Is there a convenience store at Oakvalley Resort?

GS25 Oakvalley Ski Branch is located on the basement 1st floor of Hills Village. It’s right below the pool, so you can grab rice balls or a drink before heading in for a swim. It’s large, as resort convenience stores go — walking in, my first thought was “wow, this is big.” It has everything: cup noodles, gimbap, lunch boxes, sandwiches, all kinds of drinks. Since it’s self-checkout, you can pay right away without waiting in line.

Rice balls, lunch boxes, sandwiches, cup noodles, cup rice, all sorts of drinks, ice cream, snacks, handheld fans, and even hangover remedies — there’s a wide range. A lot of people grab something simple here for breakfast, and plenty of people come by for snacks after dinner too. If eating at the resort restaurants feels like too much, this is an easy fallback. A meal of rice balls and a lunch box costs less than half of what you’d pay at a restaurant.

Why is the sweet potato so famous?

The roasted sweet potatoes sold at the convenience store sell out fast. We went three times and never managed to get one. According to staff, some people reserve them in advance. Apparently paying ahead of time secures you one, but we only found this out on the morning we checked out, so we never got to try it. One downside: to actually get a sweet potato, you need to reserve it on the day you check in. If you don’t know that, all you’ll witness is it being sold out over and over.

What kind of ice cream do they have?

They carry Tinyping ice cream, priced at 4,500 won. It’s a peach yogurt sherbet flavor, and the price surprised me — it’s almost Häagen-Dazs territory. My kid loves Tinyping and wanted it from the moment we walked in. Besides the standard convenience-store ice cream, they also carry premium options like Terre de Glace.

How was it with two kids?

The natural routine is eating dinner at the restaurant upstairs (Forest Terrace BBQ) and then heading down for ice cream. On checkout morning, since we had to leave early, we fed the kids seaweed soup cup rice, and they ate it well — it’s more convenient and faster than a sit-down breakfast. It’s right below the pool, so if we’d known from the start, we would have grabbed some rice balls before heading in for a swim.