Nest! Playing together to your heart’s content.
Accessibility has been a high priority at Efteling for many years. We find it important that everyone feels at home and safe in our World of Wonders. That has become the starting point for Nest! our inclusive play forest. We want to create a place that is accessible to all young adventurers and where children can play carefree together. Whether it is a child with or without (visible) disabilities, everyone should be able to play together and challenge themselves.
It includes elements themed to the various Efteling roller coasters so that the young visitors can still get a taste of the bigger attractions, which they’re currently too small to ride. So they learn that they are braver then they think they are!
The NEST!keeper (a Efteling theme park employee) helps all children (day in day out) to play together and to become the best adventurer in the world of NEST!
Dutch theatre creator and wheelchair athlete Marc de Hond and his family enjoyed the Efteling theme park for years. As a special advisor, he regularly shared his ideas about physical accessibility with the park management. As a result of this special collaboration, two projects became reality at the end of 2021:
- Nest! – an accessible play forest where all (young) children can play together
- “De redders van Ruigrijk” – an inclusive fairytale in which children with disabilities play the leading role, in the form of a reading and (tactile) picture book
Up until his death in June 2020, Marc de Hond was closely involved in the realisation of these two projects.
NEST! is designed together with experts & children with or without (visible) disabilities. From the very first moment we included the children in the design process. We invited them to draw/create their own playground and they came with brilliant ideas. Throughout all the design-steps they helped us to create the most amazing and best inclusive playground ever. Of course at the end it needed to be tested thoroughly by the ‘Playground Gang’ from the Dutch Foundation for disabled children Stichting het Gehandicapte Kind, before opening.
More information can be found here.
Partners
Mark de Hond
Dutch Foundation for disabled children: Stichting het Gehandicapte Kind
Bartiméus