Step back in time to a truly magical world...
Anna MelvilleJames takes her daughter to a Dutch theme park with a real old-style charm
The thought of visiting a theme park on a busy national holiday is enough to turn most parents into a quivering wreck. So I feared the worst when I headed to the Netherlands with my five-year-old daughter for a bank holiday Monday trip to the popular Efteling attraction.
But my luck was certainly in that day – unknown to me, it was not a bank holiday in the Netherlands, so Claudie and I practically had the park to ourselves.
Efteling is one of the world’s oldest theme parks and a place I had wanted to visit for a long time. It seemed different from the new breed of mega parks with their ever-faster rollercoasters, and instead harks back to a gentler age.
It was rumoured to have inspired Walt Disney to create Disneyland – although that is now largely relegated to myth. Efteling opened in 1952 and was entertaining famsomething ilies long before Mickey and Co. – and it has maintained its popularity ever since.
Unlike Disney, Efteling, just to the north of Tilburg, is lowkey, something that begins with actually finding that the park is located in a dense forest. We had travelled first to Brussels by Eurostar before a quick connecting service dropped us at the front gate.
We checked in at the Efteling Hotel, which felt slightly old-fashioned. Claudie, however, loved the sweet touches in our room – a quill, a boardgame table, and a picture of a mouse peeking out from the skirting board.
I was won over, too, when breakfast the next morning turned out to include miniature doughnuts and a bilingual Sleeping Beauty, who entertained Claudie while I sipped strong coffee.
Once inside Efteling, it all felt like a stroll through a beautiful park that just happens to have a rollercoaster in the middle. First-time visitors should start with the pagoda, a chinoiserie folly that rises above the canopy to show you the whole park.
At ground level, Claudie drew up her ride wishlist and commandeered one of the free trolleys for me to pull her in.
We hit the 1950s miniature train, pedalling engines through the mock Dutch countryside, followed by the mini-waltzer and a toy car circuit.
There are faster thrills too, including the new 100kph Baron 1898 ride and the Python rollercoaster.
Soon it was time to stop and admire the park’s luxuriant tulips and leafy boughs, themselves a fairytale of red squirrels and bird boxes.
In the oldest area, the Marerijk, the forest frames a trail of classic tales such as Rapunzel, Pinocchio and Rumpelstiltskin reconstructed from the nostalgic drawings of illustrator Anton Pieck.
You won’t recognise all the characters: Mother Holle and Langnek are definitely aimed at the local crowds. But there’s soothing about their quirkiness.
This lack of pressure also applies, unusually, to merchandise – I only saw one toy store, and food kiosks sell chips with mayonnaise, rather than drinks in movie tie-in cups.
As Claudie and I sat in the sunshine, we giggled at an animatronic gnome. It was a simple pleasure. But at that moment the world was magical.
A one-night stay at the Efteling Hotel for a family of four costs €340 and includes breakfast and two-day early park entry. Visit efteling.com/en. Fly with Ryanair to either Schiphol or Eindhoven.