Abandonded (?) Alice In Wonderland ENGLISH Park

We'd driven past it many times on the bus ride to Costco: Alice English Park. Who is this Alice? How do you make a park "English"? There were just so many unanswered questions. On Saturday, we finally decided to check it out.

The ticket booth near the front entrance: nobody's home. And it didn't look like anyone had been home in a while.

WTF a playing card man?

OH- Alice Park is an Alice in Wonderland park- of course! How random. Unfortunately, the park entrance was roped off, so it didn't seem like we'd be able to check the place out. But, quicker than you can say "trespass", we'd walked around the gate and were in the park. I thought the guy in the above photo would yell at us, but he didn't so he obviously wasn't an employee. Later, when we were halfway through the park we saw him sightseeing at the other end. He must have thought that if we could trespass then he could too.

The first thing I noticed, besides the overgrown grass and dug-up ground, was a fenced-off area full of bunnies and one pissed off rooster. He tried to charge at me, but he was tied by the foot and couldn't get close. I will not be reporting whether of not I screamed.

Some of the buildings at the park.


What's inside?

Aha! It is (or was?) an English Village! Mel, Hannah, and I are English Villagey veterans so it was funny to randomly find ourselves in another one so many years later. It was also refreshing to see that they also use a passport-based rewards system.

A building shaped like a top hat.

Inside an upside-down classroom- that picture is actually the ceiling. It looked really cool, but imagine trying to keep the children's attentions with this kind of distraction! It seemed to us that these unique rooms were built to look impressive, but with no concept of how they would be used to teach. There were no desks or chairs, and one of the "classrooms" was just full of small inflatable swimming pools. Still... upside down room= pretty rad.

Finally, I find some fruit in Korea and it's got a hole in it. Groan!

Creepy floor hockey playing area. These Alice in Wonderland promo posters are everywhere, so I really hope Johnny Depp is getting his fair cut of the action on this place.

Strange, dark covered area filled with neglected animals.


There were squirrels, birds, lizards, hamsters, mice and these guys (groundhogs?) who seemed pretty upset. The hamster cage smelled TOXIC. The wooden shavings were so piss soaked that they'd turned black.

After that lovely stroll through the animal cruelty tent, we emerged to find some mushrooms and teepees.

Whatchu smokin', Mr. Caterpillar?

Next up was the cat house (I think the cat is missing a tooth).

These poor little guys were caged up and crying outside the cat house. Mel reports that they, at least, had some food.

Some worksheets about the "Homan Brain" and the "tic TAC clock" left out inside the cat house.

Next to the cat building was this boot. We could hear someone watching TV inside the boot, so we didn't go in, but when I took this picture a guy stepped into the doorway, stared at me, and then went back inside. Do you think he lives in the boot? That's so cool.

This log, made out of cardboard and spacious enough for two full humans, marked the end of Alice Park. But wait- what's that inside the "log"?

A flat screen TV, of course! Where, I assume, Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" airs non-stop on a loop all day long.

It was hard to tell if this Alice Park English Village is still up and running. The lights were all on and there were a lot of books and materials left laying around everywhere. But at the same time, it was a really messy, overgrown, and run-down looking place. I can't imagine anyone sending their kid there. When we got home, we Googled the park and we could see that as recently as last summer the Park was holding "Indian" camps... which sounds.. rewarding...

Anyway, if any of you out there send your kid to Alice Park to be an Indian for the day, would you mind sending some animal food along with them. I feel bad for those things. Please don't blame English, little animals! It's not our fault :( What a strange place.

Caribbean Bay Take 2

We'd been to Caribbean Bay once before and it was pretty fun, aside from the fat jokes and life jackets required for knee-deep water, but it was absolutely not worth a $65 admission fee. So, today when we went to the park and saw the price was a full $25 more than we'd paid on our last visit we decided to pass on the park for the day, even though we had traveled all the way there.

So what did Mr. and Mrs. Cheapskate do after leaving the overpriced and over-crowded park?

We went to E-Mart and bought our own damn pool. For our living room. For 1/6th of the price. Piss off, Caribbean Bay.

Leofoo Village Amusement Park AKA Fun Puking Racist Broken Rides

I woke up early Tuesday morning and it was pouring, so I was pretty sure our plans to go the Leofoo amusement park would have to be canceled. I was gutted! But by 10am the sky started to clear, the sun came out and Nareesa and I jumped on the high speed rail to Hsinchu- about 90KM south of Taipei. When we got to Hsinchu we took an expensive taxi ($550NT!) to the amusement park, past a long strip of betel nut stores and desolate-looking slums. I've read that Hsinchu has the wealthiest population of any city in Taiwan, so we must not have been driving through the main part of the city because it was a pretty sorry sight. I'm sure we'll be back to Hsinchu, though, because en route to Leofoo we saw a road sign for the "Little Ding Dong Science Pakr". Sounds amazing!


When we got to Leofoo the first thing I noticed was that every single ticket booth was closed and no one was around. After wandering around a bit we found a worker at the second set of gates who pointed us towards a guest services office to purchase our tickets. At $890NT ($27CAN) the admission wasn't toooooo expensive but it was pricey for Taiwan, and when we approached our first ride- a very cool looking roller coaster called the "Screaming Condor"- and a sign said it would be closed all day we started to question the value of the admission price. Over the course of the day we found 3 different big rides were closed, among other things that weren't operating. The park wasn't very busy, so I wonder if they just don't run the big rides on weekdays as a way to save money?


A sign in the "Wild West" area of the park, which also featured a merged Halloween/Christmas theme. For example, there were snowmen with pumpkin faces... joint-holidays were possibly another money-saving concept.


The first ride we went on was this lazy river-type ride which, according to the signage, featured "fluent water". Before we got on the ride we were given a poncho that someone had left behind and we tried to cover ourselves up with it, but we still got soaked! This was a fun ride.


As soon as you leave the ride there's a store selling dry jeans and other clothes. We tried drying ourselves off with coin-operated hair dryers, but if you like there is also coin "laungy" available on-site.


Budweiser-sponsored tilt-a-whirl!!


The next ride we went on was the "Pagoda" which takes you to the top of the ride and then suddenly releases you and you drop quickly to the bottom. Try not to scream on this thing, I dare you! Even though they were only operating 1 of the 4 carts on the ride there was still no line, so they let us go twice.


Looking up!


The "Lost World" ride and the Flume in the background. Flume was open, Lost World was not!


Our next stop was the Arabian Kingdom, probably the most impressively landscaped section of the park. There were some rip offs of Disney's blue genie, a carousel, and the "Ring of Fire" which you can see above. It was kind of like a roller coaster that just looped around in circles... I refused to ride it, but Nareesa enjoyed it.


We went on a ride where we sat in a jeep and got jerked around on a track full of cheap left-over haunted house props. I got to drive the jeep- I knew my license would come in handy! Also, while we were waiting in line we made friends with some smart ass kids who pointed at my "big bird" and asked Nareesa if she was from Africa. We were the only non-Asians at the park and we turned a lot of heads. I don't think Hsinchu-folk are as used to seeing foreigners as Taipei-folk. It felt kind of weird because people in Taipei don't generally pay us too much attention. Nareesa spent most of the day getting pointed at and overhearing "hei se de" (black color). So wrong!


Mmmmm.... turkey ice cream.


Speaking of obnoxious kids, while we were waiting in line to get on a ride these two brats butted in front of us and laughed so hard at their accomplishment. It was a ride where you pedaled yourself around a track above some monkey exhibits. We were given the bike behind the bratty kids, and we pedaled super fast and bumped them good! I promise they were having fun with it too- they kept looking back to see how close we were getting and laughing. Unfortunately for them, they didn't realize that they were messing with petty foreigners!


Next, we took a choo choo train through a "safari". The most interesting thing about this safari was that, although all the other animals we caged, the ostriches were free to roam around the grounds. Ostriches aren't that friendly so the majority of them stood next to the train hissing at the people as they passed. One bunch of bratty kids jumped around and hissed back at an ostrich and I was pretty sure they were going to get pecked in the head, but unfortunately that didn't happen.


Giraffes!


A white tiger!


Outside of the safari, there were signs advertising camel rides for $50NT. How awesome- I wanna ride a camel. So, I went to pay my $50NT and GUESS WHAT- the camel ride was closed. Even though I could see the camels right there, just begging to get ridden. So, we walked back through the park and spotted a big plastic camel for me to hop on instead. As I was climbing on this plastic camel I realized that it was a coin-operated ride and -GUESS WHAT- it was out of order.


The "Dynamic Motion Theater", where us and 4 other people walked into a dimly-lit room and the crappiest, dirtiest stuffed tiger animatronic dropped from the ceiling and began giving a speech in Chinese. We laughed and then walked out. There was only an hour left and there were some rides we still wanted to try.


After 4pm, the park got quite awesome. The kids that had been there all day left (they were all from the same school field trip) and there was no one else around. We walked onto any ride we wanted and we rode it as many times as we liked. First we went on the above horsey ride, which went around a lame track incredibly slowly.


Then we went on the flume, which they had to turn back on just for us. It was a really good flume ride! After this, we went on the Pagoda (the ride that drops you from a tall height) twice, then we went on the "Undersea Adventure" which violently spins you upside down while they play "The Tide Is High" over and over again, then we went on a roller coaster twice and then another roller coaster (which had seats which spin 360 degrees as you go around the track). We went on that one three times. By then, it was time to leave the park and get a taxi back to the train station.


Shortly after getting in the cab I started to feel the effects of riding all those roller coasters in such a short period of time! As soon as we got to the train station I had to run to the bathroom, and I'll spare you the details of what transpired, but let's just say I didn't reappear for another 20 minutes. I spent the next half hour sipping ginger ale and eating plain crackers. I'm so old.

Springer's final thought:
Leofoo Village amusement park was fun, but really only because we made it fun. The number of rides that were closed was unacceptable, especially since they still charged the full admission price. Would I recommend spending a day there? Sure! I would imagine that on most weekdays there is no one there and you'd get the park to yourself. It was fun, but I'd probably only go if I were already in the Hsinchu area. And if you're over the age of 12, I recommend bringing a few Gravol tablets with you :)

Lotte World... Season 2

Lotte World, at Jamsil Station in Seoul is the largest indoor theme park in the world! Mel and I went there last year, but it's been closed for repairs for the last 7 or 8 months. Why? Too many deaths, in fact, Koreans have nicknamed the park "Death World"!! Meh, we had fun. The park has been rebranded as "Lotte World Season 2" although all of the rides are the same as they were in Season 1. As far as admission prices go, Lotte World is retty affordable as it only costs 34,000 for a full day at the park.

The indoor section, first floor (there are 4 floors)

The outdoor section is also really large, with a lot of thrill rides to try. The above ride, the Gyro Swing, swings riders while also rotating. At the steepest angle you are staring straight down at the ground, with a flimsy korean seatbelt keeping you from falling out.


Although the lines were soo soo soo long we were able to go on the Gyro Drop (above) twice. It was similar to the Tower of Terror at Disney World, except when you get alllll the way to the top the ride starts trembling like it's broken! Ahhhhh!!!!!

Lotte World employs a shocking number of flamboyant Russians to perform in parades and skits around the park.

There are also two roller coasters, a flume (90 minute wait- Good thing we'd just bought our Dong headbands to distract us!), a carousel, a rafting ride, 3D movie, and lots of carnival-type rides. Of course there were also lots of friendly park attendants to make us feel comfortable with their "Korean wave". They wave you off on every ride and sometimes (like in the above video), they continue to wave for the complete duration of the ride! The girl in the video had been waving like that for a good minute straight before I took out my camera. Tell me she won't have carpel tunnel in a few years !


If you're feeling like taking in a bit of history during the day you can always drop by the Folk Museum. Wait a minute... does that say "Fork Museum"? That's my kind of place!

All in all we had a fantastic day and we got to go on all the best rides. The only downside was when Shaun and I were thrown in jail and Mel and Shanda had to bail us out :(

Check back soon for an exciting Boney M update!