Ever been to Lotte World amusement park in Jamsil, Seoul and ridden the Flume Ride (후룸라이드) i.e. the Log Ride?
While you're waiting in line and feeling annoyed by the teen girls recording themselves doing low effort TikTok dances and the boys watching Livestreamers play computer games on their phones, you might notice a sign on the Flume Ride (후룸라이드) i.e. the Log Ride that I presume is meant to make visitors and riders feel a little more at ease.
It shows that the water used to float the logs down the track, i.e. the water that will splash you and potentially get into your mouth and eyes, undergoes a multi-stage filtering process.
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| Sign demonstrating Flue Ride water purification. Image: YouTube - 연기한별#S Acting han-byul |
For some reason, this interested me, which led me to an slightly dated but informative article about the water process for amusement parks in general and this ride in particular. That sure is a lot of water that gets used. Do they shut it off and drain it every night, and refill it every morning?
No. In fact, that's apparently quite rare:
롯데월드에 따르면 후룸라이드의 경우 정수장치가 내부에 설치돼 있으며 6개월에 1번 바닥청소와 물을 교체한다.
롯데월드 홍보팀 관계자는 "정수장치 1대가 내부에 설치돼 있어 정수 장치를 거쳐 정수가 된 물이 순환하고 있으며 6개월에 1번 바닥청소와 전체 물을 교체한다"고 말했다.
The whole article is quite interesting, but the upshot is right here.
They dump the water once every six months and at that time scrub down the track. So for six months, the same load of water is reused, repumped through the system, again and again. But again, it's at least constantly filtered.
This makes sense from an environmental standpoint, I suppose. What a massive waste of water if they were drawing those amounts from city mains every day. Still, it does make me feel a little icky to think that the splash that went right into my face has been circulating around on who knows how many other patron's faces and splashing into and onto those fiberglass seeming logs.
Just something interesting. I feel like this makes complete sense but I just had never thought about it before. Could be worthwhile to keep your mouth shut on that big splashdown. Not exactly water you want to take a big scoop of to quench your thirst.
By the way, I couldn't think of a title for this post other than "Filtered water on the Flume Ride" which seemed boring. Hoping for something a little more edgy, I asked Google's Bard to come up with a better one. What do you think? It certainly feels clickbaity but way more interesting than anything I'd be able to come up with.
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