Ali – Our friend, Laurel, had been threatening to organize a trip to Europa Park and managed to make good on her threat this past Saturday. Saturday morning at 7:30 am, Maya piled into our rented Land Rover with her two buddies, Sarah and Lil, for the two hour trip to Rust, Germany. 
Laurel (Lil’s mom) and Rick and Manuela (Sarah’s parents) were meeting us somewhere on the road for the caravan to the park.
Now I don’t know how you feel about amusement parks but I have a soft spot for them….as long as I am not forced into any line longer than 30 minutes. Mostly I love the roller coasters; don’t ask me why, just have always loved them.
I have yet to look up the history of Europa Park and Disneyland but someone definitely copied. The place is divided into several different ‘lands’ – sound familiar??? In this case it’s actual country names : Russia, Greece, Iceland, etc. And then there are themed rides within each land. However, certain rides like the Eurosat: a trip through space, and the Geisterschloss: a haunted mansion, are ridiculously similar to the Disney versions: Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion. 
What makes this totally ok (I’m assuming Europark knocked off Disney) is the price: 40 Euros for a ticket instead of whatever ungodly and greedy sum Disney is charging nowadays. Plus there are huge beers in actual glasses and good German food to be had.
We focused on roller coasters and water rides, spending most of the day with wet underwear. The Europa Park app helped us find the short lines so we didn’t spend more than 30 minutes in a line until the end of the day. On the way out we thought we would try for the new attraction: an experience called Voletarium that had opened that day. The wait time was posted as 40 minutes and so, hoping that was an overestimate, we plunged in. Well a better name for this ride would have been the Waitatarium. You can just hear the sound of souls being crushed from the picture below of folk in the line after about 50 minutes.
A hour later we made it through the line to what turned out to be a flying simulator, like at Epcott. Maya declared it totally worth the wait. I disagree. But that hour of my life is gone forever so I won’t look back. I still love amusement parks but perhaps will steer clear of rides on the opening day from now on.
