Europe Road Trip: Day 13 - Efteling

As with our time at Heide Park, I don't propose to repeat too much of yesterday's descriptions for rides we'd already tried, but there were plenty of new experiences for today!

We started off with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. This was the usual buffet type affair with the added magic of a number of fairytale characters circling the room. Down one end was a table of cereal, yogurt, fruit and juices. At the other, baskets of bread, trays of bacon and eggs, pastries and bread, and most excitingly, cake! While RJ took his customary scrambled egg on toast, I had a bacon sandwich followed by a croissant, a pain au chocolat, two very nice pancakes, a doughnut and a pink iced fairy cake with a princess on top, because of course I am a sparkly breakfast princess!

It turned out we could get a discount on the park's photo pass (6 photos for €25) if we bought it at the hotel, so we did; we also booked tickets to the Ravelejin show that afternoon, without really knowing what it'd be about. More on that later...

Into the park itself for early ride time, our first stop was right inside the hotel entrance - the indoor rollercoaster Vogel Rok. The fascia of this ride building featured an enormous roc bird, and the ride itself was themed around it. As you zoomed through the dark various bird-themed theming illuminated around you. It was good but quite short in comparison to other indoor coasters we'd ridden recently.

Across the way was the themed teacups type ride, Monsieur Cannibale. It instantly won "best soundtrack of the day" by using the Sacha Distel song of the same name, which is very very catchy and jolly, even if the theming of the ride itself is somewhat contentious - apparently there'd been complaints in the press previously about its racial sterotyping! The cups were themed as cooking pots - hence the name - and were so stiff they were almost impossible to spin, so we just sat back and enjoyed the music!

Further down was the third of our early ride time attractions - Spookslot. I had no real idea what to expect from this, as all we knew was that it was some sort of haunted attraction. It turned out to be something very Efteling. After entering the attraction building through what look like dark caves, you come to two large doors in the rock. When they open you make your way into a split-level viewing gallery with large glass windows at the front. We were the only two visitors at this point so we had the luxury of the whole attraction to ourself.

The actual attraction is a vast animatronic spooky scene, set to pieces of music including Danse Macabre. Ghosts fly around, a body hangs from a rope, and the dead try to climb out of their graves. It's very nicely done (especially when you consider its age) and I enjoyed it. A word I used a lot today was "charming" - this definitely was, and it's not often you say that about a haunted attraction.

By this point the rest of the park had opened, so we headed over to Baron 1898 before the queues built up. The park was quiet as you'd expect for an off-peak weekday; however as the newest thrill ride it was always going to be the one with the biggest possibility as a queue. Luckily we had no problems with that, and ended up queuing for front row. The ride was just as enjoyable as yesterday, and photo number 1 was checked off.

Around the corner we revisited the George and the Dragon duelling wooden coasters and took a ride on each, before deciding we liked the Water Dragon side more than the Fire one. It coincidentally seemed that the Water Dragon won nearly every race. To our surprise, the photo counter here wasn't open, so no picture for us. We then went to Python and again the photo counter was closed. At this point we began to worry that our bargain photopass was going to prove useless.

Thankfully at the Flying Dutchman we had an excellent ride (if quite wet), and their photo counter was open. I asked the attendant if the other coasters' kiosks would be opening today and he confirmed they would but only for the middle hours of the day when it was busiest. We noted this and moved on.

Behind the Python was the area we visited yesterday with the pirate ship Halve Maen. Before we re-rode that, we had a go on Polka Marina, a giant Seastorm ride. This looked more exciting from the ground, as once we were on the ride we discovered it wasn't particularly fast. Luckily we got end seats on the pirate ship which made up for it. I was tempted by the car ride in the background but it had a queue, so instead we headed back to the coasters to see if we could get our photos yet.

Thankfully both counters had now opened so we re-rode Python and both Dragons before heading further into the park. Now that the sun had come out we fancied trying the rapids, but on the way there we passed the entrance to the Swiss Bob, and thought we'd give it a go.

In keeping with the theme of today, this turned out to be not quite what we'd expected. At least half the parks we'd visited so far had had a Mack Bobsled coaster, and our expectation here was the same. However, it turned out to be a different design entirely, made by Intamin and using single 6-seater cars rather than the train of 2-seater cars the Mack ride has. The track itself was smoother and had steeper drops than the helices and turns of the Mack. Unfortunately the extra speed meant it was quite jolty and uncomfortable to ride, and in the scheme of things I don't think I preferred it.

Moving on to Piraña, the rapids ride, we passed straight through a large cattlepen queue, thankfully not needed today, and up into the ride station building. This brought you out onto the customary turntable where we had a 6-seater boat to ourselves. The ride itself was good fun, especially when we were overtaken by another boat which then caused us both to get jammed at a point where the flume narrowed. It took two other boats bumping into the back of us both to get them to move through the gap and let us follow. They then proceeded to draw all the water effects at them meaning they got soaked and we didn't. Unfortunately I was so distracted by this that I didn't look at the camera. Which meant we had to go round again...

Our second go had no traffic jams but got us a lot wetter - an enormous wave splashed my back, while RJ caught a similar amount from a waterfall. Still, we got the photo!

As we dried off it felt like it was time for lunch. Yesterday I'd spotted the park's pancake restaurant (well, we were in the Netherlands!) and TripAdvisor rated it very highly, so I'd suggested we go there. The weather was lovely so we sat outside to eat - I ordered a ham and cheese pancake while RJ ordered a ham one. It was only after eating about a quarter of it that he admitted he wasn't actually keen on pancakes, and wasn't enjoying this at all. I had a bit of his to help out, and suggested that once I'd finished he could pick up food elsewhere, which he later did.

We had a nice wander round the shops next. Unlike a lot of the parks we'd visited, Efteling doesn't have a lot of gift shops. Individual ride exit shops were pretty much unheard of, and there were only a few souvenir shops in the place. The one we visited was next to the park's collection of classic carousels, and featured ornamental models of the fairytale exhibits we visited in the afternoon, as well as general park merchandise. I bought myself a park sweatshirt (they didn't do much in the way of t-shirts) as well as some sweets for gifts. RJ was more interested in another shop that specialised in pin badges. It had a display case on the wall with examples and details of all the different pin badges the park had produced in the last 15-20 years. He managed to get himself both a park badge and a Baron 1898 one as well.

The afternoon was a lot less adrenaline-filled than the morning. Our first proper ride was Villa Volta, the park's madhouse attraction. We'd seen 3 or 4 of these so far on the trip, but this was by far the best thanks to its theming and soundtrack. I gleaned bits of the storyline from a poster in English outside, but in the pre-show all the narration was in Dutch so we didn't really know what was going on. The decoration of the ride chamber was excellent, though, and contained some really nifty little details that made it so much more fun.

Across the way was Droomvlucht (Dream Flight), which reminded me somewhat of Peter Pan's Flight from Disneyworld. By the looks of the horrifically large cattlepen queue area, it gets wait times rivalling its American second cousin twice removed - I'd really not like to be in the park on a day when they manage to fill that up! The ride itself was all right for kids but not amazing - you board 3-seater suspended carriages that run in pairs from an overhead rail. You're then taken through a series of animatronic scenes, with the carriages turning to face different aspects of them. The final scene takes you down a spiral track rather quicker than the rest of the ride, but it really left us cold, despite me really wanting to like it.

What I really did like was the Sprookjesbos (Fairytale Forest) - rather than being a ride this is a signposted path through the woods, where every now and again you come across a picturesque scene from a popular fairytale, with a précis translated into 4 languages so that you get the idea of the story. Scenes included walk through houses (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty), static props (Long Neck, the Little Mermaid), and animatronics (the Dragon, the Emperor's New Clothes). It was all absolutely charmingly done, and well-maintained - the effects work and everything was looked-after, which made a nice change from the sort of parks where something like that would be left to rot after a few years.

This took up a large chunk of the afternoon so by the time we'd finished it was time for the Ravelejin show. Again, we had no idea what to expect as we entered the outdoor theatre. We collected a set of earphones and an audio translation box on the way in, but this proved to be useless as the English translation played at the same time as the Dutch audio in the theatre so was utterly inaudible, which was a shame as it meant we had no real idea what the storyline was.

There seemed to be something with a lady who did falconry, then five modernly-dressed friends come in looking for someone. They disappear through a gate and come back on horseback in a sort of armour. They're then attacked by some bad guys who appear from a pond, and there's some sword-fighting and stunt horse riding. Then a huge animatronic fire-breathing 5-headed creature pops up and then for some reason the bad guy is vanquished and goes back to his pond and the friends find the guy they're seeking and probably all live happily ever after. Well, I did say I couldn't follow the storyline. RJ described it as being something like a medieval Power Rangers.

After the show, we thought we'd visit one of the attractions we'd not yet done, Fata Morgana. However, on arriving at its entrance we found it closed for renovation. To make up for this we headed back to one of our favourites - the Water Dragon. Here we found a slightly longer queue than usual, which turned out to be due to them now only running a single train on each track, for some reason.

Afterwards we had a quick spin round Baron 1898 in the front row again, before our final ride of the day, the Carnaval Festival dark ride. This was like a cross between the Haunted Mansion and It's A Small World rides at Disney, with echoes of Toyland Tours at Alton Towers. The ride itself was an omnimover system, running through colourful scenes depicting stereotypes of the different countries of the world (including for some reason a quite extended section on Japan and nothing at all on North America). I can't say it's something we'd particularly have wanted to wait in line for!

Finally it was back to the front of the park for the Aquanura fountain show we'd watched the previous night. This was again excellent and we enjoyed it just as much as the first time round. On the way out of the park we had a very tasty pizza each from the stand just inside the entrance, which did nicely for dinner.

From the park it was then time to head to our final hotel of the trip, a B&B about 40 minutes away in Belgium. Google Maps sent us down a road that seemed to be mostly full of tractors, and in a low-key way this led us into Belgium. We had our B&B's address programmed in, but when we turned up at the location indicated we couldn't see it. RJ got out to walk around and look at house numbers in case there was no sign, while I rang the B&B to find out if they could direct us. In the end the owner came out in her car to find us (having apparently had a neighbour who'd driven past us ring her and ask "are you expecting some English people, as I think they're lost?") and brought us in.

The B&B is very nice - the rooms are modern and enormous and the owner was very friendly. After a shower I sorted out my laundry and souvenirs ready for our last park tomorrow and the journey home! Sad to think it's nearly the end of our trip!