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[2024] Europa-Park General Discussion

It does seem to be a bit of a strange theme for their first ever film. You'd think you'd centre it around the park or atleast travel with the theme of the resort. With neither of the characters actually being racing drivers it seems a bit odd.
 
If the film is a disaster it matches the disaster of a redesign the characters have had.

Yomi superiority can't come soon enough to dethrone the Mack family.
 
One of the complaints about EP that I’ve never really understood, or at least has never really bothered me, is that there are adverts for everything, everywhere. With that said, I’ve got to admit that the last couple of years of them shoehorning IP into the park has finally started to bother me.

The Yomis are the prime example of this, where they very clearly don’t belong in either Austria or the Enchanted Forest, and yet they pop up in Josefina for no fathomable reason and they’ve evicted the delightful film of Ed & Friends from the Fairytale Forest cinema. The theme for the new Historama ride gives me similar feelings. Who knows, it might turn out fine, but let’s hope this folly doesn’t negatively effect too much else in the park.
 
Mi-Nigle said:
My wife's main argument against a trip to Europa over DLP is that they don't have any characters my daughter knows.

If I take her to see this... problem solved...? Argument won...? Yes...? 🙏 It won't be that easy!
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Most parents of young kids that I know would give anything to tempt their younglings away from singing Disney songs 24/7! Just play 'em the Mir theme and they'll be hooked. 🤣
 
I'm just recovering from the monster drive back from my family's second visit to Europa. Last time was two days (1 EP, 1 Rulantica) two nights (Camp resort) in 2022 which we all loved, but felt like there was so much more to explore. So this year 4 nights in Santa Isobel with 2 days on park and a day at Rulantica. Sadly, for various boring reasons we ended up *driving* which was a slog, so we only arrived at around 5pm on the Monday. We're a fairly well seasoned theme park family so we know what we're getting ourselves in to. A few random thoughts:

I was under the impression I had complete EP access all the time I was there - turned out to not be the case, just 2 full days. We were offered complimentary tickets for the last hour of park opening on the first day which was a nice touch. Santa Isobel is a truly beautiful hotel with a real sense of tranquility - a very nice place to retire to at the end of the day, although sadly the basement restaurant was closed our entire trip (seemed a shame). Meant we went over to Bar Cirque a couple of times for drinks which was really lovely.
Echo the strangeness of the 'at least 6pm' closing - one night it was 6:30, another 7pm with seemingly no rhyme or reason behind this. Lots of the restaurants and venues in the central part of the park seemed to close before this as well - would have liked to spend time in the biergarten but sadly not. Spain is obviously 'the place' for this for hotel guests but lacks a decent terrace bar (like the pirate one near Atlantica, that's excellent!).
Staff were amazing across the hotels and parks, apart from F&B at Rulantica. The inside swim up bar was being 'run' by two members of staff who obviously did not want to be there and it showed. Outside at the food court, 5 people in the chips cabin delivered slower serving for 3 options (plain fries, and two types of loaded fries) than I ever thought possible. The lady at the ice-cream stand inside had no clue and created a massive queue for no reason.
We ate at two buffets -Bubba Svens and at Santa Isobel (more on this later). Both were outstanding, but BS especially could have done with some kind of quick explanation for new visitors due to the disparate nature of all of the counters. Food quality was superb.
Rulantica is a world-beater for me. A splash battle in your swimmers? That ride system was made for this environment. I'll probably get a ton of hate for this, but Snorri > Ed in our family!

Overall it charmed the hell out of us and we're already looking in to making the journey easier for our next trip. We've done Florida, Plopsa, DLP etc and for us EP is right at the top. The absolute cherry on the cake was being fortunate enough to meet this guy on our final night:
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We'd seen the family in the garden having dinner when we'd been seated at our table, and were pretty chuffed with having seen them from a distance. I couldn't believe my luck when he walked past me in the foyer as we were leaving and he turned around when I called out 'Herr Mack?'. Thoroughly charming, he chatted with us for a minute and shook all our hands. Apparently Amanda and Andreas were also around for the upcoming Voltron event, but we didn't see them.

Question from my other half - how good is the park at Christmas?
 
Bowser said:
How long did it take you (assuming you started in the UK)? Looking at visiting next year but even with Autobahn fun doing it in one day seems a struggle.
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Even from Folkestone in Kent, the location of the EuroTunnel terminal and the “closest” place in the UK to mainland Europe, it’s currently showing as an 8h 3m, or 464 mile, drive to Europa Park.

So if you were to do it in one day, you’d have to pull an all-nighter and not sleep! That’s if it’s even doable in one day in the first place… with a 16 hour round trip, you'd only have 8 hours in the park before you've filled a full 24-hour day!

Realistically, you'd probably need to allocate two full days for travel; one full day for driving there and another for driving back.
 
Matt N said:
Even from Folkestone in Kent, the location of the EuroTunnel terminal and the “closest” place in the UK to mainland Europe, it’s currently showing as an 8h 3m, or 464 mile, drive to Europa Park.

So if you were to do it in one day, you’d have to pull an all-nighter and not sleep! That’s if it’s even doable in one day in the first place… with a 16 hour round trip, you'd only have 8 hours in the park before you've filled a full 24-hour day!

Realistically, you'd probably need to allocate two full days for travel; one full day for driving there and another for driving back.
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Ha no I mean driving in a single day. Best case of 8 hours plus multiple stops means it’s going to be at least 10 hours travel time I expect.
 
So we stayed overnight in the Premier Inn at Folkestone and hit the tunnel fairly early on (8am train). The drive took 7.5 hours going through France on all the toll roads. Not too bad in the grand scheme - my wife and I split the driving 50/50 so it wasn't too bad at all, and the roads are really free-flowing.
Better than the monster drive back from Efteling I did on my own back in May - all the way back to the Midlands in 1 day, and that was on the channel ferry as well!
 
ShadowTD said:
Question from my other half - how good is the park at Christmas?
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Honestly, amazing! They fill the park with something ridiculous like 3000 Christmas trees, there's a big Christmas market, festive food stalls, plus all the hotels are decorated and have massive Christmas trees in their lobbies. After dark the park is just a sea of twinkling Christmas lights wherever you look. Furthermore, pretty much all attractions stay open through the winter season with the exception of a couple of water rides (Tirol Log Flume and Atlantica SS iirc) and there are seasonal attractions such as the Bellevue Ferris wheel. There are additional festive shows as well. Go if you can, highly recommend it!

Photos in spoiler tag in case you'd rather see for yourself!

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Seconded on Christmas. It’s arguably the best time to visit the park. It’s certainly a very different experience, with a whole host of new shows, attractions, shopping and food available. If you visit earlier on in December, weekdays also tend to be pretty quiet.

As for the beer cellar in Santa Isabel, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen it open. It’s advertised as available for corporate events, but I’m not sure it’s ever open to the public outside of events.
 
Trying to decide whether to make a visit in September or nearer to Christmas. Is Voltron likely to be open during the Winter period?
 
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