Fairy Tale Forest

The tradition & historical record

The Fairytale Forest (Sprookjesbos in Dutch) is a 15-acre (61,000 m2) wooded section of the amusement park Efteling in the Netherlands, where a number of well-known fairy tales and fairy tale figures are depicted by animatronics and buildings. Most of the figures are inspired by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Perrault. ¹

The Fairytale Forest was founded on the work of R.J.Th. van der Heijden, Peter Reijnders and Anton Pieck. Van der Heijden conceived the idea in the 1950s to boost tourism. He asked his brother-in-law Peter Reijnders, a filmmaker and amateur inventor from Eindhoven, to recreate a fairy tale theme park that Reijnders had built. Reijnders chose artist Anton Pieck, whose visual style had been inspired by Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, to add the artistic elements. ¹

It took roughly two years to develop and build the first ten fairy tales: The Chinese Nightingale, The Naughty Princess, Sleeping Beauty, The Gnome Village, "Number One" (referring to the toilets), The Frog Prince, The Magic Clock, Mother Holle, Snow White and The Six Servants. ¹

The Fairytale Forest has 25 scenes. Some include specific events, such as Little Red Riding Hood at the door of her grandmother's house, while others are more general, like The Gnome Village. There are three types of fairy tale scenes: indoor scenes with a commentary telling the tale (such as The Indian Water Lilies); structures too small to enter but which can be viewed by visitors through the windows (Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother's house); and open-air attractions, such as the fountain for The Frog King or The Naughty Princess. ¹

There are ten scenes based on Brothers Grimm fairytales: The Wolf and the Seven Kids, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstilskin, Mother Holle, The Six Servants (Long-neck), Rapunzel, The Frog King, The Wishing-Table and Sleeping Beauty. Three scenes are fairy tales from Mother Goose's Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault: Tom Thumb, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. Five scenes are from Hans Christian Andersen tales: The Emperor's New Clothes, The Red Shoes, The Little Mermaid, The Chinese Nightingale and The Little Match Girl. The tale of The Indian Water Lilies was written by Fabiola de Mora y Aragón. The remaining scenes either do not have a matching tale (such as The Gnome Village and Holle Bolle Gijs) or a tale was created afterward (such as The Gardener and the Fakir and The Magic Clock). ¹

The park's cleanliness is maintained with the help of an ingenious waste disposal system designed by Anton Pieck and Ton van de Ven, and originally conceived by Henk Knuivers. There are 11 talking waste disposals. Children take trash from the ground and stuff it into the disposals to hear the gobbler talk. The most popular gobbler, Hollow Bulging Gijs, makes a gobbling sound when ‘eating’ garbage and thanks the donor politely, whereas Captain Gijs fires a cannon to illustrate his enthusiasm for the guests' tidiness. However, Captain Gijs and the cannon have been removed to make space for the fairytale Pinocchio. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Fairytale Forest”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Fairy Tale Forest is attraction at Efteling Theme Park, The Netherland, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²