The Efteling
A world of wonders
The Efteling app: a magical app for happy visitors
The Efteling is a theme park in Kaatsheuvel in the province of Brabant in the Netherlands, where everything is about fantasy, magic and marvel. The park’s many attractions are based on old legends, fairy tales and fables. Yearly, the park welcomes no less than 5 million visitors who all fully enjoy the magical experiences and amazing shows.
The Efteling started in 1952 as a fairy-tale forest theme park. Since then, it has grown rapidly. Today, it is an international organisation with visitor numbers that many businesses can only dream of. And the park’s growth has by no means destroyed the magic of the forest. A day at the Efteling is just as enchanting as it was in the old days.
Efteling app: realtime overview of waiting times
Due to the increasing numbers of visitors each year, the amount of people having to wait in a queue to get access to their favourite attractions has risen considerably too. And if there is one thing that you don’t want on a day out, it is waiting in line. Because the longer you have to stand in a row, the fewer attractions you can attend during a day. This is why this famous theme park asked us the develop the Efteling app.
This app shows the visitor a real-time overview of the waiting times for all Efteling attractions. By always joining the shortest queue as indicated by the app, you can get the most out of your day. And what if there is an attraction that you absolutely do not want to miss, but whose row has been longer than 15 minutes for some time now? Then you can activate an option in the app that sends you a notification when the queuing has reduced to 10 minutes.
Boarding Pass: No more Python queuing
In order to decrease the waiting times for the popular Python attraction, we developed the Boarding Pass as part of the Efteling app. This Boarding Pass enables visitors to reserve a timeslot for a ride in the Python. The reservation of a timeslot reduces your waiting time for this popular rollercoaster to a maximum of 15 minutes. Since the introduction of the Boarding Pass in 2018, we have introduced the following optimisations:
- The timeslot within which you have be present at the Python’s entrance location has been changed from 15 to 30 minutes. In this way, more flexibility and a better distribution of the visitors is created within the timeslot.
- In the future, the Efteling will introduce partly overlapping timeslots.
- Some more minor adjustments will be made to the queue function to avoid the formation of a row at the Python location just before the attraction starts.
In sum: the Boarding Pass is in a permanent stage of development with the ultimate goal to increase visitors’ fun to the maximum level, each and every day.
Challenges surrounding the development of the app
Developing the Efteling app and the Boarding Pass entailed several challenges. During the building process, for example, we learned that the app has to be updated continuously with the most recent information about the attraction availability and the waiting times in the park. And this requires a flawless cooperation and communication among all parties involved. Meeting these conditions were the two major prerequisites for success and for reaching our ultimate objective: creating an amazing app for the visitors of the Efteling.
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