Seoul, Day 2 (2025): Lotte World, Sky Seoul, & Myeongdong
For our second day in Seoul, we planned on visiting Lotte World, which could be described as Korean Disneyland, although that doesn’t seem entirely accurate. I tried to get tickets online using their website, but kept getting a message that no tickets were available for any day that I searched for. I’m pretty sure that’s an error on their end, so I did some research and discovered that most people use Klook to buy their tickets, so I went over to that site and found tickets for a lower price. I ended up buying tickets that included a fast pass for three of the thrill rides: French Revolution, Atlantis, and Comet Express.
It was a short train ride to get there, but the station near us, Samseong Station, was undergoing renovations, so the platforms were less than inviting:
I’m amazed Nick didn’t bash his head multiple times while walking to the train…
Lotte World is owned by the Lotte Corporation, which owns many different businesses including department stores, hotels, and food. On our last trip to Korea, we stayed in the Lotte Hotel in Busan, which was directly connected to the Lotte Department Store Busan. For the area around Lotte World, they own the connecting mall and Lotte World Tower, currently the sixth tallest building in the world.
When we got off the train and walked through the underground walkways to find the exit closest to Lotte World, we saw a familiar sight, a replica of Rome’s Trevi Fountain!
I say that this is a familiar sight because when we stayed in Busan, there was also a replica of the Trevi fountain underground next to the entrance to the department store:
Back then, we thought it was odd to have a replica Trevi Fountain, but since we’ve seen two of them next to their department store entrances, it must be some type of icon for their brand. We’re still confused why they specifically chose an Italian landmark as their signature design feature.
After admiring the fountain for a few minutes, we headed up and out of the station and found an entrance to Lotte World:
We went on a Monday morning, so we weren’t expecting it to be super crowded, but we weren’t expecting it to seem completely empty like this photo shows.
However, we were apparently not at the main entrance to the park because as we walked inside, we were still inside the mall area. We had to take an escalator downstairs and walk a bit and then we saw the crowds, including many school kids, which made us wonder why they were there and not at school since it was a Monday. Because we pre-purchased our tickets, we could use a back entrance to the park and skip the ticket lines altogether. Once inside, we were able to appreciate the massive interior:
There’s a large ice skating rink on the bottom floor, which wasn’t included with our admission ticket, but it looked like fun.
A popular trend when going to Lotte World is to rent a high school school uniform and wear it inside the park. When I asked the group if we wanted to do that, the answer was an immediate ‘No!’ Also, there’s no way they’d have a uniform to rent in Nick’s size. However, we did see many theme park attendees in uniforms, including a mother and her daughter.
Once we got to the main floor, we started to find our first ride, the Flume. It seemed like a fairly tame ride, which would be a good first ride to start our day, except once we got there, we saw a sign saying that it was closed for maintenance. After that mild disappointment, we decided to go to the French Revolution, one of the rides included in our fast pass. We meandered around for quite a while trying to find it (the online map and signs weren’t the best), but eventually we got there and saw a long, long line. We waited in it while Nick tried to find the fast pass line, which he did minutes later, so we left and headed over there. Mike and I didn’t want to go on it, so we found a bench with a view of the ride while Tiffany and Nick waited in the fast pass line. I think it took them like 10 minutes to board, while the main line seemed like it would be 1-2 hours. Soon, we saw them approach the one loop in the ride and tried to get a photo:
It’s hard to make out anything in that photo, but they’re the fourth row back; Nick’s even waving to us!
We met up with them after they got off the ride, and while a little disheveled from the ride, they enjoyed it. They also told us that there was an entire back section that isn’t visible from where we were. I asked if they learned anything about the French Revolution, and unsurprisingly, they said no.
The other rides on the fast pass were on the Magic Island, which is located on an island outside. We had packed up some of our outerwear in a locker, so before going out there, we wanted to explore more of the inside Adventureland. We went up to the highest floor so that we could go on the world monorail, but as would soon be a common sight, there was a sign saying it was closed for maintenance. There was also a cool looking fake hot air balloon ride, but that was also closed. So far, three of the rides that I personally wanted to go on were closed. One of the rides that was open was a Go Kart ride that Nick wanted to go on, but when we got to the entrance, we saw this:
Nick was actually too tall for the ride! Thus, our disappointment in Lotte World persisted…
As we continued to walk around Adventureland, we noticed that the main walkway was roped off and a crowd was gathering along side it, indicating that a parade was about to start. We waited and soon enough, the music started and some dancers started dancing down the parade path. There was fake snow falling from the sky, followed by the first of the floats and even more dancers:
We were surprised that the production value of the whole show, but we wanted to leave before the entire crowd dispersed, so we left a little early to go outside to Magic Island:
Our first ride would be Atlantis, which also had a massive main entry line. I took a look at it as we walked past it and felt like it wouldn’t be too crazy and give me vertigo, so I joined Nick and Tiffany on it. I don’t know how long the main line would take, but given that it snaked all the way to a completely separate area, my guess was over 2 hours. Our fast pass made our wait 5 minutes, although multiple ride attendants asked how tall Nick was, and said that if he didn’t feel secure with the lap bar, that he shouldn’t ride it. Once we boarded the ride, we sort of understood what they meant because you ride it straddled over it like a bike, but there was both a seatbelt and lap bar, so Nick wasn’t too concerned.
We soon began what I thought would be an ascent, but no, this ride was equipped with a linear accelerator, so zoom we went up to an immediate hill that forced me up and out of my seat supported only by the seat belt and lap bar. Many tight turns, drops, and launches later, we were back to the beginning. I was terrified that once I got up, I would have extreme vertigo, but it was actually fine. And despite not knowing how crazy the ride was, we all thought it was a lot of fun!
The final ride they would go on, as part of the Fast Pass, was the Comet Express. Nick looked it up and discovered that the max speed is 35km/hour, which is just over 21mph, so not very fast. He tried to convince me to go on it, but I didn’t want to tempt my vertigo fate, so Mike and I stayed behind. This would be the longest wait for them using the fast pass at about 15 minutes, but like all the other rides, the normal line was around 2 hours long. After about 30 minutes, Tiffany and Mike appeared from the exit and Nick explained to us what the ride actually was.
According to him, there were individual cars holding two people, so the two of them had a car to themselves. Once the ride started moving, the ride operated released something (a pin or a brake), and then the entire car started spinning in place. I guess you’re a planet that’s in orbit and rotating on its axis? Either way, after hearing about the actual ride experience, I was extremely happy that I didn’t go on it because I think I’d still be dizzy days after getting off that ride.
He also mentioned that the two cars in front of them was a family of three, and that the father was by himself in the car immediately in front of them. Because he didn’t have a second passenger, it threw off the balance of the car resulting in his car spinning much, much faster than their car. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to start the ride spinning around and not being able to stop it…I hope he’s OK.
And at this point, we were ready to leave the park, but as we were waiting for Tiffany and Nick to finish the Comet Express, I saw multiple people eating corn on a stick and I wanted one too, so we went to the stall to get one. I don’t know what they did to the corn, but it tasted like yellow wax. It was as if the corn had been sitting out under the heater for too long and partially dried out, and the butter they used to coat it tasted like nothing, and the corn had no flavor either. After a few bites, I had to throw it out because it was so bad.
Tiffany wanted to get a churro before we left, so we got a regular cinnamon sugar churro at a stand on the main floor of Adventureland:
Her experience was the same as my corn, the churro was stale and had no flavor. I guess we knew that theme park food wasn’t going to be the best, but this was probably the worst fair food I’ve ever had.
Would we go back to Lotte World, probably not, but it was still an entertaining half day for us, especially because we paid for the fast pass and skipped the insanely long lines. Much like our experience at Universal Studios Osaka, we were shocked at the dedication many of the people had to wait in line for hours just to go on one ride. I guess you can never underestimate the ability of teens to wait in line for something that they want to do…
And with that, we actually left the theme park to go into the attached Lotte Department Store because they had a sign promoting a Kpop themed pop-up section, so we wanted to check it out. To be honest, I’m not sure what was specifically Kpop themed about it, it just looked like a small collection of merchandise from local designers. Still cool, but not what we were expecting.
There was a cute Sumikkogurami themed cafe there though:
After not really eating anything at Lotte World, we were all getting hungry, so as we were walking towards Lotte World Tower, I saw a sign for the London Bagel Museum, a chain featuring various bagels and bagel sandwiches. The decor of the place was cool with its brick and wood, and British themed art, although we weren’t sure what was British about bagels:
There wasn’t a free table when we went, so I added us to the waitlist on the app but we were the first in line, so after completing the form, the person at the door called us in. A server inside showed us a table and told us to go to the self serve area to get our bagels, and yeah, there were many to choose from:
This was about 1/4 of the total bagels to choose from; I wasn’t able to get a photo of the entire display because there was a constant line of people.
After you placed your bagel on the tray, there was someone at the end near the fridge with small containers of spread asking which ones you wanted, and then later you would order drinks at the register where you would eventually pay.
I chose a rather boring tomato basil bagel, but I got the bacon potato bagel for Nick, mainly to see his reaction once I put it on the table in front of him:
After Nick gave me a look that questioned my sanity, we took a bite and it was actually really good. The bacon part was similar to a sloppy joe, and it was on top of creamy mashed potato and a slice of tomato. I only wished it was warm, but other than that, still a good snack to get us through the rest of the day. I would say that we were disappointed that they didn’t warm up or toast any of the bagels for us.
It was only a short walk across a small plaza to Lotte World Tower, where we would ascend over 1600 feet to Seoul Sky. The tower itself is quite imposing, especially since there’s nothing around it even near its height:
After we asked for directions to the ticket counter, we got our tickets to ascend the fastest double-decker elevator in the world. It would take us less than a minute to go from B2 to floor 117, and inside, a video played on all four walls and the ceiling depicting a fictional journey through the skies.
While we tried to show up during sunset, the smog partially hindered our views of Seoul, but we still appreciated what we could see:
The actual observation area spans floors 117-123, with the top floor being a restaurant. On one of the floors, there are two points that jut out from the main building revealing a glass floor for people to stand on and look down upon the city:
The glare from the glass makes it hard to see what’s going on down there, but in person, it’s quite evident that you’re really high up.
After the sun set, we tried to take more photos of Seoul at night:
It really does look a lot more impressive in person, but you can sort of see just how expansive Seoul is.
The ride down in the elevator presented us with a similar, but different video from the one that we saw going up. From here, we made it back to the station to go to Myeongdong to walk through their famous night market.
If we thought Lotte World was crowded, Myeongdong night market was even more so:
The first stall that we stopped at was a self-serve gimbap stall:
You take one of the plastic containers to the left of the display, grab some tongs and start filling the container with whatever combination of rolled gimbap you’d like. They sold the gimbap in containers of 6, so you couldn’t just get one or two. For a group of four, a 6-pack was not going to be an issue.
We devoured our selection quite quickly, but we forgot that there was a lack of trash bins, and that we should have returned our container back at the stall for them to get rid of. Instead, we kept walking around with an empty plastic container.
The next stall served tteokbokki, rice cakes simmered in a spicy sauce. On a cold evening, this was so comforting:
We were getting quite full at this point, so our last stall was a pancake stall that made various pancakes to order, including vegetable, kimchi, seafood, or half & half. We opted for the half vegetable and half kimchi pancake, and watched as he made our pancake:
I think what made it delicious was that at one point, he slid the pancake into the corner of the griddle where it was frying in a large pool of oil, giving it a nice, crispy exterior. It took a few minutes for the entire pancake to be cooked, but soon, he cut it up into pieces and handed it to us:
We needed to eat it while it was still warm and crispy, which was not an issue for the four of us.
We wanted to explore the area a bit more, so we continued navigating the crowded pathways, stopping at a few stores like the popular HBAF nut store:
We’ve never really had them before, but since the store was there, I figured I might as well go in and get a few bags to take home. There are waaaaaay too many options of almonds, peanuts, and macadamia nut, but I managed to restrain myself and get three small bags.
We stopped in a couple of clothing stores and a chocolate store before deciding we needed dessert, and Nick wanted to revisit Sulbing, where we had our first Korean shaved ice many years ago. There are multiple locations in Myeongdong, and we couldn’t find the one that we went to in 2019, so we found the closest one to us. Unlike the last time we were there, it was oddly quiet inside, so finding a table for four was extremely easy. We ordered a couple of bingsoos and couldn’t wait to dig into them:
Both of our bingsoos contained a healthy scoop of vanilla ice cream inside. We tried our best to finish them and then went back to the hotel to rest up for tomorrow, where we’d check out the palaces and hanok streets in Seoul!