Lotte World

After my adventurous haircut on Friday, I was ready for another adventure by Saturday. This time, the adventure took place in Seoul at Lotte World, which bills itself as the largest indoor theme park in the world.

Now, I've never spent a lot of time at indoor theme parks, so I really don't have much to go by. What I can tell you, though, is that this place was huge. It really reminded me of Disney World in a lot of ways. In fact, I think some of the rides are complete Disney rip-offs.

Let me take a break in my pontification to give you a perfect example. One of their main rides was called the Adventures of Sinbad. Fortunately for us, the ride was themed to the adventures of Sinbad the sailor, not Sinbad the comedian. I don't think I could handle a 15 minute boat ride that revolved around us hearing the comedy of Sinbad.

The ride was strikingly similar to Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyworld. The boats were the same, the robots and scenes were very similar, there was even some sort of pirate song, althoug it was in Korean so I didn't really understand it.

Besides Pirates of the Caribbean, there was also this jeep ride that reminded me a lot of the Indian Jones ride at Disneyland in California.

Even though the park featured many blatant rip-offs and copyright infringements, it was very detailed, which you don't see in Korea.

In more short time here, I've noticed that many things in Korea seem very half-assed. Its as if they start something and lose interest, so they quickly finish it up and move on. Fortunately this place was very well thought out and had some really detailed areas.

All in all, I had one of the best Saturdays in Korea so far.

JW