Toverland, Netherlands
Disclaimer, this entire trip was shot with a relative crappy phonecam. First up was Toverland, a relatively small Dutch theme-park that recently expanded with a new entrance area and a pretty awesome coaster.
Toverland started as a childrens playground and slowly expanded to the park it is today. With 3 coasters, and the standard log-flume/rapid river you can certainly spend at least half a day in the park if it isn't too busy.
The food was pretty good as well, with a nice pulled pork sandwich.
Their latest addition is a wing coaster that opened in 2018, which has an amazing ride!
Mannheim, Germany
After Toverland we took a day to drive to Holiday Park in Germany, which is located near Mannheim, where we spend the rest of the Saturday afternoon exploring the city center and Luisenpark, a very nice park to drink a beer or two.
After dinner we explored the town some more and went to bed, ready for the next day.
Holiday Park, Germany
The first coaster of the day was Expedition GeForce, an Intamin steal coaster that reaches speeds of upto 120 kilometres per hour. It's comparable to "Goliath" in Waliby Holland, but has much better airtime.
We took our time wandering around the park and explored the recently renovated (in Dinosaur theme) river rapids.
The second coaster was the Sky Scream, a launched full-loop coaster that was suprisingly fun!
After exploring the park a bit more we drove to our next destination:
Europapark, Germany
The "main attraction" of the trip, and ironically also the one with the least photos, as we were too busy making the most of our two days here.
When planning this trip we were slightly worried about the food in the parks, from what we could remember it used to consist mostly of pretty bad fries and typical German staples such as Schnitzel. And I must say that for almost all parks we were plesantly suprised by the quality of the food. This burger in Europapark was delicious.
To compensate for all the park food, we opted to eat slightly "healthier" food outside of the parks during dinner.
Tripsdrill, Germany
After Europapark it was time for the weirdest park of the trip. The theme throughout the park is "Germany" and originally it used to be a winery/restaurant. It is Germany's oldest amusement park and is still owned and managed by the same family.
A lot of investments were made into the park recently and the coaster count was boosted significantly.
The layout of the park is slightly confusing and there's a huge patch of grassland in the middle that doesn't seem to be used for anything. But the rides were really nice and the theming was quite good, compared to Holiday Park for example. I'd definitely recommend going here if you are in the neighbourhood.
Technik Museum Sinsheim
On our second travel day it was supposed to rain a lot and we didn't feel like exploring a city in the rain (Köln), and on our way to Tripsdrill we noticed a Concorde and a Tupolev Tu-144 perched on a rooftop. We decided to check it out.
Technik Museum Sinsheim is the largest private museum in Europe that receives over 1 million visitors per year. There are two main halls filled to the brim with either World War Two gear, or (classic) cars.
Food-wise we wanted to eat at a highly recommended Asian restaurant in Köln, but it was aparently out of business, so we went with the next best thing (and closest ;)) instead, Burrito's.
Phantasialand, Germany
We couldn't believe our luck, just 2 days before we were at the park, Phantasialand soft-opened their newest coaster for the public: F.L.Y. The first launched flying coaster in the world.
The area the coster was in opened at noon, and to fill the time we went around and rode all the other coasters (and water rides) first, starting with Taron.
Around noon we entered the Queue for Rookburgh, the area that F.L.Y was located at and after about an hour the line started moving. The coaster is amazing and the loading system is super inventive.
After two rides we decided to go for lunch and had one of the best burgers I've ever had. If you are in Phantasialand, definitely try the burger at the Restaurant in Rookburgh.
Since you have to queue again to get back into the area when you exit, we did a couple more re-rides and then spend the rest of the day exploring the rest of the park.
Dinner was a nice rice bowl at a local restaurant in Köln.
Moviepark, Germany
On our final day we visited Moviepark Germany, dueue to Covid, there weren't a lot of people in the park, and we were able to do everthing before 14:00 in the afternoon. Moviepark had it's best days in the past and it shows, there are a lot of places that could use a lick of paint or general fix-ups. The restaurant staff was supposed to open one of the few places you could eat at noon, but they did't arrive till half an hour later, the resulting burger wasn't that good either.
After all the amazing parks we visited in the past week it was a bit of a let-down. Word is there are new investments coming to the park, so lets hope they can give it some new life in the coming years.
If you want to see better photos and more detailed stories, go visit the Travel blog of Onno Groen, who accompanied me once again on this trip.
