Plopsaland De Panne — Attraction in De Panne

Arrival/Parking: Its very easy to reach by car and close to the beach. Parking casts 12€ though, which is pretty much for a european park. It was a pretty rainy day (heavy rain all day) and it was pretty quiet, almost no wait on the rides. I think mid september is considered offseason there, since the park was only open on wednesday and weekend (very weird).

Ticketing/Service: The ticketing online was not too complicated. For a rather small park, 45€ isn't that cheap. You get a weird option as well where you can bargain the price, I bargained it down to 44. They also have an app, which is useless. Only the map feature was good. At the entrance I asked if during my park visit if I could enter Plopsaqua (water park with entrance inside the park). The staff looked at me as if I came from the moon, they didn't understand a word english, french or german... I simply wanted to know when I enter Plopsaqua at mid-day if I could go back into the park (like Plopsaland morning - Plopsaqua noon - Plopsaland afternoon). They could not tell me at all... So at the end when I visited Plopsaqua the lady told me "No you cannot go back to Plopsaland, the barcode could only get scanned once, you should have gotten a (unintelligible) at first" Wow, thats what I call bad service... Very poor from you. Never saw any info about it and no one was able to tell me.

Park: The park itself is very pretty, its clean and the theming looked great, especially compared to the other belgian parks. Sadly a bunch of attractions, like Anubis and Dino Splash, were also closed (might also because of offseason). If you look for lockers, you have to pay 6€, so avoid them. I had my backpack and umbrella with me the whole day and every ride has a shelf/bin where you can safely put your stuff.

Attractions: Since I am more of a coaster guy, I mainly went for the coasters and managed to ride: Ride to Happiness (5x), Heidi the ride, K3 roller skater, Like Me coaster, De Draak, Supersplash. Would have loved to try Anubis too but was closed for revision. As an adult visitor, there are only like 4 intresting rides and you could be done in 3-4h, the rest is rather for a younger audience. Ride to Happiness: This is their main attraction. Honestly I would say the best roller coaster I've ridden so far. It has 2 launches, many inversions, spins and many strong airtime moments. I never had to wait in line as well. Mack Rides has outdone themselves. This is a must-ride for every coaster fan. Heidi the ride: This is a fun little wooden coaster with fast pacing and quick twists and dips. Also very smooth for a woodie. Supersplash: Short but fun water ride. Vertical elevator up and drop down outside in the lake. You get a little wet, but since it was already raining we didnt mind. De Draak: A powered family coaster, on the tamer side but offers a great view of the park's scenery. It does 2 laps K3 Roller skater: Very fun family coaster. Good speed and longer than expected. Does 2 laps. Like me coaster: Typical family coaster but with a pretty long train, which offers a weird experience. The trains were not that comfy though. Does 2 laps as well.

Food: The park's food was a bit overpriced, concerning its quality. Tasted pretty bland. I liked the fact that there were A LOT of slushy vendors.

Verdict: Well themed and clean park with some good attractions, but a terrible customer service and expensive. pros: Ride to Happiness, Heidi the Ride (Anubis?) Well suited for families with kids theming, cleanliness attraction line up easy to navigate through the park cons: customer service language barrier if not speaking flemish expensive for a rather small park (+parking) bad app only open the whole week during summer school break, else its only wednesdays...

We had a great time here as two adults on a sunny Sunday, but there's probably only enough thrill rides for a one day visit, with Ride to Happiness being a particularly standout attraction. Quite busy but clean when we went. Staff friendly and spoke some English. Entry cost and express pass were very reasonable prices. Normal queue times for the thrill rides were about 15-20 minutes, although there was no queue around midday for a couple of rides on the Ride to Happiness. The water rides and children's rides had queues of up to 60 mins when we were there.

The express pass was a little weird though, there are no signs and you have to find the somewhat obscure exit to the rides and often wait in inconvenient positions, getting in the way people who have finished the ride. It also felt like it was a last-minute addition to the park as this whole system didn't feel very organised and we would end up splitting up families who were waiting in the standard queue. I think this needs a rework with dedicated lanes for each ride which join the main queue near the station to resolve these issues.

In terms of attractions, Ride to Happiness is absolutely fantastic, one of the best and most intense rollercoasters I've ever ridden, we went on this about 5 times. Heidi was also a good wooden rollercoaster, and Anubis has a very fast, unexpected launch which is very intense, and the rest of the ride is fun but quite rough. The two water rides are also good, but SuperSplash has a long ride back to the station after the initial and only drop. The Plop's Forest dark ride was charming too. These were the main rides you'd want to do as an adult, along with some flat rides too. Enough for one day but I wouldn't do more than one day here.

The food and drinks were very expensive, with the average price around 5€ per drink. I would bring your own food and drink if possible as it was too expensive, this should be addressed by the park.

On a sunny Sunday when we went, the parking situation was not great, it took 30 mins to leave the motorway and get to the car park due to the very long queues. We were finally parked in one of the overflow car parks in a field, but the traffic flow was very slow all the way through the town up to that point.

Overall we had a great time and would return, especially to ride the Ride to Happiness again, but there are also some things that we would like to see improved here for...

A amusement park that is okay for a visit. It's a wonderfull place for small kids. This park has possibilities to sleep, spend a day in a amusement park or a themed swimming pool. The park is really well maintained. I think that spending one day in this park is enough for a full experience.

The park has several rides for the whole family. It has a really nice balance but with the focus for smaller kids and young teenagers.

Today i wouldn't call this park a theme park. Plopsa makes severall themings with every attraction, but they are almost all different. The theming of the rides themselves is mostly beautifull done, but the areas are lacking a overall feel in theming. You don't get a immersive experience. To be fair the theming in wicky land and the swimming pool is beautifull!

The park has one world star rollercoaster "ride to happiness" for coaster enthusiast. Don't miss out on this coaster!

The main reason for me to give 3 stars instead of 4 is because of the food and drinks. I'll keep it short. Expensive "Fast" food = More slow food I would rather eat carton board then this food. Almost no diversity in this food. "Even if you want a hot chocolate milk at the boomba area. You have to go outside to a rombauts machine and you can only pay cash!" "If you get a burger at plopsa restaurant there is a carton box of Maya the bee image. This is so easy to fix in theming..."

The overall service and waiting times were okay for me. It is still a amusement park and on a busy day a hour waiting seems for me normall. There is always a possibility to buy a "fast pass" to skip some lines.

Plopsa is a big amusement park group. De Panne is there main park. The company has the know how to make something exciting and beautifull. This park is in my country and i have a lot of admiration for what the group is achieving in Europe. I hope in the nearby future they will take some action in they're food and beverage in the Panne. In my oppinion the focus now is branding a branche to severall parks in Europe. They are generating multiple sources of income, but in my opninion they are losing some focus on they're main park. For me the main park should be a business card to other companies. You see a lot of copies to other parks and they are losing originality and creativity (look at wicky land,heidi,...). This company has so much...