Plopsaland De Panne

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

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

Plopsaland
The family Florizoone sold the park in 1999 to Studio 100 and VMMa. The park received a make-over during the following winter season, to reopen as Plopsaland on 20 April 2000. During the renovation several characters from Studio 100 were used - such as Samson en Gert and Kabouter Plop - to theme new and old attractions. The new park had some issues at the reopening with parking capacity and catering, these issues were fixed 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.

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

 * The name Plopsaland is an aggregation of the first two Studio 100 characters Plop and Samson. Another name that the new owners thought of was Pannadine after the town De Panne, this name was abandoned after the new owners discovered it was a medical creme.
 * From 2000 until 2012 the park - and the other parks of the group - had Koning Plopsa as icon. In recent years the character was taken out of the logo's, parkshows and as a walk-around character. At various places around the resort the icon can still be found.