Needs a new coat of paint, but yeah, it works.

This is the roller coaster at the Mangyongdae Fun Fair in Pyongyang, North Korea. It was definitely the scariest roller coaster I have ever been on, considering the safety restraints didn’t work and there were thick layers of rust on the tracks. But I survived, and even managed to film the ride while holding on for dear life (and I’m pretty sure camera insurance wouldn’t have covered a device carelessly ejected out of that roller coaster).

A fellow member of our tour group tests her marksmanship skills at the Mangyongdae Fun Fair in Pyongyang, North Korea while locals look on.

Footage of our visit to the Mangyongdae Fun Fair aka the Disneyland of Pyongyang. You can watch us ride the Roller Coaster of Death, carousel, and Ferris wheel and play carnival games.

Well, here it is – the only video I have filmed in which I feared for my life during the process.

This is the footage I foolishly shot of our ride on the loop roller coaster at the Mangyongdae Fun Fair in Pyongyang, North Korea. When your harness doesn’t work on a loop roller coaster, perhaps the best course of action is to place your camera in your pocket and hold on for dear life. For whatever reason (some may call it insanity), I didn’t. I figured that if I was going to fall out/be thrown out of the roller coaster, I might as well capture the entire incident on film so that it could be replayed a million times on CNN.

At the beginning of the video you can hear a baffled U.S. Imperialist asking, in reference to his fellow passenger’s harness, “It doesn’t lock down?!” After spotting the loop for the first time, I then ask our guide, “Hey, we don’t go on that loop, do we?” He said no. Obviously, he had no freakin’ clue what I was talking about.

Bonus: You get to hear me scream.

You might want to fast forward the video a little bit as well, because it takes forever for the coaster to climb up the hill. And apologies for the horrible camera work, but, well, you know…

The happiest place in Pyongyang

Thankfully, a tour of the DPRK doesn’t consist solely of bowing before Kim Il-Sung monuments. That would get incredibly boring, very quickly. Sometimes you get to do things like ride old, rusting roller coasters at a Pyongyang amusement park. That is what we ended up doing one afternoon when our guides took us to the Mangyongdae Fun Fair. Since it was a DPRK national holiday, there were a lot of locals there enjoying their day off. I think many of them were quite shocked to see 16 U.S. Imperialists walk into their amusement park.

As with everywhere in the DPRK, you couldn’t just wander away from your guide and ride whatever you wanted. One of the guides would say “Who wants to ride the roller coaster?” and those of us fools who obviously had a deathwish would raise our hands. Half the group wanted to ride the roller coaster, so one guide took us there while the other guides watched the other group members. When he took us straight to the front of the very long line, we protested, pointing out that it wasn’t fair for us to cut in front of all the people who were waiting in line, and that we would gladly go to the end of the line. But the guide and one of the park employees would have none of this and herded us onto the stairs leading up to the roller coaster platform. We all felt pretty bad. The North Koreans are fed enough anti-U.S. propaganda, and then here comes a group of us cutting in front of them on one of their few days off.

Once we got to the ride’s platform we surveyed the half yellow/half rust track that lay before us.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“It sounds like a bunch of bolts just fell off.”

“Well, I’m sure they do regular safety checks…”

The amusement park employees wouldn’t allow any of the North Koreans onto the platform or let them fill in the ten or so seats that were left empty as we climbed into the roller coaster. Perhaps the ride operators feared that their countrymen’s ideological purity might be corrupted while riding with a bunch of U.S. Imperialists. Or maybe they were just planning to flip a switch and kill us. As the roller coaster began to climb upwards, I realized that the latter was a definite possibility.

Are you sure you want to do this?

I noticed that my shoulder harness wasn’t locked. I could basically just raise and lower it at will. Some people had harnesses that locked, and some didn’t. Hmm…that was a bit odd, but whatever, this seemed like a pretty tame coaster.

Until I saw that there was a loop on this roller coaster, which, for whatever reason, none of us had seen until now. Now, I actually love upside down roller coasters, but that is usually when there are, you know, working safety harnesses.

As we slowly made the uphill climb, a series of thoughts began to flash through my mind. “Well, Lindsay, this is it. You’re going to plummet to your death on a North Korean roller coaster. Your friends and family will file past your coffin, muttering, ‘We told her not to go, but she just had to.’ Hmmm…at least my death will make CNN: ‘American tourist killed on North Korean roller coaster after harness failure.’ What a way to go. Thankfully my travel insurance policy covers the repatriation of my remains.

When we entered the loop I held on for dear life and somehow managed to not fall out and die or lose my camera (oh yes, I filmed the entire thing). Later, when I got back to the United States I discovered that this had something to do with physics and not pure luck, but whatever, I’m a political science major, remember?

Dude, where did that come from?

The rest of the roller coaster ride was spent leaning as far into the car as possible so as to avoid decapitation by the rusty steel poles that you fly by when turning. I would not recommend riding this roller coaster if you are very tall.

Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times. Seriously.

We were all quite relieved once the roller coaster pulled into the platform, as we felt like we had cheated death. After we got off the coaster, three of the guys in our group went over to a woman selling ice cream bars from a cart, purchased every single one of them, and then handed them out to the North Koreans who were still waiting in line to ride the roller coaster. This “ice cream diplomacy”, as we called it, was meant to make amends for cutting in front of them.

The U.S. Imperialists bought all the ice cream!

We’re sorry.

Our group went on a few more rides, including this one:

The military cadets loved us

And played some games:

We attracted quite an audience:

As with any amusement park, you can buy souvenirs:

So Jason went and bought a bunch of toys and handed them out to the kids. I think he still felt guilty for cutting in line.

This place is so much better than Disneyland

We skipped this one

We rode on the carousel. Haven’t been on one of these in ages. Oh, wait…I mean 2004, in London, after a few pints of Strongbow.

The last ride we went on was the ferris wheel. The cars were really rusty and I was certain some bolts would pop off and the car would plummet to the ground. It didn’t.

See, just like Disneyland

View of the coaster

As far as amusement parks go, the Mangyongdae Fun Fair can’t really compare to, say, Cedar Point, but it’s a nice break from the Kim Il-Sung monuments and is one of the few opportunities you will have to interact with the locals while you are in Pyongyang.

More Fun Fair photos are here.

Last week, some friends and I went to Knott’s Scary Farm. The night went something like this:

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Let’s get an icee!”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
“Let’s get a caramel apple!”

It was definitely a lot better than I expected it to be. They have a ton of “mazes” spread around the park that you can go into. At first, they were scary because when the park opened there were not a lot of people so you often found yourself walking through this maze alone, with random Knott’s employees jumping at you from above and popping out of the most random areas. It’s funny how something can still be “scary” when you know going in that people are going to be jumping out at you and startling you. Near the end of the evening though, the park was much more crowded, so when you went through the maze you were in a huge line and the scare factor was zilch. Most of the rides were open, too, and they put them in “scary” mode by turning off all the lights inside and having employees setup along the ride routes to jump out of the darkness and scare you. Anyways, it was definitely worth the drive to Orange County land, check it out if you get a chance.