Enjoying our day: Mich, Patrick, Ciara, Me, Kim, Paul and Molly (Kamal's taking the picture). We're all Now Bar homies.
I had planned on going to Seoul on Saturday, mostly because I haven't yet picked up some much needed birthday gifts for loved ones back in Canada and Insadong is really the only place you can buy any kind of gift. However, when Everland was suggested on Friday night at Now Bar I quickly changed my mind. My friends will forgive me.
That being said, I still wasn't overly excited. If you know me well, you know that I'm pretty anti-theme park. Maybe it was the incident with Yogi Bear at Canada's Wonderland when I was very small, maybe it's my extreme distate for the bastrdization of Disney culture, maybe it's a combination of the two, but I am normally just plain against theme parks. I have since come to the conclusion that as long as one does not plan their vacations around such places, they can be enjoyed and are actually a lot of fun. I need to get off my high horse either way.
We had a great time! A small-ish group of us piled on the 6000 bus from outside HomeEver and had a super busy day riding all the rides (minus the really scary ones for me and Kamal), eating theme park food, walking around taking pictures, watching the parade, and finally the fireworks (which were beyond amazing). We were pretty lucky, we always just "happened" to be in the right area at the right time and always just "happened" to have decent spots for viewing. I must say, although you won't see me planning a trip to Disneyworld anytime soon, I definitely might go back to Everland.
Outside the gates cutesy music was blaring from large speakers, promising all a magical time. I admit, I was totally digging it.
We had a map that we didn't really end up using very much. The park is pretty easy to get around, even if it is built on a mountain.
Mich let his inner child out for the day and couldn't resist some delicious ice cream. Paul joined in on the fun.
We were a little worried Ciara wouldn't be tall enough, but there you go. Who knew?
My favourite might have been the bumper cars. The 40 minute wait was definitely worth the two minutes of continuously slamming into my friends. Ok, so mostly I was the one getting slammed. But still.
One needs to remember that Everland is still Asia. Hence this picture-taking area: every colour of the rainbow, people who are apparently famous to the children dressed up in feather hats and chaos ensuing. We didn't stick around for very long...
This was just crazy. There's a woman who is painted white somewhere in this oversized novelty dress. Another thing I noticed about Everland that is totally Korean is the emphasis on whiteness. The Koreans who were playing characters were painted white, and there were several actual white people working as characters too. Why can't Koreans just be Koreans?
Note the wooden roller coaster in the background. I did not go on this, but nearly everyone else did. They said it was fun but I still have my doubts! There was an actual vertical drop of about 80 feet! So scary.
Instead, Kamal and I went to a cool 3-D movie where our seats moved and water splashed up on us, making it look as if we were part of the cartoon (which we couldn't understand since it was all in Korean, natch) and then moved onto a nice relaxing chair lift to the top of the hill (which only had another 40 minute wait).
Where the chair lift brought us: 50's Diner Rock and Roll street- I'm completely guessing that name. There were some freaky rides we didn't go on (well... some of us went on them) and then we made our way back down the hill only to see that we were just in time for the parade. Then we went to "Holland Town" where we had some dinner and watched the fireworks from our seat. I'll say it again, excellent day.
No comments:
Post a Comment