Efteling

[TheShiningHostess]

I first heard about Efteling on MN and we are finally going this year.

Any hints/tips/dos or don'ts?

The children in the group will be 3,6 and 9. Anything that can/should be booked in advance? We'll be staying in 2 adjacent village houses.

Not really planning on doing much cooking but would be interested to hear about the on-site shops for breakfast stuff etc. We will be stopping off overnight en-route so can always do a big supermarket shop on the way.

TIA

I really recommend the pancake house for the experience as they have animated pots and pans that create music every once in a while, as well as "magical water" dispensers for a small extra cost. We had both savoury and sweet and both were good. The only criticism is that the service is a bit slow, and it wasn’t super busy on either occasion that we went.
We also liked Het Witte Paard as it had spacious seating areas, plenty of choice for hot meals, and self-service, so there wasn’t much queuing or waiting time for dishes to come (we had to queue for about ten minutes at Polles Keuken and wait for about twenty minutes until our meals arrived).
If you have the time, do the whole fairy tale forest from start to finish. Allocate about half a day. Then return when it’s dark to see how different everything looks lit up.

I’m going this summer so no tips from me but I’m following with interest

Are you staying in the hotel or a holiday house? I can’t decide.

I say this every time Efteling is mentioned, and it probably doesn’t apply to any other family, but my DS was completely terrified by the place! We had to take it in turns to take him out. He had been to Disney and loved it, so it was just the Efteling characters that were the problem. He was having bad dreams about it on and off for 2 years…

Efteling is incredible, were returning for our fifth year.
you really don’t need to plan much in advance at all, just discover it at your own pace and be amazed.
a few things you can pre book are the Caro show which is a must, and a few restaurants can pre book- the pancake house polles keuken is a must, and the raveleijn heroes dinner but you can watch that show for free without the dinner.
the nearby town of kaatscheuvel has good supermarkets if you have a car, including Albert heijn which is great to get food. Take a picnic on gondeletta and feed the ducks that chase you!

@FuckoffeeBeforeCoffee

We are staying in 2 houses. We find self-catering a lot easier with the GC.

@CurlewKate Sorry to hear that. My GC are all pretty fearless so I hope it doesn't freak them out.

Also, what’s the easiest way to get there?

@FuckoffeeBeforeCoffee where are you travelling from? We had a good drive from the Channel tunnel and used our saved-up Tesco vouchers to slightly reduce the cost of the crossing

I don’t have any tips except to say we had a really lovely time. It’s a lot of walking so either take a buggy for the 3 year old or you could try and hire one there.

Has anyone been with older kids?
Mine are teens and their only experience of a theme park is Lightwater Valley - we had a fab day.
We'll be near Eftling in late July. Is it crazy busy? And worth going to with teens?

Mine were 14 and 11 and they enjoyed it. There are quite a few bigger rides. We found it much less busy than UK theme parks. It was outside of Dutch school holidays but in the UK holidays (and neighbouring Belgium). They have a good app and we didn't queue for longer than 25 minutes for anything, mostly less. There are no fast passes so everyone queues the same amount of time which seems to keep things moving.