You might have heard of this park called Europa-Park. We already wrote several times about this incredible park, which also blooms as a resort more and more. Last year, they proved that even more with the addition of Rulantica, a heavily-themed indoor waterpark and basically their second gate. We’ll guide you through, discovering this special place and how you need to prepare yourself for a visit!
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Hotel Krønasår
Rulantica lies a bit further down from Europa-Park. To get there, the best way is either by car or the Europa-Park Shuttle Bus which you can take from the Spain entrance of the park or at one of the hotels. You then arrive at the newest themed hotel of Europa-Park: Krønasår. This Scandinavian themed building has all the good stuff that you can expect from an Europa-Park hotel: amazing theming, water fountains, a museum theme perfected in the highest detail…
Entering the hotel lobby just makes you fall in love immediately. Just look at this wonderful themed skeleton!
Right on the opposite side lies the entrance of the waterpark. However, you also have a direct covered walkway from the hotel reserved for hotel guests. Note that the crane in the picture is not part of the theming! It’s there for the future expansion of the waterpark! Note that the park usually is open from 10:00 till 22:00. That also means the you can buy a day-ticket or just an evening ticket. The price difference between the two is rather small, but an evening ticket can be sufficient for a first acquaintance with the park (like we did). 
Know before you go
As we wanted to protect ourselves from spoilers, we didn’t look up a lot about this park in advance. Besides even after seeing some pictures and videos, we could never really capture what to expect from the park. As we’ve got some experience, it would be easy to figure out to navigate ourselves inside right? Well, yes and no. First step was easy: scan your ticket at the reception desk and get yourself a Rula-band. Very similar to Disney’s Magic Band, you are able to use it for several functions: entrance to the waterpark, use of the lockers and more importantly, your payment method inside Rulantica. You can always check how much you have spent by going to the info desk inside the waterpark.
Once you’re through the turnstiles however, you go up the stairs and then… well, we didn’t really know where to go. Maybe it was just us, but the signage was not that clear. On the 2nd floor, we clearly were at the entrance for hotel guests but as we didn’t really see the way to the changing rooms again, we took another staircase up. Here we finally found them and after changing and putting our stuff in the lockers, it was time for a swim!
As we entered, we were standing on the 3rd floor and had no idea how to go down. We finally found out that there are two ways: a pretty long walkway or a one direction staircase (due to Covid). So first piece of advice, enter the park via the 2nd floor. Easier to navigate for sure. However, the advantage of the 3rd floor is that it’s more quiet if you prefer to sit down in one of the chairs from time to time with less people. 
Navigating the park
After a while, you’ll know where to go but in an attempt to help you navigate during your first time, here’s the structure of the park. Let’s split it up in three areas from the point of view where you enter: West, Center and East.
West
You can’t reach it from the 3rd floor, so that’s the longest walk you’ll have from there. Most of this area is namely on the 1st floor/ground floor. You have the Winterhal area which holds quite a few waterslides. Right next to that there’s the Skög Lagune, an incredible swim-up bar. Finally, there’s the wavepool, Surf Fjørd, which takes a large chunk of the park. As you walk up to the 2nd floor from the Winterhal slides, you have the only shop and the biggest restaurant, Lumålunda. 
Center
The Center area has experiences on all three levels. On the 1st floor/groundfloor, you have the Skip Strand area with two boats. One of them has slides for the smaller kids, while the other one has something really cool: Hoppablad, an obstacle course on the water! What you can also do here is go outside to the outdoor pool, Frigg Tempel. Again here you can find a bar right into the water! Once back inside, you’ll also notice tubes passing by! Follow those around towards the lockers again to find the entrance of an absolute highlight of the park: Snorri’s Saga, a huge and highly themed lazy river. Going up here will bring you to the largest kiddie area: Trølldal on the 2nd floor. This path also figures as the walkway to the 3rd. Both upper floors have lots of chairs to relax. But the uncharge Komfort Hyddas can only be found on the highest floor.
East
Last but certainly not least: east side! Right next to the entrance queue of Snorri’s Saga (and thus still on the 2nd floor), you can find the other restaurant: Snekkjas. Expect more McDonald’s style food here. Once you’re filled up, you can go to the outdoor rapids: Vildstrøm. Finally, all the other bigger slides are right here in the Ragnarok area. The final and only not swim-up bar can be found on the 3rd floor: Skål Bar. You’ll notice however that there’s an exclusive section for VIP guests.
Our favorites
We could discuss every slide and ride but today, we’re going to limit us to our favorites. What elements makes this park stand out against the other water parks? Obviously, there’s the theming. Expect the more recent Europa-Park quality theming spread over the different areas of the park. But as for attractions, we’ll dive a bit deeper to the ones that we really love!
Svalgur Rytt
In the Winterhal (west side of the park) area, you can enjoy 6 slides. Two of them always have the highest wait times: Vinter Rytt, a four tube Cliff Slide and Svalgur Rytt, a family rafting slide. That last one turned out to be our favorite, especially if you can ride it with four. A pretty high speed slide with lots of upwards moments, think of an indoor Oxygénarium at Parc Astérix with smaller boats. The other slides are pretty okay too, but they didn’t stand out that much in our opinion.
Skog Lagune and Tempel Krog
Okay, so you’re swimming quietly and all of sudden you feel thirsty. Well, no problem, just swim to the bar, order a special cocktail, pay with the Rula band and enjoy your drink! That concept can be enjoyed both indoor in the Skog Lagune and outdoor in the Tempel Krog. Incredibly smart concept as and you’d want to try it out for sure (even though your wallet will like it less at the checkout).
Hoppablad
This can’t be found at a lot of waterparks. Enjoy a short obstacle course where you can race your friends by crossing from one side to the other. Seems simple right? Well, don’t forget that running with your bare feet on these slippery tiles might get you at some point!
Vildstrøm
Less unique but a must for a waterpark is a rapids. Rulantica’s Vildstrøm might not be my favorite of its kind, but it delivers good fun. Halfway through, you can choose between two sides and opinions were divided on which side was better (but they are quite similar).
Odinrås
In the Ragnarok area, all 4 slides are worth having a go. The thrillseekers will enjoy Dugdrob & Vildfål, the free fall slides. Interestingly here, you can buy the picture of the moment when you’re trap door opens and you slide down vertically into the water. Still, we preferred the other two slides (Hugin & Munin) which combined is one duelling slide: Odinrås. There are three moments where you can see how well you’re doing in the race and thanks to the speed, it’s one of my favorite slides at the park.
Snorri’s Saga
Although we love water slides, we adore lazy rivers. We just like to relax in between all the waiting for slides. But this one stands out from any that we’ve done. Not only because of the theming, but the special music that was scored! You start of in a first cave where Snorri introduces himself and his friends. 
Next up, you pass by the big screen which serves as an impressive background for the wave pool and the restaurant seating area.
The next cave has a super cool bubble effect which we had not seen before. You then continue and are greeted by several mermaids. Although some screens seem a bit weird (but very high quality) compared to the real props, there’s one mermaid wall which feels a lot more realistic.
Next up is the Vågestycke! Yes, besides being a ship with slides, you can also go through the bottom of the ship during your tour.
There is a whole story about Rulantica but we didn’t go into detail yet of it. However, we’re sure that you’d recognize several characters from it during your experience. As you continue back towards the entrance, this part resembles more to a regular lazy river. A bit of a shame really, as you don’t end with a big highlight. The only thing you still encounter is this Snorri animatronic, buried in treasure. Yet, there’s no denying the high quality of this attraction.
A visit to Rulantica & future expansion
We can conclude that we had a great evening at this waterpark. If you’re a fan of theme parks and not afraid of water, you should check out Rulantica during your next visit to Europa-Park. Once again, the Mack family proved that the best way to visit Rust is by going for the resort experience. You could spent a full day at the waterpark, if you really want to discover every inch of the park and ride the slides several times. I do think that most people will have enough with an evening, but stay until the very end. That’s when the water slide queues will be at its lowest. There’s not much outdoor yet, but that’s going to change with the next expansion of which you can see the model below!
Some points of attention however is that the experience is not cheap. Both the entrance ticket as the food inside the resort. The bars did have reasonable prices though for the cocktails. Also, the covid measures didn’t feel sufficient in our opinion. Especially while waiting in line for slides, the indications were not clear enough and a lot of guests stood to close because of that several times. And as you’re not working a mask, that didn’t feel very safe. But to conclude on the positive side, Rulantica delivered what we expected from the park: it has everything a water park needs and no matter the weather, you can always enjoy visiting this water park. 