Visiting Gardaland

Gardaland is the most popular amusement park in Italy. It is located in a tiny village called Ronchi VR in the north-eastern part of Italy just a few hundred metres from the banks of Lake Garda. Getting to Gardaland can be done by various means of transport; below you can find a detailed description, but first a few useful tips for your visit to Gardaland.

Visiting Gardaland – what you should now

⇒ Avoid visiting Gardaland on the busiest days during summer (especially August when the whole Italy has vacation), as you risk spending most of your day in a que; weekdays tend to have less visitors then weekends.

Tunnel between parking and park entrance

⇒ If you purchase your ticket on the park website minimum 7 days before your visit, you can save about 5-8 Euro per ticket, which is great as you also then avoid having to que up for getting your ticket, but you should keep the following in mind:

• Tickets have to be printed (you can get it printed at the entrance for 1 Euro per ticket)
• Date of the visit cannot be changed (also not if it rains).
• Tickets cannot be refunded.

⇒ Other issues related to tickets:

• If you plan to visit the park two days in a row, you should buy two day tickets.
• If you travel as family with kids under 10, you can buy a discounted family ticket
• Discount ticket for afternoon visit between 2 and 6 pm.

Gardaland Entrance

⇒ If you plan to visit the park more than one day (not consecutive) during a calendar year, it pays out to buy a season pass which is available as basic (unlimited entrances + free parking), premium (basic + food discount and free entrance to Sea Life) and as VIP (Premium + timesaver)

⇒ If you spend a whole day at the park, you will have cost for food and drink of at least 25 Euro / Person. Alternatively you can bring you own cooling box with food, on the left hand side exiting the tunnel from the parking area, there is a picnic area where you can leave your cooling box.

Gardaland magic tree

⇒ When the park opens most visitors hurry to try out the big attractions like e.g. Raptor which means you can easily end up in a 30 minute queue; you can avoid this queue by first visiting some of the less popular attractions and then return to the bigger attraction a few hours after opening (queues are minimal around lunch time).

⇒ Kids can enter attractions according to their height (not age).

⇒ For the most popular attractions (those where you have to queue up) there is an option to buy a timesaver (express pass) which basically lets you skip the queue; it is however not cheap to do so, each timesaver costs about 4-5 Euro for one ride and 12-15 Euro for 5 rides. As mentioned above, holders of Premium seasonal pass have timesaver integrated in the seasonal pass!

Raptor on of the most popular attractions

Other attractions near Gardaland

If you are staying in the Gardaland area for several days you should consider also visiting the following attractions:

Just 3 km from Gardaland you can find Movieland park and Caneva Aquapark which both used to be operated by the company behind Gardaland, but now belong to another company.

Movieland is movie themed amusement park, it is a lot smaller than Gardaland, but as the rides and attractions here are completely different, it is still worthwhile visiting for half a day or so. The other half of the day, you can then spend in the Caneva Aquapark which is within walking distance from Movieland.

Travelling to Gardaland

By Car: the amusement is really easy to reach by car, as it is located only 4.5 km from the exit Peschiera on the A4/E70 highway. As soon as you exit the toll payment station, you will see signs for “Parchi di Gardaland” guiding you directly to the park. The route marked on the signs might not correspond to what your navigation system will suggest, as the sign route guides you on an 8 km route around the town Peschiera del Garda, whereas the shortest route goes through the centre of the town. If there is lots of traffic it is highly recommended that you follow the signed route.  If you are arriving from north on the highway A22 / E45 (Brenner highway) you should exit by “Affi Lago di garda Sud”, from the exit there is about 17 km to Gardaland.

By Train: travelling to Gardaland by train is for sure doable. The nearest train station is the one in Peschiera del Garda which is located 2.5 km from the park entrance. There are frequent trains from direction Venice (travel time from 1 hour 20 min) as well as from direction Milan (travel time from 1 hour 5 min). Between the train station and Gardaland, there is a shuttle bus running every 30 minutes during opening hours of the park; the last shuttle from the park departs 15 minutes after closing time.

By Bus Domestic: From Verona you can take line nr. 164 directly to Gardaland. The bus operates about 10 times daily (check timetable here). Also from Brescia there are frequent bus connections, most of them stopping by the main train station (these buses are operated by Arriva). If you travel from anywhere else in Italy you will for now have to change bus in either Verona or Brescia. If you are staying at the Lake Garda area, you have regional buses driving to the park.

By Bus International:  there are no international buses which drive to Gardaland but you have bus from e.g. Zurich to Milan from where you can easily travel to Gardaland, and also between Zagreb and Verona there is bus connection.

By Plane: The Verona Villafranca airport is located 22 km from Gardaland and the Brescia Airport Gabriele D’Annunzio airport 44 km from Gardaland Park.