How to spend a day at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens

If you’re going to spend a few days in Copenhagen, you really can’t skip the Tivoli Gardens. You’ll probably hear it called the oldest theme park in the world but, in fact, it’s not even the oldest in Denmark. That title goes to Dyrehavsbakken, more commonly known simply as Bakken which is about 6 miles north of Copenhagen and dates back to 1583, which is an incredible age. The Tivoli Gardens opened in 1843 with a variety of gardens, exotic buildings, mechanical rides and pretty lights after dark. It’s so important to the Danish psyche that Nazis burnt and bombed it in the 40s and every time, it got repaired, rebuilt and reopened within a month.

An old-fashioned carousel with swings instead of animals to ride, in the middle of the gardens. There are decorative low hedges, there's a large water feature next to it and there are even some mini greenhouses in the background, although I think they're repurposed as bars or snack kiosks by now.

It’s hard, really, to say what the star of the show is these days. The Nimb Hotel, which makes up a huge chunk of one side of the walls, is a five-star establishment that featured on the BBC’s Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby Personally, I find it hard to picture a truly great hotel being attached to an amusement park – I mean, I know how expensive some of the Disney hotels can be but they’re hardly up there with The Dorchester or Claridge’s or Raffles. But it seems the Nimb is one of those hotels. As for the Tivoli itself, the bits accessible to the general public by merely buying a ticket, probably the star is Rutschebanen, or “The Rollercoaster” in English. So iconic, it doesn’t need an exciting name.

The Nimb Hotel, a big white Aladdin-style building with a water feature in front of it. It's daylight so you can't see the several thousand colourful light bulbs that will illuminate it in the evening.

Rutschebanen was built in 1914, it’s one of the bits of the park that was specifically bombed, it’s among the oldest wooden rollercoasters in the world still operating and it has an operator sitting in the middle holding the brake. Now, that I knew, probably from Amazing Hotels but possibly from Tom Scott, who got around some theme parks once he overcame his fear of rollercoasters. I didn’t realise the brake operator sat in the middle of the train rather than at the back. The park opens at 11 and they give you 15 minutes to find your way around before they start up the rides. I used those 15 minutes to pick up my ride pass – like a paper festival bracelet but more plasticky and with a chip embedded in it – from the automatic dispensers and to figure out where Rutschebanen actually was. I knew it was going to be popular, I thought I’d get in there early before the worst of the crowds. There was quite a queue in front of me but I was on the third train and because it’s first thing in the morning, the trains were all waiting one behind the other. As they set off, they’d be spaced out because no one wants one train to ram the back of the one in front of it but it meant I didn’t have long to wait.

My hand, held up against a backdrop of trees and carousels, with my plasticky ride pass bracelet on.

I’m not a huge rollercoaster fan. After taking my Rangers to the Region Legoland takeover in March 2025, I found I could probably tolerate something gentle and my tolerance picked up hugely after my weekend at Parc Asterix last Christmas and, to be honest, I thought a 112-year-old wooden rollercoaster would be fairly tame. And it is, of course it is. It remains strictly upright at all points and it’s squeezed into the footprint that the kiddycoaster would be anywhere else. But it goes up and down just enough and just sharply enough that… well, it’s just pushing my ability to cope without quite triggering the delight.

I mentioned the ride pass. Tivoli Gardens are very flexible. You can just buy an entry ticket, which you can do via the app or at the gate and you can buy a ride pass either separately or in combination with your entrance. I also did the sums on an annual pass and figured out that if you go three times, you’re saving money. I knew I wanted to spend a full day there. Was I also likely to want to spend a couple of evenings wandering around? Probably not two evenings. So if I did want to spend a full day and an evening, it was still better value to just buy those two tickets separately. But you can buy an entrance ticket and then pay for rides individually, so if you just want to do the celebrated rollercoaster and nothing else, you can either just buy a ticket on the app or, I believe, tap your bank card at the turnstile. It meant I had to do more sums. Is it worth getting a ride pass or do I not want to do enough of the rides for it to be worthwhile? It seemed to be worthwhile – and spoiler, I did just enough to make it worth the money. You scan your ticket at the entrance but then you have to go to a dispenser to pick up your ride pass, where you can also just buy one if you haven’t already bought it online. Lots of options!

The Ride Pass machine, where you can either scan your ticket or use the touchscreen to buy a pass. It spits out the bracelet at the hole at the bottom.

Next was The Mine, which was a bit underwhelming – you sit in a little “boat” and go through a mine shooting at lights with a kind of lightsabre. The Milky Way Express was a favourite and if the queue hadn’t immediately tripled in length, I’d have done that one a few times, like Le Vol d’Icare at Parc Asterix. It’s just on the right side of scary but it’s also fun and if I don’t actually scream or shriek, I certainly giggle and whoop a bit. It goes round three times – the first time it’s just picking up speed and the last time it’s slowing down ready to drop you off but the second time is at full speed and I really enjoyed it! Yes, I know, it’s the one that sits just one level up from the rollercoaster for four-year-olds. That’s my level. In the afternoon, when it opened, I watched The Demon, which is a proper rollercoaster with hanging seats that loops you upside down two or three times and you would not get me on that if you paid me. But Milky Way Express? Yep!

My official ride photo from The Mine. I'm sitting in a little boat with two rows of benches, pointing a laser gun shaped like a heavy metal cylinder at something the camera can't see. The picture is framed with a cartoon wooden mine support and has TIVOLI across the top and 2026 in the bottom right corner.

I briefly thought Tik Tak looked like a fairground ride I can cope with; it’s kind of like a carousel with dips and hills but the seats roll and they roll you right upside down. Same for Aquila, which looks like the kind where you go round and round and up and down but that also spins you upside down in all the wrong ways. Both visible from standing underneath Milky Way Express, by the way.

Aquila, which looks like just a kind of carousel, except that as it spins, each arm spins the seats. In this picture, I've caught one of them upside down so the riders are literally hanging like ragdolls.

The Flying Trunk is cute. It’s a bit like It’s a Small World except instead of being in boats you’re on a proper rollercoaster that just happens to move at walking pace and takes you through the world of Hans Christian Andersen. I’m going to do a post on the HCA-themed things you can do in Copenhagen and this is a good one. Nice and tame, kind of educational and cultural rather than a proper thrill ride.

A scene from the Flying Trunk illustrating the Little Mermaid in a slightly nightmarish almost pop art style with a lot of blue lighting and topless mermaids.

Later on, when it opened at 3pm, I also did Villa Vendetta, which is the haunted house. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, especially as this is an award-winning ride. More riding and less walking, I think. Someone sits at the door and groups you into five or six and then you walk through as a line, holding onto each other’s shoulders while actors try to frighten you. Now, it was already pretty creepy and knowing that people are trying to jump out at you makes it worse but the majority of the actors went for the back of the line rather than the front and the only one I really saw was the one who ran a feather duster over our fingers, which I saw coming before she did it and was more bewildering than terrifying. That said, I was very glad of the tall solid man at the front of the line because you couldn’t pay me – again – to have led the group into that nightmare.

Also on my list was Star Flyer (a swing ride that swings you right round and out 80m above the park, which I might have gone on in the afternoon once I decided I was brave enough but the wind had closed it by then), Dragon Boats (too much queue for a ride even I felt was meant for small children) and Galley Ships (which was definitely meant for small children). There were a couple of others that were firmly in the “Nope!” category, like the Golden Tower which takes you up to 63m and then drops you and Monsoon, which is like that fairground ride that spins you in circles against a flat background and which I mostly associate with the video of the crowds trying to stop the whole thing falling over. Not that the Tivoli one would fall over but I’m not sure being taken round and round in circles is my idea of a good time.

The Golden Tower, a gold needle sticking out from the trees with riders mid free-fall near the top.

A lot of the more theme park-style rides have a camera on them and you can download your photos (or short video from Villa Vendetta) for free by scanning the QR code with the Tivoli app. I’m not hugely experienced in theme parks but last time I went, you had to pay a small fortune for each one you wanted. Unfortunately, the cameras or the screens weren’t working on both Milky Way Express and the Flying Trunk so I haven’t got any pictorial evidence of either of them.

So that’s Julie’s Version of the rides. There are also an abundance of places to eat, from the little kiosk where you can get hot dogs and fries (they come with rock salt and herbs!) to the Gasoline Grill to Wagamama’s to proper expensive sit-down restaurants, so there’s food for every budget. Yes, I had the fries and I also had a Coke or Pepsi in one of the reusable plastic cups. Like at Christmas markets, you can return your cup and get a small deposit back for it, thus ensuring that they don’t need single-use plastic cups or risk reusable cups getting binned, or you can keep them and forfeit the deposit. At Christmas markets, you just take it back to another stall to reclaim your pfand. At the Tivoli, there’s a machine. I kept mine. We love a usable souvenir.

On the left, my chips and my plastic cup of Coke/Pepsi. On the right, a waffle soaked in chocolate sauce with a glass of Mirinda next to it.

I also went to Vaffelbageriet, which is kind of like a 50s American diner except it only does waffles, pancakes, cakes and ice cream. I had a waffle with chocolate sauce and tried to get my cup refilled – reusable cup’s got to be reused, right? – but they don’t refill them and in fact, because this is a sit-down place, they put in a proper glass. I had Gorm’s, a pizza place, on my to-do list but it’s inside the Tivoli Food Hall and I never figured out how to get there from inside the Tivoli. I don’t think I found Churroria, which does churros – or maybe I did and I just wasn’t in the mood for fried dough at the time – and Pops & Softice, which is cakes and ice cream.

Vaffelbageriet, a wooden diner painted in white with blue and red accents, peeking out from under a tree.

If you don’t want to do the rides, there’s plenty to see just while walking around. My parents, who would no more dream of getting on a rollercoaster than they would of getting on Artemis III, love the Tivoli Gardens. You can just walk around and look. You can walk around the lake or around the formal gardens or take in the sights right in the middle, stop for a reusable plastic cup of beer or an ice cream and otherwise just appreciate the atmosphere. Personally, I’m not entirely sure I can picture spending an entire day there deliberately avoiding rides and I’m not sure I’d want to, unless I was there in the evening for the lights and fireworks. I didn’t stay that long, by the way. In July, it doesn’t get dark in Denmark until quite late and I ran out of stamina by about 5pm.

A selfie by the Dragon Boat lake, with the Pagoda on the other side and a loop of the Demon rollercoaster behind my head.

One last thing I did was some of the sideshow games down the little “canyon” through which I entered the park, having come in the side gate opposite the station rather than the main entrance. I had a go at shooting – on my first attempt, I got all my shots in the top-left corner and I know enough about target sports to know that if I therefore adjust my aim towards the bottom right, I’m likely to get closer to the bullseye. Nope! My second lot scattered around the top right and I had a go at adjusting on the fly, so there are three of the five that are just all over the place. No points for me. But then there was plastic archery and although the arrows were terrible (the nock didn’t click onto the string so I had to hold the arrow in place with both hands to draw, and at least two of them fell out of the target), I earned 110 points from it. I exchanged 60 of them for a tin of metallic coloured pencils and took that as a pretty good win.

My archery target, with the arrows that actually stayed in, on the left. On the right, my hand holding up the tokens I won for it.

So I think that was my day. My advice for a first-timer: look at the rides in advance and figure out whether it’s more economical to get a ride pass or to pay as you go. If you’re a rollercoaster fiend, the only thing that’s really going to interest you here is the Demon; if you’re a chicken or you have small children, there’s plenty to entertain you and if you’re happy with rides that are a bit scary but aren’t rollercoaster, you’ve also got a half-decent choice. If you’re not into rides, you’ll still enjoy spending time here, especially if you time it for the shows and music that I missed and you just soak up the atmosphere and if you’re here for some of Denmark’s culinary magic, you won’t find outposts of Noma or Geranium or Alchemist here but it’s got fine dining as well as more fairground-style fare and no one’s going hungry. Something for everyone, I reckon.