A CHEESE Park?! - Imsil Cheese Theme Park

Very shortly after Abe accepted the assignment in S. Korea I saw a news segment on a cheese theme park, and you will never guess where it was! I decided right then and there that I was going to check out this Korean cheese themed park. I was in luck--it is only about 1 1/2 hours away from us!

Apparently cheese was introduced to this country a couple decades ago. A Belgian priest missionary living in Imsil-gun raised goats and made his own cheese. The governor asked him to teach the whole community how to make their own cheese and the rest is history. Imsil cheese is now sold throughout Korea. So why not create a 32-acre cheese theme park to celebrate this goodness?

We have mixed reviews about the whole experience. Upon arrival, we found these cute little cow statues. Yay Cheese Park!

Downward cow--the newest yoga move.

Keep in mind, there are not a lot of cows in Korea. They eat mostly seafood, pork and chicken. There is beef, but it is not common and super expensive.

Daisy is milking it for all it's worth.

We appreciated the whole theme all the way down to cheese benches.

Once we got in, it was a ghost town. Boo Cheese Park! There we a few other people walking around, but the buildings were all locked up. One very large building that looked like it had fun stuff going on inside was under construction for renovation. The Cheese Theme Park was not meeting our expectations. We did find these crazy little statues to take pictures with.

There was a fun cheese building in the background. Yay for the Cheese Park! But there was nothing fun in there to do. Just office space. Boo Cheese Park!

1,2,3, Cheese!

Lijee was not wanting to pose for another picture. I said you don't have to smile, just be serious like the guard. Cleary not a problem.

Abe's just taking a little road trip in our new car.

A little Café Terrace, anyone?

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore.

Mona Lisa's got nothin' on me.

Cheekly little monkey.

This...I don't even have words. Balloons floating a wedge of cheese in the clouds, with a lamb on a leash???

Looks like someone's out for a joy ride in Daddy's new car.

Sixteen years, and still love birds.

So after we walked out of that fun picture building we were feeling better about our experience. Yay Cheese Park!

We aimlessly wandered around a bit more and stumbled upon Smurfs.

I had seen this unique building in pictures. It was open so we wondered in. Yay Cheese Park!

I  almost felt like I was in Chick-fil-A with the cows.

It had this little map to read, but it was in Korean so we didn't get much out of it. That and a couple cows was all that was in the building. Boo Cheese Park!

Those are my people waving down from the cheese building observation deck.

We wandered around and took the rolling slide down to the children's park. Yay Cheese Park! Daisy dropped her camera along the way down and had to run up the side to retrieve it.

The children's area was not only void of all people but it was rather run down and desolate. Boo Cheese Park!

 We stumbled upon a little building that was selling tickets to something. Yay Cheese Park! We hoped we bought tickets to make 2 types of cheese as well as make your own pizza for lunch, but it was anybody's guess as to what we really purchased. Lucky for us it seemed we purchased what we intended to. It was a class mostly aimed at younger kids, but we enjoyed it anyway. There was a nice lady at the table next to us that helped translate a bit since the whole thing was in Korean.

We started with a small ball of dough and we pressed it into the pans.

Lijee is prepping his pizza crust with oil. 

 We were able to get most of the directions, but missed a few things, like only spread oil on the outer edge of the crust instead of the whole crust. So no biggy that we did it wrong.

 Violà!  The adult in the group added all the ingredients, like onions and peppers and mushrooms. The kids and I only added a tiny bit of pork and tater tots. 

 The pizzas were moved aside while we worked on making cheese. Yay Cheese Park! 

The details on the next segment are a bit fuzzy, because, once again, it was all in Korean. We made some type of soft cheese using hot water, maybe yeast, letting it sit, straining it and stirring it.

It turned out tasty! Yay Cheese Park!

The next bit was even more exciting. I got to wear these big gloves.

 We cut up something into little chunks. Then I went and got some hot water.

We did some stuff and eventually got to take it out of the water and began stretching it.

It started to mold itself into strings.

 We made string cheese!  It was super yummy! Yay Cheese Park!

When we were done making our cheese, our pizzas were done. Yay Cheese Park!

When we first arrived we walked into an airsoft gun maze building, but it wasn't open yet. Boo Cheese Park! However, after our delicious pizza lunch that we had created with our own hands, the laser tag was open with no waiting. Yay Cheese Park!

We were supposed to look mean here. Can you see Eli's tongue sticking out at his sister?

Team DaiZeke VS MeEli
(I just totally made that up. We didn't actually use those names.)

This ended up being so much fun! That's me and Lijee hunting down Zeke. We weren't hunting down Daisy because she was hiding at base the whole time. At the very beginning she took a bullet in the hiney and she was too scared to play after that. The sad part is that Team DaiZeke still won even though it was really Zeke against Eli and me. We had a great time! Yay Cheese Park!

As you can tell, the Cheese Theme Park had mixed reviews from us. To be fair, they were doing some renovations, so that building should be open and improved now. It was a little bizarre that a lot of things were not open; if everything was up and running it would be a better experience. I have read reviews including a research center, animal park, a cave-like building where cheeses age, a milk processing factory and a science lab.

From what we did get to see, it was a quaint little village with cute cartoon statues for pictures and play, plus beautiful landscape. There are also a couple restaurants and a shop.  All in all, I would say give it a try if you are in South Korea. I mean, come on, it's a theme park based on cheese! 

Yay Cheese Park!

[August 6]