It wouldn’t have mattered if the Fata Morgana had never happened. This is what former Efteling employees say in the documentary ‘Fata Morgana – Making of: The Forbidden City’ (2021) by fansite De Vijf Zintuigen. It was a working visit that inspired them to develop the attraction, which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. And surprisingly, Pirates of the Caribbean has everything to do with that.
Designer Ton van de Ven and architect Jan Verhoeven made a business trip to Disney World in Florida in 1974. “This allowed us to become, as it were, recreation specialists. Nowadays that is a profession, but that was not the case then. Until then, we were mainly enthusiastic hobbyists. Amateurs, actually,” Verhoeven says laughing in the documentary.
‘Fata Morgana – Making of: The Forbidden City’
Did you know that designer Ton van de Ven traveled to Morocco himself to be inspired? And how did the music, composed by Ruud Bos, come to life? These and other stories are featured in the documentary series. The documentary series of The Five Senses about the origins of the Fata Morgana can be viewed for free and without an account at Brabant+.
The Five Senses also wrote about the Haunted Castle documentary (2023). The attraction was replaced by Danse Macabre in 2024.
Pirates
During the trip they were surprised by the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, a pirate-themed dark ride from 1967 – long before the blockbuster film of the same name was released. Designer Ton van de Ven: “I remember thinking: this is a good ride. It could be used, but we will never in my life build a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’.” He had a solution for that: “We will make our own fairy tale. This is how the Fata Morgana was created through Pirates.” That is absolutely not a fairy tale, Van de Ven emphasizes, “but it does contain fairytale things from 1001 Nights.”
Van de Ven submitted the plans for the attraction to his Design & Development department. It was Henk Smulders, Joop de Bont, Henny Knoet and Peter van Ostade who started working on it. “They made a complete script for what the Fata Morgana could look like in their eyes,” says Lex Lemmens, head of the technical service. That script was then still entitled ‘Arab Show’. “Then Ton started working on the sketches again.”
Ornamental pond
It is striking that the attraction was originally going to be located at a different location in the park: on the island in the Ornamental Pond, where the Gondoletta is now located. Lemmens: “For this we would use the boats of the Gondoletta, an attraction that could already be admired in Luisenpark in Mannheim, Germany. The plan was to first place the Gondoletta in the Ornamental Pond.” Only when the green light was given to build the ‘1001 night attraction’ on the island would the boats’ route be diverted. “Then visitors would sail through the island.”
Immediate action
Movement technician Mari van Heumen says that the plan immediately resonated with the team. “The idea that you see a castle in the water that you can sail through with a boat is of course fantastic.” Unfortunately, the jubilant atmosphere was short-lived. “Then we discovered that as a visitor you are not interested in sailing for fifteen minutes before you end up in a ‘show’ and then can get out again. People want immediate action.”
The Ornamental Pond ultimately turned out not to be the most suitable location for the attraction. “Let the Gondoletta be a place where people can take a breather, but let’s build the attraction much bigger and more beautiful in another place.”
And so it happened. The Gondoletta continued to exist as an independent attraction on the Siervijver. The Fata Morgana was built on the site where a riding school used to be, close to the park’s then rowing and canoeing lake. The boat trip through the Forbidden City has since become one of Efteling’s most beloved attractions.
