Lotte World Aquarium & Tower

The title of this post, Lotte World Aquarium & Tower, might be misleading. There isn’t an entity called Lotte World Aquarium & Tower. There is an encompassing complex in Seoul called Lotte World. Among its many components is an aquarium and a tower. I went to those.

However, there is more. Measured horizontally, the vast majority of the Lotte World, or at least the complex that includes the aquarium and tower, is a shopping mall. It has countless stores. Alright, countless is an expression. I assume someone knows how many there are. Computers, maybe a massive server farm employing the most advanced AI models, can help them keep track of that.

I don’t need to know the exact number. “Mega many” is an accurate enough approximation for me.

I think there is also a theatre and a museum or two, but I’m not sure.

Because I hate malls and shopping, I did my best to avoid the vicinity of as many stores as possible. However, getting to the entrances to the aquarium and then the tower required walking through a bit of the Lotte World mall and past a few of its stores.

Oh, the reason I said “or at least the portion that included the aquarium and tower” above is that there is also a Lotte World indoor and outdoor theme park somewhere in Seoul, possibly attached to the same complex or maybe somewhere else. I wasn’t interested. So I didn’t check.

Lotte World Aquarium

The Lotte World Aquarium entrance is in the mall, one level below ground. The aquarium spans two levels. It sells a combination ticket that includes the aquarium and the tower’s observation deck. I came to see both, so I bought that.

I don’t want this journal to appeal only to old fogies. I warmly welcome young people to these pages. (Ciao, young people. I will strive to be cool and speak your language. I will fail. Completely.) Nevertheless, being of the old fogey persuasion, I feel the need to celebrate places that offer discounts to seniors. Lotte World Aquarium, and its tower combo ticket, has a senior discount. Yay!

As at everywhere else where I received a senior’s discount in Seoul, they wouldn’t give it to me unless I showed a document proving my age.

If any other seniors have been to Seoul and received a senior’s discount, but they didn’t have to prove their age, please, I beg of you, let me know in the comments below. I’d love to think that the only reason they have, so far, always asked to see my passport is that, despite my being 73, they thought I didn’t look older than 65.

I suspect they ask everyone before giving the discount as a matter of course. A centenarian who looks even older than their age could be wheeled in on life support, and ticket sellers would probably still demand proof of age before providing a senior’s discount.

That senior moment out of the way, you might want to hear about the Lotte World Aquarium. It’s an aquarium. It’s in Lotte World Mall.

What? You want more?

It’s not a puny aquarium. But it’s also not huge. It has some nice fish, a beluga whale, and at least a couple of semi-aquatic creatures that I remember: otters and penguins. The aquarium’s website said they recently got some capybara. If I saw them, I’ve already forgotten them.

In many aquariums I’ve been to, there has been at least one species that captivated or amused me that I didn’t recall having seen before. (“Didn’t recall” might be doing a lot of work in the previous sentence.) The Lotte World Aquarium had one: the Indian threadfish. Its skin, or probably its scales, were silver and very shiny, almost reflective.

It’s called a threadfish because attached to its dorsal fin is a series of thread-like appendages that didn’t serve any purpose that I could tell. Then again, I can’t tell much, so maybe they do benefit the fish in some way.

It might sound as if I thought the Lotte World Aquarium was okay as far as aquariums go, but kind of meh. If it sounded that way, good. That’s what I was going for. Having seen so many aquariums in my life, perhaps I’m getting jaded and can rate highly only the best.

To be honest, I would have ranked the Lotte World Aquarium much higher were it not for one factor. Regular readers won’t find it difficult to guess what that was. The aquarium had no jellyfish. Not a single one.

I didn’t just fail to spot them. After walking the prescribed route through the aquarium and not seeing any, I stopped at the information desk near the exit. I asked if they had any jellyfish. The attendant told me they didn’t. I left disappointed.

Lotte World Tower

When it was built, Lotte World Tower was the tallest in the world. I read somewhere that it’s now sixth. I don’t know how old that information is, but I don’t think it’s dropped down another notch. Yet.

That’s the problem with building anything primarily to claim to be the tallest. Eventually, someone will build something taller. Then you’re just number two, no longer the top dog. Then number three. Then four. And eventually you’re “the what tower? Never heard of it.”

Where will the race for height end? I suggest they stop before they get to the point where you have to put on a space suit before you open a window on the upper floors.

Whatever. The Lotte Worlde Tower is 555 metres tall and has 123 above-ground storeys. The observation decks start at the 117th floor and occupy a few levels above that.

The peak of the tower splits into two wide spires, with a gap between them. The tower offers a thrill whereby, for an additional charge, you don a special jumpsuit that gets harnessed to a cable. You then get to walk across a narrow, open bridge between the two.

I used the word “you” in the preceding paragraph to specifically exclude me. There is absolutely no way I’d pay to do that. If they offered to pay me a few million Canadian dollars, I might—let me underline that; I might—no, let me also bold and italicize that—I might—do it. But I sure as heck am not going to pay to do it or do it for free. No way.

However, I did go up to the standard observation decks and take in the expansive, but somewhat hazy, views of Seoul. They’re quite impressive.

There is a large section of glass floor on one of the observation decks. I spent a lot of time standing on the edge of it, trying to convince myself to walk on. It took a long time, but I finally extricated myself from the paralysis that enveloped me and walked a few steps onto the glass—far enough that I could take a picture of my feet entirely on the glass. Then I quickly stepped back to safety.

Some people nonchalantly walk as far as possible onto the glass and spend some time there while someone else takes their picture, and they have a chance to look around and down. Others sit on the glass to have their pictures taken, and probably couldn’t get up and jump off in time if they hear the glass splintering. What the heck is wrong with these people? It’s glass, and you’re halfway between the ground and heaven. How can that not scare the bejeebers out of you?

I’m a fearful person by nature. So I regularly have the bejeebers scared out of me by even the slightest of things. But they keep returning to warn me against such activities.

And then I took the elevator back down to the subteranean level, where I got a subway to my first afternoon destination.

By the way, I didn’t take a picture of the exterior of the tower. Lotte World is connected underground to the subway. The only time I was outside was to go upstairs from the underground aquarium so I could walk across a short open area to the tower, where I had to go down into the mall again to get to the Lotte World Tower observation deck elevator. During those exterior moments, I was too close to the tower to get a decent picture of it.