A fine balance - European theme parks and culturing July 2020

[Sallyingforth]

Next stop Europa Park!
We are getting two day park tickets. We did a bit of number crunching around various annual pass options and decided that none would work for us for this time.
Tickets will be our last purchase after the Christmas madness is done and when the glorious council tax free months are upon us.

Plans

We've not quite decided how we're going to work our visit yet.

Plan A is:-

Day 1 - drive from France to Rust. It’s a 4 hour drive. Hope to arrive for midday, get straight into the park. Hope that the opening hours are the same as 2019 and the park is open till 8pm.
Day 2, full day and night at Europa Park.
Day 3, breakfast and leave for our Rhine adventure…

In case it isn’t open late we do have a Plan B which is:-

Day 1 – slow drive over, lunch and sightseeing at Colmar. Get to Rust at tea time. Possibly spend evening at Rulantica the brand new water park (not open till the end of November)
Day 2, full day and night at Europa Park
Day 3, day at Europa Park till about 3pm
I am in favour of Plan A as I don’t want to cut into the Rhine time but I am tempted by Rulantica. However, it is expensive and strangely none of the boys seem to be that interested. DH prefers Plan B because of the two days early entry to the park, but isn't bothered about Rulantica.

We're still mulling it over. Think it will depend on park opening times and reviews of Rulantica. We don't need to decide yet.

Hotel
We are staying at Hotel Coloseo, the fabulous Italian themed hotel.

It is a huge extravagance but I couldn’t resist its gorgeousness. Top tip here (hope it’s a top tip and not a complete nightmare! ) they have some cheap rooms, think it is five or six, underneath the main bar. We went for one of these and saved 200 Euros. We are thinking how loud and late can it be on a Monday and Tuesday night? Watch this space...

I can't wait to swim here:-

And the boys are looking forward to sleeping here.

After a week of self-catering we will all be looking forward to the buffet breakfast.

Speaking of food we think we are going to book one of the buffet dinners at Hotel Castillo. I have been scouring trip advisor and think Colosseo could be very busy and noisy and we might prefer the Castillo buffet. It looks gorgeous, better get it booked soon I suppose. Thinking of prepaying for vouchers for that one as it is a big expense.

The Park

Europa Park looks awesome. This is the one we are all most excited to visit.

Our most anticipated rides are:

The Voletarium (me, because I was nuts over Soarin and it is supposed to be better)

Blue Fire (our eldest because he thinks Icon at Blackpool is the best thing in the world and this is supposedly similar)

Silver Star (our youngest because he is a daredevil, he will love them all)

And Euro-Mir (my DH, because he is a nutter and also likes a good techno tune! )

Bring it on!

[Sallyingforth]

Next stop the Rhine for two days (if we stick to Europa Park plan A) and two nights
I’ve been wanting to visit the Rhine ever since my mil came back from a Rhine cruise and told us how gorgeous it was with all the castles along the way.

We don’t have any firm plans yet but what I do know is that boats go along regularly and you can hop off at towns to visit and then catch trains back. The trains go along both sides of the banks and are relatively cheap and quick, making it very easy to navigate.

During our two days I would like to visit Rudesheim and take the cable car.

A good thing to do apparently is to get off at the top and walk to a place above the next town where you can take the chair lift down and then the boat back to Rudesheim.

I would also like to visit Bacharach which is famous for its romantic view of the river through the ruined church window.

St Goar is supposed to be very good for touristy shopping with all the cuckoo clocks and steins.

My mum recommended Boppard (need to look into that one more)

I’d also like to see Koblenz and the Kaiser Willem memorial where the Rhine meets the Mosel.

And we have to see a castle. Rick Steves (who, unlike the rest of my family, I totally adore) says his favourite castle in the whole of Europe is Burg Eltz so we might go there (us and bus loads of Americans probably! )

We’ve booked a hotel in Oberwesel for our stay.

It’s not actually in town which isn’t very handy and not what we wanted really, but we couldn’t go past it as the reviews are all 5 stars. It is supposed to be fabulous for traditional German food and when I read a review talking about the woman who gets up at 4am every day to make the breakfast cakes, I knew we couldn’t go anywhere else!

So that’s the beginnings of our Rhine adventure sorted – plenty of rivers, riesling, and rouladen hopefully!

[Sallyingforth]

Phantasialand
Phantasialand is stressing me out! Our current plans are to go for one day.

We will have to drive there on the morning from Oberwesel (1 hour 20) have our day in the park and then drive from there to our next stop in the Netherlands (2 hours 15). I’m worried that it is a bit much.

I am also worried that it happens to be a Saturday in the summer. After reading Hemanclofty’s experiences of a Saturday there this August we are very worried. And reading Tripadvisor has just confirmed that we are right to be worried! One thing I did glean from Tripadvisor is that for the last two years running there has been a Phantasialand offer of a free second day ticket. We are wondering if it might be a good idea to book into the onsite hotel so that we don’t have the long drive afterwards and meaning we can go in again for free early the next morning.

Still mulling it over. Last time I checked it was 334 euros to stay in the Ling Bao Chinese themed hotel which is absolutely bloody too much, but it does look right up my alley...

We’ve agreed to think about this some more after Christmas, see how the finances are, and think about if we really need to go into two days in such a small park.

BTW our number one anticipated ride at Phantasialand is the same for all of us, of course, it is Taron – phwoar!