Every year, somewhere around James’s birthday in May, we find a theme park. It started as a tradition and became something we don’t question anymore. Alton Towers. Thorpe Park. Then Europa Park, and the bar moved permanently.
We had two days. You need two days. The park runs across nineteen themed zones and no amount of early starts fixes that — you simply cannot do it in one. On day one we arrived to the blue loops of Blue Fire already running against a grey sky and just started walking.
The main entrance. Eight times voted best theme park in the world outside the United States. The banner says so. It isn’t wrong.
The size of it
Europa Park doesn’t feel like a theme park from the inside. It feels like a sequence of small European towns that happen to contain rollercoasters. A German canal street with half-timbered buildings and green umbrellas over the water. A Greek quarter with blue domes. A Scandinavian harbour with a boathouse marked BÅTNAUST and a monorail sliding past overhead. The theming is deep enough that you occasionally forget where you are and have to look up to remember.
The German themed zone. Canal, willows, café tables. A coaster audible somewhere behind the trees.
View from the observation tower — the bobsled run threading through the canopy, the park stretching to the Rhine plain and the Alps beyond.
Normal people things
We are not above a stadium bar and a beer at lunchtime. James spotted football on the screens — SC Freiburg, whose stadium shares the Europa Park name — and that was that. Thirty minutes, a Weizen each, a burger, kids playing an informal game of dodgeball outside that was genuinely more entertaining than the match. Then back out into the nineteen zones.
Europa Park Stadion bar. The football was incidental. The beer was not.
The rides
This is a theme park post so we should say: the rides are exceptional. Blue Fire, Wodan, Silver Star — all delivered. The park was busy enough to feel alive, not so busy that you spent the day in queues. No fast track needed. Most things we wanted, we got.
Then there was Voltron.
Voltron Nevera had opened that season — brand new, all the crowds funnelling toward it on day one. We left it alone, let the queues thin, caught it late on day one at the right moment. Rode it. Looked at each other. Said very little that was coherent.
Then on the final evening of day two, with the park emptying and the light going golden, we joined a ninety-minute queue for one last go. Front row. Arms out. Worth every minute of it.
Voltron Nevera. The on-ride photo tells its own story.
Voltron at dusk — riders mid-inversion, the Tesla tower structure catching the last of the light.
Rulantica
On one of the evenings we walked across to Rulantica, the waterpark attached to the resort. A few hours, warm water, completely different energy. The kind of thing you do when the legs have had enough of the park but you’re not ready to stop.
The observation tower base — “Herzlich Willkommen zur 50. Saison.” The fiftieth season. We picked a good year.
We left on day two when our feet told us to. The Strava says 9.74 miles across both days, which is technically accurate. Some of that was at considerable speed and completely involuntary.
The best theme park we’ve been to. Clear margin. If PortAventura has to follow this, it has its work cut out.
Europa-Park · Rust, Germany · 9.74 miles · 3hrs 34m · 118ft · 7,760 Steps
