ANPLong line for Danse Macabre
In collaboration with
Omroep Brabant
NOS News•yesterday, 1:17 PM•Adjusted yesterday, 8:49 PM
More than two years after the announcement, the new Danse Macabre attraction opened at Efteling. Shortly after the amusement park in Kaatsheuvel opened its doors, there was already a queue of at least four hours.
The first fans were already waiting at the Efteling gate around 6 a.m., writes Omroep Brabant. Around 7:30 am there were hundreds of people standing there. The park normally opens at 10 a.m., but due to the crowds, visitors were allowed to enter an hour earlier.
Visitors immediately ran to the new attraction. “We expected crowds today, but this exceeded our expectations,” Efteling said. Soon the line for the Danse Macabre was almost a kilometer long, while other attractions remained virtually empty.
Even after closing time there was still one long line for the new attraction. The park closed at 8 p.m., but at that time there were still many hundreds of people waiting. The waiting time was about an hour and a half. It was then decided that all those waiting could still take a ride on the attraction.
Spookslot
Danse Macabre, which cost 35 million euros, was created as a replacement for the Spookslot. “That attraction was outdated,” says amusement park expert Klaus Hoven, affiliated with the Breda University of Applied Sciences. “Where other parks choose to update a ride system or renew elements, Efteling has built a completely new theme area.”
“It is special that the horror theme has been retained,” says Hoven. Pieter Cornelis, leisure scientist and former researcher at Efteling, agrees: “It does not happen often that an attraction is replaced by an attraction in the same style, certainly not in the history of Efteling.”
ANPBusy at the opening of the attraction last night
The Haunted Castle was opened in 1978 and was the first major attraction outside the Fairytale Forest. The attraction, designed by Ton van de Ven, showed the ruins of an ancient Celtic castle where ghosts came to life to the well-known music Dance of death, of composer Camille Saint-Saëns.
In 2022 it was announced that the Haunted Castle had to make way for a new, modern attraction. It had been Efteling’s least appreciated attraction for some time. Still, fans were disappointed: “With the demolition of the Haunted Castle, Efteling robs itself of its soul,” said the Nostalgic Efteling working group. In a short time they collected almost 10,000 signatures against the demolition, but the attraction was still demolished.
Cornelis and Hoven think that fans will be happy when they see the new attraction. “You can see the DNA of the Spookslot in Danse Macabre. They have continued in a contemporary way with old designs by Ton van de Ven,” Cornelis explains. “Some elements have been adopted and a new story has been created around the music,” says Hoven, “but it has become a completely different experience.”
According to Hoven, Danse Macabre is a type of attraction that we have not had before in the Netherlands, but he expects it to become “just as iconic” as the Spookslot.
This is what the new attraction looks like:
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