7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Everland, Gyeonggido Part 1

We were barely spending half day at Seoul and we have to travel out of city again on day 3 of 7D Korea Golden Rama Tour. We took bus to the next destination on our itinerary which is located at Gyeonggido province, Everland Resort. Everland Resort is the biggest theme park in South Korea and it is always included as part of any South Korean tour itinerary.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Everland, Gyeonggido Part 1

I am actually not really a fan of theme park (with exception of Disneyland, maybe) but since we are at South Korea, we should visit its biggest theme park, at least once. It is very important not to lose out the ticket stub because the theme park staff will check it upon taking the ride. Map is always useful whenever you are in the theme park because there is no point to use Google Map if you don't even have wifi connection in the theme park anyway. 

Everland Resort Guide Map, Gyeonggido

Cute bomb bomb are fugitives in this theme park. But other than that, I have no idea what's written on the notice board. 

Cute poster at Everland Resort Gyeonggido South Korea

The main square of the theme park is decorated like some kind of flower market. So pretty. Everland is huge and it has a lot of different section with different themes. It even has its own zoo named Zootopia. Jenny has led the tour participants which are interested to go to the zoo but to be honest with you, animals are not what I'm looking for from a visit to Everland. However, if you are a fan of animals, you may really consider visiting Zootopia as it boasts its exhibition of 2,000 animals. It also has its own ecological safari section, the Lost Valley and a pair of giant pandas given by China can be seen at Panda World. 

Beautiful main square of Everland Resort Gyeonggido

I wanted to take picture with the beautiful tree so we kinda went on our own way in Everland. The funny thing is, we got reunited with Nico, our Indonesian tour guide, in another section of the theme park. He's leading the tour participants who wanted to check out those thrilling rides such as roller coasters. Oh right, talking about roller coasters here...

Beautiful tree at Everland Gyeonggido South Korea

Everland has many roller coasters ranging from easy, wild and uhh, crazy adrenaline-seeking rides, I suppose. Most of the visitors of Everland has the main objective of riding the T-Express, the first wooden roller coaster in Korea. The fastest way to reach the T-Express from the main square is by taking a cable car ride which bring you downhill ride to where the T-Express is located. Yeah, you can see the roller coaster from up here. So the cable car ride can also serve as your time to build up courage and guts prior to challenging the T-Express. LOL. 

Cable Car Ride at Everland Resort Gyeonggido

After certain deliberation, only 4 of us decided to take the challenge of riding the T-Express. So it's Nico, Dea, my Bro and myself. Dea's dad vomitted during our warming-up challenge of riding the medium-scary roller coaster (medium because of the double loop) so he has to sit out this ride for his own benefit. I suppose you should not eat too full upon challenging roller coaster because the ride will turn your stomach upside down (okay, your whole body for that matter). In addition, you should really really make a visit to the toilet and pee before riding a roller coaster, especially a badass one. The entrance to T-Express ride is rather cute though for such a scary ride. 

Entrance to wooden roller coaster at Everland Gyeonggido

I thought the queue for the ride will be super long (like probably one hour) but turns out we only have to queue for 30 minutes. The benefit of having others to queue with you is that you can chat while waiting for the queue to move up. Otherwise, it will be very boring. The queue moves kinda fast thought because T-Express allows at least 20 people to ride per turn. When we are nearer to the ride, we saw that the TV flashing out instruction on what not to do during the ride. The most interesting part that the TV screen shows us is the part where there is an instruction to stretch prior to riding the T-Express, especially stretching your neck. The instruction guided us (in Hangul but it's easily follow-able) to stretch our neck by turning it to the left, right, up, down and circular/ reverse circular movement). Hmm, confused but decided to do that anyway. 

Queuing for wooden roller coaster at Everland Gyeonggido

3.5 minutes later (I did not count, but one of the guy from our tour counted how long does it take for the whole ride)...

This feels like the longest roller coaster ride I have ever taken in my whole life. The first downward slope was so scary and steep, we can hear the scream of people who are seated at the first car even before we feel the sense of gravity. There are some flat (and hence, somewhat restful) moment of the track but it's not for long so basically, you will spend most of your 3.5 minutes screaming your lungs out. It does feel like my real life, sometimes you feel like you are at the peak, and then suddenly stuff happens and you have to take a steep downward path and then life brings you to the left, to the right, until you lost sense of direction. And then, suddenly life was pretty okay, before you got dragged down in another steep path and up again. Up and down up and down. Hmm, suddenly I feel life is scarier that T-Express. Hahaha. 

Taking cable car ride at Everland Gyeonggido

If you are a fan of Korean reality shows, chances are you have seen T-Express before since it's often featured as one of the challenges which have to be overcome by whoever involved in the variety show's challenge. Those actors/ actresses/ idols who are often featured in reality shows must have had a nerve of steel since they are used to this kind of game/ ride. We're gonna check out the less challenging parts of Everland in the part 2 of the post. Anyeong! 

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