Alpensia Resort

View of the ski slopes from our room

This is our family’s first stay at a ski resort. Though there are other resorts nearer Seoul, we chose Holiday Inn Suites at Alpensia Resort over them after reading many good reviews on the resort and concern over the lack of English speaking staff at the other resorts. With 3 IHG hotels at Alpensia, English speaking staff should be a given.

We arrived on a rainy and gloomy day, via the purple ski bus (advance reservations required). The bus stopped us right outside the Welcome Center of the resort where the checked in counters are located. Check in was a breeze, with fluent English speaking staff at the reception. We had reserved a 2 bedroom apartment, but unfortunately, our apartment was situated at block 302, which was located furthest from the amenities and required quite a walk up the slope.

The apartment was spacious, with a fully functional kitchen and 2 bedrooms, one with a king bed and an ondol room. I found the Korean futon beds a little too thin for my liking and uncomfortable unlike the Japanese ones. The futons came with a small block pillow, and we had to ask for normal pillows. Extra futons are chargeable.

As the weather wasn’t suitable for going out to the slopes, we decided to spend the afternoon at Ocean 700, which was quite an underwhelming experience. The water park is small, entrance fees are high and we even had to pay extra for life jackets. There was a wave pool, lazy river, about 2 thrill slides and a kids playground. There were also gender segregated hot spring pools in the toilets (similar to the Japanese onsens, where one has to go in naked). Not surprisingly, there was hardly any visitors around.

It started to snow in the evening and we woke up the next morning to a very different view from our room. A thick blanket of snow coated the slopes unlike the day before. The kids had a good time playing in the soft powdery snow making snow balls and sledding. We did not try skiing but there were many people skiing and ski equipment and ski wear were available for rental.

There is a small village center with several restaurants, a Lotteria, Angel-in-us cafe and several convenience stores. Over the next few days at the resort, Angel-in-us became one of our favourite rest areas. We liked their sweet potato latte, black cereal latte, hot chocolate & yummy waffles. The cafe was a short 2 min walk from the skiing area.

Korean instant noodles with mandu (dumplings) at one of the restaurants

 

Lotte World Hotel

Went to Korea for a family vacation in December. Decided to stay 2 nights at Lotte World Hotel as we would be visiting Lotte World. Heard a lot about the character rooms at the hotel so we booked a character family twin room for our stay.

The room is relatively small, but adequate with a queen bed, a single bed with a pull-out mattress. There are characters of Lotty and Lorry all over, on the bedsheets, wall paper and even the cute kids’ slippers. Though some parts of the room are showing their age, the room is still relatively well kept and clean. The bathroom is very kids friendly with a twin basin, including a lower wash basin for kids. There are special kids toiletries, Lotty and Lorry cups, comb etc. For adults, the hotel provides Molton Brown toiletries, which was a nice touch.

The kids loved the cheery room and we had difficulty getting them to leave the room once they started on the Nintendo Wii consoles. Though this was the smallest room during our trip, it was the kids’ favourite.

Lotte World Hotel is conveniently situated right on top on Jamsil subway station, south of the Hangang River. It is next to Lotte Department Store, Lotte World Tower (tallest building in Korea, 5th tallest in the world). There’s a Lotte Mart that occupies 2 floors at Lotte World Tower. However, the area doesn’t seem to have that many taxis. (or maybe just on that day) We checked out and wanted to move to another hotel in Gangbuk area on Christmas Eve (which fell on a Sat) and there were no available cabs. We couldn’t even call for one as our concierge told us that the cab companies have stopped accepting calls for cabs. It was Christmas eve and there was a protest in city hall area (2 km from our next hotel). We had to lug our heavy luggages, with young kids in tow, brave the cold to take the subway to our next hotel.

One great perk of staying at Lotte World Hotel is the discounted Lotte World tickets available to its hotel guests. We paid only KRW 23,000 for each one day pass, a huge discount off the standard price.