One of the Four Major Theme Parks in the World.

I asked Tom to name four major theme parks he said Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, Disney World and Euro Disney. Take a moment to think of your own list. I'll wait.

*moment*

If you included Everland on that list, well done. That's certainly how they market themselves however I hadn't heard of the place before coming to Korea. My students are a little obsessed with it, and I've used it a few times in my lessons which resulted in a class full of hyped-up students chanting 'Ebah-landuh, Ebuhlanduh!' They get so excited it's almost as if I've given them a free trip there instead of showing an image on a PowerPoint slide.

I LOVE theme parks (probs because there's only one in New Zealand) (Splash Planet doesn't count, Tom) so I left Tom to climb a mountain and missioned out to Yongin with some of my friends. We caught a bus from Nambu Bus Terminal, if you're travelling from there take exit 4, walk straight ahead to the t-junction and cross the road. There's a bus stop to the right. It's supposed to take 50 minutes, but our trip took an hour and a half. Grr.

When you get to the outskirts of the park, there's a huge parking area where you must catch a (free) shuttle to the park itself. We'd been strategic with our Everland visit timing and hoped that by going on a Friday we'd miss all the weekend lines. WRONG. Visiting a theme park is a popular day trip for Korean students, so as we watched shuttle after shuttle get packed with busloads of teenagers our hopes of short wait times were dashed.

We got to the park about 5 minutes later and went in. It's the priciest theme park I've been to in Korea, at 38,000 won per ticket ($44), although you can get a 'foreigner discount' (of about 3k) on the Everland website. Like most of the theme parks in Korea, tickets are also cheaper after 4pm.

And here's where my useful commentary ends. Rather than give you a breakdown of the rides available blah blah blah, I just want to say that I personally think Everland sucks. There are some good things about it (matching couples, the Safari, the cover ups on the water rides, the garden area) but the lines are far to long, the price is too high, it's way too far away from anything and most importantly - the rides aren't very scary. I guess Everland's more of a family park, but so is Lotte World and some of the rides there had me crapping myself.

I understand that if you're in Korea you'll probably want to visit, but my advice would be - go to Lotte World instead. The rides are three times as good and it's half the price, as well as being near the middle of Seoul.

Below are some pics and a few words about the good stuff.

The water rides were kitted out for those who don't actually like getting wet! We got this big cover thing....

And dryers/fans for when you're finished.

 

Pro tip: bring a pen and some post-its. With wait times of over an hour,
playing 20 questions kept us sane (while the Koreans in line stared and giggled)

I really enjoyed the 'Safari' which had a Jurassic Park-esque antechamber to separate each enclosure.

The bus (which is pimped out to look like a tiger) drives through a number of enclosures housing lions...

White tigers, giraffes, elephants, zebras and....

one liger! That's a lion/tiger mix of awesome.

Just one of the many troupes of school kids in the park. These were cuter than most.

Lauren is modelling my current favourite Korean t-shirt.
Mine says 'Ho Phuture' and has a combi van on the front. Of course.