Childrens Grand Park

The first theme park of the trip was Children's Grand Park, a small theme park within one of the largest public parks in the city of Seoul. The main park was fairly busy with a number of school parties who gave us a nice greeting of "Welcome to Korea". My Korean was nowhere near as good but I was able to put together a "An hyeung a se yo" which means "Good Morning/Day/Evening".
I have no idea who these characters are but I'm guessing they didn't come from the same show as each was drawn in a different style.
A small children's playground with a rather peculiar upside-down house playhouse. Obi Wan Kenobi appeared and told us that "This was not the park we were looking for" and we felt an overwhelming urge to move on. Bloody Jedis and their cheap mind tricks.
A very nice large pagoda type building, the banners also displaying the same cartoon characters as seen earlier led me to conclude that if I wanted to know more about those characters I'd have to go inside, later!
The park has two roller-coasters. This was the first one called Crazy Mouse, called as such due to the paint-job that looks like Mickey Mouse has taken too much LSD. Due to the rain, this ride didn't open.
One of the unique rides from the last Japan trip, and it was nice to see them here in Korea too. The animals are coin-operated and play music whilst moving the riders very slowly around the park. The giraffe looks a little bit odd!
One of those rides that is just asking for trouble.
The graffiti in the station of the second coaster. Cute! We'd come to realise that most of the time the graffiti wasn't nasty tagging but sweet stuff like this, however sometimes there would be quite a lot of it.
This is the second coaster called '88 train. I'm guessing the ride opened in this year and doesn't have anything to do with two oversized females getting stuck in it. The ride had very little leg room, even in the front, and in ensuring my legs didn't get injured on the ride I missed the couple of rough bits that threw my shoulders into the restraints. An instantly forgettable ride, although I seem to have contradicted myself in writing this review of it.
Smile for the camera!
This video game is called "Come on Baby". It's a track-and-field type game that features babies as participants who get hurt should they fail the challenge (e.g. skipping over a live electric cable)
I found this clip on youtube which shows it in action.


Having had enough of the little park and enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing people queueing up for the coaster that wasn't going to open I decided to venture out to see what else I could find in the main park.
Close by was this replica of an old steam train. Just a replica though.
Nice paving. Smile, even though it's raining.
These little mushrooms are actually the public toilets. Nearby a speaker system in the trees was playing Christmas carols. I think its the first time I've head "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in September. The English lyrics aren't understood by the majority of visitors to the park but our guide told me that they like the melody of the singing, which is why its popular.
The caterpillar seat outside the pagoda. The exhibition had something to do with the planet and climate change.
Something to do with world love.



Some models of the previously advertised cartoon characters.

Children's Grand Park was always going to be a quick stop and the wet weather compounded that. The coaster counters were off to a bad start with the one coaster not running. It did however open later in the day and some of those more hardcore/stupid members returned to ride it. Not me though, there would be plenty more coasters on the trip to experience.