FIFTY  YEARS  'DOCUMENTARIAAT'

It was on a Friday morning, the 23rd of July in the year 1976, that I embraced an adventure called 'Efteling'. What started with a small collection of flyers and newspaper clippings about the Dutch Fairytale Theme Park, ended up with what today is called 'Documentariaat De Efteling', a private contribution to preserve passionately the cultural and historical heritage of the park. And over the years to follow many special events and encounters with various interesting people took place...

October 16, 1982, during the event 'Efteling - Yesterday, today and tomorrow' I met Theo Hochwald, one of the very first employees of the Efteling Theme Park. Within a timespan of almost twenty years we would become close friends. Due to his efforts I was offered the opportunity to visit the park during its winter closure to take many beautiful pictures no regular park visitor would ever be able to take, and write down all the stories he had to tell.

April 30, 1983, Chris Sprangers, friend and colleague of Theo, granted me permission to give a live performance during the main show of Europe’s biggest Haunted Castle. It triggered Efteling to ask me to promote the park on two subsequent occasions.

Make-up artist Jack Senders creates a ghost of me

April 27, 1984, I promoted Efteling by opening the renovated bus station of Tilburg City with a special lane for busses heading for the Efteling Theme Park. A few weeks later, June 20, I was asked to represent the park at Tilburg Central Station by welcoming the Flietstra family, Holland’s largest family at the time consisting of both parents and their 17 (!) children. The extended family crisscrossed The Netherlands in The Camel, a special VIP-train from the Dutch Railways, to promote their Family Railway Runner pass.

The tenth anniversary of 'Documentariaat De Efteling' was celebrated on July 31, 1986, with an extended press publication in various regional news-papers. A similar article was previously released by Efteling in its Press kit 1985 at the request of Anja van Riel and Cees Kikstra (Efteling Public Relations).

From 1993 until 1996 I participated in a pantomime adventure called The Ghost Play created by Witch Kromhout Productions, a Dutch fan group composed of the very first major Efteling fans. This enthusiastic ensemble, supported by Jeroen Verheij (present designer at Efteling), performed several ‘ghostly’ shows on the front court of Efteling's Haunted Castle during the so called Summer Nights. The act would boost Efteling to sustain permanent live entertainment of its own in the park.

In 2016, while visiting Disneyland Anaheim and California Adventure with two Efteling friends, I met David ‘Paco’ Froberg, Audiovisual Engineer at The Walt Disney Company, who showed us around in both parks for two days.

Later that week we met former Efteling employee and present Frozen designer at Disney's, Michel den Dulk. We shared an inspiring dinner together at The Tam O’Shanter Inn, incidentally Walt Disney’s favorite steakhouse. Later that evening Michel drove us to the Griffith Observatory, where he treated us to an impressive E.T.-ish view over nocturnal Los Angeles.

The absolute highlight and culmination of my passion for Efteling, however, took place on November 6, 2022, when the book Memories of Theo Hochwald was presented to the public during a big Efteling Fan Event. Nearly 46 years of research and many interviews with (former) employees of Efteling formed the base of this history book of the park, which took me almost one and a half year to write and publish. Over 1.500 copies were sold in the months to follow.

Dove tailing the publication of the book I was invited by Sander de Bruijn (Manager Design & Experience at Efteling) to give a presentation of the book to the creative Design Team of Efteling at the Raveleijn office on April 20, 2023. Afterwards Sander handed me a special 'Thank you'-gift book, signed by all the designers present at the time.

On commenting to the appearance of the book one of Efteling’s top directors later would state that ‘…they were baffled by the fact that half of Efteling's history lay outside the park in the hands of one single individual'.

And over the past decades many precious artifacts of the park were saved, heritage that will be lovingly preserved and secured for generations to come...

https://www.eftepedia.nl/lemma/Bram_van_Binnendijk

https://www.eftepedia.nl/lemma/Herinneringen_aan_Theo_Hochwald

© Beeldmateriaal Het Documentariaat