Europa Park

In my sincere efforts to secure the title of 'Coolest Mom Summer 2010' title, I took our children (and an extra one since four wasn't enough) to Europa Park for the day. I didn't know much about it except for a little off their website and the info Jaxon told me since he had been there before. I was expecting sort of a watered down version of an amusement park, not super big, maybe two big rides (the ones Jaxon spent the whole day on the time he was there) and a few kiddie rides. I was mistaken. This place is awesome, and huge. If anyone ever wondered if Mickey Mouse had any siblings, wonder no longer. I am sure he had a long lost brother that spent a summer abroad and set up this place. It is so much like Disneyland that I kept singing "Its a Small World" to myself. Instead of different lands, like Frontier Land or Fantasy Land, Europa Park has different countries, such as Greece, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, etc. Each country has rides, stores, shows and food. The similarities between the two parks is amazing. Instead of Pirates of the Caribbean, we rode Pirates in Batavia, complete with an automated lady chasing a man around in circles just like the Disneyland ride and a drunk guy next to a pig. We went to the Ghost Castle instead of the Haunted House. Rather than have Pluto and Belle strolling through the park getting swarmed by little kids, there were pretty ladies walking around to take pictures with and clowns on stilts balancing precariously over your head.
I was really hoping that we could be on the road before 7:30 since its a 2 1/2 hour drive, and look at what time we were pulling onto the autobahn:

I had bought a bunch of pastries and pretzels for the drive, since I woke the kids up early, dressed them, brushed their teeth and loaded them into the car all within the space of 15 minutes. Here they are enjoying their breakfast buffet in the car:


Jaxon and Spencer separated from us once we entered the park and set off for the E ticket rides (anyone remember when Disneyland had the book of tickets for their rides and the fastest rides were the E ticket ones? I know, I'm old...) Spencer had his phone with him so we called each other every few hours to check in with one another and met up a few times to see that they were doing fine. Here we are at the start of our day:


The children were wonderfully behaved the whole day. The only one who could have been fined by the grumpy police was Mason, who after 8 hours of being carried around by me, started to get tired and a bit cranky. He has a cold and I guess wasn't feeling fantastic once evening hit, so he was bitten by the cranky bug and fussed a bit. But for the rest of the day, he, Ella and Colton were awesome. We had fun together going on all the rides and seeing the sights. There was one hard part: some of the rides have a four year age minimum. So, Mason was out of the running to go on those rides. And 5-8 year olds had to ride with an adult. So, Ella couldn't ride without me. So, since I couldn't clone myself and be in two places at once, Ella couldn't ride on some of the rides because I had no one to leave Mason with. Colton could have ridden a bunch of rides by himself, but that's not as fun as going with someone, so half way through the day we met up with Spencer and Jaxon. Colton joined up with them so he could go on the 'big boy' rides. A bunch of the faster rides had a 8 year old and 120 cm requirement. Since Colton is 9 and with his bedhead met the height requirement, he was able to go on some fun rides with the older boys.
Here are pictures of us throughout the day on different rides, having a blast and enjoying the day:




Remember the Jungle Cruise? Here's Europa Park's version. No tour guide shooting a hippo, but the boat is armed with water guns and you get to shoot the ducks and the other park guests who are riding on different boats.



There were quite a few places to play in water. I tried to distract the kids away from those areas since I didn't bring spare clothes and it wasn't hot enough for them to dry out quickly, but this little place was fun to play in and not get too wet.




My favorite outlaws:




There were lots of train rides, boat rides, and car rides. Sometimes the kids got to drive the vehicle, sometimes we were just along for the ride. When Colton was at the wheel, I didn't fear too much for the future and our insurance rates when he gets his license. When Ella was the driver, well, let's just say I have a call into my chiropractor for the whiplash I received yesterday.










It's hard to make out Colton in these pictures, but if you look carefully you can see him. He is sitting by himself trying to pull on the rope to lift himself up on the ride. You pull to reach the top, then fall down. He was so funny after he got off this ride.
"Mom, that was a workout. My muscles are bigger now. Wow, I can feel my arms are a lot harder than they were before!" I think he's ready for crouching Cohen curls!



We ate nutritiously the whole day. We started off the morning with crepes (which Ella said were NOT as good as the ones her daddy makes) followed by cotton candy for lunch. Popsicles rounded out the day in the afternoon. At one point I got Ella to eat some tuna fish I brought and Mason had two bites of some pasta, but today was not a day to record in our food diaries.




We found a great playground to play at for a while. Much of it had sand so Mason had to throw off his shoes asap. I guess being born in Hawaii predisposes him to kicking off his shoes once he feels sand underneath them. The first picture is of the huge slide Ella went down all by herself. No fear. Mason climbed up with her, saw the slide, and walked down the steps again. No deal.







Once Colton hooked up with Jaxon and Spencer, I took Ella and Mason to an ice skating show. There we spent half an hour looking at the beautiful skaters in their colorful costumes, pointing to different ones and saying, "I'm THAT girl!". I would tell Ella that I'm the skater being spun in the air. She would tell me "NO! That's me!" I'd say, "Ok, then I'm that girl dancing" to which she'd reply, "No, that's me too!". So, in the end, she got to be all the cool girls and I think I was the girl that swept the ice at the beginning.
My favorite part of the day was watching Mason get his face painted. We had walked by a face painting stand earlier and Ella wanted to do it. I was still in the "Must See Everything First" stage so I said, maybe later, let's go on some rides. By 4:30 I was ready to stand in the 20 minute line and get their faces painted cuz you know Mason wasn't gonna let Ella be the only one wearing make up. Ella went first and got some pink and white swirls painted on. Then it was Mason's turn. He was SO excited. I didn't know if he'd be able to sit still for the 5-7 minutes it took to apply the make up, but I think he has acting in his future because he had no problem being still in that make up chair.

And here are the final results:



As we were getting ready to leave the park, we found some colorful people waiting to take pictures with. I'm not sure if they were princesses or fairies, but they were friendly, free, and there was no line to smile with them, so we were all over that.

We looked into souveniers, but there wasn't anything fabulous to bring home. These were tempting though:



We took a few last pictures on the way out...



thanked Mickey's brother for the fun park...

and called the day a success. I drove the 2 1/2 hours going home without any problems and only one pee break for Ella. Eating the rest of the pastry box kept me energized and awake. Everyone that wasn't asleep by the time I hit our driveway went straight to bed. Definitely a good time and I can't wait to go again. WITH Sean.