Park Update
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A whole new world
Park World discovers the enchanting lands of Lotte World Adventure Busan M
ore than three decades since Lotte World opened in Seoul, March 31 of this year saw the grand opening of the South
Korean theme park operator’s second park, Lotte World Adventure Busan. Designed by Hollywood-based Legacy
Entertainment in collaboration with Lotte World, the new park bears little resemblance to its Seoul counterpart. Likewise, it bears little resemblance to the urban environment of Busan where it is based, with its grey-toned architecture and densely- packed districts. All of this is deliberate. Lotte World Adventure
Busan has been designed with a colourful garden aesthetic, complete with spacious landscape tableaus and sprawling water bodies. The European-inspired ambience of the park
is in such stark contrast to the surrounding urban landscape that guests feel like they’ve been transported to another world. Without adherence to any particular time or place, the idea was to deliver an enchanting setting and an escape from reality - somewhere visitors can forget their real- world worries and concerns. And these visitors have come in droves. Lotte
World Adventure Busan hosted over half a million guests in the first 100 days since its opening - a figure which accounts for one of every seven
SUMMER PART 2 2022
citizens currently living in the city of Busan. The park is the centrepiece of Busan’s Osiria
Tourism Complex. This 900-acre development has been developed to raise the city’s profile as an international leisure destination, and it’s already clear that Lotte World Adventure Busan is making a considerable contribution here.
AN ORIGINAL ADVENTURE Of course, its success since opening could be attributed in part to the reputation of the original and iconic Lotte World in Seoul, but Lotte World in Busan offers guests an adventure all its own. Visitors will find small nods and references to the Seoul park, but Lotte World Adventure Busan has been purposefully designed as a truly original experience. Legacy Entertainment knew that visitors would
inevitably make comparisons to the flagship Lotte World in Seoul. In developing a new park for a smaller city, with a more restrictive budget, the entertainment design business therefore made sure to take a different design direction, rather than simply creating a smaller Lotte World. In order to achieve its design goals, Legacy
Entertainment worked with Lotte World to reimagine what a regional Asian theme park could be in its opening year. The glut of under-thought and over- designed parks that have flooded the market over
the past year have confirmed that bigger is, in fact, not better. The plan was to reign things in to a human
scale, to design and create an all-round immersive environment where people would enjoy spending their time - even if they weren’t riding the attractions themselves. There is no doubt that Lotte World Adventure
Busan provides this for its visitors, and in delivering such an experience, it echoes some of Europe’s best regional theme parks. Indeed, Lotte World in Busan has adopted the ‘spoke and hub’ planning configuration for which Disney’s parks are renowned. Befitting a park which celebrates the beauty
and magic of nature, guests will find The Talking Tree rooted in the central plaza. Around this there are six themed zones: River Village of Tinker Falls, Rainbow Springs, Wonder Woods, Queen Lorry’s Royal Garden, Joyful Meadows, and Underland. Each area has its own distinct ambience and design style - and the park is configured in such a way as to allow ease of movement for visitors, encouraging circulation, exploration and, above all, enchantment. Taylor Jeffs, President and Chief Creative Officer
of Legacy Entertainment, comments: “While it’s still in the process of growing in, my hope is that the park will become well-known for its landscape, area
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