On day four, our final day of our family road trip with Eurotunnel, we woke up in the beautiful city of Ghent - a city we'd spent the previous day exploring and had become enchanted by. And after a lovely French family breakfast at our hotel, we were back packing the car up ready to start another exciting day full of fun and adventure. Our last day was very excitingly going to be spent over in The Netherlands in Kaatsheuvel at Efteling Theme Park - the largest theme park in The Netherlands.
We'd been so excited about visiting and staying over at Efteling. Ethan, now that he's four, is starting to be able to go on a few of the bigger rides at theme parks and like his Daddy, he is pretty much fearless - if he could, he'd quite willingly and happily go on absolutely everything! Logan, our other little boy, at very nearly 2, is also able to go on quite a few rides. Not as many as his big brother of course, but still plenty enough for us to be able to enjoy a fun, family day out together.
The car journey over from Ghent to Efteling took us just an hour and a half, so it felt like we were there before we knew it. And when we arrived, we decided to go and find our hotel first so that we could park our car there for the day. We were excitingly staying at Efteling's newest hotel in their brand new Loonsche land holiday village located on the edge of the nature district, where there are holiday homes built over the water covered in dune sand and heather and a large hotel with big, modern family rooms all made from natural materials. We were really excited to get to look around some more, but first, we had the theme park to go and explore!
We took a short 15 minute walk over from Loonsche Land through the woods to the park and as soon as we arrived inside we felt almost like we'd stepped in to the middle of an enchanted forest. It was clear that there had been so much attention to detail put into the theming and decor around the park, from things like talking trees to woodland paths as well as different magical scenes and shows to stumble upon and watch. It became obvious that there was a real fairytale fantasy sort of theme to the park and there was going to be so much to see and discover as well as the rides. Because of this, Efteling is huge, it's the sort of place that you'd probably need to have at least two days at to see the majority of.
Ride wise, Efteling offers something to suit everybody.. from toddlers to pre-schoolers, to older children and adults. There really is lots for everyone to enjoy there. One of Adam's favourite rides that he fearlessly solo'ed whilst I took care of the boys was Baron 1898 (pictured below), which is a bit like Oblivion at Alton Towers here in the UK, but even more intense. It plunges it's riders down a 37.5m free fall into the mineshaft below at 90km/h and even Mr. Brave (aka Adam) said it was intense!
Together as a family we enjoyed so many rides, from the monorail ride in Laafland, the carousel, a pirate themed water ride, a car ride and even a bobsleigh ride which was super fast and so much fun!
We also loved going on the river rapids together - it was so funny watching each other get splashed and squirted with water! Ethan couldn't stop laughing the entire time! Adam and Ethan also enjoyed the pirate ship together, which was probably the tallest one that we've ever seen!
Having an ice lolly stop in the sunshine! It was actually mine, but of course, Logan had other ideas.
To get around the huge park we hired a cart for a few euros, to pull Ethan along in (which he occasionally shared with his brother when Logan wasn't in the pushchair) and I would really recommend doing so. Ethan used it so much during the day and it meant that he saved on lots of energy, especially in the warm weather!
There were lots of restaurants to eat at in the park and also lots of little places to grab food on-the-go, and again as with the rest of the road trip, we found eating as a vegetarian family at Efteling really easy. At the end of the day, after having what was such a fantastic time running between rides and wandering around enchanted forests, Efteling treated its guests at the park to a magical water show and it was the perfect way to end what was a really wonderful day at the park - the boys loved it, as did we!
Back at our hotel that evening we decided to have our dinner outside overlooking the water. I ordered a lovely vegetarian cannelloni and because they'd built a little children's sandy play park just in front of where the outside seating was located, Adam and I sat and watched the boys from our table whilst they were off having fun playing together.
The next morning shortly before heading home, we headed down for a buffet breakfast in the main restaurant, which was clean, modern and well set-up for children, with high chairs, kids breakfasts and a little play area with toys for them to play with.
After breakfast, we decided to have a quick explore of the rest of the holiday village before packing up our car. I'm so glad that we did because we found a little barn with sheep and goats in. You could go into the barn and then go up on to some hay bales that had been laid out like steps which took you to the top of the barn. At the top, we excitedly found a hidden slide that had been in-built into the barn for the kids, Ethan loved it!
There were also some fun bridges and balance beams across the water. Although on this particular one (below), Adam hadn't quite realised that the bridge actually dipped in to the water and so his shoe got soaked, haha!
We had so much fun at Efteling theme park and we loved our stay at Loonsche land. We were really sad to be leaving, but we'd had the most incredible time not just at Efteling, but throughout our entire road trip. We'd gone in expecting a road trip with such young children to be a bit difficult and I have to admit that it's something we both probably wouldn't have considered in the past. So I'm so grateful to Eurotunnel for giving us this opportunity and letting us experience the reality of taking our boys at 4 and very nearly 2 on this sort of trip because it turned out to be a lot easier than we'd anticipated. We really did have the best time and we now have such brilliant, fun memories that we will be able to treasure with our boys forever.
I think another one of the biggest things that we realised was just how easy it is to get out there and explore other countries via the comfort of our own car. Before this trip, I hadn't realised that the Eurotunnel journey from the UK over to France was so quick and I had no idea how quick and easy it was to drive between countries to go and be able to explore new places.
My biggest advice to anyone considering this sort of trip with a young family is just to go for it! Take lots of snacks and entertainment for your little ones (an iPad loaded with films for the car is a good idea) and just take it at your own pace. We're such an adventure-loving family and so for us, getting to go and see so many wonderful places that weren't actually all that far from home, was the perfect sort of trip for us. We'd like to say a huge, huge thank you to Eurotunnel for helping to make this trip happen for us.
Please visit Eurotunnel.com for more information and for lots of tips and bits of advice if you are considering this sort of trip yourself.
Read our other posts from our road trip
- Part one: Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
- Part two: Lille, France.
- Part Three: Ghent, Belgium
- You can also now watch both parts of our video from our trip over on my YouTube channel.
Wow, you wouldn't think there is a theme park behind that big building. You had the best weather as well for it. Such an adventure. xx
ReplyDeleteAhh this looks like so much fun!! What a lovely theme for a theme park xx
ReplyDeleteThis looks amazing! It is so close too - we live in London and popping over to Europe would be pretty easy for us too... This is giving me some ideas now :)
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