South Korea: Paradise City in Incheon

This is a continuation of my travel recap of my South Korea trip from October 2023. My fiancé and I spent 2 weeks in South Korea visiting Seoul, Jeju Island and Busan.

After touring around Seoul, Jeju Island and Busan, we finally reached the last day of our trip. To relax and unwind before our long flight back to Vancouver, we decided to stay 1 night in Paradise City 😍.

For those who are fans of the Netflix show Singles Inferno, you may be familiar with Paradise City. It is the hotel they stay at during season 1 and 2 when they couple up and get to leave the island. The show depicts it to be a luxury hotel and there are many memorable scenes so we thought it would be really fun to actually stay there ourselves.

In this post, I will share everything we did, ate and where we stayed during our 1 night in Paradise City.

Read more about my South Korea trip

South Korea trip 2023 recap
Seoul – part 1 | Seoul – part 2 | Jeju Island | Busan | Paradise City

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Day 13: Arrival to Paradise City

We started off our morning checking out of our Airbnb in Busan (Gwangalli Beach area).

To get back to Seoul, we took the KTX bullet train, which takes around 2 hours one-way and costed us around $112 CAD for 2 people.

It was actually kind of difficult to purchase KTX tickets on the official site (really clunky and hard to navigate). We actually thought we had purchased tickets already but realized the charge never went through on our credit card and we never received an email confirmation 😱. So instead, we ended up buying the tickets again the night before on a western/English site. They charged a little bit more but we wanted to ensure we had seats for the train.

We purchased some snacks and some baked goods at the Busan train station to eat during the train ride. It was actually quite comfortable and relaxing, unlike how the movie Train to Busan depicted the train ride to be (guess there are also no zombies 😅).

Once we arrived at Seoul Station, we looked for the Airport Railroad (AREX) express train to take us straight to Incheon Airport. It costed around $20 CAD for 2 adults and the train ride took another 1 hour to take us to Incheon Airport.

This train was less spacious than the KTX and was also much more empty. We were still comfortable but pretty tired from all the sitting/train ride 😣.

Accommodations: Paradise Hotel & Resort

Paradise City is not really a city, but a large resort with lots of facilities. It is actually right next to the Incheon Airport, making it super convenient for you if you have a long layover or have a really early flight in the morning.

Once we arrived at the Incheon Airport, we actually tried to find a taxi to take us to Paradise City/Hotel because we didn’t want to transit anymore and it would take around 28 minutes to take local transit to the hotel. The taxi would have only costed around $10-15 when I looked on Uber, but when we actually tried to find a taxi, they ushered us to the shuttle bus area.

Turns out there is a free shuttle that takes you to Paradise Hotel and the drive is only 10-15 minutes 😊! The shuttle comes every 15 minutes so it was pretty convenient.

By the time we arrived at the hotel, the sun had actually begun to set so it was kind of dark for me to see the exterior. But the interior was very grand. Park Seo-Joon’s photo greeted us on the escalator 😂 and there was a gigantic lobby with art sculptures of LV pumpkins and a Pegasus.

We checked in at the main desk with a lot of luggage and plastic bags full of souvenirs (and looking like homeless people). The front desk staff were super friendly and spoke very good English. We were given the keys to our room as well as an explanation of everything that comes with our stay (there’s a lot so keep reading!).

We booked a Double Deluxe Room for 1 night and it costed us $383 CAD total. Note that this price is already on their lower end as we stayed on a weekday night vs a weekend night would be around double the price.

Our room actually felt kind of far (or maybe we were just tired) because it was literally at the very end of a hallway/wing. However, once we got inside we were very satisfied because it was a very modern, spacious and beautiful room 🤩!

It’s called a deluxe double room but it comes with a king bed – super soft and fluffy sheets. There is a big TV and a small dining table in the corner. Bathroom had both tub and shower and double sink. Items in the drawers and mini-fridge were also free so there were bottles of water, 2 cans of beers, 2 sodas, some potato snacks, tea and coffee.

Indoor pool

We were told by the front desk that we only had access to the pool during our stay so we should go tonight before it closes at around 8 or 10pm. The outdoor pool was closed maybe for either renovations or it was just too cold (we stayed here in October).

We still needed to eat dinner but thought we would take a quick swim at the pool since it would be closed by the time we come back.

The indoor pool wasn’t super spacious, but there were lots of different hot tubs set at different temperatures. The pool had a shallow part but most of it was deep and it was filled with families and young children when we arrived at 7:30pm.

Overall, a nice little dip but due to all the families, it wasn’t the most relaxing or private time.

Dinner: Buffet at On The Plate

There are several dining options in the Paradise hotel. Originally, we wanted to order food to our hotel room and eat in our room like they do in Singles Inferno. However, we were not into the prices. You’re looking at about $30 average for an appetizer and around $50 average for a main dish (CAD). These may be more normal prices for Vancouver but I consider these pretty expensive prices for Korea.

So we took a look around at the dining area of the hotel where there are 4 restaurants:

• On The Plate – buffet
• La Scala – Italian
• Raku – Japanese
• Imperial Treasure – Chinese

The 3 non-buffet restaurants had similar pricing. For a 3 course meal, you’re looking at about $75-160 per person. In the end, we chose the buffet because it had all types of cuisines and the price was $140 per person.

When we went in, we only had around 1.5 hours left until they closed so we ate as quickly as possible. We got a free glass of white wine and there was still a lot of food available to eat at the buffet. They had all types of meats, seafood, salad, and desserts. Our favourite was definitely the crab legs – easy to eat and pretty fresh and sweet 😋.

Exploring the plaza

Even though it was late at night and dark now, we still got to explore the plaza a little bit after dinner at the buffet. There are actually quite a lot of art installations around this shopping plaza area and Kelvin was very impressed by the giant Kaws figurine.

We continued exploring outside and found some cool lit up buildings. One of them was Chroma, which is supposed to be a night club actually. It was closed but that could have been an interesting activity.

Casino time

Along with our 1 night stay at Paradise Hotel, we were given some free casino credits to play at the casino inside the hotel. Along with a special promotion for signing up as a member, we got around $75 CAD credit to play in the casino and you had to play it either at slots or certain table games. The minimum table bet was $25 so we played 3 games (and lost) but if we had won, we could have easily won back the price of our hotel 😳!

After not winning a million dollars 💀, Kelvin and I returned back to our hotel room to watch a movie, eat some snacks, drink the beers and relax in our hotel room.

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Day 14: Leaving Paradise City

We asked for late checkout for 12pm and they were actually able to accommodate that, which is great because our flight actually wasn’t until 6pm. When we checked out, we left all our luggage with the front desk so we didn’t have to lug it around with us all day.

Lunch: Plaza food court

So if you are wondering what to do if you don’t want to pay $100+ to eat inside the Paradise Hotel, there is actually an indoor/outdoor food court in the shopping plaza with cheaper food options. Here you can find a lot of Korean options like stews, noodle soups, fried cutlets, and set meals for around $20 or cheaper. We got a cold noodle set and a curry tonkatsu set for around $16 and $17 + and ice cream cone for $6.

Theme park: Wonder Box

After lunch, we spend some time at the theme park called Wonder Box. With our 1 night stay, it came with free admission.

Inside, it is pretty dark but basically, it is an indoor amusement park tailored to children. Inside they have small rides, slides, carnival games, and performances. At around 2pm, there was a show and all the children were sitting on the ground, waiting for it to start. It looked like there were several kindergarten classes since they were all wearing similar hats, backpacks or clothing.

Anyways, once the show started it really started to feel like a fever dream 😵 because there were ballerinas, jugglers, guys on tall sticks acting like they have long legs, etc. Also all the performers were Caucasian and they were playing Taylor Swift music.

After that, we went on 1 ride that looked the most extreme – it was a spinning upside down machine and it definitely is not for small children. We went down a long tree slide that was pretty fun, and we decided we had enough of Wonder Box.

Cimer

Cimer is the spa facility in Paradise City. Our 1 night stay actually comes with free access to this spa for either day (check-in or check-out) so it was perfect for us to relax before our long flight back to Vancouver. Admission can be up to 6 hours!

Inside, it is very quiet and clean. Men and women separate to go into respective changerooms, and then you can come out and use the spa facilities – this includes lots of saunas, steam rooms, swimming pools, relaxation rooms and more.

The inside combines European aesthetics with Korea’s jjimjilbang culture. So they still provide you with some clothing you can wear inside, but I would recommend you just change straight into your swimsuit and use the pool facilities. Daybeds and chairs cost $ to rent, but you can leave your stuff in a shared space and use the pool freely.

We took our time to explore Cimer (it’s huge!). Some of my favourite facilities was the big indoor pool, which also has 2 waterslides that are very fun. I also liked the cinema pool that plays a huge video from wall to wall to make it like a digital spa – I’m sure you can lose track of time in there. The outdoor pool was also quite nice because it was a nice sunny day, but nothing special.

Inside you can find bars, restaurant and other rooms where you can relax.

After having a lot of fun swimming and relaxing, we took a nice long bath in the male and female changeroom bath houses, and felt super pampered leaving Cimer to go to the airport. They even had individual mini Dyson hairdryers in the women’s changerooms 😍!

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Final thoughts

Kelvin and I had an amazing 1 night stay at Paradise City Hotel. Originally, we did think it was a little pricey but after thinking about all the activities it comes with, we actually think it’s a great experience at a reasonable price but only if:

• You have an early flight or a late flight the next day
• You stay a weekday (~$300-400 a night) and not a weekend (~$600)
• You want to relax
• You are at the end of your trip (i.e. going home, instead of just arriving to South Korea). This is because you would probably be very excited and want to see Seoul but unfortunately, the hotel is far from the downtown core areas and is only close to the airport.
• You only stay 1 night – there’s just not enough activities to sustain more than that

Here is what I thought of all the facilities and activities:

Paradise Hotel

Beautiful rooms and great customer service. We saw a lot of families with young children all throughout the resort, and I actually think this would be a really good stop for a staycation with your family.

Dining

All 4 restaurants are quite expensive, I would recommend only eating at the cafeteria if you do not want to spend over $100 on food.

Casino

Even if you don’t gamble, you should go and use up your free credits. There is definitely potential to win back some of your booking money. Also very foreigner friendly.

Wonder Box

More for children. If you are a couple/adults only I can only imagine you spending 1 hour here.

Cimer

Amazing facility – so clean, spacious and relaxing. Perfect for couples and elderly, and even children since there is a pool and waterslides. You can take a nice long bath before your flight or get a long nap in comfortably. Even if you do not stay at the hotel, you can pay a regular admission to use this spa – this is a must go to and makes the hotel stay so worth!

Stay tuned for my final recap with my travel montage video.

South Korea trip 2023 recap
Seoul – part 1 | Seoul – part 2 | Jeju Island | Busan | Paradise City

Sincerely, Loewe