Wandering Fel

Showing posts with label Theme Park. Show all posts

If your tour itinerary includes a visit to Nami Island, most likely it will include a visit to the nearby French cultural village, Petite France. From its outward look, you will think that this European village seems to be a tad out of of place in South Korea.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Petite France

However, due to its unique concept, Petite France has become a filming location for many best-selling TV series like Secret Garden and The Man Who Came from the Star. I watched both series and they are both pretty fun to watch.

To be honest with you, I was not particularly looking forward to visit Petite France again because I have been here before and I have explored the whole place (more or less). You probably will not need more than one hour to play at Petite France. But the thing about joining a tour is you don't really have a say in the tour itinerary. You just have to bear with the not-so-excited place and proceed with it. So yeah, Petite France is fun for first time visitor but not so for 2nd time visitor.

Entrance to Petite France at South Korea

Anyway rather than grumble, let's just revisit the beautiful colorful houses at Petite France. These houses serve as cafe, stores, exhibition facility and also a youth training facility. There are 16 French-style buildings where visitors can lodge and experience French food, clothing and household culture.

Right after entering Petite France, you will see an auditorium. There will be puppet shows and performance held at this open auditorium. This auditorium also served as jail for one of the early episode of Running Man. That was quite a fun episode to watch really.

Open auditorium at Petite France South Korea

Mom feels like posing like Hyun Bin. I don't think she even watch the drama but she's being so cute here trying to stick her head out there because the poster frame is quite tall. Hahahah.

Mom posing as Hyun Bin from Secret Garden at Petite France

Some of the houses are open for you to take a peek inside. The interior design of the house is inspired from a typical village house in French. Hmm, I am not very sure if a house in French village has that many plates though. Do people there still have a very big family nowadays?

European plates collection at Petite France South Korea

This is how the living room looks like with piano, sofa and cupboard. I can tell within one glance that it's gonna be a huge effort tyring to clean the whole house with design like this.

European living room inside house at Petite France

We were getting bored after 30 minutes of wandering around Petite France so we decided to buy drinks intead. There is a cafe next to the house that we just saw earlier and this is the list of the price for the coffee and tea.

Coffee and tea price at Petite France cafe

From where the cafe is located, you can see the view of Cheongpyeong Lake. Quite a nice view from above, except for the fact that it was so hot.

Lake Chuncheonho viewed from Petite France

The seating area on the right side is where you can sit down and enjoy the drinks that you just bought from the cafe earlier. We sat down for a good 15 minutes before we made our move to the auditorium again since our appointed meeting time is still 20 minutes away.

Cafe seating area at Petite France South Korea

A recreation of a French village will not be completed without a small miniature of the Eiffel Tower, in yellow color. Je'taime!

Eiffel Tower at Petite France South Korea

Did you see the statue of a young boy dressed up in green coat behind me? The boy is actually the Little Prince. The concept of Petite France derives from "flowers, stars, and the Little Prince". The village has a memorial hall which is dedicated to Saint-Exupery, the author of the celebrated French novel, Le Petit Prince (1943). I guess you can call Petite France as the Little Prince theme park. If you'd like to, you can buy some souvenirs or even the French kitchenwares from some of the shops in Petite France.

Marionette or puppet show are available at certain timing and this show seems to be very popular with the children. I have no idea what the person is saying though because she spoke in Korean but the puppet dance is quite fun to watch. There is no additional fees need to be made to watch the show.

Admission fees:

Adults: 8,000 KRW

Teenagers (middle and high schoolers): 6,000 KRW

Children (3 y.o. - elementary school students): 5,000 KRW

Seniors (>65 y.o.) and People with disability: 6,000 KRW

Opening hours:

Sunday to Thursday: 9AM - 6PM

Friday to Saturday: 9AM - 8PM

Anyeong! The wooden roller coaster ride at Everland, the biggest theme park in South Korea, was a really thrilling good experience. But my back neck seems to be kinda tight after those defying gravity moment on the ride. Now I know why the telly that we saw while queuing asked us to stretch our neck prior to riding the roller coaster. Oh well, since we are done with the most challenging ride and we only have around 45 minutes left to hang out at Everland, we slowly made our way back to the meeting point at the entrance of the theme park.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Everland, Gyeonggido Part 2

Ooo a lot of people is watching the ride which looks like Twister, you know the kind of ride that flip you in 360 degrees direction and splash you with water while you are stuck there like suckling pork. I don't know but it is really kinda fun to see people getting tor... uhh I mean, having fun riding that ride. My mom, bro and myself watched them for around 3 minutes or so hahahaha.

Watching people get wet at Everland Gyeonggido

Uhh I kinda regret not riding this Robot VR ride because it looks pretty cool and you won't get wet from this ride. Oh well, maybe next time if I ever come back to Everland.

Robot VR ride at Everland Gyeonggido South Korea

Omaigat I saw my favourite cute friends, Brown, Cony and Sally. Aww, turns out there is a store of Line Friends here at Everland. Woots, time to say anyeong to them. The store is located near to the main square where all the flowers and the beautiful tree is located.

Line Friends Store at Everland Gyeonggido South Korea

A visit to Line Friends store is not complete without taking picture with Brown, Cony and Sally. Brown and Sally look so cute in the outfits from their latest line. Hehe.

Posing with Brown, Cony and Sally at Line Friends Store at Everland Gyeonggido

A variety of Line Friends' plush toys is sold here. They are so cute but I have a few of Line Friends' plush toys already and I'm not sure where I can keep them if I keep expanding my collection. :(

Cuteness in container tube at Line Friends Store Everland Gyeonggido

If you are more into collecting figurines, you can also buy them here. I have two of the biggest size of Brown and Cony and they really make a good picture prop. Although I use them mostly when I am eating at home instead of eating out with friend.

Collector statue from Line Friends Store at Everland Gyeonggido

Phone casings are also available but they are all for Iphone. Argh. I thought South Korea is the land of Samsung products? What happens to casing for Samsung phones, Line Friends? Aigoo.

Phone casing from Line Friends Store Everland Gyeonggido

I came out from Line Friends Store empty handed but I suppose that's okay because after all we were only at day 3 of the 7D Korea Golden Rama Tour. More money to spend when we are back in Seoul. Teehee.

An afternoon at Everland Gyeonggido South Korea

Admission + Rides Fees:

- One day ticket: Adults 54,000 KRW/ Teenagers 46,000 KRW/ Children and Senior 43,000 KRW

- Night ticket (after 5PM): Adult 45,000 KRW/ Teenagers 39,000 KRW/ Children and Senior 36,000 KRW

- Two days ticket: Adults 84,000 KRW/ Teenagers 71,000 KRW/ Children and Senior 67,000 KRW

Admission only fees:

- One day ticket: Adults 45,000 KRW/ Teenagers 38,000 KRW/ Children 35,000 KRW

- Night ticket (after 5PM): Adults 36,000 KRW/ Teenagers 33,000 KRW/ Children 31,000 KRW

Opening hours:

Daily 10AM - 10PM

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.

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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Wandering Fel

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Petite France

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Everland, Gyeonggido Part 2

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