What I Love (and Loathe) about Phantasialand

After two very different visits to Phantasialand in Germany within the last twelve months, I feel I am now in a position to reflect on some of the aspects of the park that I deeply appreciate, and some that I perhaps…don’t. I could both wax lyrical and complain for an eternity about this small park that packs a punch, but instead, please enjoy here a medium-lengthed ramble, with select highlights of what I’ve loved and what I’ve loathed whilst trekking about the place on my solo travels.

Love: Poop Goose and the Frogs

I don't know what's going on here, but I like it.

It may not have the sophistication of Rookburgh or the ridiculously photogenic rock work of Klugheim, but Wuze Town and its surrounding Fantasy area sure do have whimsy. Whilst the space near the lake doesn’t offer much in terms of, well, anything really, now that the splash battle Wakobato seems to have been condemned to a life of splash-free silence by local noise complaints, it’s still worth having a mosey over there just to see the excellent frog decorations.

Chuck a few flowers on this and these happy little guys would make a delightful wedding arch.

The lakeside has a bunch of decorative pieces shaped vaguely like amphibious metal creatures - plus a sentient rusty bucket - along with more of the sassy bins that watch over Wuze Town Central. So enamoured am I with the sassy bins that, other than Kroka, the rotund “no thoughts, head empty” dragon representing the ‘Deep in Africa’ portion of the park, I would gladly see the park’s dragon mascots replaced with these joyful trash guardians.

One of my beloved sassy bins, guarding Crazy Bats.

I need to know the lore of this smiling bucket, by Lake Mondsee.

Wuze Town itself is an aesthetic marvel. For instance, from the heights of the gentle Würmling Express ride that trundles above the banks of the Mondsee Lake, you gain an excellent vantage point to view the Poop Goose. Now, through subsequent viewings, I have become less convinced that the poop emoji-esque pile on the head of the giant giraffe-necked bird that rests on the roof of a food stand selling currywurst and chips is intended to look like a turd, but the mental image has stuck and I love Poop Goose for it. The name of the food stand, Schwan Snack, would also suggest that the bird is in fact a swan, but no one will ever convince me that this giraffe-necked creature wearing an Elizabethan ruff for a turret is the noble swan; it is just too silly. The Wuze are a bonkers people and long may their bizarre stylings continue to grace Phantasialand.

The aforementioned Poop Goose, hoping a chip from Schwan Snack will be lobbed up as tribute.

Loathe: Mayo. Mayo Everywhere

Is this mayo? I think it's mayo.

I know, I know - I shouldn’t be allowed into Germany if I don’t like mayo (or the Netherlands, or Belgium, or…) When I asked if I could have ketchup for my fries during my stay at the Hotel Charles Lindbergh last year, I was met with such a look of confusion and hurt that I feared my dessert may have been poisoned to maintain national pride. My humble request was followed by several agonising minutes of consultation amongst waitstaff before the conclusion came that no, they did not have any ketchup, and that I should choke on my dry mayo-less chips (the last part was implied, not spoken).

Swerving the mayo curse by eating a delightful pizza in Mexico.

This time round, I spotted some of those previously forbidden red sachets at breakfast, so they have clearly listened to the desperate pleas of mayo-refuseniks, but still, the oily egg slime taints almost every dish at the Charles Lindbergh. Even when it’s not listed on the menu, mayo is always there to spoil the party. Picked one of the burgers that doesn’t mention mayo when all the others do so explicitly? Jokes on you, it’s mayo all the way down!

The meal that almost broke me, September 2021. Notice the suspiciously mayo-like substance peeking out of the bun of a burger that didn't mention mayo, unlike its brethren.

Love: My Guilty Pleasure, Geister Rikscha

I’m not sure I should love Geister Rikscha. This 40-plus year old omnimover-style dark ride loosely based on Chinese mythology and ghost stories has some incredibly janky animatronics, no plot whatsoever, and exudes a faintly musty smell of dust, decay and plastics in their death throes – fitting perhaps given the theme of Chinese concepts of the afterlife and the underworld. This is of course leaving aside whether or not Phantasialand has done any cultural justice to its subject matter. I am no expert on Chinese mythology (apologies to my BA in East Asian Studies) so I don’t want to pass too harsh criticism, but what I will say is that some of the animatronics do appear to have been disappointingly chosen or replaced over time for classic ghost-train scare-factor, rather than authenticity, and I did see at least one banner of Chinese writing upside down in a scene (and I’m not entirely sure it was deliberate...)

Despite this, I absolutely adore that Phantasialand went with such an out-there choice of theme as their answer to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion back in the early eighties. Certainly, “oriental” themed areas, with their sprinklings of red lanterns as a short-hand for all East Asian culture, are a familiar trope in Western theme parks, including Phantasialand, but this ride manages to largely eschew this and other standard imagery, in favour of a bleakness that I think I am yet to see in another attraction - and I doubt I ever will. And I mean this in a good way. I’ve seen criticism of the sound design for this ride; for it being too sparse, too dead, but I personally feel on this occasion it gives the scenes the room they need to breathe their last raspy breaths. For anyone who has experienced the auditory overload of the Spirit of London at Madame Tussauds London, this is the antithesis. The experience is uncanny and awkward and I believe it should be; the ride is, after all, essentially making you face your own mortality. Fun stuff for a “kid’s ride!"

Whilst Geister Rikscha is probably not one of my favourite rides of all time, out of all the rides I have been on so far in life, it is the one I most want to see made the subject of an in-depth making-of documentary. Much like Spookslot at Efteling has recently come to pass, I fear Geister Rikscha will be descending into the underworld one last time fairly soon and I would hate for the thought process behind the creation of this unique-yet-copycat oxymoron of an attraction to be lost to some storage cupboard in Brühl - or worse, the scrapheap.

Me and a hitchhiking ghost in the only photo I have of Geister Rikscha.

Loathe: Odd Operational Decisions

Anyone who really likes theme parks runs the occasional risk of becoming an obnoxious armchair-theme park manager, and I recognise this in any complaint I make about how a park is run. Anyone can whinge about throughput and capacity, and pontificate on how we’d fix the staffing crisis until the cows come home, but unless we’re actually running the park, we don’t truly know why things are the way they are or the pressures dictating those choices. So in reading my criticisms, please do not interpret them as a belief that I could do better. In fact, I never got past the first scenario in Theme Park World for Playstation as a child because I cried from being so bad at it. I never could get that ticket pricing quite right.

Having got that out of the way: there were some things that irritated me about the way things were being run when I visited. The two I’m going to focus on relate to the handling of hotel guests.

Firstly, by being entirely dependent on the doorman punctually opening the hotel gate down into Rookburgh at the park’s precise opening time, Hotel Charles Lindbergh guests were oddly allowed into Rookburgh later than regular guests, who legged it across Berlin to be first in line for F.L.Y. Yes, hotel guests at Charles Lindbergh get one fast pass per day to use on the area’s signature (and only) ride, but these can’t be used on the arguably far superior front-row seats, so if you’re tactically trying to get in a front-row ride first thing, those extra twenty or so people who’ve had the same idea make the difference. I'm sure hotel guests were allowed down into Rookburgh well before day guests last year, so why we were held until the last moment this time round, I do not know.

Secondly, hotel guests are shepherded back into each of the onsite hotels at the end of the day like the park is going into emergency lockdown. As soon as ride queues close, it seems you are expected to magically teleport into your hotel room, as I found out on my last night of my recent stay. With a bit of luck, I had managed to join the queue for Taron just before it closed, fifteen minutes before the park’s advertised closure time; a few other people got in line after me, but we were going to be last train of the day (or would have been if some cheeky guests hadn’t found an unsecured staff-only door to sneak into the queue twenty minutes after it’d closed). I got off the ride around fifteen minutes after park closure, and made my way fairly swiftly back to the hotel, taking a couple of photos on the way, as lots of guests were still milling around so there didn’t feel like a great deal of pressure to leave in a hurry. When I got to the entranceway of Rookburgh, the doorman was standing out in the street of Berlin scanning the crowds. As I walked past, he cried out to stop me entering, fearing I was a day guest. Having sheepishly explained I was staying at the hotel I was warned to get into the hotel immediately and not stop on my way. It was only now twenty minutes after park close and Taron’s wheels were still warm, so the desperate sense of urgency seemed a bit misplaced.

Make sure you're walking up these stairs at 5pm sharpish.

Several Hotel Matamba guests I spoke to were also bemused at being treated like trespassers for the crime of daring to be on the last ride of the day. I sympathise completely with staff who can’t finish wrapping up for the evening until every last guest has been shoehorned out of the park by their fingernails, so I can see the appeal of rounding up your hotel guests as quickly as possible so that you can focus on the loiterers, but I feel that this should not come at the cost of making your guests feel guilty for riding the rides as provided.

Staying at the Hotel Charles Lindbergh is an incredible, unique experience, and so it's a shame that that experience can on occasion be tainted by the slightly ungenerous treatment of its aeronauts.

You do at least have a chance to view Rookburgh after dark as a hotel guest, from around 8pm to midnight.

Love: The Layers

Phantasialand is not a park with a large footprint; built on a former open-cast coal mine and facing disapproval from local government whenever it seeks to expand, the park makes up for a lack of room to spread by building down. This has lead to winding paths, track entwining with track, and an effect akin to one of those multi-layered 3D paper art diorama boxes, where you peer in and see a scene made up of many intricate pieces stacked one in front of the other to give an illusion of depth. Except in the case of Phantasialand, it’s not really an illusion: by building at different levels, the park is able to pack in so much, play with scale, and create imposing structures without necessarily constructing up into the stratosphere. Other parks have a similar set-up in places; Alton Towers for example, has wiggled around strict planning permission rules by digging down to great effect, with Nemesis nestled in its quarry. I can’t however think of any park that’s pulled it off quite like Phantasialand.

Looking down on Chiapas in Mexico, with Black Mamba in Africa, looming behind.

Phantasialand has brilliant sight lines, where often you’re just enveloped entirely by the land you’re in, and this is usually held up as the mark of Good Park Design. But at the same time, I love the view from the Hotel Charles Lindbergh’s balconies, where you can catch a little glimpse of each area all in the same frame - Black Mamba’s striking lift hill, the carefully-imported tiles of the roof of Hotel Ling Bao, Mystery Castle’s tower looming - with each a world in miniature, all jostling up against each other.

Rookburgh and beyond at 10pm, June 2022.

Loathe: The confusing layout

This unfortunately is the flip-side to the immersion and visual interest generated by Phantasialand being built in a big hole.

I have a bad sense of direction. A frighteningly bad sense of direction. I legitimately often cannot tell left from right. The street I live on ends in a cul-de-sac and I still think I could get lost on it if you just spun me around a few times. I’m sure this joke’s been played out before, but Phantasialand really does not help this directionally-challenged idiot out by having pathways with all the logic of a Rollercoaster Tycoon ride that you’ve forgotten might actually need an entrance and exit before plopping it down.

Nor does it help that parts of the park are complete internet dead spots (I believe the 'Mystery' themed area actually got its name from guests having absolutely no clue where they are because the wifi’s non-existent), so working out where you are by following your little blue blob on the map will only end in tears and accidentally getting into the queue for the kiddie drop tower Tikal instead of for the mine train without parallel, Colorado Adventure.

Don't let the red lanterns fool you - you're really close to the entrance for the runaway mine train that's technically part of Mexico!

The only saving grace is that Phantasialand is an itty bitty park (but with many, many rides squeezed in) and even after endless laps of the place in sheer desperation to find a toilet that the map promised existed, you’ll still be doing fewer steps than if you took one casual stroll across Alton Towers.

Love: The music

I’d like to end on a positive so let me tell you about the thing that drew me into booking a second visit just 9 months after the first: the music of Phantasialand.

I will always stand by my statement that music is so important that you could give me a caterpillar coaster with a fabulous soundtrack and I’ll think it’s a world-class ride. Thankfully, many of Phantasialand’s rides are world-class in their own right, but those soundtracks really do help to elevate the experience and it is hard to imagine that they would have anywhere close to the same impact without their music.

Sound design is an intrinsic part of the ride experience and this really hit home when I went on a demonstration ride at IAAPA Expo in Orlando last year and was left completely unsure whether I enjoyed the experience or not because it had just eerily glided about in total silence save for the swimmy white noise of the Orange County Convention Center.

By attributing a sound to a ride, good theme park musical scores connect the experience to a lived emotion or feeling, be that the pure joy of Chiapas, or the adventuring spirit of F.L.Y., so when we listen to those soundtracks again, even outside of the context of the park, we relive those memories. In Spring 2022, I was trying to decide which parks I wanted to try to visit this year, and hearing the soundtracks for Chiapas and Rookburgh again took me back to hurtling down that backwards drop after a skull-percussion disco and seeing F.L.Y. soaring through the mist overhead in a steampunk wonderland for the first time - and that cemented it for me. Phantasialand needed to be in the mix.

A very poorly filmed bit of FLY's soundtrack, but you get the idea.

IMAscore’s soundtracks have contributed a great deal to Phantasialand’s musical landscape, but those that pre-date that prolific company’s existence are just as excellent. It is a pity that the queue for Mystery Castle rarely lingers in the Windhoven family’s study, as it’s a prime spot to listen to a version of the tragic yet strangely romantic musical motif that accompanies the pre-show and that helps to flesh out the ride’s backstory centred around the Windhoven family curse. It’s frankly amazing what a few strings, piano, and some spooky synthesizers can do for a ride thats entire deal is just to blast you up and down a very big tower a couple of times.

A small snippet of Mystery Castle's fantastic soundtrack.

Having gone full theme park dork and purchased the Rookburgh soundtrack CD during my summer visit, I am now going to have to make a concerted effort not to listen to it too much, for fear that I’ll fall into the trap of booking another trip in the not-distant-enough-for-my-wallet future. After all, I haven’t experienced Phantasialand’s winter event yet and Taron in the dark is awfully tempting…