Carnival Festival


Carnival Festival is a dark ride in amusement park Efteling in the Netherlands. It was designed by Joop Geesink and opened its doors in 1984.

History and details

The ride system was built by Mack Rides, the ride has a track length of 240m. The ride cost €4.1m. The ride concept is original, but clearly influenced by Disney’s "it's a small world", and signified a breach with the fairy-tale style of the Efteling. The ride takes 2 adults or 3 children, in 1 of the 118 cars, through a humorous simplification of the world populated by animatronics in just over 6 minutes, accompanied by a catchy music written by Ruud Bos and stand-up comedian Toon Hermans. The ride’s host is ‘Jokie de Prrretneus’, a carnival doll and the park’s mascot from 1984 until 1989 when the new mascot ‘Pardoes’ was introduced.
In 2005 the ride was redecorated with the famous Dutch doll "Loekie de Leeuw", which also was created by Joop Geesink.
Joop Geesink’s objective was to make it a hilarious ride, which is done by taking cultural aspects that have been generalized, and portraying them with funny dolls. In 2019 the ride closed for an extensive refurbishment. The lighting was upgraded to LED, the dolls were repainted and the Japan, China and Africa scenes were changed. Also in addition the gondolas would now stop periodically so that the fanfare portion would play.

The Ride

The ride passes through 9 different regions, each represented by typical scenes and variations on the music.
;Netherlands
;Belgium, Monaco and France
;United Kingdom
;Germany and the Alps
;Italy
;Japan and China
;The Arctic
;Africa
;Mexico and Hawaii

The Music

For Carnival Festival, Efteling commissioned its first original soundtrack, which was composed by Toon Hermans and arranged and produced by Ruud Bos. Each of the ride's scenes features its own variation on the theme music.
Since 2019, if a disabled person boards the attraction, fanfare music will play.