Europa Park

This past weekend we took a trip to "Europa Park" with our friends the McGaughs.  Europa Park is a big amusement park resort in Rust, Germany...about 2 hours away by car from Zurich.  I would describe Europa like this - picture someone in Germany designing their own amusement park and they suddenly decide to try to blend the Magic Kingdom and Epcot into one massive park.  That's kind of what Europa is.  It's a big park divided into countries, like France, Spain, England, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, etc, and in each country there are rides and attractions.  Sound familiar?  In fact, the official mascot is a grey mouse named "Euro."  That's right...I said mouse.  Even some of the rides are cloned right out of Orlando...like the big silver ball from Epcot, there's a "Haunted Mansion" clone named "Ghost Castle," and a "Pirates of the Caribbean" clone named "Pirates In Batavia."  But despite all the corny similarities Europa Park is a lot of fun.  The park is huge in size, and the rides are pretty fun.  Supposedly the park was founded by a German family who's core business was building cars and roller coasters.  So in the 70's they decided to build a park to showcase their designs.  That's kind of how it all started.  Nowadays the park is the second most popular amusement park in Europe (second only to Disneyland Paris.)  We decided to go there this weekend because the park was starting their Halloween celebration, so the park was all decorated and actors were dressed up in freaky outfits.  Even the big silver ball was decorated as a giant pumpkin.  It was a lot of fun.  This year our Halloween will no doubt be diluted here in Switzerland, so it was nice to celebrate the season.  Ben and I's favorite ride was "Wodan," which is a Viking themed wooden roller coaster.  Megan got a kick out of the "Enchanted Forest," with all the story land characters.
I'll say this much about Europa...when you can't make it to Disney this is a nice alternative.  The park is very clean and the staff are pretty friendly.  We stayed in the resort area and the hotel and surrounding restaurants were pretty nice.  All weekend we couldn't help but make fun of all the Disney-rip offs, but overall Europa Park was pretty cool.