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2019: Rulantica

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I'm not sure about this. I mean, the quality of the stalactites (?) is excellent but they seem to be sticking out of the roof? Bit odd.

I think Rulantica looks lovely, but ultimately, they clearly have had to make some sacrifices with it - even with a massive budget over €100m.
 
Rick said:
My old grandma used to take us to Blackpool Sandcastle so she could "close her eyes and pretend she was in Spain", before promptly falling asleep for 8 hours.
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She must have been deaf as a doorpost to nod off in there. Hardly k own for its tranquil ambience.
 
Looking at the investment the articles are quoting, they spent around 1/3rd of what Disney did on building Pandora to get the waterpark and hotel complex.

I know it is a huge investment, but it seems a well considered expansion. The waterpark means longer distance visitors need to stay an extra day, they've rebuilt the road access and opened new income streams.

I really want to make our 1st visit to EP in 2020... but sorting out the travel options remains daunting. I know its easier than it seems, but its a lot harder than going to Alton Towers for the day for a family.
 
So I went to Rulantica last Saturday and Monday also. I'll give you an verview of my experience rather than a full blown review as such.

The first thing I noticed was that the initial doorway leading into the reception area is quite un assuming. As soon as you walk in though, wow. Two floors of what can only be described as looking as part of a museum and not a but of water to be seen. You get directed either upstairs or downstairs as they have changing rooms and lockers over 2 floors. Once you have redeemed your ticket, you get your rulaband and off you go. It's worth noting that if you lose your Rulaband, they will charge you 150 euro, this is the cap on it. The band was quite secure though with an old school plastic watch strap.

Once you're in, its a linear corridor with changing rooms down corridors to your left. Each of these sets of changing rooms then open out into their own locker area. Helpfully there are screens showing how many lockers are available after which set of changing rooms. You enter one side of the changing rooms and exit the other side to the lockers. Once at the lockers, it's very straight forward, find a locker with a green light, load up your stuff and scan your rulaband over the green light to lock it, It's worthy noting here that tickets booked through the hotel has a free locker attached, failing that it's 1 euro for the day that is payable when you first arrive. The lockers are pretty big and would easily hold 3 adults stuff, maybe even 4. At this stage, don't worry too much about remembering your locker number/

So at this point, it still has a very museum feel, you exit the locker room and into a long corridor which stretched along the back of the water park. This makes it super easy to find your way back and it's also the same on the first floor.

Once you walk in, you get the big reveal! I was on the first floor and when you walk in, you get a good view over the main park, there's so much eye candy. On this floor are also the sofa's you can pre purchase and the cabanas. My initial impression was WOW and it was hard to work out how I would navigate the park but this was very easy.

We settled for a place right in front of the wave pool. Now the wave pool is not very deep and appears a bit boring when you're watching the waves. The waves come on every 15 minutes or so. Once entering i soon realised that the wave pool was good fun, with 3 wave machines at the end, offering different directions of waves, super fun!

I then sat and looked around, once inside, you can't see the top of any of the slide queens and you forget how tall the flumes actually are, the queues are all behind theming which I liked. For any first time goers, to find the slides, it's quite simple. The main big slides are in the 2 corners at the back of the park.

So onto the slides, none of them were pretty ground breaking. The park is clearly more about atmosphere than killer slides. All if them were good fun and queues on the saturday were about 20 minutes or so per slide. I also got the impression that Saturday was a busy day for them.

My favourite attraction was the wild river outside, the way to ride this is by doing a Klinsman diver onto your front. Super fun but could be wilder. It's a lamer version of the center parcs rapids.

Snorri's saga was the lamest lazy river I had been on. I feel it's missing some water effects. the caves are nice though and it is very relaxing. When we visited, staff were giving out the tubes at the start of the ride and taking them off you after 1 lap. Going forward I'd like to see the tubes floating around and people being able to enter/exit at will.

As for food and beverage, we opted for a Snorri cup for 17 euro as it is super hot inside the park. We figured that we would drink a lot. I held on to the cup and got refills again on the Monday for a 10 euro re activation fee. There are 2 main restaurants in Rulantica. One that serves your standard burgers and chips affair and one that has more healthy options and flat breads etc.

The burger option utilises order screens like you see in McDonalds where as the other one is more your typical counter service affair. There is ample seating at the latter, not so much at the burger place.

The indoor pool bar was very nice, you can get your normal Erdinger or Carlsberg and a select few cocktails. What I liked about this is that you don't have to sit at the bar and are free to take your drinks around the lagoon with shelves around the outside to sit on. Very relaxing,

I ventured into the out door pool/bar area one but the water was freezing and the bar wasn't actually open as it was too cold. This looks to be a nice area for the summer.

Anyway, on the way out the park, there are band readers outside the lockers. Scan your band and it helpfully reminds you of your locker number. Upon exit, you go to the cashier and pay your band balance then you can only leave through the turnstile by placing in a zero balance band.

Overall, I was very impressed with rulantica. if you are going there for thrilling water rides then perhaps it's not for you. I went back on the Monday as it was a rainy day and it was a nice place to be.

There seems to be loads of chairs and loungers and chairs for people and although it was clearly busy on the Saturday, it didn't feel too overcrowded. I think it is slickly run at the moment and every part of the customer experience has been considered.

Once a trip will be enough for me, but I really did enjoy it. I think it's a success.

Side note - If staying at the hotels, then make sure you get there for 9, good loungers and you can get most the rides done.
 
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No mention of the Germans using towels to reserve all the loungers
I am sure there is a legal requirement that all UK travel reports must include that stereotypical cliche!

A nice write up, thanks for thst.

As expected, it sounds like a high quality product, that enhances the overall Europark offering, but isn"t enough to justify its own trip.

That is no criticism. there hasn't been a waterpark created that would justify a 500÷ mile excursion solely for that. I guess Seaworld Discovery Cove might be *that* park for some, but I have no great desire to cuddle a big fish [I know they are mammals].
 
After our visit, I gave to agree with a lot of what Graeme says:

- the entry experience is probably the most impressive element of the park as far as utilising technology goes. The locker system is slick and the Rulaband is basically a Disney Magicband, making paying for anything very easy.

- the slides are all very average. No great surprise, but it’s a shame that there doesn’t seem to be a signature attraction which breaks boundaries. The closest thing is probably the half-pipe slide which is now a fairly dated concept.

- the soundtrack I found to be spot on and pretty consistent, more so than the main park.

- I appreciate EP have pushed the envelope with the theme. I’m just not sure it works that well. Whilst there is an overall theme, there’s nothing which really connects Trolldall to Rangnakor to Vinterhal etc. To the layman, it is a collection of unrelated themes and they don’t quite gel as they’re pushed up close together. I’m not aware of another themed water park which has this kind of multiple themes in one park.

- some of the areas feel like they would benefit from some foliage. It sounds a little daft, but there really is very little in the way of soft surfaces to break the area up, the water park is on the whole one large space with little to break it up or add interest. Personally I like to happen across different areas rather than have them all laid out in front of me.

- to half contradict myself, the way finding could be improved and the slides being sat outside mean that in many cases you’re not sure what slides are available or whether you’re queuing for the slide you do want to ride.

- the outdoor Vildstrom slide is good fun, but there’s a couple of points where you can easily fly straight into a wall on the corners - I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets altered. We witnessed a girl fly straight into one wall and end up with a bloody nose.

- Skog Lagune is possibly the best realised area and this goes back to the foliage point. This is the only area with any! The trees create a much more engrossing environment and the swim-up bar is a delight. The cocktails are pre-mixed from a machine but I can recommend the pina colada at a not unreasonable €7.90.

- the outdoor area is quite barren at the moment. Again, and I know I sound like a broken record, but it needs some foliage or something to soften it and break it up. The pool bar was open with a tent over the top and a “pool party” consisting of dodgy German techno remixes and some disco lights. What’s not to love?

- the lazy river, Snorri Saga, is good except for the latter section where you float past deck chairs hard up to the river on either side, feeling rather conspicuous.

- the drop capsule slides pull probably the most Gs I’ve experienced on a water slide - very intense.

- people appear to really have taken to Snorri and I have to say I see why. Having an anchor character like Snorri definitely provides an identity to Rulantica.

- the tiles, amazingly, are pretty slippy.

Overall then, Rulantica is a good addition with some particular highlights. It however also has some regrettable issues, some which are more easily fixed than others. It probably isn’t going to blow you away with its ride hardware and personally the theme doesn’t quite find the mark for me either. It is a solid addition though and should we see the next phases, I hope they will go some way to rectifying some of the issues like providing that signature attraction (a water coaster seems like a given).
 
@Graeme @venny - how was the capacity? Is there forced sharing of rafts etc?

It's a shame they haven't particularly pushed the envelope with the slides, but perhaps they have concluded that they didn't need to.

Looking forward to visiting.
 
In terms of capacity, there was no sharing of rafts when I was there on the Saturday or the Monday. The Saturday seemed pretty busy and the max queue was advertised at 20 mins
 
We didn’t see any forced sharing either. Even with a 30min queue for Svalgur, people were effectively batching themselves into whatever group was required (note there’s a weighing scale and there has to be an even number of people). There was nothing extraordinary about operations or capacity, like you might see in the main park, the only things I’d say are:

- there is a slight bit more self-operation, such as the capsule drop slides which you enter, close and start yourself.

- there’s no batching on the Vildstrom river which is good.

- the lazy river is once around as Graeme says, however you can ask to stay on. We found that, whilst there can be a queue, the queue is formed not by a lack of rings, but rather actually getting people into the rings.
 
venny said:
We didn’t see any forced sharing either. Even with a 30min queue for Svalgur, people were effectively batching themselves into whatever group was required (note there’s a weighing scale and there has to be an even number of people). There was nothing extraordinary about operations or capacity, like you might see in the main park, the only things I’d say are:
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With queues this long (I take it other slides didn't have quite as long a wait) how long did you spend in Rulantica before being ready to leave?
 
We did 4-9:30pm - you’re right this was the longest queue and we didn’t do every slide, but we’d had enough by that point. We’d done the lazy river and wild rivers a few times and then the pools and slides, there’s not a great deal to keep you there or a slide which is good enough to merit queueing too long for a reride.

By 9pm the park was pretty quiet but the queues had not really subsided too much. They’ve clearly recognised the quieter period as they were offering an 8pm ticket for €20.
 
Not overly interested in water parks to be honest now i'm in my 30's. However it's great to see they've added one. Definitely adds to the resort and will no doubt prove to be really popular. Interesting reading the early reviews too. Does seem like they've missed a trick not adding a 'Wow' slide/attraction but I'm sure they will in time.
 
I think they've probably taken a senisble apprach with the slides so far. There doesn't seem to be a 'wow' slide when you compare to some of the slides at water parks in the US for example, but I think I am right in saying that many of the slides are unique to the German water park industry?

Really looking forward to experiencing Rulantica for myself in a couple of weeks.
 
I'm excited for my first trip to EP in September of 2020! Rutlantica looks amazing and I'm excited to go. Did anyone check out the cabanas? I'm thinking I may want to rent one for a more relaxing day. I will be going on the last Saturday of September and I do kind of like a little more pampering or VIP style but if it isn't worth it than I may forgo it. What do you all think?

P.S. - Thanks for all the reviews so far! :)
 
The lounge beds are just tucked into alcoves one the upper level, with publicly available seating immediately in front. The cabanas are more separated, but they look pricey.

For me at least, if you’re going to a water park you go to experience the slides and attractions. I’m not sure that there’s be much value in the cabana given how little time I’d spend in it.
 
From the little I have seen that cabanas appear to be very expesnive for what they actually offer. I'll be able to get a better look when I am there though.
 
Rob said:
From the little I have seen that cabanas appear to be very expesnive for what they actually offer. I'll be able to get a better look when I am there though.
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Thanks! If you can get any pictures that would help as they don't have any pics on the website. They may be overpriced for what they are so that is what I'm trying to get a sense of. Any thoughts you can provide would be most welcome and I hope you have a GREAT time when you go!
 
venny said:
The lounge beds are just tucked into alcoves one the upper level, with publicly available seating immediately in front. The cabanas are more separated, but they look pricey.

For me at least, if you’re going to a water park you go to experience the slides and attractions. I’m not sure that there’s be much value in the cabana given how little time I’d spend in it.
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I get it but sometimes I want a more private area to relax in between slides. I may plan to spend the whole day there so it would be good to have a place to just rest and relax... Maybe take a nap in between. I'm still far out from my trip but just trying to get an idea of what I want to do. Without pics or better reviews on-line it is hard to know if I want to get a cabana or maybe just one of the daybeds that you can rent. That may be the better option as well.
 
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