In which Larry heads to the Netherlands, family in tow, for a rollercoaster older than Disneyland, a hotel that outclasses most five-star city stays, and a fountain show that puts Vegas to shame…
I’m suspended in mid-air, 100ft up, facing the ground, braced against the safety restraint. A flashing thought, “oh no, it’s stuck”, barely has time to register before we’re released, plummeting to the ground, screams shredding my eardrums. But there’s no impact. Instead, we plunge into an abyss, enveloped in smoke, before emerging from the ground and thrown into a loop, a spin, another inversion.
I am, quite literally, screaming like a girl. I glance to my left as my daughter instinctively looks back at me, matching my pitch — except her expression speaks of unbridled thrill, mine of bottomless fear. Before I’ve collected myself, we brake suddenly, level out to a slow crawl, and clank our way to the end of the ride.
This is Baron 1868, one of the biggest draws at Efteling, the fairytale theme park in the southern Netherlands. Its reputation, for those who know it, precedes it. Every Brit I asked who’d been spoke of it with the same unified fondness — childhood memories, a recent visit with their own brood, somewhere permanently on the wish-list. What is it, I wondered, that inspires that kind of loyalty? Out of curiosity, and in need of something to do mid-holiday, we booked it.
Efteling opened in 1952, conjured out of a patch of pine forest and heathland outside the small Brabant town of Kaatsheuvel by a mayor, a filmmaker and an illustrator. That illustrator, Anton Pieck, gave the park its unmistakable character — nostalgic, hand-drawn, insistent on natural materials over plastic and concrete — while Peter Reijnders supplied the animatronics and stagecraft to bring it to life. The original Fairytale Forest held just ten scenes (it’s still magical); Efteling now covers some 180 acres and counts among the oldest and most visited theme parks in Europe. It got there three years before Disneyland, a fact the Dutch mention with entirely justified satisfaction.
For us, it was a stop on a week’s holiday through the Low Countries — a spot of fun after a couple of days of cultural immersion in Bruges, and a reward, frankly, for the ennui that had begun setting in for our temperamental 12-year-old little nest of vipers. Crucially, given the journey, we’d arranged an overnight at the park. That, more than anything, set the tone for what turned out to be a delightful, joyful, and — with no exaggeration — spellbinding 24 hours.
Here’s the thing worth saying plainly, because it would be easy to let it get lost among the rollercoasters: the Efteling Grand Hotel is not a token add-on to the main event. If this were the UK, it would be tacky, or basic, a sort of Premier Inn Does Theme Parks. The Grand Hotel would make a case for itself among the world’s best hotels on its own merits, quite apart from the 180 acres of fairy tale next door. Read on, and I’ll explain.
The rooms are spacious and genuinely luxurious: a king-size bed you sink into, an abundance of pillows, soft furnishings that wouldn’t look out of place on the Italian Riviera. In-room amenities include Zenology toiletries and a minibar that could set up shop and call itself a café, and aside from the welcome chocolates, children are met with a branded case and a prince frog plush — a small gesture, but it tells you the hotel understands exactly who is checking in.
Staying over, it turns out, is the whole trick. It buys you shorter queues in the evening and, better still, access to the park before the masses descend in the morning. There’s something rather delightful about a theme park at dusk, and something even better about running through one at nine in the morning, before anyone else has arrived, and simply hopping straight onto your favourite ride.
Our first taste of the park proper, Max & Moritz, delighted our LNV the moment she realised the ride’s two scamps were dedicated to setting off whoopee cushions. It proved a mere taster for the aforementioned Baron, with its ‘hover-drop’ launch, and for the Python, an innocuous-sounding ride featuring a double loop and corkscrew. But there’s more here than derring-do: the Python’s neighbour is an original wooden rollercoaster, Joris and the Dragon, that would give Coney Island a run for its money, a huge, intricate timber frame and one of the park’s genuine icons.
Needless to say, none of it persuaded Mrs L, a vehement coasterphobe, preferring to content herself with the park’s visual wonders. We coaxed her onto one ‘gentle’ indoor ride, which still proved gut-pulling as it threw us through a serpent’s mouth and a light tunnel. Asked afterwards what she’d enjoyed, she couldn’t say. “I had my eyes shut throughout,” she sighed, relieved to be back on firm soil.
As we went, one thing particularly struck me; the queues. Unlike most resorts, they’re mercifully short, even on a sunny July Saturday in the school holidays — twenty-five minutes was the longest we waited all day. There’s a neat trick for smaller children, too: rather than queuing for hours only to be turned away at the barrier for not measuring up (yes, it’s happened to us), you’re measured at the entrance and issued a wristband for the day. And even where the wait does creep past twenty minutes, there’s proper theatre built into it — a pirate’s tale unfolding around the water rollercoaster The Flying Dutchman (at one point you step clean through an oil painting into a Jacobean dock), or wailing women projected in hologram before you take on the Baron. Nobody queues in a straight, characterless corridor here.
But what sets Efteling apart from almost every other theme park I’ve visited is its setting. This isn’t a series of rides dropped into pleasant scenery, it’s an entire world, built with the same care Anton Pieck brought to it in 1952 — animatronic creatures, hidden corners, a sense that the fiction continues well beyond the edge of each attraction. That spirit is best captured by the Dream Flight, recommended to us at check-in and every bit as memorable as the rollercoasters: a slow, silent glide through a world of fairies, sprites and trolls, rendered with animatronics sophisticated enough that you stop noticing they’re mechanical at all.
The mise-en-scène extends to the human cast, too. Characters tour the park interacting with visitors, and the performance doesn’t stop at the gates — it follows you back to the hotel. Over dinner at Brasserie 7, a passing bellhop broke into mime with our daughter; another began performing card tricks tableside. Even the menu was in on the joke, not by virtue of tackily-named dishes, but subtle touches; we were offered a menu of “magical condiments”, extras to sprinkle over your dish as you saw fit, ‘Princess Tears’ adding a rather delicate note our daughter’s ham and melon starter. Mains kept the standard just as high; a pan-fried sea bream fillet with fennel, ajoblanco and dill oil for Mrs L, and a beautifully cooked steak for me, with sweet potato mash and chimichurri, followed by an exquisite cheese board to finish. This was no gimmick or afterthought — proper, accomplished cooking, a world away from theme-park fast food.
The other thing you don’t get elsewhere is the sheer enthusiasm of the staff. Ask a waitress what to do after dinner, as we did, and she lights up, pointing out rides, offering tips, talking about the park the way you’d talk about somewhere you loved rather than somewhere you worked.
Which brings us to the one thing you can’t miss, and the whole reason to stay until night properly falls: Aquanura, Efteling’s fountain show. It’s routinely ranked among the largest in the world, in the same company as the Bellagio and the Dubai Fountain — and having seen it, I’d happily argue it belongs there. Fourteen minutes of choreographed jets, light and music; aquatic fireworks, hypnotic and exhilarating in equal measure. It’s not only worth the price of admission; it’s arguably worth the journey to the Netherlands on its own.
Little wonder every Brit I asked beforehand had it lodged permanently in memory. For the Dutch, there’s no need for convincing at all. One woman I got talking to told me she’d been coming since childhood, and that a visit to Efteling was now an annual ritual — not a one-off treat but a fixture, passed down the way some families pass down Christmas traditions. She wasn’t the only one who put it that way. Efteling has been delighting the Dutch for three generations and counting, and twenty-four hours inside had me, my little nest of vipers, and – rollercoasters aside – my wife, utterly bought into the magic.
Since opening in 1952, Efteling became an international destination with five million visitors per year, and has grown to become one of Europe’s biggest theme parks. It is now ranked in the top 25 theme parks in the world, according to the Tea Theme Index 2024. Efteling is open all year round and is an ideal family short-break destination with Efteling Wonder Hotel, holiday villages Efteling Bosrijk and Efteling Loonsche Land just a stone’s throw away.
Easily accessible from the UK, Efteling sits an hour from Amsterdam. Visitors can take the Eurostar to either Rotterdam or Amsterdam, fly to Amsterdam Schiphol or Eindhoven Airport, or drive to the Netherlands via the Eurotunnel. Regular trains run to the nearby ‘s-Hertogenbosch station, as well as a regular bus service and taxis directly to the park.
For more information, including details of the Grand Hotel, and to start planning your trip, please visit www.efteling.com.
