Efteling - dutch for tasteful theme park?

Conscious that the kids have endured a lot of old cities, churches, harbours, cobbled streets and stuff, today was a day for them - a visit to a 'theme' park. We walked to the station in Dordrecht, caught the train to Tilburg and a bus to the park, called Efteling.

By 1030 we were in the steady queue to the ticket gates, jostling with marauding teenagers, parents with prams, even the odd wheelchair. I felt rising dread.

I hate theme parks. When you have two families, as I have done, you can delight in all of the wonders of parenting twice. I say this with all sincerity - for I truly thrive on fatherhood and its attendant responsibilities. But taking children to theme parks is a horror that should be avoided at all costs. It is an evil, enervating reincarnation. Only bowling alleys compare - but I digress.

Efterling starts off like any other theme park ordeal - you queue for an hour in a vast car and bus wasteland, hand over an outrageous amount of money, are given an indecipherable cartoony map and funnel through the gate to the park. That's where the similarity ends.

This place has the most extraordinary gardens - they are a delight. It is like wandering the garden of the Rodin Museum, the Luxembourg Gardens or Hyde Park. There are forests of verdant autumnal trees, chestnut, oak and ash, manicured beds with thoughtful colour plantings, late flowering bulbs, sculpted trees and glades. The buildings are tasteful, set in leafy surrounds. The water features are extensive, exquisite and peaceful. Did I say peaceful? Have you ever been to a Gold Coast park on a simmer, sorry summer day? I have. Hades would be a relief. Hot, steamy, crowded, melting bitumen, no shade and sweaty people everywhere. Efteling is not like that.

Amongst all that greenery are fearsome rides with names like 'Viper' 'Python' and 'Pirhana'  - we went on them and they deliver the same adrenalin rush as anywhere.And they do have the same queues, but standing in the enchanted forest, they felt shorter! To be fair, the food is as awful as the theme parks of Australia and the US.  But local awfulness, like hole-in-the-wall fricandel and croquet, fritte drowning in mayonaise.

But overall, this was, dare I say it, the best theme park experience I have had. Would I go back? Not on your life! But at least I won't have nightmares. Oh, and the kids had a good time.