A storybook vacation
On Disney group tour in Germany, fairytales come to life
MUNICH, Germany — Once upon a time — last month, actually — several American families were walking through the medieval German village of Alsfeld.
They meandered along the cobblestone streets, marveling at the flower boxes bursting with geraniums and the half-timber homes that seemed too precious to live in.
They meandered along the cobblestone streets, marveling at the flower boxes bursting with geraniums and the half-timber homes that seemed too precious to live in.
All of a sudden, a girl in a long red coat darted in front of them. She looked afraid, lost. She called out for her grandmother and then scurried away.
(Lori Rackl/Sun-Times)
(Lori Rackl/Sun-Times)
Departures are scheduled May through December and cost $2,659 for children and $2,959 for adults, airfare not included. You fly into Frankfurt and out of Munich. (The Sept. 25-Oct. 3 trip coincides with Oktoberfest and is adults only, costing $3,059 a person.)
CONTACT DISNEY: (800) 543-0865, adventuresbydisney.com.
All of a sudden, a girl in a long red coat darted in front of them. She looked afraid, lost. She called out for her grandmother and then scurried away.
No sooner did she disappear than a wolf came charging down the street, hot on the girl’s trail.
Sound familiar?
It’s the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and it was playing out before our eyes on the very streets that inspired the world’s most famous and prolific fairytale authors, the Brothers Grimm.
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm traveled around their native Germany in the early 1800s, chronicling folk lore from local villagers and soaking up the scenery — the castles, crooked streets and dark forests — that would serve as the setting for many of their yarns.
A century later, Walt Disney and his team of animators would bring many of the Brothers Grimm stories to the big screen.
Now, Disney once again was bringing these stories to life — for us — in a setting far more memorable than a movie theater or theme park.
My husband, 8-year-old stepson and I were on Adventures by Disney’s “Once Upon a Fairytale” trip, a nine-day group tour that covered stretches of Germany’s famed Fairytale Route and Romantic Road.
You didn’t know Disney offered trips? You’re not alone.
“Everyone we told about this thought we were going to Euro Disney,” said Washington, D.C.-area resident Michael Kidd, who had his wife, mother, 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in tow.
Adventures by Disney is four years old, making it a relative newcomer to the Disney empire. The company runs guided tours in 22 spots around the globe, lasting from six to 13 days. It launched seven new itineraries this year, including an African safari and trips to the Galapagos Islands and remote wilds of Alaska.
The vacation packages are geared toward families, although there are some adult-only itineraries for those big kids who never outgrew their mouse ears.
As with most group tours, Disney takes care of all the details, from hotels and most meals to the motor coach that piloted us along the autobahn and into the towns where we’d spend two nights each: Heidelberg, Trendelburg, Rothenburg and Munich.
“I love that I don’t have to think,” confided one mom.
Thinking was the job of our two Adventure guides, Jennae and Tracy. Dyed-in-the-wool Disney fans (they’d both worked at Disney World before joining the Adventures team), Jennae and Tracy shepherded us from place to place, kept the kids entertained and took care of all the logistics. And they did it with more enthusiasm and energy than the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. I was convinced they went to bed at night hooked up to an IV full of Red Bull.
On Disney trips, Jennae and Tracy told us, you can expect lots of Disney magic. That might mean a trip backstage at Disney's “The Lion King” in London, a chance to meet Marco Polo in Venice, a scavenger hunt in the Louvre or, in our case, a live performance of Little Red Riding Hood in a nearly 1,000-year-old German village.
Little Red Riding Hood wasn’t the only character to surprise us along the way. After a dinner of pasta sprinkled with rose petals in Sababurg Castle, we took turns posing with Sleeping Beauty and her prince in front of the same ivy-covered walls the Brothers Grimm had her slumbering within for a century.
While the theme of the trip was fairytales, our guides made sure to feed us facts along with the fiction — enough to give us an education without putting the kids to sleep. As we toured historic churches and towns, we learned about Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation and Europe’s devastating Thirty Years War. In Munich, our local guide delved into the darkest chapter of Germany’s past and talked about Hitler’s rise to power.
On a much lighter note, we learned why steins have lids (to keep the chestnuts in the beer garden trees from falling into the brew) and the origin of a military salute (it mimics the motion knights made to raise their armor over their eyes).
We got to see the salute in action when a medieval knight greeted us at a 700-year-old castle in Trendelburg, our home for the next two nights. Covered in chainmail, the knight led us over a drawbridge to the base of a tall tower. A tiny window high above popped open to reveal a blonde woman, who began lowering her long braid. The children loved it. Even the grown-ups had to admit it was pretty cool to shack up in Rapunzel’s castle. (Jennae and Tracy dutifully reminded us that Disney’s “Rapunzel” movie is due out next year.)
Rapunzel came down for some photo opps, and then the kids — ranging in age from 5 to 16 — began running around this 14th century fortress looking for ghosts.
A few adults who weren’t ghost-hunting apparently found them anyway. A mother and her teenage daughter moved to a new room after an especially spooky night. Another woman was convinced that the opened jar of gummy bears in her suitcase was the work of a spirit ... with a sweet tooth.
Our next stop took us to the remarkably well-preserved Bavarian town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the medieval walled village that Walt Disney had in mind when he produced the 1940 animated classic “Pinocchio.”
Rothenburg ranks up there as one of the prettiest towns I’ve ever seen — half-timber houses with orange “beaver tail” tile roofs, outdoor cafes, Gothic churches, stone towers and ancient fortress walls.
“Hey!” said my stepson, Ben, excitedly pointing to a statue in the town square showing St. George slaying a dragon. “That’s at Disney World!”
Anyone who’s been to Disney World’s Epcot will feel plenty of deja vu in Rothenburg, the model for some of Epcot’s Germany Pavilion.
After the buses full of day-trippers pulled out of Rothenburg, our group spent part of the evening following a costumed “night watchman” as he made the rounds with his lantern, much like he did centuries before. The night watchman’s job was to look out for fires that could turn this walled village into a giant Weber grill. Bats flew overhead as the enthralled children trailed him like the Pied Piper — another Grimms’ fairytale set a bit farther north in Hamelin.
When we weren’t together as a group touring towns, learning how to bake Bavarian pretzels or bike riding through a Hansel and Gretel-type forest, we had free time to explore (or nap) on our own — an important ingredient to a successful group tour, especially when children are tagging along. Anyone who’s traveled with kids knows that jam-packed itineraries can lead to over-tired children. And over-tired children lead to meltdowns.
The trip managed to strike the right balance between activities and downtime, and it was fun to break free from the group and strike out on our own every now and then.
One of our family’s most memorable meals was a non-Disney dinner in Rothenburg, eating sauerbraten and sausages with Europeans at a beer garden’s communal table. The 86-year-old German woman seated across from us, tipsy on rum and Coke, fished fistfuls of caramel candy out of her purse to give to Ben. We talked about the economy and America with a young Danish family who seemed crestfallen — make that crushed — when we confessed to having no idea their prime minister recently was named NATO’s secretary general.
I was sorry to leave the tiny town of Rothenburg, but we had to forge ahead to the metropolis of Munich, where we’d spend the final two nights of our fairytale adventure.
Disney had saved the best castle for last: the iconic Neuschwanstein, near Munich. It’s the stunning hilltop palace of Bavaria’s eccentric, ill-fated “Fairytale King” Ludwig II.
The model for Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland, Neuschwanstein is said to be Germany’s most photographed building. Its elegant towers and spires jut into the sky, surrounded by snow-capped Bavarian Alps, turquoise lakes and evergreen forests.
Ludwig was living at Neuschwanstein when authorities arrested him here in 1886. Shortly after, the corpses of the deposed king and his psychiatrist were found floating in a lake near Munich.
Disney wouldn’t dare let our story end on such a downer. So the group gathered that night at Munich’s lively Hofbrauhaus for a farewell dinner.
We passed platters of pork and dumplings, danced to oompah music and hoisted heavy glass mugs of Bavarian beer — or carbonated apple juice, depending on our ages.
And we all lived happily ever after. At least I hope so.
The End.