Germany's Europa Park will reopen to guests on May 29, as we begin to see the return of Europe's top theme parks.
The second most-attended park in Europe, after Disneyland Paris, Europa Park is reopening as Germany begins to lift stay-at-home restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Europa Park will begin its phased reopening with its hotel restaurants on May 18, followed by the theme park and hotel accommodations 11 days later.
Visitors will have to buy date-specific tickets, for which only a limited number will be available each day as the park reduces its capacity. Park shows, as well as the cinema, will not operate during the initial reopening period. And the park will require the use of masks covering the mouth and nose "in all covered areas, waiting areas of any kind, as well as during the use of rides."
Germany announced this week that it is beginning to lift its restrictions as the number of new cases and deaths have been declining in the country. Germany has seen more than 169,000 cases and more than 7,000 deaths, giving it a death rate of 88 persons per one million population - significantly lower than the 234 per million rate in the United States and 460 per million rate in the UK. But Germany will continue to require social distancing, enhanced sanitation, and the use of face masks indoors even as more businesses open.
Also in Germany, Legoland Deutschland has announced that it will reopen on May 30.
Elsewhere, Shanghai Disneyland will reopen on Monday, May 11. Walt Disney World's Disney Springs shopping and dining area returns May 20. And Indiana's Holiday World has announced that it will reopen on June 14. We will continue to update parks' reopening dates as they are announced.
For tickets to the German theme parks, please visit our international travel partner's Europa Park tickets and Legoland Deutschland tickets
pages. For tickets to more theme parks in the United States and around the world, visit Theme Park Insider's theme park listings page.
Update: Efteling has announced that it will reopen on May 20, at a maximum of one-third of its capacity. Social distancing will be enforced between parties and the park will implement enhanced cleaning and sanitation.
It's interesting that Efteling published the news of its reopening only on its primary, Dutch-language website and has not included the news on its English-language website. Europa Park not only included the news on all of its sites, it also sent out a press release. Granted, international travel restrictions make it unlikely that either park will be welcoming any out-of-market visitors for some time, but it's interesting to see how the parks will be publicizing their returns.
Anyway, here is the link to our international travel partner's page for Efteling tickets.
>>PM Merkel just happens to see reality that the gov't does not have a magic money tree and wishes to avoid bankruptcy.
Not at all, CHANCELLOR Merkel leads a country thats in a very different position in dealing with the epidemic.
I was very tempted to include this in the original post, but I figured it would have more impact once someone said what you just said. Germany's death figures updated as of right now. 89.3 per one million people. Florida's deaths per one million people--77.7 California's per one million (lower) 64.4 all of those are as of real time on realclearpolitics.com They also track very closely to Robert's number. If you take out Miami, Florida's number is actually much lower than that. So. Make people show their drivers license to show that they are from a county that does not have an more than one standard deviation above the average death rate. To open Anaheim (right now) might require allowing people from everywhere in Calif, except LA county. But, that can be done. It's Much less of a violation of civil liberties, than other ideas that some people advocate.
Your stats have nothing to do with the question or risk level. Deaths per million doesn’t tell you the danger level or the R rate.
Whether or not to open has to be based on where you are in the cycle of the virus: what the number of presently infected is, what the number of those as needing care is, how many dare dying daily, and crucially are these numbers getting better or worse, and what capacity you have to deal with the increases to those figures that will follow when you do remove restrictions.
And even then, those figures have a huge lead time. If you change restrictions today, you won’t see the full impact in those numbers for 2-3 weeks.
The metric you’ve selected is pretty useless to determine what the current danger level is.
Not only that, but relying on a standard deviation? That again has nothing to do with the danger level.
While i´m convinced that its a rather stupid decission, in particular compared to more sever restrictions on activities that do not involve anybody makeing money still in place, it is also one based on a very different situation- read much lower level of covid spread than in the US.
In general, the German restrictions were never as strict as the ones imposed in many places in the US. Things still went much better (so far) mainly because the restrictions were put in place at an earlier point of the virus spread.
A second aspect for all yelling now Disney has to open to consider is that opening Europapark was part of a larger decission to open up all zoos and theme parks. In many cases that decission is similar to alowing people to go for a walk in a public park in a small town- no density no packed lines or anything like that in many small Zoos. Europapark is a as big as it gets in Germany. And Euroapapark is a joke compared to anything from Disney.
In legal terms, the decission authority for this is solely at the Länder level and in this case you can bet it also was there at the practical level, meaning Merkel was in all likelyhood opposed to that early opening, but did not get her way against the Ministerpräsidenten (somewhat comperable to governors of states in the US).
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Yeah. I guess I've been completely hysterical to think that theme parks could re open with measures that were possible to have and still have some fun. Many on this site, have told me that would be crazy irresponsible. PM Merkel just happens to see reality that the gov't does not have a magic money tree and wishes to avoid bankruptcy. Once, people get cured of their trump derangement syndrome disorder that becomes clear to people. Even people like PM Merkel who are soft socialists.
Although, Germany has done very well with this virus. (Either through luck or policy. maybe both). Germany is potentially much more vulnerable to deaths than we are. German's smoke like crazy. So many of them. They have cigarette machines on a lot of sidewalks where anyone can buy them. I was at Europa park over the summer. The rides were fun. It was a good park. The part of the experience that was not enjoyable was the smoking everywhere. There were even announcements to please not smoke in ride lines and German's were ignoring them and smoking anyway.