Everland

This past Sunday I went to Everland with Ariane, Felix, Peter, and two of our Korean friends whose names I unfortunately cannot pronounce, nor spell. Everland is a big theme park outside of Seoul and many call it the "Disney land of South Korea". It was a beautiful park and we had a lot of fun, but it definitely did not have the same magical feeling that Disney World has. We took a bus out of Sinchon station that brought us directly to Everland. We then boarded a shuttle from the parking lot that brought us to the main gate. The actual park is completely hidden by trees and mountains, and the shuttle ride felt like an attraction in itself, the driver was zipping up and down these tiny, narrow roads extremely fast!

Everything was already decorated for Halloween, even the animals' cages at the zoo had pumpkins in them! We did a few rides in the beginning which were a lot fun, but unfortunately it began to rain so most of the outdoor rides closed. We ended up doing all the inside rides which was fine because a lot of them were really cool and we probably would've overlooked them had the weather been nice. The park has an upper and lower section and we took the "Sky Way" to get from one section to another, which was basically just like a ski chair lift, but it gave us an awesome view of the whole park and the surrounding mountains.

We spent a lot of time in the zoo area, which reminded me of Disney's Animal Kingdom. The animals were fun to look at and my favorite were the polar bears. We took a safari trip and saw lions, tigers, bears. The highlight of the animal section was doing the two water rides that were still open, one of them was a big raft ride and the second was basically a smaller version of splash mountain.

Each section of the park was themed and there was an American themed section, creatively named "American Land". We ate lunch at the Western-style burger restaurant, but unfortunately my American lunch still had a Korean flavor to it. This section was decorated with old posters and billboards of Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Cash, people like that. Also there was a lot of street signs for decorations and a bunch of cliche-looking traffic lights in this part of the park. I think it's a little funny that when the creators of Everland thought of stereotypical American items, they thought of street signs and traffic lights. It's a little ironic actually because Koreans are horrible drivers, so perhaps they would benefit from the civic organization that America is apparently known for.

Even though it rained we still had a lot of fun. We finished up the day by catching the final showing of one of the park's performances. This of course did not have the same Disney feel to it, but it was still a good show. The Everland characters, a few cute, but unidentifiable animals (two of which resembling a Minnie and Mickey) opened up the show with a some songs and dances but the coolest part were the gymnasts. The middle few acts consisted of a bunch of gymnasts doing flips over one another, some crazy stuff with a rope hanging from a ceiling, and then some human pyramid stuff. It was really cool what these performers were capable of, sometimes I got so nervous when they were in the air that I could barely look, but none of them fell or even messed up!

We got back on the bus, exhausted, and slept all the way to Sinchon. The first picture is of the woman at the main gate who collected our tickets, what a great outfit! The next is all of us with an Everland character, and the other one is a shot of the Sky Way.



And how can I forget the polar bears?!