My First Visit to Efteling, September 2022

As someone who loves thrills, but loves beautifully themed environments just as much, Efteling in the Netherlands, with its confident and consistent branding as a world of fairy-tale wonder, has been on my radar for a good few years. Throughout the pandemic, the park’s marketing emails have taunted me from lockdown with the promise of reduced-price birthday tickets, but they shall taunt me no longer! For I finally made my pilgrimage this September to what is arguably Europe’s most revered theme park, and in its seventieth anniversary year no less!

The Efteling entrance, including seventieth birthday signage.

Other than missing the permanent closure of a much-loved attraction, Spookslot, by a couple of weeks, 2022 seemed as good a year as any to marvel at a park’s commitment to heritage, to fall in love with some hypnotic floating city orbs, and to be absolutely horrified by all the hideous hamster-cheeked characters of the park’s stylistic choosing. Efteling is a park of immense beauty and astounding nightmare-fuel unintentional horror, so let’s explore it together!

Visit Breakdown:

• Park time: Two full days, two partial days either end, for a grand total of 24 hours’ worth of park time.

• Accommodation: Het Landhuys secluded 4-person family room at Efteling Village Bosrijk (on-site hotel), €526.51 for three nights; park tickets and breakfast included.

• Costs during trip: £37.56 for travel excluding flights (train and bus, from Amsterdam and back); £103.46 on food (lunch, snacks, dinner); approx. £76.00 on souvenirs (oof), £8.58 for Caro (evening theatre show).

The Efteling Theatre, where Caro, the current evening show, is performed on select nights.

Center Parcs, but make it Sandman

Het Landhuys, offering family-sized hotel rooms within Efteling Village Bosrijk.

Full disclosure: I have never stayed at a Center Parcs, but Efteling Village Bosrijk, one of three onsite accommodation options, is what I imagine Center Parcs might be like on a smaller scale and with Sandman theming. Interestingly enough, Center Parcs was actually set up by a Dutch entrepreneur in the ‘60s, so clearly the Netherlands has a long tradition of enjoying stays in forest-y holiday homes, and for that I am grateful, because Efteling Bosrijk is a delight.

Wearing one of the cute night caps prepared for your stay, made from the Sandman's own bedsheets supposedly.

Bosrijk was marginally more expensive than the other two accommodation options, the Efteling Hotel, or Loonsche Land (another holiday village but set in the dunes), but it certainly felt worth it to have the experience of walking through woodland with the crunch of leaves under my feet to get to the theme park, especially on a crisp yet sunny September morning. I had been cruelly denied the middle-class rite-of-passage of a Center Parcs break by my family as a child, so nothing was going to stop this millennial treating herself to a belated wooded idyll, the excesses of being a single person staying in a four-person room be damned.

My room, all the way at the back of the holiday village in a hotel block called Het Landhuys, was definitely cute (huge number of spiders and initially non-functioning toilet sink tap aside), but I yearn to one day gather a big enough group of people together to be able to stay in one of the standalone holiday homes that perch on the side of the lake, huddled by the Sandman’s sandcastle. I’m sure I took more photos of those houses than I did of any of the rides. What can I say? As a member of Generation Rent, I can’t help but lust after houses I’ll never get to live in.

Views of the dreamy holiday homes.

I was initially concerned that Bosrijk might be too secluded for its own good, after seeing too late that guests could book a shuttle bus to bring them from the park entrance to their accommodation. However, unless you have mobility concerns or difficult small children in tow, it’s a pleasant ten-or-so minute walk. (Note: do not attempt to wheel your luggage through the sand in Bosrijk like I did. The Sandman may have sprinkled sand about the place, but he has also kindly built walkways, and you don’t need to submerge your suitcase in grit to get the full immersive experience).

This way to het Landhuys - not through the sand.

Excellent Operations – Poor Single Rider?

One thing that struck me about Efteling is how the operations of its rides managed to be both efficient and thoughtful.

I did visit during term time Tuesday to Friday, so I certainly never experienced the park under significant pressure; on my first full day at the park, I absolutely legged it over to Baron 1898 to “beat the crowds” as soon as hotel guests were allowed in at 9:30am (thirty minutes before the riff-raff), but there were no crowds to beat amongst the hotel guests. On my second full day, for the first few minutes of operation it was just me and another solo Brit at the dive coaster, both used to immediate long queues for headliner rides at parks like Alton Towers, and looking like overly keen fools.

Enter the park early as a hotel guest and you'll be held near the entrance to Fata Morgana until Early Ride Time starts.

I was however still impressed with how quickly most rides were dispatched, with advertised wait times peaking at a maximum of thirty-five minutes, and by my calculations, I managed to board a ride every twenty-two minutes on average, which is fairly impressive for a park that has a substantial footprint.

Some of that efficiency is down to the park’s choices: for example, all pre-show elements for the dive coaster Baron 1898 start as soon as the first guest walks through the door, not once the last guest has entered. It’s perhaps not the best experience for the last person to enter the room, but it does avoid wasted seconds and a stuffy room of increasingly irritated people jostling on each other’s toes in anticipation of something happening (I’m looking at you Derren Brown’s Ghost Train and Wicker Man pre-show). I also saw absolutely no mucking around by the staff; they were always on the ball and I think the gentle sense of urgency from the ride hosts rubbed off on the guests, as there was far less faffing about on the ride platforms than I’ve witnessed elsewhere. I definitely felt compelled to unclip my seatbelt on the brake run for Baron 1898 so as not to break the perfect flow of dispatches – I hope I did the Baron team proud.

Baron 1898 looking photogenic as ever.

Efficiency was rarely at the expense of guest experience however. There were multiple caring moments throughout my stay: firstly, a girl aged about five was allowed to check everyone’s restraints on the wooden coaster Joris en de Draak and send the train. This was obviously under the watchful eye of the ride team, and a host closely followed behind to double-check the restraints, but the child was not overly babied and was instead allowed to seriously take up her duties as a (surprisingly efficient) coaster operator. Similarly, part way through the ride cycle on Halve Maen, the swinging ship, the ride was stopped to allow a very upset child to get off, and they were given something for their bravery by the ride team and allowed to press the ‘go’ button to set us swinging again. I’m unsure whether Merlin Codes of Safe Working Practices permit child labour, but perhaps they should, because it led to some very sweet staff interactions.

Children weren’t the only benefactors of Efteling’s generosity: having sat for a good ten minutes at the top of the lift hill of Joris en de Draak so that a harnessed ride host could relieve a teenager of her disposable camera (a disposable in 2022?!), we were all disappointed to find that the duelling coaster’s other track, which had also stopped to accommodate the camera-extraction, had restarted before ours, removing the duelling element. So once we rolled back into the station, dejected losers in the race, we were all sent around again after a quick check for anyone wanting to bail, so that we could compete fair and square. The team didn’t have to do that, as we technically had a complete ride, but it was a nice gesture.

Four out of Efteling's six rollercoasters are visible in one frame from the observation deck, Pagode.

The only word of warning I would give regarding operations for those considering a solo visit is that Single Rider queues are not always your friends. On Symbolica you will likely smugly sail past a thirty-minute queue in five; on Baron 1898 you may start seriously contemplating your life choices after the twentieth evenly-numbered train of guests is welcomed into that cursed mine before you. Staff stick rigidly to the “single riders are only there to fill an empty space” rule, no matter how long that means you have to wait, and unfortunately with Baron 1898, the configuration of six seats per row means that groups of twos, fours, and threes are not necessarily going to generate that magic single seat you need for entry. If you see more than five people waiting in that Single Rider queue and the main queue is twenty minutes, the Single Rider line might not be the clever queue hack you think it is.

Looking over Symbolica's eco-friendly palace from Pagode.

The Aesthetic Horrors of Efteling

I may be banned from re-entering the Netherlands for saying this, but the majority of Efteling’s humanoid characters give me the creeps. The bulging cheeks, the perpetually puckered lips, the glazed-over dead eyes; they all come together not in an uncanny valley, but an alien ravine.

Part of the Laaf village, complete with (slug-powered) monorail running through its buildings.

Droomvlucht is probably my second favourite ride in the park after Baron 1898, but that’s certainly in spite of the appearance of the fairies, elves, and trolls populating its ethereal worlds, and is very much a testament to just how beautiful the planet-city and forest landscapes are. I could sit in that second to last world of Hemelburchten (“Heavenly Fortresses”) in Droomvlucht, watching those twinkling spires levitate against a starry boundless backdrop for far, far longer than the few fleeting seconds you’re afforded. Yet I could happily never see one of those fairies ever again; they’re just so…twee.

Droomvlucht fairy (left), sans arms and hair, in the Efteling Museum.

I was only vaguely aware of the Volk Van Laaf before visiting, and oh boy, are they even less appealing than the Droomvlucht fairies. Much like Droomvlucht however, I do still appreciate the Volk Van Laaf. These weirdly bulbous folk are an entirely Efteling-born fairy-tale with an origin story and an interactive village for them to dwell in and for guests to explore. I adore any attraction that has fully fleshed out lore to it, but unfortunately, I wouldn’t say that the lore of the Volk Van Laaf is currently especially well conveyed to the guest, so instead, all you’re left with is staring through glass at what look like the uncles of Cabbage Patch Kids. I had to do a bit of deep-diving on a Dutch Efteling wiki to understand the full weirdness of these North Pole-burrowing larvae-people, all born from a single “primal mother,” and I wish I had done so before visiting because I would have found it far easier to see past the visual horrors of the Laaf themselves and to instead see the thought and detail put into crafting their odd little society.

Some of the many Volk Van Laaf, working hard for a living.

Despite seemingly having it in for the Efteling’s humanoid characters, I do love the Holle Bolle Gijs; a family of constantly hungry, round-mouthed bins, known especially for their plaintive cries of “papier hier!” There’s just something so pathetically endearing about these guys who’re thankful for a manky bit of paper lobbed into their gobs. Having seen them all over social media, I felt like someone finally meeting their internet idol when I first caught sight of one. Is this what a para-social relationship feels like? Why no one was taking photos with these absolute stunners during my visit, I have no idea; they really are the stars of Efteling – and have been for over sixty years!

Me and my new friend, one of the Holle Bolle Gijs.

Mystery Croquette, My Beloved

This is only going to be a brief aside on food, because I did not find Efteling to be the land of culinary delights I had hoped it to be. It was fine. From afar, the big rectangular pizza slices of Bäckerei Krümel, a baked goods café, look a lot like the widely-praised focaccia pizzas from Phantasialand, but alas, these are not they. Being Wasp Season, each of my food stops was accompanied by a keen little stripy friend trying to help himself to a tiny bite, and in the end, I assisted a wasp off of my jacket and towards the remains of my pizza because one of us needed to enjoy it.

Efteling's thick-crust pizza offering...versus Phantasialand's.

Even the pancake I had at the much-hyped Polles Keuken pancake house was just fine, with the main draw being the brilliantly themed restaurant interior. And the chance to sit down with some Chocomel.

Banana pancake with chocolate sauce at Polles Keuken.

The one shining beacon amongst it all was the croquette of unknown filling I ate at Frau Boltes Küche, a deep-fried snacks fast food joint. I could not even tell you if it was vegetarian or meaty; all I know was that it was perfectly crisp on the outside and gooey on the inside, and that I could eat it in the five minutes I had before needing to hotfoot it out of the park to catch the bus back towards Amsterdam. That croquette may not have even been that good, but absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it’s reached almost mythical status in my mind.

Skip the chips; gorge on croquettes.

The Merch

For someone a little disappointed in the merchandise, I sure dropped a lot of coin on it. I kicked things off with a cool 35 euros spent on a multi-day digital photo pass. With thirty-five photos downloaded, making it essentially one euro per shot, I would say that it was pretty decent value if unflattering photos of yourself and loved ones are your thing.

One of thirty-five so bad-they're-good photos I got from my Digipass.

I also felt obliged to purchase something celebrating the seventieth birthday of the park, so I settled on a €10 metal tin filled with stroopwafel. I have since learnt I do not like stroopwafel, but I do now have a snazzy tin.

The snazziest of tins.

I can now also show my appreciation for Efteling through the hippest of fashions: a dark green sweatshirt simply embroidered on the front and back with the Efteling logo (€35), that was seemingly only still in stock in the souvenir shop aimed squarely at toddlers, Jokies Wereld, (probably because no one thought to look there) and a tote bag (€6) featuring Langnek, the long-necked icon of the fairy-tale forest, Sprookjesbos.

These sweatshirts are surprisingly tight-fitting - don't be expecting a Disney spirit jersey.

Only Efteling fans will not be horrified by my new bag.

Rounding things off, I bought probably my least-favourite pin badge of all time (€6), which features the Indian Waterlilies – my least favourite of all the fairy-tales in the fairy-tale forest – as this was the only one on offer. The 1955 fairy-tale of the Indian Waterlilies with its 1960s Dutch easy-listening soundtrack (‘Afrikaan Beat’ by Bert Kaempfert) and its slapdash mishmash of ‘oriental’ artistic references, exemplifies both the twee-ness I am not overly fond of at Efteling, and the outdated portrayal of other cultures that I would love to see consigned to the Efteling Museum in the future. I accept de Indische Waterlelies as part of Efteling’s history and a product of its time, and it is certainly nowhere near as offensive as the ride Monsieur Cannibale was before its recent complete re-theme, but it is still disappointing that a park which prides itself on its attention to detail would continue to maintain without revision an attraction that mushes together a bunch of disparate cultures and calls it “Indian.”

On a lighter note, I really wanted to buy the miniature figure of the goat-children sitting around a table that lives in the window of one of the gift shops as part of a not-to-scale Efteling diorama, but nope, Efteling appears to release each of its figures for a limited time only and my goatly wishes remain unfulfilled.

Goat-children in a gift shop window: unavailable for purchase; forever in my heart.

Concluding Thoughts

Efteling is without a doubt the most relaxing theme park I have visited. Anyone who knows me will know I am not a naturally relaxed person, and I am no different when you plop me into a theme park environment. Theme parks may be part of the leisure industry, but there is nothing leisurely about how I attack a park day. Despite having a whole two days, plus an afternoon and a morning to enjoy a park with a fairly modest ride line-up, I still zipped about like strolling is a crime under Dutch law. And yet, I came away from the trip only marginally stressed – even after having to deal with Schiphol Airport’s winding security queues on the way back. That’s saying something. Efteling may not have the world’s fastest, tallest, or scariest rides, but it does have unparalleled laid-back vibes.

"Be still and listen. In Bosrijk, you can hear the grass growing."

Efteling is also the park I have visited with the strongest sense of its own identity, and I greatly admire it for that. Whilst at first Python may seem to stick out like a sore thumb – an ‘80s coaster through and through in a world of fantasy and amorphously ‘historical’ whimsy – even Python’s recent re-tracking demonstrates Efteling’s commitment to a broad heritage narrative rarely seen in a post-war park. As an archive nerd, I adore the value Efteling attributes to its existing assets.

One of the Holle Bolle Gijs, dating back to 1967.

And yet, Efteling still cannot beat Phantasialand to become my favourite park. Remove the obnoxious teens from Phantasialand and you have a dream park for the adult thrill-seeker who wants something a little classier: soaring soundtracks, all-encompassing environments, (slightly) sophisticated hotels, and really, really good rides. The pizza is better too. Efteling accepts ‘Efteling Adults,’ but it knows its target market is intergenerational families, and its offerings are all designed to resonate specifically with them, not me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be booking another trip down the line to experience the new ride Danse Macabre and grand hotel both opening in 2024, but in the meantime, I’ll be dreaming of flying over Rookburgh again.