It was a day for the kids as we planned an outing to the popular Lotte World Adventure theme park. Initially wanted to get out of the apartment early so as to maximize the time at the park. The plan to meet at 9am became 945 instead. Plus we had to pack our luggage for a shift of units because of unavailability the first 2 days, and that also took up some time.
The inertia faced in the morning was the same as the day before and as we made it to the subway, we spent a lot of time searching for toilets.
After managing to get up the train, it was then about a 40 mins ride to Lotte World with the nearest station as Jamsil. Decided to have lunch upon arrival as it was almost 12 already so proceeded to the Urban’s Court food court just opposite the aquarium to eat.
After lunch, we went towards adventure land while our parents would spend their time at the malls and the cherry blossom festival outside instead.
Walking to adventure land was a little confusing within the huge mall and after trying to follow the signs and the asking the staff, we thought we found the entrance but because we bought the tickets from Klook, we had to go to the South Entrance instead. Then we had to go to the overseas tickets office to exchange for paper tickets and have that registered on the app and the magic pass.
The great thing was with the app there were 3 magic passes that were given. We bought the tickets with 3 magic passes so that meant 6 magic passes in total. There were differences as well, for the app magic passes these were utilized by reservation of time slots that we would be using at the ride whereas the tickets ones gave us instant access when handed over to the staff at the line.
Using the app and the hard copy map, we could identify the rides where the kids could ride tabulated in a table with clear limitations. The app gave live details on the waiting times so we planned the usage of the magic passes on the longest waiting time while the rest we just queued.
As we were mostly taking rides for kids, eventually we didn’t get to fully utilize the magic passes, and probably because it was a Monday, the lines were pretty manageable. This also meant that the kids got to play 2 to 3 times per ride as once the ride was done they quickly queued again for another round. The adult rides however were just full of people.
The indoor area was already huge enough and we had watched a parade at 2 pm amongst a few more scheduled shows for the day. Even then we had also ran out of time because there were 4 floors of rides to explore and an outdoor one called magic island.
As the sun set, the indoor theme park was lighted up and that gave the theme park a magical look. Many people were dressed in rented school uniforms or olden fashion to take their photos there (and we thought initially so many students came from school).
Sis went off in search for our parent first for dinner while we went to get our caricature drawn for total of 35k at one of the store within the theme park. That took about 30mins and then when we met everyone, they were still looking for a place to eat even after coming down from the 5th and 6th floor of Lotte World Mall. We settled in at a Korean food court in 2 separate tables and proceeded to order as the stalls started to close and options became limited.
K fell asleep on my shoulders while walking to the food court and continued sleeping until we woke him up to have dinner. Had to use video to hasten his eating and by the time we were ready to leave it was already 930pm.
Decided to take a taxi back instead of the train but that was also quite difficult. Tried getting on the first taxi and was told to get off (taxi driver spoke in Korean which made it difficult to understand too) because the maximum number of people was only four while we had 4 adults and one K. Dad reshuffled the group to 3 adults and 2 kids and the other 4 adults and 1 infant and that worked.
But the second problem was the taxi driver didn’t know where we wanted to go and couldn’t see the phone clearly because he was probably far sighted due to age. So I tried reading out the address and he didn’t know where and we couldn’t communicate because he couldn’t speak English. My phone that had the translator also died. In the end, I asked mommy to call the other taxi and asked for their taxi driver to tell him where we were going.
After a few exchanges he then started driving, made a U turn and stopped behind the taxi where the others were in. That driver then came down and advised our driver before we got on the road again.
About 30mins and 19.1k later, we finally arrived. We went to the new unit that was much smaller than the initial one (of course cheaper too) and proceeded to get ready to bed quickly. It was going to be an early day the next day with a booked driver so we couldn’t afford to be late like these first 2 days. It was very tiring day for me as we walked so much within the theme park that I had no issue dozing off.