News about Drakenslangen

In June 2026, Toverland announced which attractions would keep running deep into the night during the 25-hour ToverFestival. Drakenslangen was included on that list alongside major crowd-pullers such as Fenix, Troy, Booster Bike, Merlin’s Quest and Djengu River. Between midnight and 06:00, twelve attractions were scheduled to be available.

For Drakenslangen, that was a notable role. The water slides are usually associated with a daytime family visit inside Land van Toos. During the anniversary event, the attraction became part of something different: not just a children’s and family ride, but one element in an overnight celebration of Toverland’s 25th birthday.

The park did warn that attractions could temporarily go down because systems might need to be restarted, or because of faults or weather conditions. Even with that caveat, the inclusion of Drakenslangen showed that Toverland wanted smaller and older attractions to share in the anniversary programme. For visitors, the overnight line-up offered more than the headline coasters and water rides. For fans, it underlined that Land van Toos, the park’s oldest area, still has a place in special park-wide moments.

In August 2022, Toverland reported a long-running issue at Drakenslangen. The black boat slide, the enclosed tube lane of the attraction, had already been out of use since the third week of July. The park described the cause as a technical fault. Technicians were working on a solution, but no clear reopening date was available at the time.

For visitors, the important detail was that Drakenslangen did not have to close completely. The two open lanes without a tube remained in operation, so the attraction stayed partly available in Land van Toos. Even so, the experience was noticeably reduced: the black lane adds variety to the water ride and is one of its most distinctive elements.

The news also placed the fault in a historical context. Drakenslangen opened in 2001, initially without the black lane, and previously carried the names Hara Kiri and Aqua Snake. The closed tube therefore highlighted not only the technical dependence of a water slide, but also the gradual development of the attraction over time. For fans, it was a rare glimpse at the vulnerability of what may look like a simple family slide.

In the summer of 2021, Drakenslangen was affected by a problem many parks recognised after the Covid period: a shortage of staff. Toverland confirmed that the water slides in Land van Toos had regularly been unable to open in the preceding weeks. The Kletterparcours was also mentioned as an attraction that sometimes stayed closed because of staffing pressure.

The park described daily planning as a difficult puzzle. The shortage had already been visible in food and beverage locations, but it now also affected ride operations. Toverland said it had to make choices and deploy available staff in a way that kept the overall guest offering as strong as possible. The most popular attractions were given priority.

For Drakenslangen, this meant the attraction was not limited by a technical problem or maintenance work, but by the wider labour situation. That makes the news a useful part of the ride’s recent history: a family water slide can be ready to operate and still remain closed when staffing is not sufficient. For visitors, the main impact was uncertainty, as the availability of smaller attractions could differ from day to day.

In June 2020, Drakenslangen became a clear example of how deeply Covid measures affected everyday ride operations. The water slide has a maximum rider weight of 100 kilograms. Under normal circumstances, a guest who does not meet that requirement at the top of the stairs can simply be sent back down. During the reopening period, social-distancing rules made that route much harder to manage.

Toverland therefore introduced a stricter procedure. If staff only discovered at the top that a guest could not ride, Drakenslangen was stopped. Everyone still waiting first had to make their ride, after which the guest could leave the stairs safely. The park said this was the only responsible way to guarantee distance on the staircase.

For visitors and fans, the situation showed that Covid rules were not limited to masks, route markers or lower capacity. Even a compact indoor water slide required new operating choices. In the story of Drakenslangen, it is a small but telling episode: the attraction remained available, but the usual guest flow temporarily had to give way to safety and distancing.

Toverland used 2018 to tidy up and sharpen several parts of its story. Alongside new names for areas such as Magic Forest and the Troy Area, a number of attractions in Land van Toos were given a fresh identity. For the water slide Hara Kiri, that meant a clear break with the past: from then on, the attraction would be known as Drakenslangen.

The old name no longer matched the park’s friendly, magical tone. Hara Kiri refers to a Japanese form of suicide, a meaning that sat awkwardly with a colourful family area aimed at young visitors. Drakenslangen moved the slide closer to the fantasy world Toverland wanted to create around Toos and her surroundings.

The ride experience itself did not immediately change for guests, but the new name gave the slide a more suitable place in the park’s narrative. The renaming became official on 7 July 2018, the same day Toverland opened Port Laguna and Avalon. That makes Drakenslangen part of a wider moment when the park connected its original indoor areas more clearly with its newer, more ambitious themed worlds.