I’m not necessarily a theme park aficionado. I’ve been to a bunch over the years; as a kid, my family vacation was almost always a road trip to an amusement park, and since having kids, we’ve been to a few LEGO parks, Disney (in Orlando, Paris, and Tokyo), and more recently to Dollywood. Last month, we visited Efteling in the Netherlands, and it immediately became our favorite theme park by a wide margin. After visiting Dollywood, Legoland Billund, and Lego House Billund in the weeks prior to our visit to Efteling, I might have thought I had my fill of theme parks. Imagine my surprise when my wife and I agreed that two nearly 12-hour days at Efteling weren’t enough, and that we would both be as happy to return with kids as to return without.
Efteling is an awesome theme park about an hour and a half south of Amsterdam that you should absolutely put on your list if you enjoy either fairytale magic *or* theme parks – and move it to the top if you happen to enjoy both.
What is Efteling?
In a nutshell, Efteling is a Dutch theme park centered around classic fairytales. Think Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and all of the talking tree, forest troll, dragon, evil witch, princess stuff you grew up reading.
There is an entire enchanted forest that we spent *hours* roaming, with houses/buildings/castles featuring animatronic characters and, in some cases, little levers for the kids to pull that made the characters respond. The attention to detail is incredible.
In Sleeping Beauty’s castle, you’ll not only find the vegetation (what landscaping!) growing all up around the castle and Sleeping Beauty fast asleep inside, but you’ll find the bakers passed out in the kitchen – even the mice are fast asleep (as per the curse in the story).
Around the park, you’ll find rides that captivate the imagination (think indoor stuff reminiscent of A Small World at Disney, but with downright magical fairytale lands), thrills (including two different dual racing rollercoasters), spook and surprise (The Flying Dutchman does a great job setting the scene of a ghost ship cursed to roam the seas in a dark section that starts as a boat, turns into a roller coaster, then has the tracks slam into the water), and mesmerize (step aside, Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas – Efteling’s fountain show is on another level).
We spent two full days in the park and didn’t see it all, nor did we feel like we spent an inordinate amount of time waiting in line, thanks to having so many things to see other than rides.
Staying “on-property” at Efteling Wonder Hotel
We spent two nights at the Efteling Wonder Hotel, one of four official Efteling hotels. Out of the four official Efteling hotels, one is within the park (Efteling Grand), one is immediately outside the park and has its own dedicated entrance gate (Efteling Wonder), and two are a short walk from the park (Efteling Loonsche Land Hotel and Efteling Bosrijk).
Rooms at Efteling Wonder were on par with staying “on-property” at Disney in terms of price, but with a big difference: When you stay at one of the Efteling hotels, tickets to Efteling are included for all days of your stay, including your arrival and departure day. We booked direct (and I would probably do so again), but my understanding is that tickets are included even if you book through a third party (you’ll notice that at sites like Hotels.com, the hotel name includes the words “Theme Park tickets included”).
I originally intended to book our stay through Hotels.com to use Hotels.com gift cards earned from Capital One Shopping. However, we ended up booking direct because there are numerous types of themed suites available when you book direct that I haven’t seen listed through third parties like Hotels.com. Since we were traveling as a group of five, it made more sense for us to book a suite that accommodated five people than it would to book two rooms, but it was a slim margin.
If it had just been our family of four, the cost during our peak summer dates would have been around $550 to $600 per night, whether we booked directly through Efteling or booked through a third party like Hotels.com (or Rove, where we could have earned Rove Miles). That’s obviously not cheap, but when you consider that a single-night reservation gets not only lodging but also theme park tickets for the family of four for 2 days, it seems quite reasonable. I see off-season dates between $300-$400 per night, which seems like quite a bargain. The hotel is bookable through platforms like Bilt and Capital One Travel, so there are opportunities to use credit card credits to bring the cost down significantly.
As noted above, we wanted to book a suite that would accommodate 3 adults and 2 children. There are a number of themed suites to consider, but we went with the Sleeping Beauty Suite, which was spacious and cute. It wasn’t fancy, and there was a bit more dust in places than you might expect if only judging by the nightly rate of nearly $1,000 per night, though keep in mind that we paid for 2 nights and got park admission for 5 people included for up to 3 days.
We would definitely return to the hotel. Breakfast is included for hotel guests and was extensive enough (think eggs, pancakes, cereals, yogurt, and most of the other breakfast buffet stuff you would expect). By booking directly, we were able to access our stay within the Efteling app and manage various add-ons.
Speaking of add-ons, during the booking flow, there was an opportunity to add tickets to Caro, a show within the park that’s reminiscent of Cirque du Soleil, at a discounted rate of €12.50 per person. That was worth it, as the show was quite good and easily exceeded expectations based on the cost.
We also booked one dinner at the Efteling Wonder Hotel’s Saga Restaurant. Prices are a bit inflated, but the presentation is really well done. We agreed that we would have at least one dinner there again next time.
Beyond the room and meals, service at the hotel was terrific. They certainly captured that sort of fairytale magic feel, from the way you’re greeted by employees to the fact that Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella were walking around at breakfast, greeting guests.
Efteling Theme Park Short Review
I just couldn’t say enough good things about the Efteling theme park. My pictures aren’t all amazing, but the memories certainly are. I don’t feel a pressing need to go back to most of the theme parks we’ve visited, but Efteling is an exception. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be back at Efteling in the future, probably more than once. When we do return, I imagine we will probably once again stay at an Efteling official hotel.
As mentioned above, Efteling Wonder Hotel has its own dedicated entrance to the theme park. Less than 100 yards from the lobby door, there’s an entrance to the park where you can come and go as you please throughout the day (you simply need the Efteling app to scan your tickets at the gate). Conveniently, there’s a little snack shop right next to the gate.
We arrived at the ark around 12pm on our check-in day, stored our bags, and went straight into the park. We only left the park to have dinner at the hotel restaurant, but we immediately went back in and stayed until closing. The kids didn’t get in bed until almost 11 pm the first night, and we were up before 8 am the next morning to enjoy complimentary breakfast in the hotel and be at the park in time for “rope drop” for hotel guests at 9:30am so that we could get in a couple of the most popular rides before the crowds. We were able to get right on a ride that had a wait of more than an hour the previous day, and we got to our second ride early enough to have a very reasonable wait there as well.
Within the park there is just so much to see and do. We spent hours roaming the fairy tale forest, which had life-size models of houses and a cast of characters from popular fairy tales, including things like Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel & Gretel’s house, an animatronic version of The Emperor’s New Clothes, numerous fairy tales we didn’t know, and various mythical creatures like dragons and talking trees within the forest.
The rides were all so terrific. We didn’t get good still pictures on the indoor rides Symbolica and Droomvlucht, but they were outstanding, memorable indoor rides where you sit in a car on a track, similar to rides like Pirates of the Caribbean or A Small World at Disney, but more magical.
There were a bunch of great roller coasters. Max & Moritz was a great starting coaster for kids, as it featured two trains racing each other. After taking a lap around the track, it goes for a second lap at a faster speed. It was a ton of fun.
My younger son developed a love of roller coasters over the last month, so he and I did a number of others. My favorite coaster was probably the Flying Dutchman, which is so well-themed and starts out indoors in a roller coaster car in the water that seems like a boat. It then feels like you’re on stormy seas before it takes off as an outdoor roller coaster and eventually crashes back into the water.
Beyond adventure rides, there was a cute train that took you all around the park to see the various lands. Similarly, there was a slow boat ride on a track, with just your group getting a relaxing chance to “float around” and enjoy seeing different themed areas of the park.
Speaking of seeing different areas of the park, notice the pagoda in the sky in the back of this photo that starts on the ground and gets lifted by something like a crane to a vantage point where it turns around 360° so you can really see the entire park from above. We enjoyed that at the end of the night.
Speaking of the end of the night, Efteling ends up with a fountain show that is cut from the a similar thread as the Bellagio fountain show, but with a significantly higher thread count. The show plays a couple of times near the end of the night, sometimes with two different musical themes, and it’s worth checking it out.
The only disappointment we had at Efteling was that we booked a late lunch at a pancake restaurant within the park that got really good reviews. Maybe there’s a story associated with it and if you’re more familiar with the story perhaps it’s more enjoyable. We found it to be pretty overpriced, with the pancakes being nothing special and the theming being just okay.
Speaking of food within the park, though, don’t miss the stroopwafel in the Fairy Tale Forest near Longneck. Absolutely delicious.
Bottom Line
My pictures don’t do it justice, but Efteling was absolutely outstanding. It was a theme park that I will be actively excited to visit again at the next opportunity we have.
We visited the parking during what was a more than 3-week trip to Europe, where we visited the Lego parks in Denmark, spent a few days on the Amalfi Coast, visited friends on the Tuscan coast, and took a cruise from Rome to stops in Italy, France, and Barcelona. The part of our trip that all five of us talk about the most is Efteling.
There is no doubt that Efteling is a long journey for people based in the United States, but with things like Flying Blue promo rewards sometimes making it cheaper to fly to the Netherlands than it is to fly to Florida or California, I would find Efteling to be a compelling alternative to a Disney trip. Considering the value of staying on property and getting theme park tickets included with your stay, it feels like a great opportunity, particularly during shoulder seasons. It certainly is possible to stay off-property for less and buy admission tickets separately, but we would probably enjoy the convenience of staying on-property again in the future (especially when you consider the ability to use various hotel credits to book).
The next time we visit, we will definitely plan to arrive early enough to take full advantage of admission on check-in day and to stay late enough to enjoy a full day at the park on checkout day. Our one regret was that we had an early flight on checkout day, which meant that we had to leave the hotel just after breakfast. All of us would have been happy to have had a third day in the park. Next time we’ll plan it that way.
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