.

The Gyrodrop tower. Quite a good ride, even more so in seeing Jeppe's trip badge fly off his neck on the way down (Yes, he did make it out of the prison cell seen earlier)

The park has a third coaster called Comet Express, which you could overlook as its underground. This ride was a lot of fun too, especially if you rode alone as the cars rotate on the way round and the more unbalanced the car the faster the spinning.

Back indoors and Pharaoh's Fury is a dark ride that employs the same ride system as the Indiana Jones attractions in the Disney parks. Whilst not being quite as well themed on the ride as its counterparts the queue line knocked Disney's theming for six.

The queue takes you through an Egyptian museum with some stunning pieces of Egyptian art. Quite spectacular and almost as good as a Tutankhamen exhibition I saw at the O2 earlier in the year.

A view from of the indoor section from up high. How did I get up here you might ask (well not you lot who have been here, you already know the answer). The orange and green balloons you can see going around the roof are people carriers that take you around the circumference of the building, and I'm in one of those.

Some nicely painted lockers. That little bear child thing has grown up and now has the horn...must be puberty!

Back outside now for some end-of-day rides on the Atlantis ride. A nice light job on the castle too.

Lotte World is a stunning complex, the scale of which I can't really put across in a quick report. The only place I can compare it to is the Mall of America but if they closed the shops and extended the park to fill the space. It was also quite funny that one of the best rides of the trip would be ridden on the first day.