Efteling - A weekend of Fairies, Dragons and Pancakes - Day 3
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Day 3
The final day on park started with a character breakfast, as Pardoes did lots of interaction at an extremely peaceful level never seen at Disney. Once again our first port of call was Vogel Rok with 2 straight goes on the front before having to move back. Burdenous people!
And again like the day before, Joris was our next venture. We got there slightly before it was due to open, so I watched the engineers play around with the sensors on Flying Dutchman. Upon opening we got 4 goes, including front and back seat action. It’s always good when rides like this run extremely well first thing in the morning, and when there’s no queue whatsoever, even on 1 train operation.
Bob had a fair queue so Single Rider was called upon this time, and resulted in minimal (read, none) waiting. Was still rather enjoyable if a bit awkward being slammed into a random Dutch person on some of the corners. Took some pictures of the Pirana refurb that’s currently taking place as well, it feels like being at Chessie.
Fata Morgana was next, I actually took photos this time round instead of being gobsmacked; here they are.
We then wandered the park aimlessly for a bit, taking in another Puppet Show before another go on Carnival Festival before grabbing another hotdog and hat combo and watching yet another Jokie Show.
Straight out of RCT Coffee Shop!
We walked into the Museum again to have another look, and got given free badges for it, yay! Back in the Fairy area, it was time for more Dreamflight and Villa Volta. Because why not? The Train had just come in so we decided to hop on for a ride.
Much safety
It was then of course time for MORE Pancakes. Much further nomming was had, and we purchased some pancake mix to sneak past customs on the way home, and with Shrove Tuesday next month!
We once again rode Carnival Festival and watched the Jokie Show, before one final go on Vogel Rok of the holiday. Bless it. Next were the Gondolettas, which are the fastest Tow Boats I’ve ever seen, yet still take 20 minutes to go around the huge lake.
Heading into an area we had barely visited, it was time to mop up the rest of the unridden rides, starting with the Vintage Cars, which were long but nowhere near as good as Asterix’s, the Pile of Ship Halve Maen and it’s 14 rows of WHY were next, which was pretty awesome. Then the final piece of the puzzle was the weird cousin of Seastorm, Moby idiot, which doesn’t go backwards and just goes around in circles at walking pace. Very weird.
It was time for the final rides, and what better option to have fulfil this than Joris? A ride on each side for the final determination of which was ‘better’ (the winner of which was Water), but both are winners, as they’re both good. Now when will someone in the UK build a GCI?
After Joris, we walked back to the entrance, encountering some cats and buying some sugary as hell doughnuts before settling to watch Aquanura one last time.
Upon which it was back to the hotel room to rest before heading home.
Efteling is a truly fantastic park. Whilst it may not have a giant assorted of rides, and half of the park is taken up by landscaping or a Fairytale Forest of Forever, it fills itself with charm and colour throughout. And the rides that do exist on the park are all good at the minimum, which is rare for a park to have no truly bad rides (although Carousel land confused me greatly, why have 3?). The staff were all very pleasant and the characters very interactive. The hotel is rather basic in the rooms but even then have little details dotted in them.
I could just say it’s my favourite park because of the Pancake Kitchen (which may have helped my opinion formation), but there’s so much more to the park than that. The Disney quality dark rides and the ‘dead’ areas allow you to relax across your day (though I’m sure the full cattlepens would combat this feeling), and with the Fairytale Forest it has one of the most well designed and picturesque areas in a theme park.
A truly good theme park is one that doesn’t feel like a theme park. And Efteling fits that bill to a tee.
- Matt 236, Mitchada04, pluk and 1 other
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