CSLKenny
TS Member
The African themed Adventureland and the Jungle Rafts attraction’s renovation/retheme has been long planned but delayed by the Batavia fire and then corona. Finally its seems 2022 is to be the year.
Weirdly though Roland recently was quoted saying it would be a 3 month project while this article today suggests much longer. Probably a misquote?
Nevertheless intrigued to see how they transform the area and in what theme direction it goes.
Weirdly though Roland recently was quoted saying it would be a 3 month project while this article today suggests much longer. Probably a misquote?
Nevertheless intrigued to see how they transform the area and in what theme direction it goes.
https://www.parkerlebnis.de/europa-park-2022-neugestaltung-dschungel-flossfahrt_125633.htmlOne of the oldest attractions in Europa-Park is about to undergo a major overhaul. In 2022 the area of the "jungle raft trip" is to be rebuilt. After accusations of racism, the revision is forced.
The eight-minute raft trip across the large lake in Europa-Park was opened in 1978 and is one of the oldest attractions in the Baden-Württemberg amusement park. In the past few years, the "jungle raft trip" has been criticized more and more often. The amusement ride is to be revised in 2022. Engelbert Gabriel, spokesman for the management of Europa-Park, explains this to the Badische Zeitung.
The work on the "jungle raft trip" should take at least a year. "This is a huge area that is being rebuilt," Gabriel explains to the newspaper.
Europa-Park regularly renews and redesigns old attractions. In 2018, for example, the children's themed ride “Old 99” became a “Journey through Lummerland” with Jim Knopf and the indoor roller coaster “Eurosat” became a night flight over Paris. A renovation of the "jungle raft trip" was also due anyway, but is being forced due to increasing criticism.
As early as 2017, Europa-Park managing director Michael Mack announced that he wanted to change the "jungle raft trip". At the time, he responded to criticism of the attraction in an article in WirtschaftsWoche.
For a good year now, Europa-Park has been criticized even more, especially on social media channels, said Gabriel. "It started in summer 2020," said the spokesman. "We take the allegations very seriously." Therefore, immediate measures have already been taken and individual figures have been replaced.
In a scene in which a person rides under a basket with a monkey on a cable car, a dark-skinned figure was exchanged for a light-skinned figure. This representation was "downright racist", said the ethnology student Sophia Hiss in the Badische Zeitung. Overall, the “jungle raft trip” romanticizes colonial history and serves the stereotype of the superiority of whites over indigenous people.
Today's jungle theme of the raft trip in Europa-Park was introduced in 1992. Before that, the attraction had a Finnish design and pirates.
How the attraction will be themed in the future is currently still unclear.