Daejeon O-World Amusement Park, Daejeon, Korea

 O-World is a smaller amusement park located in Daejeon, a city about an hour south of Seoul by high-speed rail.

 The park grounds are really large and there's a lot to see and do - it's a combination zoo, amusement park, and botanical garden. My visit involved only "Joy Land" - the amusement park section.

 I visited on the first day of a major Korean holiday and the park was really busy; there was a magic show going on at the covered stage.

 There is a good collection of rides, though they're certainly geared toward families.

 The first of two coasters in the park is Baby Airplane, a standard kid's coaster with airplane-themed cars.

It's a cute little thing, but hardly exciting.

 

 The second coaster is a spinning mouse named Wild Storm.

 This is much better, but doesn't deliver anything really unique. I still enjoyed my ride, because my car got some good spinning time for a while.

 The drop ride has two types of cars: sitting and standing. Unfortunately, the standing side was closed.

 Here's the entrance to the zoo portion of the park, which has a safari bus of some kind.

 One last Baby Airplane shot. The guy in front was on his phone the entire ride.

O-World doesn't have much for thrill seekers; the drop tower is the only really exciting ride. However, the flower park and zoo seem very promising and if I have time on a future visit I'd like to return to the park and see what the other sections look like.

The park opens at 9:30, with varied closing times throughout the year. Admission also varies depending on the options you choose, starting at 12,000 won ($12) for adults. You could take a costly taxi, but buses 115, 301, 311, 314, 315, and 318 all go to O-World from Daejeon City.

Don't be fooled by the bus stop that is actually "before O-World" - you want the one next to the parking lot (the first picture shows you the view near the "before O-World" stop - the buses will turn in toward the park here). I'm not sure if all buses approach from the same direction, but it's a long walk uphill if you get off early.

Note that Daejeon has two KTX terminals depending on which line you take from Seoul; the main line station that serves Busan is much easier to handle with buses; I took a different bus back to the other station to head south to Gwangju and the stop was a long way from the station; I consider myself very lucky that I got off at the right stop and managed to find the station.