Wanderings and Ramblings : Efteling: final installment

By the time we made it out of the Fairy Tale Forest, we were running low on time. We knew we wanted to loop back around and get in one more ride on the Viking ride and George vs the Dragon coasters, so we set aside the last half hour of the day for that and concentrated on picking up as many of the most unique of the remaining offerings as we could.

The map showed a dark ride, whose description indicated it was very much a small world type ride. I wanted to see what they did with that, so we headed that way first (which put us back near the Vulture coaster, by the way). Also in the area was the teacup style ride. We chose not to spend time on it, but the theming was funny for us so we snapped a couple of photos:

(Yes, it is called "Mister Cannibal!").

The Small World style ride has passengers riding in two person carts past carnival style dolls. It is very much the same sort of thing as Disney's, but not as pretty and with a less catchy tune. This is one I would think is skipable for others trying to see the park in a day. I am sure "very little people" like it though.

Next, we headed over to the dark ride "Dream Flight" that I had heard was nice. It really was! You are, once again, seated in carts for two--but two carts go through connected. The ride is mostly fairy themed, though towards the end you descend into the land of the trolls by spiraling down around and around a large room, past treetops, then forest level, then underground. The various forest scenes, with fairy and sprites, throughout were really pretty and there was a large room with "fairy planets" floating in it that were really a nice effect as well. We truly enjoyed this unique ride, and I am sure young kids would be enthralled with it. Being quite dark, and moving, all of my photos came out blurry. Sorry about that.

Next to the fairy ride was a "fun house." This is not a walk through attraction. It is very similar to one we were on at Europa Park. I have not encountered one outside of Europe, but they very likely exist elsewhere. Essentially, you are seated in a "room" along benches facing the center. You are rocked back and forth some on your bench, though not terribly high; however the outer wall rotates fully around you, which does a very good job of creating the effect that you are in fact completely upside down and spinning.

By the time we got out of the fun house (which had a rather elaborate pre show in Dutch, so it took 15 or so minutes all together) it was about an hour to park close. Rio was anxious about missing the coasters, and Dave thought we might be able to ride them and still make the last showing of the 4-D movie after if we were lucky, so we headed back for a second go round on our favourites. The Viking ride actually had about a 15 minute queue at that point in the day (both of the other coasters were walk ons, the kids rode "Python" again as well). When our "ship" burst out of the interior sections for the final, high speed part over the lake, it had started snowing! It is a lot of fun to be zipping through the snow on a coaster--similar to skiing quickly without any sore muscles or fear of falling!

After the coasters we rushed towards the 4-D movie, but missed it by about 2 minutes. So we decided to go see the antique, steam engine driven carousel. It is lovely and in a lovely building, with a GREAT model train in the adjacent room. If we had had lots of time we could have happily spent 20 minutes looking at the details of the model. With out limited minutes we only walked quickly around it once. We did take a spin on the carousel though!

We had 15 minutes left until park close, which ends with a dancing fountain show. We made our way towards the show by cutting through a corner of the Fairy Tale Forest we had not yet visited. We found sleeping Beauty in her castle and giant mushrooms to play in (Does Marika look like a Smurf?).

Then we ended the day with the dancing fountain style water show, which was well done and a nice end to the day.

I should note that there was a fair amount of live entertainment in the park. We had so much to try to see, that we never stopped to watch, but I snapped a couple of photos as we passed.

In the warmer months (starting in late April) there is a also a heavily billed live show featuring Equestrian acts. The was a BIG Arabian style palace that this takes place in.

So, even being there from park open to close, and having virtually no lines and several attractions not open for the season (the horse show and 2-3 water rides), we were not able to fit quite everything in (we MIGHT have pulled it off had we not repeated any coasters, but I still think we would have missed a couple of things), so there is certainly more than enough to fill a full day here, and I think 2 days would be ideal for those who really want to take their time and enjoy it all.

I will leave you with a few more photos of some of the details in the park. I especially liked the ATM machine cleverly "hidden" in a giant treasure chest.