Efteling
Interesting facts
- Efteling opened in 1952, three years before the original Disneyland, and its park area is about twice as large.
- Kate Bush made her Dutch television debut in a 1978 special filmed at the park, used to launch its new Haunted Castle.
- The Haunted Castle of 1978 was the first major attraction designed entirely by Ton van de Ven, Anton Pieck's chosen successor.
- The park greeted its 123,456,789th visitor on 19 June 2015.
- In 1997 Villa Volta won a Thea award as the world's first 'new style' madhouse ride, where the room rather than the visitor seems to turn.
- In 2005 Efteling received a Thea Classic Award for its whole body of work, only the second park so honoured after Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens.
- The park was laid out in an existing pine forest, which is why so much of it still feels like a wooded nature park.
- The company has a single shareholder: the non-profit Efteling Nature Park Foundation set up by its founders in 1950.
Why it is worth it
Efteling began as a village idea rather than a business plan. In the 1930s a local priest and his chaplain in Kaatsheuvel laid out a sports ground; in 1950 the mayor of Loon op Zand, Reinier van der Heijden, turned it into a foundation together with the filmmaker Peter Reijnders and the illustrator Anton Pieck, hoping to draw visitors to a quiet corner of North Brabant. The park opened on 31 May 1952, its name going back to a sixteenth-century farm, and its heart was a Fairytale Forest of ten scenes designed by Pieck: Sleeping Beauty's castle, Snow White, the Frog King, Frau Holle's well, a gnome village among them.
What makes Efteling different from most theme parks is that Pieck's taste set the rules. He insisted on real materials, weathered textures and a nostalgic, slightly melancholy romance — thatched roofs, mossy brick, crooked towers — rather than painted plywood, and the park never abandoned that standard. The Fairytale Forest has grown to around thirty tales, but it still reads as an enchanted wood, with figures half-hidden among old trees. Details reward slow walking: Holle Bolle Gijs, the greedy boy who has swallowed visitors' litter while calling for "paper here!" since 1959, is as much a part of the park's identity as any ride.
From 1975 the designer Ton van de Ven carried the style into larger attractions. Under him came the boat ride Fata Morgana (1986), the dark ride Droomvlucht — "dream flight" — in 1993, and Villa Volta (1996), one of the early "madhouse" illusion rides. Later additions kept the craft: the wooden racing coaster Joris en de Draak (2010), the dive coaster Baron 1898 (2015) and the trackless dark ride Symbolica (2017). Efteling received the Pomme d'Or in 1972 and an IAAPA Applause Award in 1992, and today it covers some 72 hectares and welcomes well over five million visitors a year.
Getting there
Efteling lies in Kaatsheuvel, about 3 km from Loon op Zand and between Tilburg and 's-Hertogenbosch. Buses run to the park from the railway stations of both cities, and by car it is reached via provincial road N261. The nearest airport is Eindhoven Airport (EIN), about 32 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Efteling is a fantasy-themed theme park in Kaatsheuvel, a town in the Netherlands. The attractions reflect elements from ancient European myths and legends, fairy tales, fables, and folklore.
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