Lotte World and Lotte World Aquarium

So during the winter time in Korea, the weather is biting cold. With wind and bad air always abounding during this time during the year, we specifically reserved these two locations for mid week, off season, cold weather since two things are always a guarantee in Korea: 1) during school time off every public place is packed to insane numbers, and 2) Korean people don't like the cold so any place indoors will be packed. So we went in the middle of the week on a off day of school that didn't coincide with Korean schools, and it worked!

Lotte is the biggest name in Korea. They must be a billion dollar company and seem to own every large apartment buildings, food chains, and even a mall. They made a Disneyland knock-off if you will, Lotte World, which was a indoor/outdoor theme park, which during this time was festive with Christmas. We love living in an asian country that celebrates Christ! We took this trip with the Walkers. 

Here you can see the indoor train, the hot air balloons you can ride around the top of the park, and all the little inlets of fun little things to see. They also had tucked away within it Panda Express, which was an awesome find!

The outdoor theme park has a beautiful Disneyland castle, and the surrounding rides. Here you can see M&M with Claire, her bestie. The merry-go round is always a hit with the kids, as well as driving the cars which Little A just loved with her friend Brynlee. 

As it was the Christmas holidays, it was great to enjoy some time with festive decorations, to include a huge show at the end that celebrated Santa. It's really funny to see all the Korean chants that they make up to get a crowd going, and regardless of age it seems like everyone knows it. They even did a mainstreet electrical parade performance, but the difference was using all the cool LED lights here.

So I know you have seen a lot of our pictures, like this one between Heather and Brianne Walker, where their hands are doing that. In Korea its super common when you take pictures to make your thumb and index fingers into "hearts", which if you slide them across each other they make a heart. Super fun Korean way of pictures!

Within Lotte World is Lotte Aquarium, which was perhaps one of the best ones we have been too. We have written before about how Heather and I aren't normally excited about aquarium, but this one was awesome!

There were sea lions, whales and it was amazing to see that this aquarium all the animals were super interactive. The actually moved and responded to the kids when they would, but it was super fun to watch them mimicking the kids mouth movements. Monster loved it, and made us re-live the great time we had in Okinawa at the aquarium. It was a great day and a perfect way to spend a freezing day during Christmas time in Korea.

-Kevin