Resilience is a recipe for nonstop entertainment

Europa-Park Resort is more than just a destination; it's a massive operation dedicated to a singular mission: selling joy. Located in Rust, Germany, it is the largest theme park in the country and the second-largest in Europe. Run by the Mack family for over 50 years, the resort features 20 European-themed areas with over 100 attractions, the Rulantica water park, and the fine-dining restaurant Eatrenalin.

But behind the roller coasters and the magic lies a complex digital ecosystem. From hotel check-ins and point-of-sale systems to the safety sensors on the rides, data is the invisible current powering the guest experience.

Today, the IT team delivers a seamless, immersive guest experience with zero downtime—even during accidental power failures—so they can focus on innovation rather than troubleshooting.

In 2018, a major incident damaged a data center, serving as a stark wake-up call for IT leadership. While they recovered, the incident underscored the absolute necessity of a system designed for high availability and disaster resilience.

The challenges facing Höck and his team were multifaceted:

• Scale and complexity: The team manages three data center locations, supporting 505 virtual machines (VMs). These VMs run everything from backend support for fire departments to the online ticket shop.
• Zero tolerance for downtime: With over 7 million visitors in 2025, any interruption in the digital infrastructure—be it ticketing, room keys, or food service—shatters the immersive illusion the park works so hard to create.
• Data sovereignty: The Mack family prefers to keep critical data close to the vest. “If we have to choose between cloud or on-premises, we normally always choose on-premises to keep our data in-house,” says Höck.

The team needed a modernized infrastructure that could guarantee performance and security under any condition, mitigating any impact to guests should a physical disaster or technical failure occur.

To achieve true resilience, Europa-Park Resort turned to NetApp. The strategy focused on redundancy, automation, and tiering to balance performance with cost efficiency.

Continuous availability
Central to the solution are NetApp AFF A-Series systems running NetApp MetroCluster^® continuous availability and disaster recovery software. This configuration delivers live, synchronous mirroring across Europa-Park Resort's two primary data centers. It means that if one site goes down—whether due to fire, power loss, or maintenance—the other site can take over instantly with zero data loss.

Data management and security
Running on NetApp ONTAP^® software, the infrastructure gains simplified management and integrated security. This allows the team to handle software updates and maintenance without disrupting operations, a critical capability for a park that operates year-round.

Efficient tiering
To manage costs effectively without sacrificing performance, the team uses NetApp FAS systems for capacity storage. They implemented a tiered storage strategy where critical data, like the 505 VMs, resides on high-performance flash storage, while colder data and snapshots are automatically tiered to more cost-effective hybrid flash storage.

The actual test of the new infrastructure came not during a disaster, but during routine maintenance.

“We did some work on our data center and took one side offline,” Höck recalls. In a traditional setup, this would have been a catastrophic outage affecting ticketing, hotels, and park operations.

Instead? Silence.

“Instantly, the other side took over. We didn’t have any downtime,” says Höck. “One side of the data center went down, and no one noticed. We tested it by accident, but it proved reliable. No problems. We’re always on.”

Key outcomes:

• 100% uptime: Ticketing, hotel check-in, and entertainment systems remain responsive even during high-demand periods or infrastructure failures.
• Peace of mind: With built-in redundancy and ransomware protection, the IT team spends less time fighting fires and more time supporting park expansion.
• Invisible IT: The ultimate goal was achieved. Guests enjoy a smooth experience without ever realizing the complex technology supporting their visit.

For Europa-Park Resort, the partnership with NetApp has transformed IT from a potential vulnerability into a silent powerhouse. By securing their data infrastructure, they have secured the magic of the guest experience.

Looking forward, the park is exploring a “cloud-smart” evolution, moving web-facing applications to the cloud while keeping mission-critical data securely on-premises. As they expand with new attractions and potential AR/VR experiences, they have the scalable foundation to handle the data explosion that comes with modern entertainment.

“We sell joy,” Höck says. “We sell entertainment, so everybody likes to go home and think, ‘Wow, that was great. I’d like to come again.’ Thanks to NetApp, the technology never gets in the way of that feeling.”