Efteling tips

[Ash19]

Going to efteling for 3 days Thursday and looking fot any useful tips. Taking our 9 year-old daughter. Staying in the Wonder Hotel. Any tips regarding food. Which rides to do maybe first or any useful tips people have would be much appreciated.

There's an "Efteling Just For Brits" Facebook group which is absolutely brilliant. If you have Fb I'd suggest you join it for a few weeks. We're going next May half-term and I'm so so so excited 🙂

Sorry no direct tips for Efteling, but it will potentially be a very hot weekend with temps over 30 degrees. ☀So definitely take hats and sun cream! Looks fab, we're not too far away so will have to go there at some point!

Ah we love efteling.We went two years ago when kids were 8 and 10 and going again this year.

My younger son absolutey adored the "max and moritz" ride, it's a pretty tame rollercoaster but basically two different coasters that "dance" with each other, it's charming. We must have gone on about seven times in three days. He's literally got the tshirt. It's relatively close to the entrance in an anticlockwise direction (most people go round clockwise!)

Efteling is best known for "dark rides" - non scary rides where you go through certain "scenes". Droomvlucht is just amazing and my personal favourite.

We also loved the fountains dance show at the end of the day.

We liked the pancake restaurant but I think you will be unlucky if you haven't booked. There are buffet places which I'd recommend (you don't have to book those) - not cheap but a really good spread of lovely food. There is plenty of not too expensive tasty snacky stuff on offer. The food situation is enormously better than Disneyland Paris.

Get the app which helps with queuing times (we didn't find it too bad at all but we were off season in June)

like at disney you can pay extra to queue less, but we didn't feel the need to at any point. Hopefully the same for you.

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.
There’s an evening show called Caro that’s an extra cost but it's truly worth it.

Thanks so much for all the wonderful replies. I have pancake house booked. Will def do all the suggestions. Never thought of doing fairytale forest both in day and night to see the difference. Csnt wait for our trip.

This is not true and is why Efteling is such a joy. No fast passes or VIPs, everyone pays the same and a queues the same, and the queues are never that bad.
There are however a few rides that have a virtual queue, the incredible Danse macabre and droomvlucht that you will not want to miss. Get the Efteling app to monitor queue times, then simply join the virtual queue outside those two rides. You can wander and do something else until your allotted time to ride.
efteling is amazing, we’ve been a lot. You don’t need to over plan like Disney, just discover it for yourself.
the only thing you might want to book is the excellent Caro show, and maybe the pancake house polles kuken

Thanks. Yes Caro booked. Pancake house and pinnokkios. It seems to get such good reviews from anybody that's been there.