Being Giant Kids For The Weekend At Efteling, The Dutch Fairytale Theme Park

My colleague, at one point on our many hikes last year, mentioned how much she’d like to visit Efteling, a theme park in the Netherlands. Despite my knowledge being limited to snippets of stories of Ash’s childhood visits there when his Dad was stationed in Germany, I said I’d be up for it, and Ash was keen to go back as well.

In the end, another friend came too, so with four of us it was set up to be a really fun trip!

Efteling is a fairytale-themed theme park (themed theme park?) near the border of Belgium, in the North Brabant region of the Netherlands. It pre-dates Disneyland by three years, which makes the statue of the mouse we found in one of the areas seem a little less knock-off. In fact, what I loved about Efteling was it wasn’t Disney-fied at all. It’s based on fairytales, but the original ones – and spare no expense with the gory details of those fairytales!

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We ended up visiting in winter, which had pros and cons.

The main pro was that it wasn’t too busy – even at a weekend, the park was busy but not packed, and the longest we queued was about 40 minutes. We saw a couple of queues reach over an hour, but I mostly put that down to the fact they were indoor rides on a rainy day (and then Baron, the biggest outdoor ride, was closed for a couple of hours and the queue was an hour when it re-opened).

One con, of course, was the temperamental weather, and on our first day it started raining before midday and did not stop at all. This meant that we prioritised all of the outdoor rides in the morning, and spent the entire afternoon doing all the indoor rides that we might not have done – along with everyone else in the park. Though if there’s one thing Efteling does really well, it’s the indoor (dark) rides, so this was sort of a pro as well.

We stayed in one of the affiliated Efteling hotels, which meant we got early entry to the park which was fantastic. There are two hotels, with a third coming soon – the main Efteling hotel is closer to the entrance and looks really cool with themed rooms, but we stayed in the cheaper Loonsche Land hotel which is a short walk through some woods to the park. The bonus was that not only are park tickets included, but you get early access too, which meant we got to go on even more rides!

I hadn’t been planning to go on almost every single thing in the park, but we practically did, so here’s a review of each attraction!

Note that the Joris dragon rollercoaster was unfortunately closed for maintenance when we were there, so that was the only big ride we didn’t go on! Also the rapids ride was closed for winter.

The “big” rides at Efteling

Baron 1898

The biggest ride in the park, this is basically Oblivion in Alton Towers with a huge vertical drop and then a quick whizz around on the coaster. David & I made a beeline for this before the park opened, which meant we walked straight on. There’s a bit of a story at the start before you actually get on the ride, and that part takes longer than the ride itself!

We messed up a bit too because you get given a ticket to ride in the front row, but then the story part takes part in this circular room before you go to the ride itself. We ended up on the wrong side of the barrier out of the main room and didn’t realise until it was too late.

No matter, we thought; we’ll just come back. Well, the next morning, the ride was shut due to high winds! When it eventually re-opened, queues were in excess of an hour. Never mind, then…

Anyway, it’s a great ride – just short!

Python

One of my favourite rides, this skeletal coaster takes in four loops and it’s loads of fun. The start is soooo slow though, with the ascent probably taking up more than half the time of the ride. Still, it’s worth it!

On day one, we walked straight on just before the park opened, and on day two we waited almost 40 minutes. That was one of our longest queues, which isn’t too bad.

De Viegende Hollander

Hands down my favourite ride in the park! This water coaster has it all – an indoor pirate-themed water ride in a boat, a spooky ghost suddenly sending you up through a chute, an outdoor coaster, and it ends with a huge splash as the coaster zooms down into the water.

We decided not to do this early on day one because we weren’t sure how wet you get, but once we were wet from the rain, David & I went on it and immediately wanted to go back on! And no, you don’t actually get wet at all, really. Needless to say, it’s one of the first things we did on day two, with everyone. Even Ash enjoyed it, and he was terrified that it was going to be too intense. It’s not – it’s really, really fun!

The big “kiddie” rides

Max & Moritz

I kid you not – this was one of our favourite rides! We ended up going on it several times, usually in passing when the queue wasn’t very long. We wouldn’t have queued for ages for it, but we walked straight on twice and I think the most we waited was maybe 15 minutes. It’s a great little rollercoaster and so much silly fun!

Halve Maen

A classic theme park ride: a swinging ship. This went REALLY high, which caught us off guard and Ash accidentally yelled “HOLY SHIT” in front of a small child. It was fun but not really anything unique.

The indoor “dark” rides at Efteling

Symbolica

Symbolica is probably Efteling’s signature ride, and it’s pretty cool. It’s a trackless ride which is really weird as you are just floating around the floor amongst other pods. There are three paths you can choose through the palace, so we chose music. They seem to mostly follow the same route, with a couple of extra areas specific to what path you’ve chosen – like we had a section with mechanical musical instruments playing us a song. The ride culminates in this brilliant ballroom where you dance around. It’s pretty amazing!

Carnaval

This is basically It’s A Small World, complete with dodgy cariciatures and stereotypes. Go on a fantastical journey around the world, where everyone has big, red noses! I didn’t hate this ride, and it’s very whimsical and silly, but… yeah. It’s one I’d only do once!

Droomvlucht

This is another of Efteling’s most popular rides, and on day one it had queues well over an hour all day, but that’s because of the rain. We decided to go on it on the second day and it was almost 45 minutes.

I have to say, this was my favourite of the dark rides! It was one that we might have skipped, but I’m so glad we didn’t!

It’s the epitome of the fairytale theme, and as you move along a track in your pod, you come across fairies and trolls and all sorts of other magical creatures. It’s REALLY, really well done! Truly feels like you’ve entered a fairytale land, and sums up the park’s theme so well.

I’ll add a video of this soon, as I didn’t take any photos on the ride, just some snippets!

Villa Volta

On the app, you can select different rides to read more about them. When you select Villa Volta, it comes up upside down.

That pretty much sums up the ride. It’s not entirely what I expected, and to be honest if you don’t speak Dutch the story at the start is impossible to follow. The story takes up quite a lot of the time across two different rooms, before finally moving to the third where you sit in what feels like a courtroom. Like I said, not what I expected at all.

And then you start moving and the walls start moving and then you’re upside down looking at the ceiling but are you really and what the HELL is going on.

This was a really cool ride in the end, but I definitely felt disorientated afterwards!

Fata Morgana

What I really enjoyed about Efteling was that not only is it based on European fairytales – very much Grimm-style – but it also has a lot of fairytales from around the world. Fata Morgana is a Middle Eastern themed ride and it’s really cool.

It’s a water ride and kind of Pirates Of The Caribbean-esque in the way it’s set up, with lots of scenes of markets and so forth. Eventually you go through some old guy’s legs and it took a lot of willpower for us to not see if there was anything inside his loose “clothing”. Ideally, that would have been the picture for this ride, but I didn’t get my camera out!

Vogel Rok

This was probably my least favourite ride, to be honest. Vogel Rok is an indoor rollercoaster, but it’s completely pitch black. You cannot see a thing except for the odd lit-up bird. It’s really disorientating and I think if it had gone on much longer, I would have started to feel sick. And that’s coming from someone who loves the Rockin’ Rollercoaster.

Other attractions at Efteling

Stoomtrein

Yes, there’s a steam train in the park! It takes you around the whole park, which is really cool, but we ended up using it to get from one end to the other, and didn’t carry on for the full loop.

Pagode

The ride that can be seen from pretty much anywhere in the park, the Pagoda gives you a 360 degree view of the entire park and also shows you just how flat the Netherlands really is.

It’s also really beautiful lit up at night – my favourite view of it was from all these Christmas trees! Another pro for visiting a few weeks before Christmas.

Snail monorail

This silly little monorail ride puts two people in a snail and carries them around an area of the park, and I low-key loved it. Very whimsical!

De Ouder Tufferbaan

My friend and I went on this for a laugh! I’m disappointed the other two didn’t come because the cars fit four people!

Anyway, WE had fun. Our little vintage classic car took us around a huge area, and every time we passed an “animal”, we had to honk at it and they would go ballistic. It was hilarious, although to be honest it did last a lot longer than we were expecting so we were ready to get off by the time it finally rolled back around to the start. Very silly!

I’ve got a few videos of this ride which I’ll put together into a big Efteling video.

Diorama

I’d had no interest in Diorama, but we ended up popping in to go to the loo, and Ash went to have a look while he was waiting for us so we went to find him. And holy shit. This miniature model world is incredible. It’s an entire model of a region with towns, mountains, landscape features, and a train that runs through it all. It’s so cool!

The Efteling Museum

This is just about the only thing we didn’t do, which is a shame!

There are plenty of other things we didn’t do really, as obviously we didn’t go on the proper kiddie rides. As you can imagine, there are plenty of those!

There are, however, some other great attractions at Efteling beyond the rides…

The talking bins

I can’t really not mention the talking bins. They are the one thing that both my friend AND Ash (and even his mum!) mentioned from their childhood visits. They are legendary! The premise is simple – the bins thank you for putting rubbish in, encouraging kids to go around putting rubbish in the bin!

They do sometimes talk when you haven’t given them any rubbish too. They are moderately terrifying, if I’m honest!

Fairytale Forest

One of the most famous parts of the park is the fairytale forest, and we decided to leave this til last, thinking it wouldn’t take very long.

Boy, were we wrong.

The most famous part of this area was right after we walked in – Longnek Boi.

We passed Pinocchio’s house, and Little Red Riding Hood. Rapunzel, the Troll King, a talking tree, a sleeping giant. There were little displays of other fairytales like the Red Dancing Shoes (I hadn’t heard of this one). Hansel & Gretel’s house came into view, and I thought that must be the last of it.

But no. We kept veering off into Chinese pavilions with koi carp and dancing lily pads, stumbled across a show of the Emperor’s New Clothes, and eventually found one of the most depressing fairytales of all: the girl who lit a match to stop herself dying from the cold, and before long she sees an amazing feast with all the candy she can eat, and then meets her grandmother who she misses very much………………………… yes, this is a CHILDREN’S story but let’s just have the protagonist set herself on fire and burn to death! Geez. Fairytales are DARK, man.

We were in the fairytale forest for WELL over an hour. It got to the point where we actually started to need to leave if we wanted to do our other plans on the way back to the airport. So definitely don’t underestimate the forest!

Anyway, I need to mention my absolute favourite part: the pooping donkey.

Feed this donkey a 50c coin and it will give you a gift. It will POOP out a gold coin! This is even more hilarious than it sounds – the gold coin comes flying out of the ass!

It’s a great souvenir from Efteling.

Food at Efteling

There’s a large array of food on offer at Efteling, and what was brilliant is it wasn’t the usual extortionate theme park prices. Everything was pretty reasonable!

On the first day, we had lunch in Het Witte Paard, which has a huge variety of hot and cold food on offer, including full cooked meals, sandwiches and bakery items. It was mega-busy, so we had to keep an eye out for a table coming free and snap it up quickly.

On day two, we took the steam train across the park and wound up staying in the train station because there was a basic café in there offering really cheap food. They even had cabinets, almost like a glorified vending machine where you could buy whatever was in the cabinet. It reminded me of something you’d find in Japan.

There are also plenty of snack stands, like a stroopwaffel kiosk next to the Longnek boy. We couldn’t resist one of those!

Staying at Efteling

Efteling has two hotels, with a third coming soon, as well as woodland lodges. We stayed at Loonsche Land hotel which is a bit cheaper than the main Efteling hotel. Being behind the park, it took around fifteen minutes to walk around to the front entrance, which isn’t too bad, especially as it’s a pleasant walk through the woods.

The hotel was really good, with a decent breakfast on offer which really set us up for the day. Of course, there were pastries and fruit so I’d take some for later on in the day too. Our room was spacious, with room technically for five people. Ash & I had the double bed while the children (as we dubbed them) had bunks above. The only thing was there was no separator between the two bunks, so not a whole lot of privacy for our two friends – a little awkward as they were strangers at the start of the trip! There was a basic spare bed on the other side of the room but the bunks above were more comfortable so our friends stuck to those.

However I thought the set-up was really good! Obviously it’s more for families, but still.

Staying at the hotel has one big advantage in that access to the park is included – and EARLY access, too!

It includes entry on every day that you’re at the hotel – including the day you check in, so we didn’t make the most of this as we arrived late on the first day.

Nearby Catsheuvel (we called it “Cat Shovel”) has a few restaurants, but we ended up just ordering pizza the main night we were there, which was perfect as they even deliver straight to your room!

It would also be possible to go into Tilburg for the evening, which I was tempted to do but we were pretty knackered after a very full day of theme park-ing.

That said, Catsheuvel is worth a quick stop if you want to see a classic Netherlands sight.

I was surprised just how much we enjoyed Efteling. We’ve all said we’d go back and we had a fantastic weekend there.

It’s very whimsical and silly while being entertaining and dark enough for adults too. It’s not as polished as Disney, but I feel like that would ruin it.

There are plenty of rides for all ages, and I didn’t expect to enjoy all the dark rides as much as I did. I thought they’d be more for kids, but while they weren’t as extreme as the rollercoaster rides, they were so much fun. The detailing and the theming is excellent on every ride, but particularly the dark rides.

If you’re looking for a unique theme park to visit, this ticks virtually all the boxes!

And, of course, it’s a great excuse to be a big kid for a weekend.