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Trip Planning 2023/24: Information, advice and questions!

No there is no German holiday. Midsummer would be more like June 21, by the way. I have no idea why it is booked, sorry. Weekend Mid June may be busy depending on weather, but not extremely. Saturday will be worse than Friday and Sunday.
 
Wouldn't surprise me if it's something to do with the Euros. The opening ceremony and first match is on the 14th, albeit in Munich, but they'll no doubt put something on. Then there's a match in nearby(ish) Stuttgart on the Sunday.
 
We’ve just booked to stay in rust from 15/04-22/04 next year. Incredibly excited for our first visit to a theme park outside of the U.K. looking at doing 3 days at EP, a full day at Rulantica and potentially taking a drive up to Phantasialand!

are there car hire kiosks within rust or EP itself or would I have to pick a car up from a local airport and then drive to Phantasialand the following morning?
 
RustyRider said:
are there car hire kiosks within rust or EP itself or would I have to pick a car up from a local airport and then drive to Phantasialand the following morning?
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EP have a partnership with SIXT that means you can prebook a car to be collected and/or dropped off at Hotel Colosseo. No idea at how it works out in terms of pricing, but perhaps worth looking into.

www.europapark.de

Getting Here

The Europa-Park hotels, the Camp Resort and the Europa-Park Camping are located in the border triangle region of Germany, France and Switzerland and are therefore easy to reach. Whether you are travelling by car, public transport, a bus tour operator, long-distance bus or plane - here you will...
www.europapark.de www.europapark.de
 
RustyRider said:
We’ve just booked to stay in rust from 15/04-22/04 next year. Incredibly excited for our first visit to a theme park outside of the U.K. looking at doing 3 days at EP, a full day at Rulantica and potentially taking a drive up to Phantasialand!

are there car hire kiosks within rust or EP itself or would I have to pick a car up from a local airport and then drive to Phantasialand the following morning?
Click to expand...
Think we're going to do a similar trip with a family of 4 in August 2025 but taking the train. Let us know how you get on. 👍

Trying to work out whether to do
a) Manchester > ✈️ to Cologne > 🚉 or 🚕 to Phantasialand (2 day stay) > 🚉 to Europa (5 day stay) > 🚉 to Basel> ✈️ back to Manchester
Or
b) Manchester > ✈️ to Basel, 🚉 to Europapark > 🚉 to Phantasialand> 🚉 or 🚕 to Cologne > ✈️ to Manchester.
 
RustyRider said:
We’ve just booked to stay in rust from 15/04-22/04 next year. Incredibly excited for our first visit to a theme park outside of the U.K. looking at doing 3 days at EP, a full day at Rulantica and potentially taking a drive up to Phantasialand!

are there car hire kiosks within rust or EP itself or would I have to pick a car up from a local airport and then drive to Phantasialand the following morning?
Click to expand...
If it helps we recently hired a car through Budget and collected it on arrival at Karlsruhe / Baden Baden airport. There were also Sixt & Europcar desks within the arrivals terminal.
 
I tend to drive these days. I used to get the plane, but the costs are higher now and transfers expensive too. Train is lovely, but often Eurostar is stupidly expensive. If you can get 4 in a car, you can door-to-door return with fuel, ferry/shuttle, tolls and an overnight stay in each direction for £150pp. In this day and age, door-to-door for that using any other method is a real challenge.
 
Morning All

First post here

We are looking at going Europa-Park in may half term and we were originally only considering the flying then train option to also include phantasialand. Never driven abroad and do a lot of driving for work so enjoyed the break from it when going away

From reading past posts over the years . We live in the north west half hour from Alton towers so have a good selection of airports

The flying option was to cologne, two nights phantasialand then train down to europa park for a four night stay then flight back. This option is not looking great with availability or am I not looking at the right destination airports?

Yesterday I came home and thought sod it I’ll drive.

So looking now at drive down to Folkestone, maybe stay over then catch early train. Drive to phantasialand, 2 night stay, drive down to europa park for 4 night stay. But then put return in and it showed 8 hour drive back to Calais.

Is there anywhere nice to stop to break that journey up

When showed my boy the map he mentioned oh Walibi Belgium is near Brussels can we go there

So now thinking drive down get train to Calais. Drive close to Walibi Belgium stay night, 1 day in park, drive hour or two and stay over. Early start to europa park for 4 night stay. Drive to phantasialand 2 nights then Calais and back.

Any thoughts / advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks
Lee
 
Basel airport for EP, Köln airport for Phantasialand or Frankfurt/Stuttgart/Baden-Baden for flying in to the middle and going North then South. Plenty of UK flights going that way. What's your airport of preference for flying out?
 
Manchester to Basel has cheap enough flights. I'm not sure of trains between EP and Phantasia but driving in Germany is fairly easy.
 
I'm trying to figure out the Basel - Rust leg for the Easter meet, is this just a case of train from Basel to Ringsheim and then the EP shuttle bus?

Also not sure how easy it is to get from Basel airport to Basel SBB?

Seems like a lot of faffing about with luggage, and I don't typically travel light. Also think I'm looking at a London-based flight with an overnight stay, Bristol airport has once again proved woefully inadequate.

Driving is looking a lot more appealing right now!
 
Do they check ages at Rulantica? Looking on the website anything above baby slides has an age rating of 8+ would a tall 6 years old (way above the height restrictions) be allowed on? Doesn't really seem worth us visiting otherwise.
 
evilcod said:
Do they check ages at Rulantica? Looking on the website anything above baby slides has an age rating of 8+ would a tall 6 years old (way above the height restrictions) be allowed on? Doesn't really seem worth us visiting otherwise.
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They did not check Annabelle or Daisys age when we went, and most slides do not have a life guard controlling it.

They only seemed to care about height is my experience, for example Daisy went on Svalgur Rytt when she was 5.

Vikinglop is one that I would recommend going on first before you take an under ten on. We let Annabelle ride it, but not Daisy.
 
Manchester1894 said:
Think we're going to do a similar trip with a family of 4 in August 2025 but taking the train. Let us know how you get on. 👍

Trying to work out whether to do
a) Manchester > ✈️ to Cologne > 🚉 or 🚕 to Phantasialand (2 day stay) > 🚉 to Europa (5 day stay) > 🚉 to Basel> ✈️ back to Manchester
Or
b) Manchester > ✈️ to Basel, 🚉 to Europapark > 🚉 to Phantasialand> 🚉 or 🚕 to Cologne > ✈️ to Manchester.
Click to expand...
My preference would be phantasialand first then Europa park- phantasialand has great rides but is a smaller park so it's nice going to the big one later in the trip.

I've flown both to Basel and cologne, both are bleh airports for different reasons:
-Basel is confusing because it has a french/swiss side (my credit card approved for EU countries refused to work for the hire car as we were technically on the Swiss side)
-cologne airport has a second set of passport gates they don't warn you about with minimal staff that almost half our plane to Manchester got caught at and broke through the barriers to mob the passport desks. Unpleasant, but if you immediately go to gate instead of the first lounge you'll avoid that mess.
 
IanB said:
They did not check Annabelle or Daisys age when we went, and most slides do not have a life guard controlling it.

They only seemed to care about height is my experience, for example Daisy went on Svalgur Rytt when she was 5.

Vikinglop is one that I would recommend going on first before you take an under ten on. We let Annabelle ride it, but not Daisy.
Click to expand...
Ahh great news, Svalgur Rytt was one of the main ones I was looking at and thought the day could be hell if they could see things like that but not ride anything 😅

They won't want to do the super fast ones anyway but definitely a lot of the 8+ slides.
 
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