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I visited THE GERMAN DISNEYLAND!!

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A California surfer walks into a German theme park and leaves calling it Disney’s toughest rival.

Conner Sullivan, the American travel vlogger and former USC athlete, spent a day at Phantasialand in Brühl, just outside Cologne, and posted the results under the title “this is the german disneyland.” The video follows him through a park most Americans have never heard of but that European coaster enthusiasts talk about the way Americans talk about Disneyland. Sullivan’s takeaway, delivered to his international audience, is blunt: this place is a legitimate rival to Disney.

• Phantasialand opened in 1967 in Brühl, near Cologne, and packs six fully themed lands — Berlin, Mexico, China Town, Deep in Africa, Wuze Town, and Klugheim — into a notably compact footprint.
• Taron, an Intamin multi-launch coaster, is the park’s signature thrill ride, threading riders through the volcanic rock canyons built for the Klugheim land.
• Sullivan’s video also covers Raik, the inverted coaster Black Mamba, the Chiapas log flume, and the Colorado Adventure mine train as part of his coaster-by-coaster tour.

A Park Built Like a Movie Set

What Sullivan zeroes in on almost immediately is how little space Phantasialand actually occupies compared to how much world it manages to build. Visitors walk through a 1920s-style Berlin entrance area before spilling into Mexico, then China Town, then Deep in Africa — each one committed enough to its theme that Sullivan compares the sensation to walking between lands at Disneyland rather than just riding rides in sequence. Wuze Town and Klugheim round out the six-land layout, with Klugheim built specifically as the volcanic backdrop for the park’s newest headline coaster.

That density is the whole pitch. Where American parks tend to sprawl across hundreds of acres, Phantasialand crams immersive theming, restaurants, and record-chasing rides into a footprint small enough to walk end to end in minutes — something Sullivan calls out directly as he moves from one land into the next without the long dead-zone walks common at bigger parks.

Taron and the Thrill Ride Lineup

The centerpiece of Sullivan’s tour is Taron, the Intamin multi-launch coaster that winds through Klugheim’s man-made canyons of volcanic rock. It’s the ride he keeps coming back to on camera, and it’s the one moment in the video where his reaction most closely mirrors what he says about Disneyland’s marquee attractions — total buy-in to the theming, not just the speed.

Taron launches riders through Klugheim’s volcanic rock canyons — the single moment Sullivan keeps circling back to as proof this isn’t just another coaster park.

He also runs through Raik, Black Mamba — the park’s inverted coaster — the Chiapas log flume, and the Colorado Adventure mine train, giving his audience a broader sense of the lineup beyond the headline attraction. Between the volcanic canyons of Klugheim and the jungle theming around Deep in Africa, the throughline in Sullivan’s footage is that Phantasialand builds a story around every ride instead of just bolting a coaster onto open land.

Sullivan’s Verdict Against Disneyland

Sullivan frames the whole trip as a direct comparison, and by the end of the video he’s presenting Phantasialand to viewers as a genuine German rival to Disney’s parks — not a budget knockoff, but a park operating on its own terms with a different scale and a different kind of intensity. It’s a comparison that will feel familiar to anyone who has spent time reading up on what to expect before visiting Disney World or chasing tips on skipping the lines at Walt Disney World — except Sullivan is applying that same lens to a park most of his audience is seeing for the first time.

For American theme park fans scrolling through Sullivan’s channel, Phantasialand isn’t a stop on the usual bucket list next to Universal or Six Flags — it’s the park nobody flagged for them until now, and Taron is the ride they’ll be searching for the next time they’re pricing out a trip to Cologne.