Furiustobaco
Mega Poster
Europa Park is a park that I always have completely adored, this is pretty evident reading some of my posts. Before last week my last visit was 2019. This somewhat left a question in my mind that maybe this was just nostalgia? It is very easy to remember the best of a park instead of its gaping flaws, especially when you visit sparingly. I booked this trip with Voltron in mind, I had to ride their new premier coaster. Well, i jumped the gun here guys. When the opening date was announced, I was pretty annoyed. Luckily i have booked a very short trip in May to get the cred. Anyway I want to express in this report WHY Europa Park wipes the floor with Portaventura, Energylandia, Cedar Point, and Phantasialand IMO. The golden ticket awards are usually regarded as complete nonsense half the time, but I agree with the heavy amount of awards this park receives.
CROWD MANAGEMENT:
Theme parks can be painful with high crowds. 180 minutes queues, a queue of 100 ultra mega fastrack buyers while the standby queue waits 40 minutes to move. A park like Portaventura just completely demonstrates the intense pain that large crowds bring. A park like PA just love to dispatch their trains every 4 minutes during a 2 hour queue to force you into their fastpass system. In PA if it is busy it is practically impossible to enjoy yourself. The fastpass system is incredibly unbalanced and practically ruins the experience for anyone who has not purchased fastpass themselves. Phantasialand and Cedar Point are a lot less extreme, but they still have their problems with crowd management, and both use a fastrack system. Throughputs are a good example. Steel Vengeance is the most popular ride at CP, but has a pretty mediocre throughput. Europa Park is a breath of fresh air with the crowds, i went on a "busy day" and the queues maxed at 40 minutes. No fastrack BS, no low throughput BS, no dispatching trains once every decade. Despite having a huge queue of people, rides like Euro Mir have queues that feel like they are moving too fast at times. You look at your phone for 20 seconds, and the person in front is 10 feet away. The ride was maybe dispatching one train every like 20-30 seconds, I have seen this so many times, but it never ceases to amaze me. The Mack family know how annoying queueing is, how annoying it is when park tries to squeeze your wallet to skip those dreaded queues. So, they don't. They also build rides that are practical, throughput conscious. rides that eat the very huge crowds they are trying to attract and receive.
Europa Park also has a layout that makes Crowds seem smaller to me. Maybe it is the sheer scale of the park with the winding long pathways, but the park despite being very busy seemed quiet in places. I didn't worry about the crowds after entering as it seems the layout spreads the crowds finely. I walked onto a lot of the dark rides due to the sheer amount of them, or the good throughput Mack decides to give to them (except the small scale ones). I queue about 20 minutes each for Cancan, Blue Fire, Wodan, Silver Star, the biggest queue was Arthur at 30 minutes. This is Europa on the busier end, and the park is still incredibly enjoyable. The extended hours on busy days just makes this even more of a consumer friendly move.
OPERATIONS:
This ties in with the above, but the operations at Europa are just the best. I doubt i will see a park better at this. Watching Cancan, Silver Star, Swiss Bob Run, Euro-Mir, basically every ride there just makes me wonder why we cannot have this in the UK. I didn't even know Swiss Bob Run runs this many trains. I also did not see a SINGLE breakdown during my TWO full days in this park. What, the, f**k. Name a park where things dispatch at 25 second intervals, nothing breaks down, and throughputs can be 1500+ on a regular basis.
FOOD:
Europa Park managed to impress me with their food of all things. I remember liking the food last time but this time really validated that opinion further. I ate at the Pizza Restaurant nearby Picollo Mondo in Italy, and it was really good. My partner is a coeliac and it can become hard at parks. After asking, they took 5 minutes and served up a really good quality GF Pizza. Amongst the best we have seen like ever, they also had two gluten free cakes which is also pretty rare sadly to find. We came back for the second day as we were beyond happy with the food here. Food is not bad at CP or Phantasialand from my experience, but it wasn't this good. Portaventura might as well just serve prison food.
THEMING:
Now, parks like Phantasialand and PA both have amazing theming equally. Europa Park though i feel really competes here, but i would say it is arguably prettier than Phantasialand. I think the Swiss/French/Italy areas really standout as exceptional. I think the park's extensive pathways help this. The Swiss area has quite a lot of pathways at the back that do not really go anywhere. You could just sit there by the little river with a drink and chill. Same for the french area with the fountains. The German area has similar seats by the river which are generally quite peaceful. Europa Park sometimes has areas that don't even feel like a bloody theme park. This is what cuts it apart from PA and Phantasia IMO. It is so big, you can literally lose yourself in the Swiss Area for a hour having a drink if you want. Sometimes slowing down for the scenery feels just as fun as lapping Blue Fire. Theming is also quite extensive- this shines best on Poseidon and Arthur potentially the best. Pirates in Batavia could be the best showcase.
DARK RIDES:
Europa Park probably has one of the highest collection of Dark Rides outside of Disney/Universal, but just tier list them:
S: Pirates, Voletarium, Arthur
A: (Dinosaur Acid trip, Snorri Touren)
B: Atlantis Adventure, Picollo Mondo, Cassandra's Curse
F: Bench
Blue Fire, Whales Tours, Josefina's, Fjord Rafting, and others all have dark ride moments too!
I personally adore rides, and i think Europa Park basically gives you a buffet of them.
RIDES/OVERALL
Europa Park lacks an elite coaster, which will change very shortly most likely. Europa Park has a modest collection of coasters, not perfect, but i would say they have a very solid top 5 coasters. The park is a family park, so it is not B&M stacked with 400 foot monsters. Europa Park however has a really great balance of attractions IMO. Even the most standard of attractions (Dodgems, Rapids) have a fun angle to them. Fjord is the best rapids, Arena of Football is the best Bumper Cars. I feel Europa Park is a park you should take your time to do these usually boring and standard attractions. Whale Tours is a great example- i usually find this model dull, so the random dark ride ending just feels so elaborate and needlessly nice.
Europa Park is truly more than a Theme park- it is somewhere you can relax, somewhere where you can enjoy the food, it breaks all the stress of the usual theme park flaws. It is true immersion IMO, and no park brings more enjoyment more than EP for me.
For people who have not visited, I would recommend staying in Rust if you cannot afford the onsite hotel (like us). Rust is a small, cutesy walkable German town. It has tons of lovely places to eat and sleep, and is a nice place to be in general. Rulantica is something i did not get time for, but will add to my next visit. I would say Europa Park itself is 2-3 day park for me, maybe 1 if you just speedrun the creds. For getting here with public transport, Basel and Baden Baden are two good options. Basel though is a little tricky, but not bad with flixbus. I visited Basel for a few days after, and i think honestly i would maybe stick to a day trip. Lovely city but roaringly expenisve, i will go the Baden-Baden route next time, i believe the trains are cheaper. The trains from Basel came up as incredibly expensive hence using Flixbus. Flixbus was comfy, but always late. I might add on a Voltron review to this thread in May, as i have planned a redemption trip to get on Voltron.
CROWD MANAGEMENT:
Theme parks can be painful with high crowds. 180 minutes queues, a queue of 100 ultra mega fastrack buyers while the standby queue waits 40 minutes to move. A park like Portaventura just completely demonstrates the intense pain that large crowds bring. A park like PA just love to dispatch their trains every 4 minutes during a 2 hour queue to force you into their fastpass system. In PA if it is busy it is practically impossible to enjoy yourself. The fastpass system is incredibly unbalanced and practically ruins the experience for anyone who has not purchased fastpass themselves. Phantasialand and Cedar Point are a lot less extreme, but they still have their problems with crowd management, and both use a fastrack system. Throughputs are a good example. Steel Vengeance is the most popular ride at CP, but has a pretty mediocre throughput. Europa Park is a breath of fresh air with the crowds, i went on a "busy day" and the queues maxed at 40 minutes. No fastrack BS, no low throughput BS, no dispatching trains once every decade. Despite having a huge queue of people, rides like Euro Mir have queues that feel like they are moving too fast at times. You look at your phone for 20 seconds, and the person in front is 10 feet away. The ride was maybe dispatching one train every like 20-30 seconds, I have seen this so many times, but it never ceases to amaze me. The Mack family know how annoying queueing is, how annoying it is when park tries to squeeze your wallet to skip those dreaded queues. So, they don't. They also build rides that are practical, throughput conscious. rides that eat the very huge crowds they are trying to attract and receive.
Europa Park also has a layout that makes Crowds seem smaller to me. Maybe it is the sheer scale of the park with the winding long pathways, but the park despite being very busy seemed quiet in places. I didn't worry about the crowds after entering as it seems the layout spreads the crowds finely. I walked onto a lot of the dark rides due to the sheer amount of them, or the good throughput Mack decides to give to them (except the small scale ones). I queue about 20 minutes each for Cancan, Blue Fire, Wodan, Silver Star, the biggest queue was Arthur at 30 minutes. This is Europa on the busier end, and the park is still incredibly enjoyable. The extended hours on busy days just makes this even more of a consumer friendly move.
OPERATIONS:
This ties in with the above, but the operations at Europa are just the best. I doubt i will see a park better at this. Watching Cancan, Silver Star, Swiss Bob Run, Euro-Mir, basically every ride there just makes me wonder why we cannot have this in the UK. I didn't even know Swiss Bob Run runs this many trains. I also did not see a SINGLE breakdown during my TWO full days in this park. What, the, f**k. Name a park where things dispatch at 25 second intervals, nothing breaks down, and throughputs can be 1500+ on a regular basis.
FOOD:
Europa Park managed to impress me with their food of all things. I remember liking the food last time but this time really validated that opinion further. I ate at the Pizza Restaurant nearby Picollo Mondo in Italy, and it was really good. My partner is a coeliac and it can become hard at parks. After asking, they took 5 minutes and served up a really good quality GF Pizza. Amongst the best we have seen like ever, they also had two gluten free cakes which is also pretty rare sadly to find. We came back for the second day as we were beyond happy with the food here. Food is not bad at CP or Phantasialand from my experience, but it wasn't this good. Portaventura might as well just serve prison food.
THEMING:
Now, parks like Phantasialand and PA both have amazing theming equally. Europa Park though i feel really competes here, but i would say it is arguably prettier than Phantasialand. I think the Swiss/French/Italy areas really standout as exceptional. I think the park's extensive pathways help this. The Swiss area has quite a lot of pathways at the back that do not really go anywhere. You could just sit there by the little river with a drink and chill. Same for the french area with the fountains. The German area has similar seats by the river which are generally quite peaceful. Europa Park sometimes has areas that don't even feel like a bloody theme park. This is what cuts it apart from PA and Phantasia IMO. It is so big, you can literally lose yourself in the Swiss Area for a hour having a drink if you want. Sometimes slowing down for the scenery feels just as fun as lapping Blue Fire. Theming is also quite extensive- this shines best on Poseidon and Arthur potentially the best. Pirates in Batavia could be the best showcase.
DARK RIDES:
Europa Park probably has one of the highest collection of Dark Rides outside of Disney/Universal, but just tier list them:
S: Pirates, Voletarium, Arthur
A: (Dinosaur Acid trip, Snorri Touren)
B: Atlantis Adventure, Picollo Mondo, Cassandra's Curse
F: Bench
Blue Fire, Whales Tours, Josefina's, Fjord Rafting, and others all have dark ride moments too!
I personally adore rides, and i think Europa Park basically gives you a buffet of them.
RIDES/OVERALL
Europa Park lacks an elite coaster, which will change very shortly most likely. Europa Park has a modest collection of coasters, not perfect, but i would say they have a very solid top 5 coasters. The park is a family park, so it is not B&M stacked with 400 foot monsters. Europa Park however has a really great balance of attractions IMO. Even the most standard of attractions (Dodgems, Rapids) have a fun angle to them. Fjord is the best rapids, Arena of Football is the best Bumper Cars. I feel Europa Park is a park you should take your time to do these usually boring and standard attractions. Whale Tours is a great example- i usually find this model dull, so the random dark ride ending just feels so elaborate and needlessly nice.
Europa Park is truly more than a Theme park- it is somewhere you can relax, somewhere where you can enjoy the food, it breaks all the stress of the usual theme park flaws. It is true immersion IMO, and no park brings more enjoyment more than EP for me.
For people who have not visited, I would recommend staying in Rust if you cannot afford the onsite hotel (like us). Rust is a small, cutesy walkable German town. It has tons of lovely places to eat and sleep, and is a nice place to be in general. Rulantica is something i did not get time for, but will add to my next visit. I would say Europa Park itself is 2-3 day park for me, maybe 1 if you just speedrun the creds. For getting here with public transport, Basel and Baden Baden are two good options. Basel though is a little tricky, but not bad with flixbus. I visited Basel for a few days after, and i think honestly i would maybe stick to a day trip. Lovely city but roaringly expenisve, i will go the Baden-Baden route next time, i believe the trains are cheaper. The trains from Basel came up as incredibly expensive hence using Flixbus. Flixbus was comfy, but always late. I might add on a Voltron review to this thread in May, as i have planned a redemption trip to get on Voltron.
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Super excited to put it all behind me and go and appreciate what is honestly one of the best theme parks out there. (I'm hoping Voltron can elevate the park's coaster lineup to be more in line with the quality of the park in general, because the actual coaster lineup was Europa's weakest point imo. Several good, solid, coasters, but nothing elite, exactly as you said.
I’m not sure how they are so enthusiastic, but it’s certainly a really good look for EP.