Most lists of Efteling attractions rank them by adrenaline or by queue length. This is not that list. The eight attractions below are ones I keep returning to for what they are, not for what they do. Some are quiet, some are loud, some take two minutes, some take forty. They are listed in the order I would tour them on a long afternoon.
1. Droomvlucht (Dreamflight)
The 1993 dark ride through a fantasy world of trolls, gnomes, and floating castles. The ride lasts about six minutes. It is consistently the best-themed dark ride I have been on, anywhere. The opening tableau — the storm at the troll's cave — has not been altered since 1993 and still works as well as it did then. The lighting in the third act is unchanged. The puppetry is unchanged. The whole ride is, in this sense, a time capsule of how Dutch animatronic design looked in the early 1990s, and the time capsule has aged beautifully.
2. Carnaval Festival
A 1984 tour through a small-world version of global cultures, with about 200 animated figures. The ride is, in concept, similar to It's a Small World at Disneyland; in execution, it is funnier, more detailed, and willing to be strange. The Brazilian sequence is, for me, the highlight: a samba band with a sloth as conductor.
3. Fata Morgana
A 1986 boat ride through a Persian fantasy city. The lighting design is some of the most carefully done in the park; pay attention to how the route alternates between full sun and complete darkness. The fight in the marketplace, halfway through, is animated by puppets that are taller than human and which move on rails embedded in the cobblestones.
4. Symbolica
The most recent major addition (2017). A 35-minute walkthrough of a fantasy palace. The architecture is by Karel Willemen, working in the Pieck idiom but with more theatrical flair. The audience is divided into three groups, each of which follows a different path through the building; the three paths converge and diverge in ways that take a few visits to fully map.
5. Baron 1898
The dive coaster. The ride itself is two minutes and is conventional in its mechanics. The reason it earns a place on this list is the queue. The queue building is a fully detailed Edwardian mineshaft, with animated foremen, a pre-show in a cage that descends three storeys, and ambient audio of pickaxes that has been recorded specifically for this attraction. The queue is, in some ways, more impressive than the ride.
6. Aquanura
The water show on the central lake, after dusk. Twelve minutes of fountains, lights, fire, and music. Run at sunset and at full dark. I prefer the dark version. The audience benches around the lake are arranged so that there is no wrong seat; the show plays in 360 degrees.
7. Pagode
The pagoda-themed gondola that lifts about forty visitors to 45 metres and rotates while descending. The view at the top is the only place in the park from which you can see the entire park and a portion of the surrounding Loonsche Land forest. The ride takes five minutes. It is best at dusk.
8. The Six Servants (in the fairy-tale forest)
The tableau I mentioned in my fairy-tale-forest piece. Six small mechanical figures, each with an exaggerated physical trait — a man who can see through walls, a man with very long legs, a man with a hat that summons frost. The tableau is animated in a slow loop. It is also, for reasons I cannot quite articulate, the most haunting thing in the forest. I usually end my day here.