European Adventure 2024

Considering that we're going to Europe in just over a month, it would be great to hear about the parks we're planning to visit during our 2+ week trip.

We're starting our trip in Sweden and driving through Denmark, so I assume you didn't visit Liseberg or Legoland Billund, the first 2 parks on our itinerary. Our next stop is in Hamburg, and we're debating whether or not to visit Heide Park, which is operated by Merlin. We're leaning towards spending that day in the city, because Heide Park doesn't look like it's worth using our only day in Hamburg, especially since we visited 2 Merlin parks last year (Thorpe Park and Alton Towers).

Our next park is Efteling, where we're staying at Lonnsche Land, which has good reviews, though is a bit further away from the park entrance than the Efteling Hotel. Depending on when we leave Amsterdam, we should get a few hours in the park when we arrive, and the full day following our stay.

We're then going to Phatasialand and staying at the Hotel Charles Lindburg. This is the hotel we're most looking forward to, because it's physically INSIDE the theme park. Like Efteling, we plan on arriving to the park in the mid-afternoon so we can get a few hours in the park (so we can use the F.L.Y. passes that come with the rooms) and then the entirety of the next day.

The next park on our itinerary is Europa Park, and we're staying in Strasbourg, France, which less than an hour away. Unfortunately, we only have 1 day planned for Europa Park, which could be a bit tight. I guess the biggest thing we were trying to figure out is how their virtual queue system works, and how quickly their single rider lines move. This park has the largest number of rides that we want to hit, and I've been reading a lot of different strategies for getting to as many as possible in a single day. Obviously, everything is different now because of Voltron, so it would be good to have a more recent first hand experience. We have enough flexibility in our itinerary to spend another half day here, but we'd have to buy a 2-day ticket for what would be a few hours in the morning before we'd need to leave before our drive through the Black Forest and on to Munich to finish our trip.

Aside from a Sunday afternoon/evening, all of our theme park days are slated for weekdays (Liseburg Tuesday, Legoland Thursday, Heide Park? Friday, Efteling Sunday/Monday, Phatasialand Tuesday/Wednesday, Europa Park Thursday/Friday?), so our hope is the parks won't be quite so crowded.

OK Russell, let’s see if I can give you the info ….

First off, I really liked Heide park. The resort hotel was awesome, and the park was clean, well op’d and had a great little winged coaster, Flug der Damonen. Colossus was good, Krake a mediocre dive, and the rest were just one offs. I had 2 half days, and 1 full day, and was kept busy all of the time. The 2 shows at the hotel end were ok, along with ghostbusters and damonen gruff. My 2 German friends took me to a great BBQ place a few miles from the park called Timber Jacks. Really good, if you’re in the area.

Efteling …. I spent 3 full days at the park, and loved every minute. Of course the talking trash cans are the stars of the show, ha !!. Coaster wise, nothing earth shattering. I rode Baron 4 times, mainly for the theming in and out of the queue. It’s a slow loader due to the pre ride ‘show’, but it’s a good dive coaster. Vogul Rok was good too. The fantasy garden walkthru was a delight, and takes a while to see it all. Symbolica is a must see, but my favorite was Droomvlucht. The line is long for this ride, but it moves quickly. Fabula the 4D show is good too. Just so much to do at the park. My 2 friends were with me 2 of the days, so it helped having some local knowledge. I don’t think there was too much I missed at Efteling, thanks to them.

I stayed 2 nights at the Charles Lindbergh. Amazing how the whole area of Rookburgh is interwoven with the hotel and FLY. Truly worth a visit just to see that. The rooms are very small though, but being on my own, it didn’t matter. I found riding FLY after 4pm was the best time, but with you going in July, I can’t say if that will still be the case. FLY is amazing, but Taron for me, is the standout coaster at the park. But don’t dismiss the others. Black Mamba is a good invert, and the setting thru Africa is good. But the surprise for me at the park was Crazy Bats, the VR coaster. The VR was in perfect sync with the coaster, and the bats were adorable. A must ride. As is mystery castle. And if you get chance, Noubis is a wonderful show. I spent 2 half days, and 1 full day at Phantasialand. A superb park, most probably my favorite of the whole trip. Even though you get let into the park at 9am, most of the rides don’t open until 10, so the vast majority of people either stand in line for Taron or FLY. Single rider on Taron was hit and miss. Wait times were steady all day for Taron at 30-40mins.

I stayed at the Bell Rock at Europa, so had early access, but Voltron didn’t open early, so it was just a matter of getting in line. I found that was the best time to ride Voltron. The VQ goes quickly, and opens for the first time at exactly 10am, so be ready. Voltron was consistently 40-50mins minimum all 3 days I was there. The single rider line was awful, and would not recommend joining unless the start is at the locker area. As best as I could tell, the VQ opened 3 or 4 times after 10am, but I don’t know the exact timing. VQ’s for the rest of the rides were pretty much open all day. Silver star was my 2nd favorite at Europa. Although Arthur is a must ride. Wodan was a half decent woodie, but certainly no Mystic Timbers. I spent 3 days at the park, and still didn’t see everything. There’s lots of little hidden nooks and crannies that seemingly housed a dark ride or something else of interest, that I missed (according to my friends). The shows were great, with Misterio being the best. Energ’ice was good, but you can miss funny library 2. If you get chance go and see Voltron 4D, is a good prelude to the ride. I won’t say anything about the ride, although I’m sure you’ve seen the POV’s. All I will say is, it was not my favorite ride of the trip, by a big margin.

I visited most of the big parks in midweek, and I wouldn’t call them quiet. As I said, I hit the school field trip time, but a lot were little kids, so they were not going on the bigger rides. In July, I’m guessing it’ll just be the vacationers ?? At no time did I even think about an express pass, so all in all not bad …. busy, but not Orlando busy.

Hope this helps, but let me know if you need any other info.

Glad you had a great time! I did a tour of the German parks in 2022 myself and hit the following: Erlebnispark Tripsdrill, Europa Park, Fort Fun Abenteuerland, Hansa-Park, Heide Park Resort, Holiday Park, Movie Park Germany, and Phantasialand. I'm guessing you probably didn't visit all of those, but I'd be curious to hear general thoughts on any that you did. Outside of Germany, the only park I've done in the area you toured was Disneyland Paris, but I'd like to get to the other places someday.

A few more specific questions, just to see how your thoughts matched up to mine...

1. What were some of the rides you found the strangest or quirkiest? Not necessarily good or bad, just unusual.
2. What were the biggest differences you noticed between American and European parks?
3. Which park(s) would you most like to go back to? Which park(s), if any, would you have little to no interest in revisiting?
4. Did you have any big surprises or big disappointments?
5. Beyond the parks, what were the highlights of your trip?

Also, Russell, based on my experience I'd highly advise you to devote as much time to Europa Park as your schedule allows. I initially planned 1.5 days for the park, but did two nearly open to close days and still wasn't able to hit everything (and that was with October crowds...20-30 minute waits at most). While it's only one park, it has more to do than any of the multi-park resorts I've visited, so despite the outstanding efficiency of operations it will be a struggle to do even 2/3 of it in a single day. As for VirtualLine, it works very similarly to the way Maxpass used to work. You go on the app, pick an attraction with spots available, and are given a time window to return (IIRC it's only a 10 minute window, though, so plan carefully). Once you arrive at the attraction, you'll scan the code on your phone at the VirtualLine entrance, after which you're eligible to join VirtualLine for another ride. When I was there, they went pretty quick for the big rides (I was never able to grab one for Wodan on either day, for example), but were generally fairly available for the smaller attractions. They don't book out all the slots right away and instead release them in batches throughout the day, so keep checking back if a ride you want is unavailable (and you don't already have something else booked), and if you can't get one, you can join the regular queue at any of the attractions.

AJ, I’ll try my best answering your questions …..

The only park I didn’t visit from your list was Fort Fun Abenteuerland. Wasn’t even on my radar :)

1. Weirdest one I suppose was the spinning/leaning ride, El Volador, at Bellewaerde. Never seen anything like that before. The spinning was a bit much, but it was a good ride. A lot of the smaller park’s dark rides were odd too, with the puppet like animatronics. Sadly I couldn’t understand what they were saying and/or singing, but interesting all the same.

2. Not a lot to be honest. The thing I did miss the most was water drinking fountains. Not one park had them, even Europa. Food was obviously different, although they all had burgers, but I tried different food items. Some things were snacks I used to get in the UK, so it was good to have them again. Everything evens itself out over time, so good food - bad food, clean parks - dirty parks, good ops - bad ops, so on and so forth. The parks certainly don’t open as early, or close as late as those in Orlando.

3. I’d revisit Phantasialand for sure, then Europa, Heide, Parc Asterix, Efteling … basically all the major parks. Ones I’d miss … Movie park, Hansa park and Bobbejaanland.

4. No disappointments, after all, they were all new parks to me. Biggest surprise, and I wish I’d spent more time in there, was the Tripsdrill wildlife park. It was superb, and I almost missed it, but the tram driver said it’s included with my ticket, so in I went.

5. I spent a couple of days down close to the Swiss border, and stayed at a hotel called, Chateau des Avenieres. It was just amazing, scenery was breathtaking, overlooking the alps, hotel was outstanding … truly a place I’d love to revisit. And I love driving, so the countryside was great to see.

Good advice on Europa park. My 3 days were open to close, although it took me a day to find my way around. I found it a bit confusing with the country areas all blending into each other. I think they could do with half the countries, just too many in my opinion.

Chiming in to say we are literally just back from two weeks in France & Germany, and spent a day at Europa-Park. Mostly to address Russell's questions, I was checking VLs on the app almost nonstop from entering the park at rope drop and (as previously noted) Voltron didn't show up for a while and when it did it went crazy fast. Around 11, it finally allowed me to select a 2:15 time slot for 4. We found that even after entering with our VL, it was still a 10-15 minute wait. Standby was listed at 25 at that time, so not a huge savings. The real issue with VL at Europa Park is that the park is so dang big and the window for VLs is so small, that by the time the app pops up with your reminder (5 minutes before your slot), you literally cannot make it in time unless you were already in the vicinity. So set your own reminders! You can enter with VL after that 5 minute reminder has popped up, but no earlier (we tried).
My teens loved Silver Star, and my 15 yo absolutely loved Voltron. I rode it with him (the other two members of the family ended up not doing it, for Reasons) and found the POV video had been useful in preparing me. We heard a lot of swearing in German at the midpoint, lol! The 15 yo rode a second time as single rider, basically walking on, but then tried single rider again and the line was so long he abandoned it.
Arthur was a great ride, but a long standby queue and a short ride time. Euro Mir was very herky-jerky, I wouldn't do it again and even my teens felt a little concussed afterward.
Cancan Coaster was very fun and a good first ride - I believe they started cars going at exactly 9 AM. Rope drop must have been 8:50-something, 52 or 53.
Lots of smoking! Cigarette vending machines in the bathrooms, you don't see that in the US.
Final note is allow plenty of time to drive from Strasbourg, it's easy to get lost with the language difference and roads changing numbers between France & Germany. We spent the night before at a vacation flat in Rust, and the flat was huge and cheap. We drove afterward to Freiburg, about 40 minutes.

@lorentz …. totally agree on the VL, they go very quickly. I’m not sure what the park opening times will be in July, but I think you found it to be as when I was there … park opens at 9, with most of the rides open at 10, which is when the VL opens. I snagged 2 on 2 consecutive days at 10am, with both being within that first ride opening hour. I lucked out and got a 3rd later on the one day, but when it was my time to ride it was pouring with rain, so that was a big no for me. I waited inline at the end of the day with a wait time posted at 50mins, and it was pretty much spot on.

As I said earlier, I wouldn’t entertain single rider unless it was past the lockers. I watched people get in line when I was in standby, and I was on the ride before they had even reached the lockers.

I really liked Voltron, an amazing coaster. But a couple of things put it fourth on my favorite list for the vacation, behind Taron, Toutatis and Ride to Happiness.