Visited the fitness facility ("Josun Wellness Club") and pool -- both on the 26th floor -- during mid-morning. The fitness facility included a small room for yoga and exercise ball work, a small room with machines, and then a much larger open area including treadmills, cycling machines, nordictrack-style machines, and some stairclimbers. There was also a row of 10+ weight machines, and then another area with free weights, dumbbells, and barbells. For all but the most serious (and pro) athletes, this Wellness Club will suffice.
If you need a locker, you can pick up an electronic locker bracelet from the 26th floor desk by giving name and room number. (If you don't need a locker, you can skip the desk altogether... If you want to visit the sauna, you will need to pay 40k KRW and they'll give you a key to the sauna room.) All guests have access to the fitness room and pool.
If you don't go to the sauna and want to use a locker, you may need a bit of luck! There were only 8 lockers
total for men who want to
only use the pool. (I can't verify the men's locker area for the sauna, but the women's locker area for the sauna consisted of 200+ lockers!)
Another quirk was that the shower area (a) didn't have towels handy, or even (b) a place to hang up a towel. So if you take a quick shower before heading to the pool (as many have been taught is standard procedure), you will be soaking wet on the walk to the pool, which actually requires you to step into a hallway briefly. Instead, towels are laid out on the seats poolside. (Maybe both of those shortcomings (a) and (b) will be fixed at a later date (?), after the hotel works its kinks out.)
Furthermore, this locker room is different from other public facilities in the sense that there's no place to set aside your shoes before changing into/out of your clothes. Most Korean pool facilities will have a first locker area, where you take off your shoes. When people enter the dressing and shower areas without any footwear, it means that people stepping out of the shower need not worry about getting their feet dirty. Here it's different. Well, just hope that people aren't trudging in mud to the shower area in the locker room here at Josun Palace!
(Next to the lockers in the pictures below are actually t-shirts and shorts. Not towels!)
There are two pools: one is a lap pool, 1.3 meters deep throughout; the other is a warmer pool, maybe more geared for kids as it was only 0.7m deep throughout. What I term the "lap pool" has no lap markings.
Bottled water is freely available for guests all around the Wellness Club and the pool.
Pool-area seating is free of charge, except for the 2-person cabanas! The cabanas are 50k KRW for 3-hour rental.
The rest of this post is best told through pictures...!
