TR: Lotte World 03/25/09 (Very long!)

I just came back from an interesting trip to Asia. It was my second time there and I started by doing a week in South Korea.

I won't do detailed TR's for the first 2 days, but we did 3 smaller parks and the only interesting ride was Phaethon, a B&M Inverted that opened in 2007. Theming for it is pretty awesome and the layout is very original. But, the ride got one slight problem and its just that it doesn't have a lot of speed for the size of the elements.

Lotte World is located in Seoul. To get there by public transportation is easy! Just get off at the Jamsil subway station and walk through the underground mall to the park. Its probably also the only park in the world where the main entrance is underground!

The park is divided in 2: "Adventure" is the indoor portion and "Magic Island" is the outdoor portion, on an artificial island on a lake. You can use either the monorail or a bridge over the street from the 2nd floor to get there.
Adventure is located in a huge building, with a mall and skating rinks in the basement and it also shares it with the Lotte World Hotel and Lotte Department Store. The park is divided over 4 floors. I'll go over the park floor by floor.

1F:

You get a tons of attractions here! You have an upcharge walkthrough, carousel and other shows. You have one large stage, where they show various shows during the day. One of them involves the 2 characters of the park, which are raccoons. The best one is the "Janny Funky Show", where you had talented singers and dancers performing dance and hip hop songs. Around the rink, there is a parade shown twice a day. Its a Disney style and size parade, with a lot of floats and dancers. Very nicely done!

Over the rink at night, they show a laser/fire/fireworks show. Its awesome! It tells the story of the creation of the universe, using the walls and 2 screens for projections. Now for the rides:

Giant Loop is a Nauta Bussink copy of the Larson Loop of Fire, but it is too slow to be any fun.

Drunken Barrels is the Intamin version of the tea cups ride. The difference here is that the whole platform lifts and tilts during the ride. The cycle was long enough and it was pretty fun.

Log Flume is an Intamin ride, with 2 strange dark rides portions that don't make a lot of sense! You start off by floating through a desert fort, seeing the french foreign legions shooting at locals! Then you go up a lift, go through a jungle and see a small T rex before going down the first drop. You got a large lift after and the boat can barely float to the final drop. It is reasonably big, but the boat goes too fast pass at the bottom and slam into the wall! Maybe adding water would help? Getting wet is not a problem, since you're inside and its like 80 all the time!

Conquistador is a large Intamin swinging ship. Ton of capacity, not enough power, so you never get as much airtime as you'd hope.

Adventures of Sindbad is a huge 10 minutes dark ride. The amazing thing here is that it starts with 2 drops, to get you into the basement of the building and that's where the ride take place. Its again an Intamin ride using boats. It shows its age and its not that good.

Desperados: Interesting concept! You sit on a little horse that moves in front of a movie screen. You got a laser gun and you shoot the screen. Its an awesome and original idea.

2F:

Beside the walkway to Magic Island, you got a lot of shops and restaurants. Attraction wise, there's one.

French Revolution: Its an indoor Vekoma custom looping coaster. The ride start with a lift to the ceiling of the building. A short drop to the left bring you into a nice airtime hill in a tunnel. A large half enclosed double helix follows (ouch...) and you got a lighted up tunnel. You then got a drop into the loop, which has a walkway going through it! A rough turn lead into a flat portion that may have been a block brake at one point. A curved drop to the right lead into an helix over a fountain and then its over. Sadly, it can only run one train, so the line is always long. The ride itself is still fun and you can brace yourself for the rough turns.

3F

World Monorail: Its an Intamin monorail that does a full loop inside the building and if the weather is nice, got a transfer track that will send it outside to Magic Island where there is a second stop.

Jungle Adventure: Another very weird ride. This time, its a dark ride, using an Intamin river rapids ride! The amazing thing is that its on the 3rd floor of a building and its all enclosed. The theming is nice and it doesn't get you too wet. The spinning is very good and the whole thing is really fun!

4F

Aeronauts Balloons: Intamin were really creative for this park! In this case, these are large balloons where 4-5 people stand in the basket. They run along the ceiling of the building and it take 15 minutes to go around. The balloons go down 30 feet in order to load. Creative and fun ride and when you get to Pharaoh's Fury, it has some dark ride effects.

Pharaoh's Fury: The ride with a 10 minutes walk down the empty egyptian museum that serve as the ride's line. It is very detailed, pretty and just one of the nicest line in the world.

You get to the loading station and you board 8 passengers jeeps. This is Intamin copy of the Disney EMV (Indiana Jones Adventure and Dinosaur at WDW) and the ride here is a 5 minutes and half huge, elaborate and amazing dark ride! Room with giant crocodiles, drop, fire, snakes, etc. Everything is here. Its like Revenge of the Mummy and Indiana Jones Adventure had a child and this was it. It is an awesome ride, but not on Indiana Jones Adventure level unfortunately.

Magic Island:

This is a nice island, where everything is very compact and you got a Disney style castle in the middle. I'll start from the right of the castle and go clockwise.

Bungee Drop: This is Intamin copy of the S&S Space Shot, but with better capacity. You got 20 seats here, but its the only thing better than the Space Shot... The ride is LAME! For some mysterious reasons, Intamin put some magnetic brakes at the bottom, so you don't even get a nice launch. The ride slows down so much at the top you get no airtime and the whole thing just feel like a fast elevator!

You get some kiddie rides and a kid only dark ride.

Waikiki Wave: This is a weird Vekoma flat ride. Imagine a Huss Top Spin that doesn't go upside down and that the arms can move in independant directions... Just looking at it made me feel sick, so I didn't ride.

Comet Express: Intamin weird ride ahead! This is an underground spinning coaster using a large train of 13 cars. The ride has no lift, instead, it got pusher tires all around the ride to keep it at an impressive speed all the time. The theming is awesome and the spinning very intense.

Gyro Drop: Closed for its annual rehab sadly... but, I rode it on a previous visit and it is excellent! Its the prototype Intamin Gyro Drop, 230 feet tall. Lotte World is in the middle of the city, so you get an awesome unique view. The drop itself is amazing.

Haunted House: Unlike what we through, this is not a walkthrough. Its a strange 3-D movie involving a cat chasing a mouse in a haunted house. It is kinda disturbing...

Gyro Swing: This is the large version of the Intamin Gyro Swing. Its like the Huss Giant Frisbee, but this one has a poweful motor, so the G's on the swings are insane! It also doesn't make you sick... Due to the neighbors, the park added strange "scream shields" to the restraints... I would not imagine how it would feel in the summer when its 90F outside.

Atlantis Adventure: This is it, the only Intamin Aquatrax coaster in the world. From the outside, it looks very nice, with the large building and the cars/boats doing insane turns next to the water. They were running 4 cars out of 6 today, but a motivated crew kept the line moving. For loose articles and bags, their system is brilliant. They got a metal cart for each car and when you board, they come next to the car and you put your stuff in it. At the end of the ride, they bring it back and you retrieve your things. The cars have 4 rows of 2 and you sit like a jet ski. You got a seat belt and T bar to hold you in. Warning to tall people: the ride got a strict 6'2 height restriction and when I went on a tour in 2007, 3 people were not allowed to ride.

The ride itself start with a small climb into the launch section. The launch here is done using LSM and is gradual, almost like a car accelerating. After this, you got an insane 60 feet tall top hat in the building! The airtime is sick and is the strongest I ever felt outside of Dodonpa and T Express first drop. After that, you got intense turns, more insane airtime as you go in and out of the building. You reach the first block brake before doing a flume style drop over the lake. A small hill (with trims) follow and then a 70 degrees banked turn where you got water cannons shooting off to give the illusion you just touched the water. A S turn lead into the brakes... You got a turn inside a building, with large monsters around.

You see the ride transfer track on the right and then you wait at the bottom of the lift hill. Its very fast and also uses LSM to take you to the top. A 72 feet drop at 72 degrees lead to an airtime hill, more turns inside the building and then you drop down in final brakes...

The ride is amazing! Intamin did miracles with a small plot of land, barely bigger than what is required for a Vekoma Boomerang. The airtime is amazing and the theming top notch.
Next... Everland.

Wow, great TR! I'm shocked that you haven't had any comments...

Lotte World sounds like an amazing park. Thanks for the descriptions of all the rides. How would you rank Atlantis Adventure in comparison to, say...Maverick?

I can't believe I'm saying this about a Vekoma, but French Revolution looks like an incredibly fun ride! If this thing was retrofitted with the new Vekoma trains, I could definitely see it becoming a great custom coaster. Here is a POV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EhtQVmG9dA