"Dutch Disneyland" : Take the kids to Efteling theme park

Photo: Efteling

I'll be honest. The very words theme park make me lose the will to live. I picture myself trapped in a long, long queue, moving forwards inch-by-painful-inch, while being attacked by wasps, whingey kids and whiffs of hot-candy-dog-floss breath.

But a niggly little voice in my head kept taunting me: What kind of parent are you? Your daughter's almost 11 and you're not going to take her to do that whole Disney make-magical-childhood-memories thing even once?

So when I heard about Efteling theme park in the Netherlands – sometimes nicknamed the 'Dutch Disneyland' – my ears pricked up. It sounded sort of different. Sort of classy. Enticing even. I decided to take the risk ... and I didn't regret it one bit.

Here are 10 reasons to choose Efteling as an alternative to Disneyland.

#1  It's got the charm factor

Efteling was originally designed in the 50s by Dutch artist Anton Pieck – and you can feel the love! He insisted on using no concrete or plastic and paid incredible attention to detail. Even the bins are made of wicker baskets.

It's a bit like taking a stroll through a beautifully mature park, brimming with lakes, trees, flowers and quirky buildings – that just happens to have incredible rides and attractions in every nook and cranny. 

I mean, you don't expect to see a little gang of ducklings waddling towards the Haunted House, do you?

#2  It's humungus

Make no mistake. This is a Full Size theme park, as big and exciting as you could wish for. Twice the size of Disneyland California in fact. It's divided into four realms (Adventure, Fairy, Travel and Other) and to save your legs, a good-old fashioned stoomtrein runs around the whole park. 

But when I saw how gorgeous these little wooden carts for children were, I was desperate to pull my daughter every step of the way. 

"Er...Hellooo?" she protested. "I'm like, eleven." 

#3  It's fairytale (literally!)

Yes, Mickey Mouse, Dumbo and Disney Princesses are iconic, but any screen character is always going to feel a little superficial and commerical – especially when they're a human in a giant fluffy suit. Efteling, by contrast, is themed around fairytale, folklore and legend which taps into something deeper and more magical. The Fairytale Forest was truly enchanting. We followed meandering paths through the trees stumbling upon life-size creations of fairy stories that made us gasp just a little bit. 

I got an extra surge of excitement when I glimpsed Rapunzel in her tower through the trees. It was like my favourite childhood Ladybird book in real life.

#4  But you can still have a near-death experience (if that's your thing!)

You might think a theme park based on fairytale only has gentle, cutesy rides aimed at younger children. Wrong. There's a mind-blowing tangle of roller coasters. 

Like the one in darkness (Efteling's equivalent of Disney's Space Mountain), the one that flies off the track at the end and smashes you into water, the bobsleigh ride, and perhaps scariest of all, the one that plunges you vertically into a pit of steam – to the sound of angels singing! – and then immediately hauls you out upside down. Er, we gave that one a miss.

#5  You can avoid the crowds

The Dutch school holidays only overlap with the British ones so it is possible to visit at a time when the park is quiet. Really quiet. We went in the Easter holidays and waited in queues of 0 to10 minutes for each attraction. In two days we managed to do absolutely everything we wanted to do, everything we didn't think we wanted to do until we did it – and then do our favourites all over again.

#6  It's about half the price

Isn't it odd how you take your kids to places for their enjoyment but have to pay more for your own entrance ticket than you do for theirs? Efteling doesn't do that. Adult and child tickets are the same price – about £32 for the day. For a family of four, that works out at almost half the price of Disneyland Paris.

#7  There's a lack of tackiness

Nothing is in-your-face at Efteling, not even the souvenir shops and food outlets. Yes, you can buy a can of coke and a portion of chips (though you can eat them with mayonnaise the Dutch way). But you can can also buy more interesting things like Turkish pizza or these crunchy potato spirals on sticks, all at non-rip off prices. 

There are all kinds of restaurants too, whether you're after fish, vegetarian or a stack of Dutch pancakes, and they don't mind at all if you bring in your own picnic. We had to actually hunt out a souvenir shop before we left and I was surprised at how nice the stuff was. My daughter chose two jewels. "They're magic stones," she said. "This one gives you the power of invisibility and this one gives you the power of flying." That's the spirit. 

#8  It has beautiful places to stay

It was this picture of Efteling holiday village that first hooked me in. It looks like somewhere I might choose to stay with or without a theme park on the doorstep. Efteling has two 'villages' snuggled in woodlands – one with undergound houses. But we stayed at the Efteling Hotel with its moat and turrets just a few minutes walk away from the park. "Just follow the yellow footsteps!" smiled the receptionist and my daughter bounced out the door like she was off to see the wizard. 

She loved discovering all the little details in our room like the bedside table in mid-air, the TV hidden behind an ornate sliding mirror and the mouse peeping out from the skirting board.

"It's fit for queen!" I overheard her say to her dad on the phone as the waiter in the restaurant poured her chicken soup from a teapot. Making her own fairy bread and bumping into Sleeping Beauty at breakfast were unexpected bonuses too, even if she did refuse to have her picture taken with her. ("I know, I know, you're like eleven, right?")

#9  All the staff are friendly and fluent in English

Everyone seemed genuinely happy to work there. My daughter even commented on it. As a man helped her out of our boat onto a rotating platform after a ride through Dreamworld, she said, "He has to walk backwards in the dark all day and he's still in a good mood!" They all spoke really good English too. Some of the attractions in the park were based on Dutch stories unfamiliar to us, but that didn't detract from our pleasure. What's not to like about a pair of red shoes that dance through the streets on their own, or a monorail that travels through a village of gnomey people living in thatched hobbit houses?

On one ride, the insanely disorientating Mad House ("Mum, are you going to just stare at your thighs the whole time?" Yep.) we had to listen to a wise old wizard tell a story in Dutch for about eight minutes first, but that didn't put my daughter off wanting to go on it again. 

# 10  It's easy to get to

You can travel to Efteling easily from Amsterdam, Rotterdam or the nearest city, Eindhoven. We flew to Eindhoven with Ryanair for pocket money prices and then took a (double decker!) train and a bus to the park. "You going to Efteling?" asked the bus driver. "Oh, I'm jealous. I went there so many times as a child, and I still love it."

As we watched the spectacular light and fire show on the lake at the end of our last day, my daughter had one of those rare bursts of pure gratitude. "Thank you for bringing me here. It's awesome!" "That's okay," I said, mentally ticking the magical-childhood-memory box. 

"Shall we have a hot dog and a candyfloss for dinner?" 

Quirky World: 10 Things from our trip to Japan

My son is suddenly all grown up. Now 16, he’s got himself an apprenticeship and transformed himself overnight from off-the-rails schoolboy to mini-businessman. Now he does things things like wear a suit, catch commuter trains, go to team meetings and email clients. I’m still in a state of (relieved, exhausted) shock.

So in celebration of that, I thought I’d write a ‘retro post’. I’m picking out some quirky highlights from what he says was the best holiday of his whole childhood: our one-week trip to the Kansai region of Japan when he was 9. Just me and him. I have to agree it was a cracker.

  

1. Fake food & DIY restaurants

The land that loves raw fish – and blowfish that can kill you outright with one mouthful come to that – might not seem like an easy place to feed kids. Wrong.

So much of Japanese food is warming, comforting, filling and flippin’ delicious: from fat slabs of the squishiest toast in the world for breakfast to sweet, sticky, grilled chicken on sticks for dinner.

And what's really great is you can ‘see’ the food before you eat. Just about every cafe and restaurant has a window of droolingly realistic plastic models of the dishes they serve. “Just choose and point” I told my son.

 

Nope, these ice-cream sundaes aren't real either.

Eating in Japan is far more fun than functional anyway. We barbecued our own meat (yakiniku) at the table.

We mixed and flipped our own Japanese ‘pizza-pancake’ (okonomiyaki).

And we were never more than a few steps away from a HOT can ("ooh, ow") of hot chocolate from a vending machine.

2. Taking a "Bath Stroll"

Kinosaki is a small, pretty and charmingly old-fashioned town where the Japanese come to eat fresh crab and bathe in hot springs.

But you don't just take a dip. Oh no. There are seven bath-houses here, all with different features (waterfalls, cave-pools, mountain views...) and the tradition – or challenge! –  is to put on a kimono and and shuffle from one to another until you have sampled all of them.  

Within minutes of being welcomed at the traditional Japanese inn we were staying at, we'd been undressed and dressed in full Japanese garb by an old Japanese lady, presented with towels and flannels, a map of where the bath-houses were, coupons for free entry and thrust us out the door with the words, “OK, let’s enjoy Japanese baths!".

Clip-clopping down the street in our wooden shoes in broad daylight, felt something halfway between the excitement of going to a fancy dress party and the embarrassment of accidentally going out in my dressing gown. “Are you sure we’re meant to be wandering around like this?!” asked my son, giggling.

As we entered the first bath-house, I was pleased to find out my son could come in the female section with me (allowed up to puberty, apparently). He was not so pleased to find out he had to strip off naked. 

Copying everyone else, we began by sitting down on little stools with a shower hose and bucket and scrubbing every nook, cranny and crevice of ourselves. Then we eased –  no, grimaced and winced – ourselves into the insanely hot spring water. It was a bit like being boiled alive. 

We were really happy to discover the ‘Penguin Sauna’ – a sort of walk-in freezer for humans – set at -5°C. The contrast of temperature was an utter relief and pleasure. My son spent the rest of the time bounding backwards and forwards from bath to freezer enjoying the sensation.

How many bath-houses did we manage? Only three. Epic fail, as my son put it. 

3. Lift ladies

In Japan, customer is king with a capital K. And in department stores, this goes as far as employing "Elevator girls". Incredibly smart, polite, perfectly-groomed women in uniforms who ride up and down in the lift all day operating the buttons and bowing deeply to customers.

They are strangely fascinating. The way they gesture you in and out of the lift with precise, robotic hand signals. The way they announce in precise, sing-songy voices things like "Third floor, ladies underwear". We rode up and down in the lifts just so we could watch them.

“It must be a really boring job,” said my son after a while. “Let’s try and make this one laugh.” We tried our best but only managed to get the tiniest hint of a smirk out of her. Super-professional.

4. A cage full of humans
We were really excited about seeing wild monkeys at Arashiyama, a beautiful mountain park near Kyoto. Until we saw this sign. 

The woman at the ticket booth worried us even further, “Be very careful of the big monkey you meet. He is the chief and he gets angry very quickly. Also, it is mating season, so he gets angry even quicker." Oh crikey. 

Our hearts were pounding as we set off up the steep, narrow path, gripping each others hands. In our peripheral vision, we could see monkeys sitting in trees but daren't look up. "What's the point of coming to see wild monkeys if you're too scared to look at them?" asked my son. 

We should have known the Japanese had thought it all through. At the top of the mountain, we were surprised but relieved to be ushered into a cage. Inside, there were little bags of monkey nuts, apple and sweet potato to buy and within seconds we were surrounded by monkeys asking for food. 

And there was one more surprise. The way down the mountain, round the other side, began with a long, slippery slide.

5. Twisty train seats

We couldn’t resist a ride on the Bullet Train and nipped from Kyoto to Osaka for the super-smooth 27-miles-in-7-minutes journey. 

But even ordinary train rides were pretty fun. My son, a "kinaesthetically creative" creature (= likes to fiddle with everything) quickly discovered that at the push of a pedal you could flip the double train seats around to face either way to make a twosome or a foursome. He spent a long time trying out all the different permutations before finally settling down to his bento (or "packed lunch in compartments" as he called it) which we'd bought from the trolley man.

“This country is so organized,” he said, a more than satisfied passenger.

6. Build-your-own Barbie doll

Super Kids Land in Osaka is five whole floors of toys –  many of which we’d never seen the likes of before. From ingenious marble runs to miniature room kits to wooden sushi-making sets. 

But the most eye-boggling section of all was the build-your-own Barbie type doll section with a choice of heads, torsos and legs. Yep! Would you prefer a blonde, a brunette or a red-head, young madam? Large, medium or small breasts? Pear shape or straight up and down? I couldn't decide if this was a healthy thing for girls (celebrating that we're all different shapes and sizes) or if it was aimed at...erm...a different market altogether.

My son got so excited in the transport section he begged me to give him his next eight weeks' pocket money in one go so he could buy a Bullet Train set. (Fine by me. The perfect souvenir.) 

 

When we finally emerged after two hours of browsing, he said, “That’s got to be the best toy shop in the world." 

7. Singing in a box

In my own country I am not a fan of karaoke. I associate it with alco-pops and falling over in high heels to a screechy rendition of I Will Survive. But in Japan karaoke is a serious business. It was invented here after all. The idea is to sing well, sing earnestly, often traditional Japanese songs about love and heartache. So it was only right that we gave it a go.

We were unable to find a karaoke bar that let kids in, but we were directed instead to a "Karaoke Box" – our own private room, hired by the hour, with all the equipment we needed and six bulging books listing just about every song in the world. 

So with no-one watching, and still in our kimonos, we selected our favourite pop songs and sang our hearts out. Badly and frivolously. And I have to admit, that after a couple of beers, even I could kind of see the fun in it. I didn't fall over though.

8. The aquarium where you can eat the fish

You can touch rays at London Aquarium. You can do sleepovers at Plymouth Aquarium. But Marine World on the shore of the Sea of Japan takes the ‘experience’ concept to a whole new level. For a start, it must be the only aquarium in the world where you can catch a fish with a fishing rod and have it cooked for your lunch. 

We couldn't squeeze all the experiences on offer into one afternoon, so we opted for "Dive Adventure" where you are submerged into a tank of sea creatures in a sort of glass elevator... 

...and "Dolphin Trainer" where you get to wade into a pool of dolphins and learn how to get them to do tricks like waving goodbye and turning in circles.

9. Big wheel on the side of a building

The HEP 5 (Hanky Entertainment Park) in Osaka is a building bursting with fun and gluttony. You can mess about in purika (photo sticker) machines, play old-school arcade games and eat ice-cream sundaes as big as your head. There's even a virtual theme park on the top floor where we tried "Sky-cruising" – a scarey 3D ride where you sit in a simulated hang-glider together and steer yourselves at top speed through mountains, waterfalls, forests and caves.

But our first stop was the seventh floor because this is where – bizarrely – you board the giant ferris wheel. This is because it is actually fixed high off the ground on the side of the building itself. It gives you spectacular views of the whole city. There is even a diagram of the skyline on the window of each pod so you can pick out landmarks.

10. Naked with strangers in a lift

We spent the final afternoon of our holiday at Osaka Spa World, an incredible multi-storey complex of water-based fun and relaxation. Indoor baths, outdoor baths, salt baths, herb baths, mud baths, jacuzzis, steam rooms, streams, bridges, gardens... There's even a family water park on the top floor.

My son, however, was reluctant. “I did not come to Japan to keep getting naked with lots of Japanese women,” he said as we entered the ladies changing rooms. 

“And I am definitely not wearing those,” he added, pointing to the pink pyjamas they'd given us to relax in afterwards.

But just two minutes later he was in the buff and splashing from bath to bath like a born-again baby elephant, squealing, “This place is amazing!” 

Eventually we decided to head up to the water park. But what was the etiquette? Should we put on our pyjamas to travel between floors? Er..no...it seemed this was unnecessary. So then there we were. In the lift. Naked. With other people. And we didn't even care.

We were almost disappointed to find that we had to put swimming costumes on to go into the water park. Which we had all to ourselves (yep, it was a school day in Japan!). 

We got a double raft for the two of us and rode down a terrifying dark roller-coaster of a flume which shot us into this giant plug-hole where we were spun round and round before being plunged backwards into the pool. My son was ecstatic.

Finally, we settled down in a roof-top jacuzzi just as it was getting dark and the neon lights of the city were coming on. It was magical. “I don’t want to go home tomorrow,” said my son. 

Then he put on the pink pyjamas.

Quirky World: Warsaw, the cheapest foreign family trip ever (and yes, cheerful too!)

“Isn’t it a bit grim there?” was the general gist of the response we got when we told people we were going to Warsaw for a few days last Easter. “Krakow is much nicer, you know?” 

I knew, I knew. But money was tight and flights and accommodation for this trip for all four of us were inside £300! The cost of living would be cheap when we got there too. If you're looking for a budget-to-beat-all-budgets foreign trip to do with your family in the school Easter holidays (from the UK), this is it! Anyway, I like to go against the grain.

I mean, how bad could it be? As it turned out, not at all. Flippin’ great in fact. Warsaw was a surprisingly attractive city, criss-crossed with trams and crammed with fun, free or unbelievably affordable things to do with children. 

Here’s some of our highlights.

1. Lazienki Park 

Lazienki Park, the biggest park in Warsaw, is teeming with red squirrels! The littlest, cutest, perkiest, tuftiest, fluffiest creatures that make the grey squirrels that have overtaken Britain look like large rats with puffed-up tails. And with patience, you can get them to eat seeds from your hand. 

Just the right amount of patience – maybe 3, 4, 5 minutes – not so long that you give up interest, but long enough to give you a real thrill and make you punch the air (mentally!) when it happens. We became determined, addicted even, shuffling around in a squatting position with our hands out like crazy little diddymen.

And we certainly seemed to have the Dr. Doolittle effect on animals that day. At one point, a bird even flew down onto my husband's hand.

And when my son hovered with a seed over a hole he'd spotted, a tiny mouse popped its head up and took it!

I should tell you that the park also has roaming peacocks, palaces on islands, orangeries, an amphitheatre, people on handcycles – and American Civil War re-enactors the day we were there! But for us, the gentle nibble-nubble of red squirrels eating out of our hands, that was more than enough to keep us happy. 

 

2. University of Warsaw library

by Justine Jablonska/CC BY-ND 2.0

Why on earth would you take your kids to a university library on holiday? Because this particular university library is one wacky building. Inside and out. 

The facade is pretty striking in itself, but inside amongst the books is a playground of futuristic glass walkways and bridges and lifts to explore – as long as you play reasonably quietly! 

by Annaspies/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

And that's not all. After that, you can also climb up onto the roof where there's a huge and funky garden (one of the largest roof gardens in Europe), which was – put simply in my daughter’s words – “epic”.

by Bartosz MORAG/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

“It’s like Tellytubby land,” she said. “But on a roof.” There were bridges, domes, sculptures – and a very big hole. (Can you spot us?)

You also get a great view of the Warsaw skyline from up here. Oh, and did I mention, it's free entry!

I think in my next life, I’ll be a student at Warsaw University and spend rather a lot of time at the library instead of the pub.


3. Warsaw Zoo

"It's probably cheaper for us to fly to Warsaw for the day and go to the zoo here than it is for us to go to London Zoo!" remarked my son. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Tickets for us to get into Warsaw Zoo were 70 zloty (bout £13). That's not each. £13 TOTAL!

As it was a school day in Warsaw, we also had the place almost entirely to ourselves. The only other people were three mothers with toddlers, a TV presenter and camera crew making a children's programme and a PhD student doing a 15-hour observation of gorilla behaviour. We got to see all the animals up close and personal, and all the biggies were there: elephants, hippos, giraffes, lions, rhinos, tigers, even a polar bear.

It was a real Topsy and Tim Go To The Zoo kind of experience! 

Perhaps the zoo was ever-so-slightly concrete-heavy in places, with a tinge – just a tinge – of sadness here and there, but no more than zoos in Britain I've been to. In the end, it's a zoo.

The kangaroos seemed pretty chilled-out.

And the two gorillas were very happy chappies and thoroughly entertaining with their wrestling, chasing, chest-thumping antics. 

"They're play-fighting" the PhD student explained to us."They're adolescent males and they need to establish who is going to be the dominant male." Mmm ... not dissimilar to a certain member of our family when he's with his friends.

4. The Copernicus Science Centre  

This humongous, state-of-the-art, hands-on (or whole-bodies-on for many of the exhibits!) science museum was better than any I've visited in the UK. Allow 3-5 hours for a visit, their website says! 

It was busy (we went on a Sunday) but I noticed and loved that the Polish people – kids and adults – seemed to approach each exhibit with a real focus and desire to learn. They didn't just press a few buttons, pull a few levers and move onto the next thing. They wanted to do things properly.

We experienced what it’s like to be in an earthquake, walk on the moon, manoeuvre a wheelchair, and so, so, so much more. 

And the price of a family ticket? 66 zloty (= less than £12).

5. The National Stadium

My son, as I mentioned when we stayed in West Ham United Hotel, is stadium-crazy. So we couldn’t not go to the Stadion Naradowy, an impressive, 58,000-seater stadium with retractable roof. Even for me and my daughter who groan when we even hear the word ‘football’, walking into that vast, cavernous space had quite an impact. 

My son went still and quiet, imagining a game in action I could tell, while my daughter became lively and excited. She wanted us to all to sit as far apart as possible on different levels of the stadium so she could run around and up and down between us. “Give me messages and I'll be like the email going between you!” she said. 

We paid 30 zloty (= £5.30) for all of us to go in and have a look, but you can also do a tour, have a family brunch overlooking the stadium on a Sunday and catch all kinds of events through the year –from the Indoor Windsurfing World Cup (they fill the stadium with water!) to an extreme rope slide experience for kids with speeds of over 60km/hour. 

6. Milk bars 

A milk bar or Bar mleczny in Polish is one of the old communist-era cafeterias, where workers whose companies did not have canteens could have a cheap, nourishing lunch. Many have been preserved and are charmingly nostalgic places to eat – if you're brave!

The system is simple, or should be: You order your food at the till, get a ticket and then collect it from a hatch when it's ready.

However, the women who work in these places are extremely ... erm ... business-like, and helping foreigners decipher the menu is clearly not in their job spec!

by Mohylek/CC By 3.0

So we sold it to the kids as a 'Mystery Lunch Experience' and took our luck by pointing at random words on the board. And we were pretty lucky! We weren't entirely sure what it all was, but it was all tasty, filling and around 45 zloty (= around £8) for the lot. We'd eaten most of it by the time this photo was taken but the tomato soup with the pasta in it was a big hit with my daughter.

After that, we looked out for a Milk Bar every lunch-time and we got a lot better at them: re-ordering things we’d particularly liked, pointing to other people’s dishes that looked good and matching up words on the menu with words in the food section of our phrase book.

It was a fun way to sample tradtional Polish food like borscht (beetroot soup) and pirogi (dumplings) at non-touristy prices. 

7. Our apartment

We booked a 2-bedroom apartment for four nights through a scheme called Bed4City at £22.50/night. (That's less than the price of a Premier Inn in an unpopular location on a weekday!) Yes, it was in a forest of drab, suburban, ex-communist tower blocks. Yes, the lift was scarily antiquated and juddery. But don't be fooled by the outside. The inside went way beyond what we'd expected for the price. 

It was warm, spacious, modern, spotlessly clean, quiet, fully-equipped, opposite a supermarket and a few minutes walk away from a tram stop for the 10-minute journey into the city centre. My son was particularly delighted to discover he had his own walk-in wardrobe. 

Perfect for the two screwed-up T-shirts he'd packed.

We flew from London Standsted to Warsaw with Ryanair and booked our apartment through booking.com.