Sunday 11 April 2010

Never Again Land


On the Saturday just gone I, along with 16 friends, took a trip to Everland. For those not in the know, it’s a theme park about an hour out of Seoul. The website boasts of it being the ‘4th best theme park in the world.’ The official Korean tourist website were obviously less impressed. They have it down as the ‘4th best theme park in the Asia-pacific region.’ Trip advisor had it down as the ‘4th best theme park an hour out of Seoul, called Everland.’ It was difficult to know who to believe.

Either way I boarded the coach excitedly and arrived at the resort feeling the same way. My students were jealous I was going. They’d told me about a mythical ride I simply had to find; they weren’t sure of the name, but they were certain it had the word ‘Eagle’ in it.

(I couldn't find a good picture about queues, so this is my tenuous best)

I’d read stories of beautiful sunshine, only ever interrupted by chocolate flavoured rain that didn’t leave you wet; stories of a Shangri-La of fun, where the only problem was how people could ever cope with leaving such a place, knowing that they would never again be that happy. It was to be a trip to a place where dreams come true, like Disney World, but without the need to remortgage your house to pay for the rickets.

Our already low entrance fee was even lower than Koreans paid, thanks to a promotion on the website that offered reduced prices for foreigners. The paper said up to 4 people could enjoy reductions of 8,000won, and that up to 3 of those people could be Korean. That led to surreal touting on the front gate.

“Waegukin, (foreigner) waegukin here, only 4,000won. Get your waegukins before they sell.”

When inside the park the group split into splinter cells, all with different wants and needs for the day. Mine was to see the Safari, and damned if I was going to take into consideration my friends on this one. I dragged them through the hoards of people to the new Safari ride, on the premise that the animals would be more active in the morning. Friends protested. They wanted to visit Friendly Monkey Valley, but I assured them the monkeys would be friendly and active all day. The Safari had to be reached.

Sadly it wasn’t to be. The queue was 150 minutes long. 150 minutes. That’s enough time to get a bus to Seoul and back, enough time to study for a genetics PhD and breed my own animals.

However, help was on its way in the form of a Q-pass. I always thought he was a rapper in the early 90s, but the literature assured me that this was a place where, for a small free, one could procure a digital ticket. This would give you a time to return to the ride, thus removing the need to queue. I was about to buy one when I saw my ride time was May 24th, 2012, 06:30. I skulked off to Monkey Valley. Needless to say the monkeys were asleep.

This formed the basis of the day; queue after queue after queue; queues to get in other queues. I’m English, so I’m good at queuing, but this was too much even for a man of my line following abilities. The line for the biggest rollercoaster (one of only 2 coasters in the park) was 2 hours, the queue for the log flume, 100 minutes. A log flume is supposed to be a ride you go on at the end of the day when you have 10 minutes to kill. Essentially it’s a poor quality roller coaster that gets you soaking wet, yet I was expected to spend 6000 seconds of my life waiting for it.

One ride was called the Mystery Mansion. Here we queued for 30 minutes before being taken into a room. Success at last, and after only half an hour. Sadly not, the lights dimmed and a gargoyle screamed at us in Korean. Then we were moved into the second part of the queue.

One ride had us moving around a house in orderly fashion for 40 minutes. When we reached the end of the line we left the building via the back door.

Bumper cars had a wait for an hour, the two cable cars that connect the far ends of the park 40 minutes each. In desperation I turned to the arcades. I put 500won into a machine so I could shoot some endangered fish on the game ‘Ocean hunter,’ but a screen came up telling me the game would not start for 25 minutes.

Part of the problem is a lack of rides combined with a huge amount of people. Everland has 10 rides that I would consider proper rides, and not carnival attractions. That combined with 7,500,000 visitors a year (20,548 people on an average day) means a lot of people are wanting to go on not many rides. In contrast, England’s biggest theme park is Alton Towers. That attracts 2,500,000 people a year and has 8 roller coasters, with over 30 rides.

Yet the area of Everland is considerably bigger, which leaves a lot of space. The Zoo doesn’t take up much of this, considering the exhibit sizes. 3 polar bears are kept in an area not too much bigger than an average child’s paddling pool.

The vast majority of the park is devoted to gift shops, all selling entirely the same things, teddy bears, animal themed clothes and inflatable hammers that leave most adults with a desire to smash the child owners with a real carpentry tool.

Two themed areas of the park are devoted entirely to shops and food outlets, all with fanciful names, but all selling fried unidentifiable meat on a stick, or popcorn.

Over the years many people have done their utmost to create heaven on earth, and so in this respect Everland is original. The creators have made purgatory right here in South Korea, right down the finer details, all expect the waits for heaven aren’t quite as long.

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