We're just a 10 minute drive from Walibi, the Belgium themepark where we've got 12hrs to enjoy the rides. The themepark is known for going all in on Halloween where it renames itself Ibilaw (I didn't realise that's Walibi backwards until Al pointed it out!) They have a special Halloween themed show, create 4 special scare zones and have 4 haunted houses. Those you have to pay extra for other than one and reviews online suggest they are for ages 16+ (although nothing stops anyone going). Firstly we have to get in, it seems the Halloween days are so popular the local police close roads around the area so everyone is filtered through one route which is a pain for us as we've come from the opposite direction and it doubles our time to get there.

The weather isn't looking great so it's time to bust out the new middle of Lidl thermals I got for the kids whilst picking up our illegal UK meat and milk and full on waterproofs. I'm sporting not one but two waterproof coats and feeling like Joey from friends when he wears all his clothes onto the plane.

This park definitely has more for the older kids and there are 5 rides that Liliya is too small for but it's also bigger than Plopsland so don't think we'll run out of things for her. First up and the kids want to get there adrenaline pumping so we head for the wooden coaster. We've been so lucky with theme parks up to this point and managed to avoid the crowds but it's also the start of the school holidays for the locals so we've got a 40 min wait in the rain and there's already talk of being hungry!

I can't say any ride lasting just 2 minutes is worth that long a wait but we all agreed it was great fun. Next up there was no queue for Dracula 4D and it gave us 5 mins to sit down inside and warm up at least. To get to the next section of rides we had to go through the first of the scare zones. This one was called freaky circus and I have to say the costumes were rather terrifying. We're not talking kid friendly, but full on psycho clowns with mangled body parts in their hands and covered in blood. Liliya of course being our honey badger child lapped it up and wanted her photo with one of them.

Apparently you can get anti scare badges for kids who don't want to interact with the actors but we couldn't find anyone giving them out. It was hilarious to watch them creep up on groups of unsuspecting teens and scare the life out of them though. Currently this is daylight as well so can only imagine how much spookier this gets after dark. Our next two rides before succumbing to the cries of hunger are waltzer / spinning type rides then Liliya, who is mega brave and we haven't found a ride she won't go on yet, wanted to do the little pony ride. Robert is technically too tall for this but the operator doesn't seem bothered so even he can't resist a gentle ride around the course.

I've done my research after the Plopsland show disaster and although the Halloween show here is in French with Dutch subtitles it is more of a dance performance with the story being secondary to the enjoyment and I can understand parts of it to explain to the children. It features a boy called Bill who visits Walibi with his parents, he wins a toy rabbit at the fair then goes to the bathroom where he gets sucked into the mirror world which is inhabited by the scary creatures of Ibilaw who terrorise him. Meanwhile his parents are panicking and a man hunt is formed to find him. There's some great dancing, aerial performance, fire, motor bike riding, gymnastics and brilliant costumes. Sadly there isn't a happy ending though as the words come on the screen to say many years later.... There's now a man dancing with the creepy creatures, who we think is the boy Bill but couldn't be quite sure as the actor had a different skin colour and we didn't quite understand everything they were saying. The kids enjoyed the show although there were many questions about why Bill didn't get to escape as they mostly likely haven't encountered a non happy ending before. It's back to the rides and next up is one of those shooting ones this time in an Egyptian crypt. There's a 30 min wait for this one and the kids are doing really well with our alphabet game to pass the time but there's only so many times I want to think of animals / food beginning with every letter of the alphabet. I downloaded the heads up game for the phone and this is a huge hit with them both, now Liliya can read she can fully take part. Not only were we amused but I think those in the queue were entertained as we were acting out mimes for the other person to guess the word on the screen. Robert spotted a Harry Potter deck and we figured £6 was nothing to pay for happy kids in a queue. I've also learnt that if only he could have so much interest in all topics as he did with Harry Potter we'd have nothing to worry about. His knowledge of even the obscure words that I could describe to him he would know what the spell did or who the person was.

Robert is really keen to go on their biggest ride, Kondala, but there's over an hour wait so we agree to see if the queue gets shorter later in the day. They do offer a parent swap but there's still plenty we can all go on together. We spot a kids ride next with no queue so jump on that only for Liliya to then tell us this is the lamest ride she's ever been on 🤣 Ok little one, duly noted and we head over to the ride she's been eyeing up all morning. This is one of those drop rides, think tower of terror but almost double the drop. Even I'm not too happy about it, as we're in the queue looking up I'm feeling dizzy and this adds to the excitement for the kids and Al!

The drop is 77m, takes around 4 seconds and gets up to 66mph. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting but my heart rate did shoot up and likely resulted in my end of day report telling me I had a demanding day and needed lots of rest. We mixed things up with long wait rides then a couple of rides with almost no queues and with about 3hrs to go it was time to let Robert go on some of the big coasters whilst Liliya did some of the fairground rides. Both had about a 35 min wait and Robert got to go on twice in quick succession as we used the parent swap feature.

We ended up in a couple more of the scare zones, a particular creepy one was the abandoned fairground, we couldn't quite work out if this was actually an old part of the park no longer used and had been reopened and decorated for this time of year or it was fully working during non Halloween time and and just been made to look abandoned, either way I wouldn't want to get stuck in here by myself.

With just under an hour left it looked like we'd have time for one more big ride but unfortunately unlike other parks we've been to where they close the queue at the park close time this one seems to work out the queue length and close it so the last ride should be at closing time. That meant we missed the biggest ride in the park but we've said we'll come back. Liliya wanted the drop ride again but we were a couple of minutes too late for that as well but we did manage to be the very last people on the old mine coaster. It was 10pm and the kids were only just realising they had missed out on tea so we threw a whole load of snacks at them back in the van then after 30 mins we were parked in a forest for our overnight stop. Not at all creepy after the day we've just had honestly 😬.

Other than waking in the night to some pretty strange animal noises we all survived. We've got a 1hr45 min drive to the centre parks where we'll spend our last day. Al had told me it was in the Netherlands but it turns out it's actually in Belgium so having told people we're off to 3 countries in 4 days it turns out everything had been in Belgium, oops. After a few long days and lots of steps a more relaxing pool day should do us all good. First of all though the kids make use of the giant soft play whilst we get to chill and catch up on a bit of life admin. After about 90 mins we attempt to get them so we can head to the pool but we can't find Robert anywhere. After a good 10 mins of all 3 of us looking it turns out he was in the baby area building a den and playing peekaboo with a kid.

The pool was nice enough, a couple of slides, lazy river, wave zone and when we first went in there were a bunch of floats the kids were enjoying. Sadly though the water just wasn't warm enough, they also had a 'hot tub' area which was mildly better but after 2hrs I was done so we said the kids could have some more time in the soft play if we got out and they were happy with that. There was a farm and outdoor area we could also use but it just wasn't warm enough. Having had another round in the soft play we still had time for my favourite activity before boarding the boat - foreign supermarket shopping :-) Of course I didn't actually need anything but £70 later we emerged with sushi for tea, several local beers, halloween themed cakes for Al and the kids and some local brie for me.

We got to the docks with enough time to visit the duty free and of course I had to do some extra shopping (Christmas is coming after all). The boat was practically empty as you might expect for a Tuesday evening and although we were checked by both the French and English customs for smugglers they weren't interested in the illegal sushi and cheese. We were all tucked up back in our own beds by 12.30am having had another great mini adventure and also leaving time to relax at home for a couple of days before our Halloween party.