Plopsaland De Panne is a theme park located in Adinkerke, Belgium, in the municipality of De Panne, and owned and operated by Plopsa. The park was originally known as Meli Park from 1935 to 1999, before reopening as Plopsaland on 20 April 2000.

History

Meli Park

In 1935, Alberic-Joseph Florizoone opened Meli Park as a place where he could sell his home-produced honey and also teach visitors about the process and the honey bee itself. To keep up with competition, over the years the park opened several attractions, turning it into a theme park.

Plopsaland

The Florizoone family sold the park in 1999 to Studio 100 and VMMa. The park received a makeover during the following winter season, to reopen as Plopsaland on 20 April 2000. During the renovation several characters from Studio 100, such as Samson en Gert and Kabouter Plop, were used to theme new and old attractions. The new park had some issues at reopening with parking capacity and catering, though these were corrected in the following years. Studio 100/Plopsa bought out the shares of VVMa in 2005 and became sole owner of the park, with plans to turn it into a multi-day, all-weather resort. In that same year, Plopsa opened Plopsa Indoor Hasselt and bought Telecoo, to avoid confusion with the other parks Plopsaland was renamed to Plopsaland De Panne. Besides expanding the site into a resort, Plopsa also kept expanding the theme park with Anubis the Ride (2009), Vic the Vicking-land (2013) , Heidi the Ride (2017) , The Ride to Happiness (2021) and Circus Bumba (2023) in order to appeal to a wider demographic and become a destination not just for families with younger children.

Attractions

The park consists of 55 attractions, including 7 rollercoasters.

Rollercoasters

Darkrides

Other attractions

De Panne resort

The theme park is part of the larger Plopsa resort that consist of an indoor theme park (2011), the Proximus Theater (2013) , Plopsaqua De Panne (2015) , a hotel (2021) and a camping (2021/2022). The resort also houses the headquarters of the Plopsa-group.

Visitor numbers

Below is an overview of the development of Plopsaland visitor numbers, as stated in the annual report.

Trivia