Everland

Everland is a theme park in Seoul similar to Disneyland. I'm not sure if it's based on anything or if they just made stuff up for the sake of having a theme park. We've been wanting to take the boys there for a long time and last weekend was a three-day weekend for Columbus Day AND my friend told us about a deep discount for foreigners for the whole month of October. Since Marc gets the US Federal holidays off, its a good idea to go on those days since they're not Korean holidays. The weather was perfect, it wasn't too crowded and we saw a bunch of familiar faces from Camp Humphreys and our apartment complex!

We got our awesome discount and entered the magical land...

This is the "Main Street" area called Global Fair.

Where should we go first??

One of the characters similar to Minnie Mouse.

You see this kind of thing a lot: Preschool-age kids all dressed in uniforms on a field trip. There were several groups like this but what always shocks me is the student to adult ratio. Its like 20 three-year olds for every one adult. Just shoot me!

I wish you could see the detail of how this tree was decorated.

The first ride of the day. We saw some of our friends so the boys rode together. Their smiles were priceless!

Jonah has a need for speed.

Preschoolers peeking out on the merry-go-round.

This was probably the slowest carousel ever. It went around a total of three times. But he's still loving it!

This sweet kid did his best asking questions about Doren.

"Aren't I the popular one?"

Now THIS was thrilling.

And this time driving a race car! He went on three times in a row because there was no line.

Meanwhile, Brother and Dad are on the bumper cars!

Global Village: even creepier than Small World, but fortunately the song wasn't very catchy so its not playing over and over in my head.

The ONLY good part was Jonah's wide-eyed look of wonder.

A fun parade with dancers and floats. It was Everlandy with a traditional Korean twist.

The floats appeared to be ocean-themed and looked like giant coral. On the front and back are the Korean drums which I love!

Watching the parade.

I love Jonah's default look of concern even when its something fun.

Teacups, er...Tulips.

100 school children intersecting 100 school children. Just shoot me again!

Toby's train. I don't know how Thomas & Friends fits in with Everland, but it was there!

Marc in his heritage land.

By the Four Seasons Garden

The Everland cast members have a special wave. Its basically jazz hands and its funny and unsettling at the same time. The first time someone did it to us I thought they were signaling that we were doing something wrong, like: (jazz hands)"Alert! Alert! Do not enter!" Turns out its just how they wave at you when you enter the park, get off a ride, make eye contact, leave the park...anything. Should one wave back at them like this? Would one retain a shred of dignity if one did?
And what was even more amusing...I really wish I had video of this...is the ride operators do a sort of choreographed dance of clapping, swaying, tapping while the ride is running to show their "Everland spirit". Some of them are really into it like cheerleaders. Others look more preoccupied but know they have to do the dance, so there's a little clappy here...a tappy there...oops, missed a step...clap, tap...tap. But I have a news flash. The only people watching the happy dance are the ones waiting in line for the ride. Maybe its entertainment while we wait??

They're eating out of his hand in Bird Paradise!

Some of us can use long lines for napping.

This was pretty cool. We were on a bus in Safari World where lions, tigers and bears are just wandering around (in separate zones, of course) and come right up to the bus, or, in this case, a special safari car. Some of them even climbed on top of the cars with people inside. They even have a liger!

That is not a man in a bear suit. That is an actual bear waiting for a treat from the bus driver. We were surrounded!

One of the highlights for me was, believe it or not, a sandwich. Before we left the park we got some dinner at Cafe Jungle Camp. It was a Camembert and ham panini drizzled with honey. YESSSS!! THANK YOU! Finally, a sandwich! It wasn't the huge deli sandwich I've been craving for, ohhh, the last 21 months, but it was better than any other sandwich I've had in Korea since there are none.

Such a pretty tree!

We barely skimmed European Adventure, Zoo-Topia and the gardens and we didn't see any shows, but we had a great day. We really need two days in a row to see it all. Hopefully we'll get to go back and see the rest of it. Until then...

***JAZZ HANDS!***