I wanted To write this blog to not only summarise our trip, but also give a bit of advice where I can about travelling around Europe.
The highlights
Thinking about things that stuck out on our trip, I’d have to say that most of Efteling, Rookburgh and the Charles Lindbergh, most of Toverland and The Ride to Happiness as a start. So to make it a bit more fun, I think I’ll go through highlights of anything and everything starting with the coasters.
The Coasters
Fury and Ride to Happiness are the clear standouts here. I was expecting Ride to Happiness to be great but wasn’t expecting as much from Fury but it sure delivered! Anubis was also noteworthy, as was Typhoon and Taron. Kondaa was quite impressive too, Revolution and Psyke Underground were very interesting and Troy is the best wooden coaster I’ve ridden so far!
The Flats
But rollercoasters aren’t just all a park has to offer, there’s the flat rides too. Here, the clear standouts was Talocan. I looked forward to this for a long time before going and it held up all I wanted it to be! I wish the fire had been working on our visit but it didn’t take away from what is a phenomenal ride. Mystery Castle is also a ride that I’ll never forget riding the first time either! Then there’s King Kong at Bobbejaanland, Le Rondes des Canards at Plopsaland and Scorpius at Toverland for how great it looked.
The Dark Rides
Then there’s the great selection of dark rides we had a go on! Popcorn Revenge, Challenge of Tutankhamen, Maus Au Chocolat, Carnival Festival, Droomvluct and the almighty Symbolica! Efteling truly is one of the dark ride capitals of Europe!
The Water Rides
Finally there’s the water rides, though Pulsar and SuperSplash are rollercoasters, I think they stand out more for their water elements. Though the rapids rides we had a go on are definitely memorable, River Quest being the absolute champion of rapids rides! Chiapas is the best log flume we’ve been on, but Flashback and Terra Magna were great too!
As for the park that stood out as the one that impressed me most, it’ll definitely be Toverland. Though Efteling and Phantasialand were the better parks, I felt that Toverland was so well done and we enjoyed everything there was to do at the park so much. I feel Efteling could do with a few more thrill rides personally and that would make it easily top of all parks I’ve visited. For now though, Toverland is up there along with Efteling and Phantasialand, with Walibi Belgium and Plopsaland being tied and Bobbejaanland being slightly behind those two. That’s definitely not to say Bobbejaanland was bad or anything, far from it! It’s better than the vast majority of parks here in the UK! It’s just competition is stiff!
All the hotels we stopped in were not much to write about besides the Loonsche Land Hotel and Charles Lindbergh which were very well done. It is worth noting though, that most of the hotels we stopped in didn’t have tea and coffee making facilities and the beds all seemed to use foam mattresses too. I suppose I should really mention Schwerelos Suite here as the host of this overnight stop went truly above and beyond with how they accommodated us!
Some advice about Europe
I’ll have an accompanying video for you to watch here if you prefer, but I’ll try and go into a bit of detail here as it’s easier to write!
The first piece of advice I’d say is to make sure you plan what you’re doing to within an inch of its life! I had an Excel spreadsheet with all sorts of information on it while we were going through the motions of deciding what parks we were doing, what hotels we were stopping at and our route. We ended up deciding on 6 parks and 9 hotels in total (2 being booked alongside their park tickets). The route we decided on was the most fuel efficient way that I could find as I used Google Maps to decide what was best.
Once we’d gotten our actual hotels and tickets booked, we turned our attention to what we’d need. This includes your V5 for the car, travel insurance, car insurance details (including European cover), passports and such. I’ll make a list at the very bottom to help out with what you might need to make it much easier to plan! It’s also worth noting how you’re getting there. By road you’ll have 2 choices, ferry or Eurotunnel. We opted for the Eurotunnel as it was a lot cheaper, but the ferry might have offers on or be more suitable to you.
Driving in Europe wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be as you are guided straight onto a french motorway as you leave the eurotunnel and it sort of clicks as you go. The first few roundabouts are interesting as cars are coming from the other way and you are used to looking right instead of left.
Having a basic understanding of French/Dutch or German will help you out plenty in France/Belgium/The Netherlands and Germany and it certainly helps if you have allergies or specific needs as we had a little issue with onions. I’m not allergic to them per se but they can seriously upset my stomach and it’s much easier to not eat them at all. We did had a few issues trying to say ‘no onions please’, but it didn’t always come across, which is on us for not knowing how to speak a foreign language!
Obviously the currency is Euros and I took a bank card with me, where Tracy went entirely cash. Either works fine and depending where you’re going depends on what you’ll need. Bobbejaanland for example is entirely cashless so you can convert cash into their own on park currency, but Phantasialand was easier with cash as some of the vendors didn’t take card.
Things you’ll need for driving in Europe
Passport
Travel Insurance
Car Insurance
V5C
High Viz Jacket for each occupant of the vehicle )reachable from within the behicle)
I’m going to start this blog by being very forward and saying that Efteling is phenomenal. It has some of the best themed rides and experiences I’ve ever had and even Tracy was impressed by the care and attention to detail put into the park, restaurants and, well, everything!
We were staying in the Loonsche Land Hotel which meant we could park in the hotel car park and walk the 10 minute walk through the woods to the park. Even this has been looked after as the wooded area is very clean and tidy and very easy to walk through.
The first thing that struck me as we saw The House of 5 Senses (Eftelings entrance) is the sheer scale of it. I don’t know if I’m alone in the feeling of admiration and wonder that the entrance holds. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and this is just the entrance! It looks amazing and feels incredibly special as you approach it. The only very slight criticism I have here is that you approach from the side as hotel guests instead of from the front but that can easily be remedied by walking a bit further to see it in full and I would seriously implore that you do!
Once we were in, and since we were in a bit early we headed into the shop to find that all the money we’d saved at Plopsaland and Bobbejaanland would be spent here. There was so much to choose from, from ride T Shirts and keyrings, to magnets and the standard things you’d come to expect at a theme park. However there’s also tea towels, plates, posters and Christmas decorations. Even plants and their own branded tea! The thing that struck me most of all though as their range of hand and body wash as well as room scents. At this point I hadn’t experienced any of the attractions so neither of us bought anything until later that day. It’s worth pointing out that we did Efteling over 2 days too as we thought we’d need the additional time around the massive park.
Our first stop was Joris en de Draak, or George and the Dragon, a racing partial hybrid coaster built by GCI. I say partial as only some of the track has been replaced with titan track and some remains as it was originally built.
What a way to start out visit to Efteling! This coaster is fantastic, the racing element is fun, the turns are sharp and the drops are excellent. Up until this point, this is our favourite wooden coaster so far! So Heidi was knocked off the top spot quite quickly! I particularly like how the ride celebrates the winners of the race by having a flag show who did win at the finishing post and the station changes to. Winners are cheered by the suits of armour in the station while the losers get boo’d, which is great fun!
Speaking of great fun, Python was next. I’ve recently watched Expedition Theme Parks video on Python. In it, it shows how special the ride is to Efteling and because of this they went on to completely retrack the ride in the same way that Nemesis is being retracked too. You can certainly feel the work that’s gone into this too!
I never got to ride it in its previous incarnation, but in its current guise it is smooth as glass! We ended up getting a few rides on this throughout our visit, including 2 front rows and a back row ride and the back is lovely and intense, where the front is more forceful in other ways thanks to the twin loops at the start. The corkscrews can be every so slightly juddery but you barely notice it! Python is a fantastic ride that should definitely be ridden on every visit to Efteling. The only small criticism I have of the way the ride operates is that you have to take your bag on with you which is certainly an experience! It does mean offloading is much quicker though as there isn’t a fight to get your stuff after the ride though. Just make sure your bag is well within the ride and you’ll be fine though, neither of us had any problems at all once we trusted Eftelings system!
The improvements kept coming as we moved onto a truly spectacular ride with Vliegende Hollander (Flying Dutchman). This is another water coaster and such a deeply themed and immersive experience, it rocketed this to my top ride at Efteling (until later on anyway)!
I won’t spoil what goes on in the dark section of the ride as it needs to be ridden to enjoy it thoroughly, but the outdoor section, though short, is great fun and has a splashdown that also doesn’t get you very wet at all! Lovely ride, lovely theme, simply put, fantastic from start to finish!
After we’d calmed down from the excitement on Vliegende Hollander, we bought some personalised bracelets for €10 and then headed into the train station to wait for the train to head off to the other side of the park. The train arrives and we find that it is a proper coal fired steam train. We were both surprised and not at the same time. On the one hand, Efteling appear to go that extra mile to make everything perfect, so a steam train doesn’t seem out of place, but on the other hand, it’s a proper steam train! In a theme park!
The train travels around almost the entire outer circumference of the park and we get off at Marerijk, one of the areas of the park. Here we found Droomvlucht, Villa Volta and the show arena for Raveleijn. The show was performing later so we headed onto Villa Volta to find a very well themed Vekoma Madhouse. This is the original madhouse too, beating The Haunting at Drayton Manor by a matter of minutes (or so Drayton Manor say) and is a so so mad house. I didn’t really have much to say after we’d ridden it, the preshow was good with animatronics and such but the actual madhouse bit left a bit to be desired. Maybe early madhouses are all like this?
Droomvlucht was next and the entrance archway to this is very pretty and it really doesn’t give much away of whats inside either. Droomvlucht means Dream Flight in Dutch and this gives you some idea as to what is coming as the ride is an inverted dark ride with plenty of elements where the ride vehicle passes over open expanses below you. Its not quite a flying coaster in how it makes you feel but it was still impressive to see operating!
The scenes are all incredibly pretty and you do feel transported into another world throughout the ride. I particularly like the floating castles and last scene, but I’ll leave that for you to see for yourself!
After we’d finished on Droomvlucht, we headed into Het Witte Paard (The White Horse) for something to eat. We were once again astounded by the way the park operates, this time with food offerings. All the food you can see is freshly made by people behind the counter and its not like they’re just putting things together. You can see all the raw ingredients they work with as they make the food you then buy. The White Horse served cakes, sandwiches, pastries and lighter meals. We ended up with a sausage roll and tuna sandwich, as well as Coca Cola Freestyle cups.
The food tasted just as good as it looked but the freestyle cups work slightly differently to how they do at other parks. Usually you’d par/recharge a cup and then have unlimited drinks all day, but at Efteling, you get a cup and 2 drink charges. The cups cost a fair bit less than others do to compensate, and you essentially buy a charge each time you want a drink which I think is a bit of a nicer system to be honest. I love the Coca Cola freestyle system, but when its unlimited, I feel like I have to drink as much as I can to get the most value and end up bloated and full of calories! Here, the recharging system makes it so you can still enjoy the drinks but not gorge quite so much, something that is probably only a problem I have!
Next up was a visit to the Anton Pieck Plein, an area filled with older vintage carousels, a chair swing and Velodrome ride too. We only rode the one carousel on day one but on the second day we had a go on the other as well as the Velodrome, which is essentially a man powered roundabout. Each ride vehicle is a bicycle and those who can peddle to get the ride going. On our ride, only Tracy and myself could peddle as the rest were all kids and it was hard work, but still enjoyable. These are incredibly rare rides apparently too.
Speaking of rare rides, our next visit was to see the Stoomcarrousel or Steam Carousel. It is exactly what you’d think, a very vintage, steam powered (supposedly) carousel. I say supposedly as I think the ride was running off of electricity and just made to look like it was still being run as such! I haven’t got anything negative to say about that though as I’d sooner then run it as they are than try to keep running it on steam power and it not last as long, or be a health hazard or something! Besides the trickery with the power, the ride is very well kept and the organ can be seen playing original sheet music too. Well worth a visit to see in my opinion!
After we’d finished in Stoomcarrousel and the accompanying display, we moved up towards Vogel Rok, Carnival Festival and Sirocco . I’ll talk about Sirocco first as its the easiest of the 3 here. It’s essentially a well themed teacups ride themed around Sinbad and merchant boats. Good fun, great effects and just another pleasant ride.
Vogel Rok next and this is the only indoor coaster the park has. It’s themed around birds as the name suggests (vogel is bird in Dutch), and the entrance is large bird set piece too. The ride has on board audio and very comfortable Vekoma trains too, and the coaster part is decent but the darkness mixed with the few scenes there are do feel a little dated and not quite as good quality as the other attractions we’ve tried so far. This is still worth a visit as the ride is still fun, just not quite as good as other dark coasters we’ve been on, or even other coasters in the park!
Carnival Festival was our next stop and heres another kids ride that I was riding just to say I had and nothing else, only to find a great ride! This is my first ever omnimover style ride, though we should call them endless transit systems officially (thanks Disney)!
The ride is themed to Jokie, one of the parks older mascots who seemed to fade away in the publics eye before a revival and a TV show and the ride you see today. The endless train snakes its way around a variety of different scenes following Jokie on his travels around the world. There are a lot of stereotypes and cultural imagery used in the ride and I found it to be great fun from start to finish. I enjoyed it a lot more than I ever thought I could, helped massively by the sound track. The same basic theme follows you through the ride and what I found to be most staggering is that despite it changing to suit different countries musical styles, not once did it appear to just stop and change over, it was so fluid! Well worth seeing in my opinion!
The Pagode was next up and this is my first ever Flying Island, a type of observation tower that gives great views over the park. I was quite excited for this as I’ve seen them in Planet Coaster and thought the ride system was something of a marvel so I’m glad I’ve had a go on one! Gondoletta was next and this is a 15 minute boat ride around the central lake and islands. A great site down and gives you good views of Baron 1898 (which was undergoing maintenance while we were here).
After Gondoletta, we headed into Symbolica, a ride I’d heard about but hadn’t read much into. I’m not sure why I haven’t looked into but I’m do glad I went in blind as this ride is absolutely outstanding. I’m not trying to be overly dramatic when I say it genuinely nearly made me shed a tear of joy, specifically during the wine cellar scene. It has everything you could want out of a ride, only lacking thrills but it certainly doesn’t need those!
The ride is a trackless dark ride, and we’ve had a go on Harrington Flints Island Adventure at fantasy Island but this is on the next level. The ride vehicles all follow the same basic path, but will deviate to show other scenes as part of your tour. I should explain that when you queue, you have the choice of 3 tours, the Heros Tour, Treasure Tour and Music Tour. You’ll see all the main set pieces no matter which tour you take, but each will see a few different parts here and there.
What really got me with the ride, besides the staggering amount of scenery to look at, was how the ride vehicles danced around each other, as well as the scenery and other hardware, it’s quite mesmerising!
There’s also the wonderful scent too. This is another thing that Efteling does exceptionally well, the smells! Whether you’re in a shop or on a ride, chances are you’ll snell something nice and Symbolica is no exception! It was that nice, I even bought the room spray from the gift shop so my bedroom now smells like Symbolica!
Just before we ended our first day we had the pleasure of watching Aquanura which is a water fountain show with added fire for good measure! It is probably best compared with Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s water fountains that are the length of and intensity of a Legoland firework display and included in the admission price! The show we got was fantastic but I’ve seen videos of others that were recorded at night and there are lights that we might have missed out on, but it was certainly worth waiting for!
That was as much as we could handle for the first day, and during our second day, we had rerides on a lot of the attractions but made time to do the Sprookjesbos, or Fairytale Forest. This is a very expansive part of the park and as you would imagine, has many different scenes from famous fairytales such as Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty or The Emperor’s New Clothes. A lot of the scenes have animatronics or shows associated with them and some of them are good but others are of great quality. Pinocchio and The Little Match Girl in particular!
Each scene also has a story book beside them so anyone who is unfamiliar with any of the scenes will be able to catch up on what’s going on! We had a casual walk around the area and it took us nearly 2 and a half hours to see everything so plan plenty of time in to see it all!
With that, that’s pretty much everything we did at Efteling! We didn’t manage to get on Baron 1898 as it was closed both the days we were there, but all that means is we can go again! We stayed in site in the Loonsche Land Hotel and I’ll be giving that a blog on its own so for now, that was Efteling! An incredible park that has so much attention to detail and care put into it. Do yourself a favour and head there as soon as you can, it is excellent!
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