It’s the old tortoise and the hare scenario—while other parks add newer and faster coasters and thrill rides every year, Efteling’s slow and steady pace seems to be winning the race. Facing competition from nearby thrill parks, the Dutch amusement park brings in three million visitors a year by creating a world where children’s fantasies come to life. By Jessica Myer Top Thrill Dragster is too big for Efteling. In fact, plunking any spanking new mammoth steel coaster that zips 120 mph down a 400-foot drop in the middle of the 51-year-old park would be like giving Little Red Riding Hood a cell phone and a can of mace: It would change the entire story and disrupt a delicately constructed balance of natural beauty and child-like wonder that took half a century to cultivate. Although Efteling amusement park, whose themes are based on fairy tales and legends, doesn’t strive for the thrills and adrenaline-pumping rides that many other parks crave, there’s still a major emphasis on staying current. Last year, the park spent €35 million on PandaVision and the first phase of its new Entertainment Centre that includes a 1,200-seat theater, the fifth largest in Holland, and another €100 million on the initial phase of the Dream Realm, a new themed location for holiday accommodations. Last year’s fiftieth anniversary set an all-time attendance record at Efteling—3.4 million guests. One of the reasons people went to Efteling in 2002 was to experience PandaVision, the fruits of a first-of-its-kind alliance between the park and the Worldwide Fund For Nature (WWF). PandaVision features an animal discovery center and 4D attraction illustrating different environmental challenges facing the planet. With the Efteling Hotel and 225-acre golf course experiencing great success, the park has just one more plan in the works—build, build, build. Projects are underway throughout the 180-acre park, for a total cost of close to €200 million. The Dream Realm and the next phases of the Entertainment Centre are the two biggest undertakings, but other capital improvements are still going on all over. In the midst of all these changes, this quaint and nostalgic park is about to embark on its biggest challenge yet: to become a year-round destination. Once Upon a Time The story goes that in 1933, two priests, Father De Klijn and Father Rietra, decided to create a sports park for the children in the small town of Kaatsheuvel. Two years later, the R.C. Sports and Rambling Park opened with a few playing fields and some sports equipment. In 1949, when the region, like much of Europe, experienced an economic boom after WWII, the municipality decided to expand the park and add a lake, walking paths, parking areas, tennis courts, and more sports fields. The Efteling Nature Park Foundation was established. The former sports park was beginning to resemble what would become the most visited theme park in Holland. To this day Efteling views nature as one of its most important elements, spending a great deal of time and money on conservation and education. Communications director Henk Groenen says the chaplains made a very fortunate choice. “As Efteling got bigger and bigger, all the money they got they invested in land, so we have more than 944 acres. Only 180 are developed for the park.” Between 1949 and 1952 Anton Pieck, a master of oil painting, woodcarvings, and engravings, designed Efteling and many of its attractions based on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Anderson, and the Grimm Brothers. Pieck had previously made a career of illustrating books for fairy tale and folklore collections, including Shahrazad’s Arabian Nights. His style of rendering characters and buildings carries through today in every aspect of Efteling. In Pieck’s designs there are very few straight lines, which creates challenges for the designers who followed in later years. But Pieck had two conditions when he was considering whether to create the park: everything had to be built with real stones and wood and that everything had to be built in the image of his drawings. Groenen says, “There’s an old story at Efteling that says the craftsmen who created the park had to drink brandy before they started to work, but it’s all Pieck’s style.” On May 31, 1952, Efteling unveiled the addition that finally anchored its identity: the Fairy Tale Forest. Here, popular stories like The Troll King, The Chinese Nightingale, The Frog Prince, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White come to life. In its first year 222,941 people paid $.82 for each visit to the Forest. Today the Fairy Tale Forest is visited by millions who come to see 33 beloved children’s stories played out before them. Children watch in awe as the Irritable Dragon guards his treasure, nostrils flaring with smoke; the computerized Troll King sits on his tree throne predicting the future, moving his arms, wrists, hips, and back—he has 26 computer functions, nine in his head alone. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the little park grew, building new facilities, attractions, and shows; offering more activities every year; and bringing larger crowds than Father De Klijn and Father Rietra would have ever dreamed. Piecking Success From the entryway Efteling’s spindly towers beckon, promising a strange fantasy world that, even today with all the recent additions, takes visitors to another time and place somewhere in their imaginations. The park is divided into four realms or “rijken,” each with a different theme but the same Pieck-esque quality; the Fairy Realm, with the Fairy Tale Forest and the most-visited attraction, DreamFlight; the Travel Realm, with the indoor coaster Bird Rok, featuring the animatronic exploration Fata Morgana, the Forbidden City; the Alternative Realm, which houses PandaVision and the Entertainment Centre; and the Adventure Realm, with the Python and the Pegasus roller coasters. The decision to add coasters was initially a difficult one, facing strong local opposition from people who felt coasters would change the tone of the park. Back in the early 1980s, the park’s attractions were almost exclusively aimed at young children. The Fairy Tale Forest continued to grow, but the park wanted to attract a wider age group with exciting rides. The Python, a looping Vekoma-built coaster, was the largest steel coaster in Europe in 1981 when it debuted at Efteling. Groenen says the coasters had a major impact. Today, nearly 95 percent of Dutch people have visited Efteling an average of seven times each, a statistic virtually unmatched anywhere in the world. But those figures aren’t a stroke of luck, Groenen says. The Efteling staff of more than 2,000 full-time and part-time employees works very hard to ensure that themes and styles are infused throughout the park, the hotel, and the golf course. The Theme Team At the Efteling Hotel’s restaurant, the butter is served in the image of Pardoes, the jester-like host and mascot. Theming, Groening says, is key to Efteling’s success and must be a part of everything they do. There are several themes to maintain—the Anton Pieck style, the fairy tales and characters, and especially the branding image of Pardoes, which is everywhere you look. For almost 40 years, this concept of theming was led by Ton van de Ven, the creative director of Efteling until his retirement earlier this year. Van de Ven made it his mission to keep the park in line with Anton Pieck’s vision. “I went right to the top to prevent plans that I did not think fit with the unmistakable atmosphere that characterizes Efteling—plans that no longer showed any affinity with Anton Pieck,” he says. Most of Efteling’s beloved attractions—the Haunted Castle, Half Moon Pirate Ship, Fata Morgana, Villa Volta, DreamFlight, and many more—were conjured up in van de Ven’s mind. But with so many new projects going on at once, including the Entertainment Centre, the Dream Realm, and a remodeled Anton Pieck Square, Groenen says one person alone could not possibly fill van de Ven’s shoes. “We now have a team of designers and they all have a specialty,” he explains. “For instance, with more and more shops in the park, the designers must have knowledge about merchandising. But mostly, they are all Efteling-conscious—they know what Anton Pieck meant.” At Efteling, theming goes beyond logos and mascots; it means knowing the park’s identity. “Look around,” Groenen says. “You don’t see neon lights. Things that other parks do wouldn’t work at Efteling.” Cinderella Story Efteling is investing €100 million in the first phase of the Dream Realm—themed accommodations in the south woods of the park. It’s a lot of money. But Groenen says it’s what’s necessary to take the park to the next level so it can become a year-round destination, and keep the doors open 365 days instead of 232. Four years ago the park, in the Noord-Brabant province near the Belgium border, introduced Winter Efteling, a three-week opening with an ice rink and other winter activities. “In the vision of Efteling, the Dream Realm and the Entertainment Centre are crucial instruments in creating the possibility of spending several days within the World of Efteling.” The first phase of the Dream Realm will be a central castle surrounded by woodland villas, manors, and farmhouses, Groenen says. “The castle will be a significant presence, tucked away between the trees. The same applies to the cozy woodland villas, farmhouses, and the stately manors, which are situated in picturesque clusters.” Each of these facilities will portray its own theme and legend, with backstories that tie them into the Efteling universe. The central castle is slated to open to 1,000 guests in 2004. After all phases are complete, the Dream Realm will be capable of housing 3,600 people. As the Dream Realm is developed on the south side of the park, phase two of the Entertainment Centre is well underway on the west side around the Vonderplas Lake. The Efteling Theatre debuted during last season’s jubilee, which Groenen says is one of the major reasons for the year’s unprecedented success. The 1,200-seat theater lies at the heart of the Entertainment Centre and will be surrounded by restaurants, shops, and a variety of entertainment venues. This year the park will add a foyer and theater restaurant, followed by the addition of other eateries and shops. “People who stay in the Dream Realm can go to the Entertainment Centre at night and go to the shops or the restaurants to see a show,” Groenen says. This area of the park will also be opened to residents of the region, which will help boost the park’s success, he says. In March, the park sent a notice to patrons broadcasting a special deal on April Fool’s Day: free entrance for people who arrived from 6 to 9 a.m. Groenen says, “We got 1,500 phone calls asking if this was true. They called home once they got here and said, ‘This isn’t a joke, you can come.’ We had 6,500 people between 6 and 9. We have a group of regulars that was here at 3 o’ clock that morning.” Even without the free attendance, Efteling would continue to flourish as a national attraction with local flair. For more than 50 years, the park has demonstrated a combination of marketing savvy and fairy tale magic that outshines flashier parks. The addition of PandaVision, the beautifully crafted new facilities, and the lure of the golf course are bringing more guests from further away to Efteling. Themed accommodations such as the Dream Realm will bring many more, or at least give them a fantastic place to stay. But looking around the park at families eating lunch on the grass, couples rowing languidly through the lake, and children hugging a nine-foot Pardoes, it’s the quiet magic of the Efteling that has made it a success story.
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