TO EAT. A LOT. The prices for food at the Efteling were reasonable and the food choices were many, that’s why we took advantage and enjoyed everything we were able to! I want to dedicate a few words to one of my favorite rollercoasters: Baron 1898. I mean, look at that obscene theming! Even the lift supports are custom made to fit the theme!
As my first dive coaster, I declare myself a fan of the drop at first row. Even though we can agree that the coaster itself it’s not that exciting, the pre-shows and story is what makes this coaster a world-class experience. It’s exciting, it’s beautiful and it’s rerideable. A 10/10 coaster.
Our faces after riding Baron for the first time! As Efteling means details, look at the lever the ride op is grabbing. It was a dispatch button! 😱 I’ll leave here another photo of Baron because why not!
With such a beautiful sight, we move forward to the next park, the one I was most looking forward to: Toverland.
I was very very excited about this one because of Avalon and Port Laguna, so we’ll go straight to it, should we?
I instantly fell in love with this area. It might be the open space, the lake or the open background; notice that there’s no wall at the back of the area, it has views to a forest outside the park limits! The boats crossing over the lake gives a feeling of dynamism that makes the area more vivid.
Unfortunately for my photograph self, the park was dead so only one train was running on Fenix, that’s why I couldn’t get as many trains on the photos as I would like ☹ I think Sven caught some good shots though! 😝
But fortunately for my coaster self, we could ride Fenix without any queue! And so, we did just that!
What to say about this ride… Toverland and B&M have done an amazing work here. The area is magnificent and the ride is almost excellent, let’s wait until they end the station turn! The queue is amazingly well themed and the coaster itself is surprisingly intense. Spoiler: we blacked out every single time at the end of the helix!
The integration with the area is lovely, it kind of reminds me to Paris’ Big Thunder Mountain. And that’s not to talk about the beautiful color scheme. I can’t help but love this blue color 😍
Avalon is completed with Merlin’s Quest, a boat ride, and The Flaming Feather, a restaurant. We ate there and, apart from being gorgeous on the inside and outside…
… the food was delicious. It’s a lesson of how theme park food should be. And most surprising, it’s not that expensive. I totally recommend ordering the ribs and visiting the bathrooms.
So much effort has been put in this expansion and it is clearly noticeable to the guest, the product is near perfection for such a small park. Believe it or not, this is Fenix’s the station building and also the show building for the dark ride part of the boat ride!
To sum up, Toverland clearly deserves a visit just for Fenix. But that’s not the only ride worth of visit, you also can find one of Europe’s best woodies: Troy! By seeing this pic, it looks like it’s a photogenic ride 😛 These park freaks…
We had a tremendous question as soon as we got off the ride: Wodan or Troy? As for now, I personally prefer Troy because of the coaster, but the overall experience in Wodan is better. What a terrible dilemma! But what a fun ride!
The rides of the park are completed with a Mack spinner coaster with this beautiful effect next to the station…
… a Vekoma motorbike the first Vekoma motorbike coaster!…
… and a fun rapids ride! Let’s not forget also of the indoor pavilions featuring fun and unique rides (Bami Salami!) and a flume with a special surprise.
I know Toverland’s section in this article it’s been almost only Fenix but I think we shouldn’t forget what the park has done this season. A solid base is now set for a future expansion as one of the main parks in Europe. Oh, and we also got to know Caroline, the lovely park’s director!
Last park but not last day, we spent 2 days at “Deutschlands Bester Freizeitpark”, Phantasialand! And OMG, we just put a step on the park and my mind was blown away by Taron.
Taron is clearly the best ride at Phantasialand. But don’t underrate the rest of the park. The theming in this place is astonishing. But first things first. A general view of the area. As I said before, just put a step in Klugheim and my jaw dropped. I crossed the whole zone looking at everything and trying to orient myself, as the paths were at first so confusing!
But that’s great, Phantasialand is unique thanks to its unusual layout, featuring tons of different street levels and taking advantage of every corner. Notice that one side of this wall is rocks at Mexico while the other side is the stones at Klugheim.
The whole area feels immersive with all the surrounding walls and lots of tracks around you coming out of nowhere.
It isn’t difficult for Taron to raise up to the #1 position on the ranking of every coaster enthusiast. As we’ve seen, the theming and area is mind-blowing, but so is the coaster. The more I rode it, the more I liked it, and despite having my doubts, it finally made into my #1 coaster.
The launches are powerful (specially the 2nd one!) and the airtime is full Intamin-signed ejector, I absolutely love the twisted hill shortly after the first launch. The fact that the track is sooooo close to the buildings added to the speed of the ride make a great head-chopping effect that made me lower my hands on more than one occasion.
Taron deserves all the love. I like how a coaster that isn’t the fastest, the tallest or the coaster with more inversions (it doesn’t even have one!) can be so perfect. But as always, this changes depending what is every person looking for a coaster. You can also read further into Klugheim on the following CCCK’s article! 
Next to Klugheim there’s River Quest aka “Craziest and Wettest Rapids in Europe”. This ride is something I can’t explain, so I’ll leave this here and let you imagine how wet we got off the ride 😛
Mystery Castle is a unique indoor Intamin Controlled Drop Tower. Featuring a rather short ride cycle, this ride is balanced out with a very cool queue with some surprises.
Moving on to the next area, in Mexico we find some of the best rides at the park. Chiapas is definitely my favorite water ride ever. The landscaping is simply marvelous and the soundtrack really sticks to your head. It’s unthinkable how they managed to fit this flume in such a small space while creating picturesque locations. And don’t get me started about the drop and splash. 😍
The other highlight of Mexico is probably the most acclaimed Top Spin in the world, I’m talking about Talocan.
Lots of parks can have a Top Spin, but only a park like Phantasialand can have this Top Spin. Fire, water, a good cycle, amazing theming and an epic soundtrack turns this classic flat into a world-class experience. My only complaint is the restraint, a little bit uncomfortable for men, bearable though.
The next area is Africa, home of only one ride: Black Mamba. It’s amazing how the whole terrain is adapted to the ride. Being an Inverted so enclosed into the caves, it creates an effect of leg-chopping that adds to the intensity of the ride.
Also, it’s kind of disorienting as you can’t see what’s coming next! From the outside, the coaster rises from the ditches and ceilings of the African buildings and it creates a beautiful interaction with the paths. It can be difficult to photograph though!
Due to its intensity, it’s not my favorite inverted. I enjoyed it more on the inner seats rather than on the outside ones, less head-banging. As for the layout, I prefer OzIris. But it’s undeniable the theming here is insane. Remember that this whole area is built for the coaster!
Berlin serves as a main street but because of the structure of the park, this will probably not be your main entrance. It has some fun rides such as Maus au Chocolat, a kind of Toy Story Mania themed to a cake factory (with smells 😍), Hotel Tartüff, a fun house, or this beautiful Wave Swinger. Oh, and you’ve GOT to try the ice cream! Cheap and delicious!
Fantasy is another area of the park with mixed theming. On the one side there’s Wuze Town, home of the spinning coasters Winja’s Fear and Force. Both different, I can’t decide on which is my favorite! Both are great and unexpected and feature different and diverse parts.
On other building, there are two of the worst rides at the park in my opinion: Hollywood Tour and Temple of the Night Hawk, an indoor rollercoaster. The first one is a love and hate ride for me. I LOVE crappy dark rides, and this is one for sure. It’s noticeable that when it opened was a great ride, there’s some good scenes but now just feels outdated. The coaster is boring as hell and rather forceless. I prefer Vogel Rok over this one, it was a huge disappointment. Considering the amazing new additions to this park, the rides at this building feel old and out of place. I won’t miss them if they are the next rides to be replaced.
Last but not least, China Town is a small but beautiful zone. One of the advantages of staying at the Hotel Ling Bao is being able to walk through this area at night! We were by ourselves and it’s always amazing for a coaster fan to be able to walk through a park alone.
The other advantage of staying at the hotel was that we had 1 hour of Exclusive Ride Time on Taron at night, which for some reason was extended for more than the promised hour. As the ERT was at the end of the day, Taron’s launches were more intense than before! The ride during the day was great, but at night was incredibly better. At the end of the day, we did 15 laps on the rollercoaster, more than 10 without even getting of the train! At first, all the people of the hotels were there but as time went by, fewer people were there, not enough people to fill up one train! So if you want to ride one of the best coasters in the world at night (which personally I think it’s more beautiful) and with almost no queues, I totally recommend the experience of staying at one of Phantasialand hotels.
Not to talk about the food there or even the theming of the hotel, just look at the view from our room!
Let me finish with another photo of Taron because it’s a lovely coaster!
This was our final park and therefore, the end of our route! After arriving home and make my calculations, here are some fun facts for you! 😝
53,1 km on rollercoaster
72 times inverted
31 new credits
84,4 km walked
+11 hours by car
I strongly recommend doing any route like this one as it’s one of a kind experience. It will be a exhausting week but you’ll have the best time of your life! And you will experience a good ton of amazing parks 🙌🎢
Thank you for checking out this detailed trip around Europe! It’s a perfect example on how you could plan your trip! Which parks would you include? Let us know in the comments below!