A Journey Through Europa-Park: A European-Themed Wonder in Germany
As we drove past ancient fountains towards the car park sign, my children and I glimpsed the Colosseum, busy with sightseers. We parked up, made a note of our space in the Torino section, and walked towards our hotel as an aria seeped from the lobby. The hotel was exactly the kind you’d expect to find in Rome, with a pizzeria, a pretty terrace with views towards the ruins, and a lobby boutique vending glitzy jewellery and pastel jackets. But this was not Rome, it was the tiny town of Rust in Germany – home to a Europe-themed amusement park that’s been voted the best in the world 10 times at the prestigious Golden Ticket Awards, thanks to its rides, accommodation and food.
Could Europa-Park convince me of its award-worthiness, though? Over the years, I’ve ticked off a ton of theme parks with my now 13- and 11-year-old, from Legoland Windsor to Tokyo DisneySea. They’ve all left me motion-sick, exhausted and broke. But as soon as we checked into our Vitruvian Man-themed room at the Hotel Colosseo (one of six hotels on-site and, obviously, Italian-inspired), I had a feeling this one might be different.
A Park with European Charm
Owned by the amusement ride-making Mack family (who have created rollercoasters for Alton Towers, Tivoli Gardens and Disney California Adventure, among many others), Germany’s largest theme park was set up in 1975 as a showcase for their skills. By 1982, the family had begun to theme the park’s sections to correspond with European countries.
These days, rides and theatre shows are scattered among the whitewashed, blue-windowed terraces of the Greek area and the busy port of Scandinavia, with its wood-clad fisheries. The wooden chalets and waving flags of Switzerland lead to Spain’s cobbled plaza and azulejo-tile flourishes, and there are English and French areas, too.
Though it might sound tacky, an impressive attention to detail makes it easy to suspend reality: those azulejo tiles have been imported from Spain, while the chalets have been artfully arranged to resemble the Valaisan village of Grimentz. If you’re a geek like I am, there are lots of country-specific facts to take in, too (though persuading my offspring to tour a Nordic stave church when the nail-biting Poseidon log flume was in full view proved impossible).
Instead, our two-day visit included whizzing through outsized greenery on a ride themed around the Luc Besson Arthur films, joining a cute, animatronic-littered dinosaur party on Madame Freudenreich Curiosités, navigating a Swiss bobsleigh run and braving the 60mph Wodan Timburcoaster.
Unique Experiences and Attention to Detail
To my secret delight, my 139cm son was too small to go on Silver Star, Europa’s highest coaster, known for its immense centrifugal force. And I point blank refused to try Voltron Nevera, the newest of the park’s offerings, themed around the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla and involving seven inversions and 2.2 seconds of continuous weightlessness.
The fact that my children went on it without me caused me much anxiety but bagged me a fantastic souvenir: an official photograph of them as it descended, my son with his hair seemingly electrified by one of Tesla’s inventions and my daughter screaming at the top of her lungs. (Despite appearances to the contrary, they loved it.)
A lack of queues meant we could fit plenty of rides and shows into our schedule. Though Swiss friends had informed me that they had remembered a lot of waiting in line on school trips to the park, our longest queue was 20 minutes. It was just one element of an experience that was noticeably smoother than at other parks we’ve visited.
Cups are reusable and you get a refund when you return them, meaning rubbish doesn’t pile up. Theming is all-encompassing: unlike in English theme parks, there’s no looking up to discover a labyrinth of air-conditioning units and electrical wires. Meanwhile, there are attractions, parades and shows for everyone from toddlers to grannies, meaning rollercoaster refuseniks won’t get bored (the ice-dance sceptics in my family deemed a Hallowe’en-inspired skating extravaganza to be “excellent”).
In the French area, where fountains danced to the tune of Non, je ne regrette rien and you could drink kir royales on a Tricolore-draped barge on the water, we tried our most eagerly anticipated ride, the CanCan Coaster. After queuing backstage at Europa-Park’s own Moulin Rouge, where orchestras tuned up behind firmly locked doors, we entered our carriage and climbed the Eiffel Tower slowly in the dark, winding towards its very top.
Then, after a beat, a door opened, the can-can started to play and we plunged downwards at breakneck speed, under kicking legs and through psychedelic tunnels in time with the music. After being abruptly shunted back out on to the streets of Paris, it took us all a moment to work out what had just happened.
A Taste of Europe
Still reeling from the excitement, we took a stroll down a canal-side back street, home to a boulangerie where people-watchers snacked on exquisite, fruit-shaped cakes at outdoor tables with jaunty red-and-white cloths. Food is a big thing at Europa-Park. During our stay, we took a whistle-stop tour of European cuisine, eating wurst in a Bavarian beer garden, crêpes on a Parisian terrace, and fish with lingonberry sauce in a tranquil Scandinavian seafood restaurant.
There were fancier options, including Eatrenalin, a fine-dining experience involving shuttling through various immersive rooms on moving chairs. Reservations are required for that, but none of the others, and we savoured never having to plan ahead.
We didn’t hear another English voice. Though Europa-Park received more than seven million visitors in 2025, most came from inside Germany or drove from Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. That may explain why England seemed like the least loved area (“Where are the rides?” asked my teenager, nonplussed, though it did have a James Bond-like laser experience room and a decent approximation of the Globe Theatre).
Magical Moments and Memorable Experiences
Elsewhere, though, there were times when Europa-Park felt truly magical – even to a teenager, a tweenager and a middle-aged woman. In the Fairytale Forest area, winding paths revealed half-timbered houses belonging to folk from the Grimms’ stories. An animatronic Mother Hulda appeared from an upstairs window and fluffed her pillow, scattering snow on passers-by; small children tried to crack the musical code and make Rapunzel come out from her turret; sitting in a hayloft with a line of eerily real-looking animatronic doves for company, my daughter tried on Cinderella’s shoe as a kneeling prince statue looked on.
When the doves, in a crescendo of cooing, proclaimed that it fitted, we assumed that the result was universal. Not so, it turned out: my foot was too big; my son’s too small.
We saved the best for last. On our final evening in the park, we boarded a gilded, swan-topped boat during an orange-hued dusk for Josefina’s Magical Imperial Journey, gliding past ducks and colour-change fountains and through tunnels illuminated by thousands of lights to a soundtrack of gentle classical music. Rather than being exhausted, we were rejuvenated after our stay – and, crucially, I wasn’t broke.
“Can we come back next year?” asked my son. And, to my surprise, I found myself saying yes.
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Essentials
Amanda Hyde was a guest of Europa-Park and Hertz. A two-night stay at the Hotel Colosseo, with two day entry to the park, as well as one day at the adjacent water park Rulantica, costs from €1,105.60 (£960) for a family of four. Note that the park reopens on March 28 after a winter break.
Basel in Switzerland is the nearest major airport (a one-hour drive from the park), and is connected to UK airports by various airlines, including EasyJet (from £52 return) and British Airways (from £94 return). Hertz (which has a desk at the airport) rents cars from £80 per day.
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