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Toverland Adventure
A theme park and FEC in the Netherlands succeeds by balancing attractions both indoors and out
by Juliana Gilling
What if you had a theme park that didn’t rely on the weather? That’s what park owner Jean Gelissen and his managing director/sister Caroline Maessen-Gelissen achieved at Toverland [Magic Land] in the Netherlands.
The idea took shape in 1995 after Gelissen, who wanted to branch out from the construction business into recreation, visited a small Dutch park with his son and daughter. “It was a lovely sunny day, and people were laughing and spending money on food and drinks. Then it started to rain and within half an hour, the park was empty,” explains Toverland’s marketing manager Lian Lempens. “He thought, ‘It’s a nice business, but it’s very vulnerable to the weather.’” Gelissen’s solution? An indoor family entertainment center.
In 2001, Gelissen and Maessen-Gelissen opened their new one-acre indoor park at Sevenum. “They were told they would get 250,000 visitors in the first year. Within the first three months, they had received more than 100,000 visitors, so they knew the concept worked,” says Lempens. Two years later, they were thinking about expansion when a “horribly hot summer” resulted in a drop in visitors.
“It was a rather large problem because we were talking to the banks to ask if we could make another investment,” says Lempens. “We realized that we were protected against bad weather, but we also had to protect our organization against good weather. That’s when we decided to build another oneacre indoor park and also to expand outside.”
 Today at Toverland, guests never have to give the weather a second thought, says Lempens: “Our unique selling point is our combination of indoor and outdoor [attractions]. When you plan a day out at Toverland it doesn’t disappoint because you don’t have to say to your kids, ‘We can’t go because of the weather.’”
Third-Phase Planning
Gelissen’s determination to build a collection of dream rides has further boosted Toverland’s pulling power. Vekoma’s Motorbike launch coaster (“Booster Bike”) made its debut at the park in 2004: “At the time it was a world premiere, and it put Toverland on the international theme park map,” says Lempens. “Troy,” a wooden coaster from Great Coasters International, followed in 2007. It put Toverland on a par with other regional parks and pushed attendance numbers up to more than 530,000 visitors in 2009.
The park now covers two acres indoors and 15 outdoors, with the potential to expand to 75 acres in total. Capacity runs at 10,000 guests a day, but when bad weather hits, visitors are limited to 6,500 a day, the maximum indoor capacity. Ticket holders typically stay around six hours, and Lempens estimates 50 percent are repeat visitors. To grow visitor numbers further, Toverland’s team is already planning a third indoor phase. “With that expansion, we hope to reach 800,000 visitors,” says Lempens.
 “With the park so interesting, we can increase our attraction, for example, to people in the north of the Netherlands, Germany, or Belgium. With 800,000 visitors, our dream is to build a hotel.”
Lempens expects phase three to be complete before 2015. “We’ve been working on the concept for the past two years. It’s so new that we have a couple of people engineering it right now to see if it’s possible. What I can tell you is that it’s going to be so magical that no one will ever doubt the name Toverland.” Toverland’s team is budgeting “roughly €25-30 million (US$37-US$44 million) for the project,” she says.
“When we started planning the third phase, we were not expecting it to be so difficult,” she says. “We know now that we have to plan a huge attraction in the time between now and the third phase opening. ‘Troy’ was our last large investment and because the park has grown so fast in eight years, three to five years is too long to wait for the next big investment. The owner [Gelissen] is a big fan of roller coasters.
Magic Moments
Keeping coasters family friendly is crucial, believes Lempens: “There’s excitement and tension, but our goal is for people to get out of our roller coasters with a big smile, thinking, ‘That’s fun, I want to go again,’ rather than, ‘That’s heavy, I’m never going to do that again.’”
Toverland’s team is adding magic to the park in other ways, too. New this year is “Bami Salami,” a theater show featuring favorite Toverland characters and their magical adventures. The attraction blends live performers with animation projected onto LCD screens. Toverland’s staff also received magic training. “When people are waiting in line, specially badged employees can entertain them with magic tricks,” says Lempens. “We explain to guests that our employees are student magicians, so a trick may fail.
“We want it to be obvious from the moment people come into the park why we’re called Magic Land,” she says. “Our goal is to invest more and more in the magical team.”
Year-Round Challenges
Like Toverland, many theme park companies across Europe are adding indoor facilities to weatherproof their businesses and extend their seasons. Operating 365 days a year—as Toverland does—involves a unique set of challenges, says Lempens. “Because this business is very open, we can easily get on the phone with Efteling or Walibi and ask about maintenance or season cards. But there was no park—and there still is no park—that could give us the answers about putting an organization into year-round opening. Everything we had to decide for the site was new.
“Take maintenance: It would kill us to say an attraction is closed for the next three weeks, so—because we are open everyday—we have to do the maintenance at night. Then, how do you manage your full-time employees? You’re not just working from April to October, and then you’re done. You need to have a minimum number of people to get you through the summer season and the winter season, when you may only have 100 visitors a day coming in November. It’s always a challenge.
“We’ve learned a lot, and I’ve seen the organization change. Nowadays, we are professionals. In the beginning, we just had to experience what was going to happen and rely on common sense and good feeling. And we have a lot of common sense!”
Price Is Right
Toverland has established its credentials in the Netherlands theme park market, which looks to be in good shape in spite of world economic events. “The word from other parks is that they’ve all had a very good season,” Lempens says, although she is concerned about the discounting going on in the industry. “I was surprised by the parks’ price dumping. I don’t know if it’s doing anything good for the market because everybody is fighting to get their entrance fees lower and lower. In the end, it’s nice that you get more visitors, but you have to balance that with the financial result.”
At Toverland, the entrance price actually rose in 2009 from €19.50 (US$28) to €21 (US$30). “That was a bit odd,” Lempens admits. “We did a little discount promotional activities, but we’re trying to keep not only the price high, but also our head high. We really believe in the quality of our park.”
For more on Toverland, visit: www.toverland.nl
Juliana Gilling is a specialist attractions journalist. Contact her at julianagilling@gmail.com.
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