Czech Republic 2024 - Day 2: Efteling

The summation of the day is one day would never have been enough. 

After the late night yesterday and Efteling not opening again until 10am it was a fairly relaxed start to the morning. With most of the big rides covered yesterday today was going to be about the more unique elements of Efteling and Forrest was already busy planning our route out to make sure we had everything covered. 

We needed to leave Efteling by 6pm today as we are travelling on to Rotterdam to then catch our night train to Prague. As such we decided to use the left luggage on site at Efteling to save having to trek back to the hotel again. We had checked this out yesterday and were pleasantly surprised to find this only cost a very reasonable 1.50€ per item. 

So with bags deposited we then started our day with a change to Forrest's itinerary by heading for Piraña. This was a river rapids ride that we had missed off yesterday and with app saying the queue time was reasonable and the thought in mind that getting wet early gives us time to dry off in the warm weather the diversion was agreed. And wet we did get. I had managed to escape on the first run but both me and Paloma joined a soggy Forrest on the second run. Matt somehow managed to stay reasonably dry! The unpredictability of these types of rides, as the boats get bumped and pushed along the river route make them great fun and this made it one of the kid's favourites. 

But with the Piraña queue now starting to get longer and Matt not wanting to push his luck it was time to get back on track as Forrest led the way to the Marerijk area. At times the tiredness showed today and the kids kept bickering and irritating each other and the walk to the next location was one of these, so after having a photo taken with Paloma on the fairy swings I turned around to where I had left Forrest to find him gone. We looked around but no sign of him. Panic was just starting to rise in my brain when he suddenly appeared from being crouched down behind a large flowerpot. He had been annoyed that we had delayed him getting to the next ride and so wanted to teach us a lesson. I hope though that the lesson has in fact now been learnt the other way and he won't do something so stupid again. 

The ride we were heading to was Droomvlucht. This was what's known as a dark ride which Efteling seems to have several of. For this one we made use of the virtual queuing system. This is where you can use the app to join a queue, and then it pings you when it is your turn to head to the attraction so you can carry on looking around the local area. With the virtual queue only being 5 minutes we joined this and within a minute or two we were pinged and walked down the virtual queue (alongside the normal queue) and pretty much straight onto the ride.  This is only available on this ride at the moment but I can certainly see its use especially at busier times of the day when even the virtual queue was 50 minutes. The ride itself though very gentle was actually very well done as the carriage takes you round several fairytale scenes with animatronic characters moving amongst them. 

We then continued ticking off the various rides and attractions with Volk van Laff Monorail (tired and disappointing) and Diorama (a small but diverting miniature model railway) before taking a break for lunch at Polles Keuken, a traditional Dutch pancake house. It is often hard finding meals out with something to suit everyone but this one was thankfully a winner. 

We then had a notification we had set up on the app that Villa Volta, a ride that has been shut all day so far was now opening. So a quick dash back to Marerijk and we were soon inside Hugo van den Loonsche Duynen's upside down house. I had read last night that this ride started with a couple of videos completely in Dutch so having found a translation online I tried my best to dub the audio in English for the kids. If there had been time, this is one ride I would have loved to have done again. It is a combination of theme park ride (pirate ship style I think) with optical illusion and I want to know how the mechanics work because it really did feel like you were upside down even though you weren't. 

Back on track our next stop was Symbolica and even without the 5 minutes stuck when the ride got stopped (not helped by not understanding any of the Dutch announcements) this was by far and away the least interesting ride for us despite having one of the longest queues. 

After a quick ride up the Pagode to see the views over the park our adrenaline junkies decided that they couldn't wait to go on the big rides again and so we headed back to the top of the park to race on the Draak and spin round on the Python a couple more times. And despite queues being longer than yesterday they were maximum 15 minutes and nothing like theme park queues in the UK. 

A quick trip halfway round on the Stoomtrein (not very scenic but saved our feet) and it was time for the Sprookjesbos. This fairytale forest with houses and scenes lifted from various stories is where Efteling started and it was the growth and popularity of this which led to the expansion to theme park and success it is today. We were running out of time by this point and so this was a lot more rushed than we would have liked but the kids enjoyed seeing both fairytales they knew and learning about many they (and I) hadn't heard of.

We then just about managed to squeeze in the final key ride, Fata Margana. Another dark ride but this time in a boat on water, this seems loosely based around the Arabian Nights. We couldn't really follow the story though and it felt a bit dated and tired. 

And that was it. Our trip to Efteling was over and we had managed to (just about) do everything we wanted to. I am certainly glad we made the decision to come last night as trying to squeeze it all in the one day would have been way too much. The kids have loved it and the mix of big rides and smaller attractions works well.  The site is small enough to get round easily but it certainly packs it in. In short, we definitely recommend! 

Then it was onwards. Bags easily collected. A couple of quick naps on the bus and then a lovely meal at Central Station Gourmet Market. A brilliant concept where an old roundhouse next to Tilburg station has been converted to several eateries. We sat outside next to the old turntable and ordered from a centralised ordering app, so everyone can pick whichever restaurant they want. We had Italian, Indian, Vietnamese and American and whilst they did all arrive at different times the fact that everyone got what they wanted and the food was all really good meant that this wan't a problem. 

A quick train to Rotterdam and we are now aboard the sleeper train. I will let Matt blog about that tomorrow though.

Blogged by Amber.