[2025] Europa-Park General Discussion

[venny]

Impressive and creepy, both at the same time.

They’ve clearly had long enough to study all those Garner Holt animatronics they’ve bought

 

[AstroDan]

It's great they have been working on this. It could save them a lot of money in the future and gives them more capability.

 

[Llama]

Back from my annual beginning-of-December trip. Not much to add to last year's review: still the best theme park in the world. And for the first time ever, my room key worked perfectly for the entire trip!

Having been to Disneyland last year and Disneyland Paris a few weeks ago, my thoughts were mainly comparing the two. Disney has the better theming and individual rides--nothing at EP comes even close to Alice in Wonderland or Indiana Jones--but as a total experience, taking into account the money and stress required for a visit to either place, it's hard not to say that EP is the winner. Disney seems to only get more expensive while offering less and less, and every time I visit EP they seem to have added something from the previous season.

A few random thoughts:

We saw the Ice Show, starring--probably not named by Mack, but a Mack name nevertheless--Surpr'ICE, and it was actually very fun and impressive. The Circus was also pretty solid, maybe 15 minutes too long, but enjoyable neverthless and on a day with average 1 minute queues for everything it was a good break from running from ride to ride.

The new EDventure ride is not nearly as dire as I thought it would be. It is absolutely a subpar copy of Toy Story Mania and Maus au Chocolat, but for a walk-on ride it was fun enough and not quite as embarrassing as I anticipated from the early reviews, so perhaps the updates they've made fixed it a bit. The queue is really nice. And right as we were about to board, Thomas Mack came through the side entrance and the ride operator assigned him, unfortunately, to the next group. Would have been a trip highlight to face off against one of the Macks on their own creation.

I've never really had bad food there, but noticed this trip how almost uniformly good the food at EP is. Especially compared to Disneyland Paris, where the food is more or less terrible across the board, EP has a ton of varied offerings and I haven't had anything bad yet. The potato soup they have everywhere for the winter season is especially good, and was even more delicious as we had a bowl while riding Josafina's boat ride at night. Disney would never. One exception to this is Rulantica which has decent food but it's all along the lines of stereotypical theme park fare: pizza, pasta, burgers, and a couple of token salads. Especially since the waterpark is so much better after sundown and you end up staying too late to eat at any of the real restaurants at the resort, some varied offerings here would be more than welcome.

This trip was also a nice confirmation that one of the sleeper hits of the entire resort (yet another example of "Disney would never") is Hyggedal at Rulantica. I did 3 of the sauna infusions and one of the steam room salt peelings over the course of the day, which for just an additional €12 is an absolute steal. The employees at Hyggedal are especially wonderful, they went out of their way to let us know about the offerings that were coming up and even put on an impromptu second round of one of them when the first was full.

Speaking of Rulantica, the new outdoor swimming area is great. I prefer it over the older one for sure. Looks great at night.

I had what was probably--hopefully?--my last ride on Euro Mir. Good riddance to that one, the whole thing is the most visibly outdated major ride at the resort and is very much overdue for the overhaul they're planning.

And finally, I'm not sure I will ever get over the song on Arthur. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link it, but if you want to look it up yourself, it's the explicit version of Still D.R.E. by Dr. Dre, and it starts playing from the beginning as you enter Paradise Alley or whatever the bad part of bug-town is called. It is extremely explicit for what is ostensibly a children's ride and has a couple of words I'm not sure you can hear canonically on any other dark ride on the planet. And beyond the content, simply the fact that they licensed what must have been a very expensive Dr. Dre song instead of something cheaper that would have made the same point... I'd love to hear any background on how this came to be.

 

[Benzin]

I've always presumed that the particular song played on Arthur is in that sequence within the film. Especially as in the English version the character seen is voiced by Snoop Dogg (the villain is voiced by David Bowie ).

 

[Bowser]

I've always presumed that the particular song played on Arthur is in that sequence within the film. Especially as in the English version the character seen is voiced by Snoop Dogg (the villain is voiced by David Bowie ).

Coincidentally there was a mild uproar on social media about it this week:

An American visitor to Europa-Park is surprised by a scolding cannon in a family attraction. That can be seen in a video on social media. One Sophia took a ride in Arthur, the hanging darkride in the German amusement park. In one of the scenes, the beginning of Still D.R.E., a rap song by American artists Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg….

Amerikaanse vrouw verbaasd in Europa-Park: grove scheldwoorden te horen in familieattractie

Een Amerikaanse bezoeker van Europa-Park verbaast zich over een scheldkanonnade in een familieattractie. Dat is te zien in een filmpje op social...

www.looopings.nl

 

[Llama]

It's true, from an American perspective it's an incredibly shocking juxtaposition in the sense that I don't think you can hear any phrase stronger than "dang it" on any of Disney's dark rides. Beyond the initial shock, it is a very good song for that scene and on the few rides I had last week I did see many of the other riders dancing to it which was quite fun

 

[Matt N]

I could be wrong, but I get the impression they frequently have a slightly more relaxed attitude to things like swearing in mainland Europe.

My mum and dad went to Denmark recently, and they said there was a coffee advert somewhere with “Wake the f*** up” on it. You wouldn’t see that here!

 

[Benzin]

And nudity. And racial caricatures (a la Efteling before they updated Teacups & Carnaval Festival).

 

[Llama]

And nudity. And racial caricatures (a la Efteling before they updated Teacups & Carnaval Festival).

To their credit, with Josefina's Magical Boat Ride I think the Macks at least attempted to get out ahead of the latter item here

 

[djtruefitt]

You’ll hear swearing on the radio or tv all over Europe during the day time.

 

[DiogoJ42]

It's almost as if they realise that there are more important things to get worked up over than words.