Little girls and their dreams,
Ever since I was a little girl, like a lot of little girls (and boys), going to a theme park and spending a night in the hotel at the theme park was high on my bucket list. I assumed this was for my youngest daughter not any different even tho she is less aware of all these things then I was.
In the Netherlands, you can find one of the oldest theme parks in the whole world. The Efteling. The attractions in the park reflect elements from fairytales, myths ancient legends fables and folklore. It is also the largest theme park in the Netherlands and even twice the size of the original Disneyland park in Florida and predates it by three years.
It was first opened on May 31, 1952. The story goes that Disney based his parks on the Efteling after studying Anton Piecks work in the Efteling before he started his own parks. You can find more info about the Efteling on Wikipedia of course.
Two vacation parks with their own hotel and cabins and a separate Hotel with themed suites are run by the Efteling management. They also run Villa Pardoes which hosts children with serious diseases and their families to give them a short stay to give the family a chance to forget all of their problems for just a short time.
Now let’s skip more the information on the Efteling and go to the fun part that I’m excited to tell you all. I was able to book a short stay in one of the Hotels at only 5 MINUTES walking from the Efteling park entrance! I kid you not! We had an amazingly cute little apartment in the middle of the woods where we stayed for three days!
The first day, the day of arrival on Wednesday, August 21 we left Amsterdam shortly after nine o clock in the morning and we arrived a little after eleven at the entrance of the park where the bus stop was. I was not sure about our time of arrival so I had not made a reservation for the cab that would take us to the reception of the accommodation.
We were lucky though there was another family that just had arrived and they did make a reservation. The mom and children would go already ahead and enjoy themselves in the park while their dad would drop off the luggage. There was plenty of room in the cab left and I asked if I could ride along since they were staying at the same vacation park.
It was not a problem since there were no other reservations so I was lucky. We could not check into our accommodation until 3 o clock. I had already received all the tickets by mail so after we dropped off our luggage we went straight to the theme park. It was really a short walk that took absolutely no longer as 5 minutes if it wasn’t for the squirrel that we met on our way there.
We explored the park and enjoyed the rides as it was still early and not very busy yet there were little to no waiting lines. Around 4 ish we walked back to the entrance of the vacation park and checked in. Got our luggage and checked out the cute little apartment we got to stay in the next few days before we went back to the theme park for another few hours.
It was an amazing time where I finally came to relax and enjoyed life for a little bit. My daughter had a wonderful time, enjoyed some of the thrill rides alone that I had to skip due to my claustrophobia and anxiety. But most of the rides we did together and even more as once! My daughter got to meet the theme parks mascotte and even got to fistbump walk hand in hand and hug him before he had to go on his break.
We enjoyed the food in the park and the weather, the beautiful environment, each others company, and life. For the second day, I also got some tickets for the musical in the Eftelings theater which was a welcome change of entertainment. Back in the hotel, my daughter was exhausted and after watching a little bit of tv she went to sleep while I took a nice relaxing bath.
The last day came way too soon altho my feet were hurting already after two days walking most of the day and with no other pair of shoes than the ones on my feet. I laid out our clothes already the evening before and packed whatever I could already so in the morning I had little to do anymore.
We took our luggage with us to the entrance of the vacation park where also the restaurant was where we had breakfast. My daughter met there with a princess who visited guests at their tables during breakfast. We stored the luggage again and had little time loss to enjoy the theme park again after breakfast.
A little after six in the evening and a full last day of Efteling rides with even 5 times! doing the Piranha that day alone along with many other things I decided it was time to return home. On our way to the gates, we ran into the beginning of the parade and my daughter got to see a lot of the other characters of the theme park as well.
Finally back at the reception of our accommodation we met with one last character, The Sandman. The vacation parks theme is from this character and he would tell every evening a story however since we stayed late in the park we never got to see him until now. That was just one more unexpected surprise for my girl.
Finally, after storytime was over we got to leave. It was almost 7 o clock now and I asked if it was possible to ride with the cab again since again I had no reservation for one. The cab, however, had a reservation but these people were late and the driver let me know that she could drive us anyway.
Everything on this trip went smooth. back at the bus station after 7 minutes waiting the bus came and not even 2 hours and a train and metro ride later we where back home in Amsterdam where I finally could kick my sneakers off my sore feet :).
Many more pictures of my trip you can find on my Instagram!
