Ravensburger Spieleland

My hungry kids fell over one another into the breakfast room this morning. "I want pancakes!" called Alex. "I want waffles!" countered Ella. But they forgot where they were living. As always, their options ranged from sliced salami to sliced cheese.

So the kids didn't bother lingering over breakfast, and they quickly left Dennis and me for the playground. When we joined them out there, they were deep into a game of something involving Peter Pan and pirates, inspired, I think, by the Indian chief depicted on the playground equipment. Joey came running up to us, holding a piece of bark that he said was his treasure map, before dashing off to Ella's and Alex's sword fight.  Dennis mentally flashed forward thirty years: Joey will most certainly tell his friends how he had absolutely the coolest brother and sister.

Joey with his map and cutlass

We didn't leave that playground until a few minutes before ten o'clock, which happened to be when Ravensburger Spieleland opened.

The good news

You know how we Geelses love our board games. When I heard that there was a whole theme park developed by the Ravensburger game makers, we were all pretty enthusiastic.  And looking at the park's website, we were further convinced: the park was such a funky mix of clever rides themed after their games and good old-fashioned low-tech fun. It looked perfect for us.

After an hour there, Dennis declared it the best amusement park, ever. The attractions were so cute, and there were no crowds and no lines to speak of.  

The kids had studied the park map over the last few days, and although they took turns all day, choosing what rides we'd take (Joey has long had his heart set on riding the ducky ride), the kids generally agreed completely on what looked fun.

Everyone's favorite was a maze based on Ravensburger's Labyrinth game: at the entrance of the maze, the kids got to punch a time card, and then they ran through, punching their cards at four different hidden stations.  And, just to spice things up a bit, there were hidden doors and walls that you could slide.  Ella ran through several times, with a personal record of four minutes, flat.

The kids also were really excited about a ride based on the game Memory.  The four teams of players got to sit in helicopters, and the controls were replaced with a keypad for entering in match guesses.  After each match, the successful team's helicopter would rise a bit.  Dennis and Ella were alone in the sky at the end of the game, but I definitely would give Alex and Joey a prize for good sportsmanship.

They also had a crazy-fun ride based on Cat & Mouse, in which you shot balls from an air cannon, getting points for each ball you shot into the holes of a ginormous block of swiss cheese.

Ella can't wait to get started

Snails are too slow for Ella's tastes

And there's Ella again: Say Käse, indeed.

And they had bumper cars based on Snail's Pace Race: when we boarded these, Joey announced that his snail was number 9, and so it was. Little dude has some math skills.

Somehow, after that ride, number 9 became his all-time-favorite number ever.  When he and I were about to take our turn on the bumper boats, he got very upset when I told him we couldn't go in boat number 9, which he'd sighted and tried to climb in, even though it wasn't in operation: a sad, sad moment. Later in the evening, when I was flipping through pictures of the day and showing them to Joey, when I came to the ones of the boats, Joey stopped smiling suddenly: "Oh. I wanted number 9."

It wouldn't be a European playground without a little danger

Anyway, there were some really clever rides, but the park was huge, and much of it was taken up by much more low-key fun.  There were several excellent playgrounds, one with a long system of tunnels underground that the kids adored.

There was a whole long maze of dark tunnels under this playground

They had free panning for gold, which, as you know, the kids have been training for.  Joey decided he wasn't a fan of this particular seam of gold: he didn't appreciate getting water in his shoes.  So he and I instead worked on putting together a giant puzzle.  (Ravensburger is also a well-known puzzle manufacturer, and they had a large sale tent filled with puzzles for 3 to 5 euros each.)

The boys had a lot of fun on a little canoe ride: Alex cheered and urged his brother on excitedly throughout the whole ride, telling him what a good job he was doing, and encouraging him to go faster.  But after the ride, Alex whispered in my ear, "Do you know what? Joey was paddling backwards. But I wanted him to be proud."  Ella enjoyed the ride as well, paddling fiercely.  When she exited, she confided "I really wish I lived in the time of the pirates. I think I would have made an excellent pirate."

There were a couple of shows going on throughout the day. We first bumped into Miko the clown as he rode his tricycle through the park.  I thought Miko seemed a little grumpy, but the kids had a great time chasing him around on his bubble bike.  Ella reasoned "Well, I'd probably be grumpy, too, if I had ten kids chasing me.  But if he didn't want them chasing him, he probably should have picked a different bike."

We caught Miko's clown show later, and, as Dennis noted, watching his show explained a lot about why Germans are such fans of Jerry Lewis. But I, personally, wasn't a fan of grouchy Miko, particularly when he drew my kids away, pied-piper style, and I had to chase them down.

We also watched a Labyrinth-themed show: literally, a game show, in which the master of ceremonies divided the audience into two teams and invited children to come and play games.  Ella raised her hand and was chosen to do a spider beanbag toss: at the end of the day, she mused, "That was probably one of the hardest things anyone has ever had to do, losing a game in front of an audience who speaks a different language."  But I'd had no idea she was embarrassed: she carried herself so well out there.

Most of the park closed at 5:00, except for the very front of the park, which stayed open an extra hour.  One of the main attractions up there was a bouncy castle, where all of the children in the whole park ended up.  Dennis called it a "Child Collider," for every half-minute, another child would emerge, howling, from an injury, real or imagined. But he'd charged Ella and Alex to look after Joey, and all three kids left the ride without a scratch among them.

At dinner: Just where is that Goldbug, anyway?

Really, except for one little grumpy spell when Alex tried to play-wrestle with Ella and she kicked him away, the kids were just lovely to each other today.

Although the day was all together wonderful, my favorite part of it was at dinner, when Joey and Ella took turns impersonating Alex, and Alex pretended to be a ventriloquist dummy.  I took a little video, and it's terribly hard to hear what the kids are saying because of all of the background noise, and, even if you could hear them, this would probably only be charming to me.  But I'm sharing it anyway, because I love these kids so darn much.