Tropical Islands Resort in Brandenburg

Tropical Islands Resort is an artificial tropical resort in Brandenburg, Germany.

It is the world's third largest building, and is the world's largest single hall without supporting pillars inside.

Inside, visitors will find an exotic environment with rain forest, beach, artificial sun, palm trees, orchids, and bird soundtrack.

The air is warm (25 °C). Tropical Islands is open all around the clock, every day of the year. One visit of unlimited duration costs €25.

The resort is located in Briesen/Brand, Brandenburg, about 60 km southeast of Berlin, off the "Staakow" exit of the A13 Autobahn (see Google Maps view).

It resides inside a disused hangar. The hangar cost €78 million and was originally commissioned by Cargolifter AG as an airship hangar, but the airship it was intended to house was never built.

The train can be taken there from Berlin and Cottbus. The Regional Express RE2 runs hourly from both cities to Brand (Niederlausitz). The journey from Berlin Alexanderplatz takes around 50 minutes. Public transport from Munich is awkward, you likely need to go to Berlin first. Driving from Munich takes about five hours.

Further reading:

• Tropical Islands - official website
  
• Tropical Islands - Wikipedia
  
• Germany's Pleasure Dome (Damn Interesting blog)
  

Thanks to EZ Pleasy for the alert about this.

If I correctly recall the building is what is left of CargoLifter AG who were promising a reintroduction of Dirigible airships for heavy cargo transport (about 100 tonnes or so), ideally suited to making large drops at difficult to reach regions i.e., for humanitarian aid, for oil drilling or whatever.

For the construction of airships they needed an extremely large hanger which was built with a lot of state aid (as well as the help of many small investors). Regrettably the company declared insolvency in 2002 and this was one of the main assets remaining. The other was a small airship purchased for research purposes.

Anyway, doesn't mean much for the holiday maker other than to lie back think of all that money that disappeared.

I wonder what shade of white that elephant is.

it must be cool... that is until you look up... or to the sides and realize you are in an hangar

When they opened this place a few years ago a team of a dozen or so BASE jumpers leapt from the top of the building in formation (only ~100m high) and landed together on the beach - what a way to open the place! My wife's cousin was one of the jumpers - he had a very wild look about him right after the event.

Well I've been there a few times and it's a kind of Germanised indoor Bali. It is quite nice and children seem to enjoy it but it has a kind of half hearted feeling about it where you can't help feeling it could have been developed a bit better.

It's slap bang in the middle of an old DDR airforce base with old ruined hardened aircraft hangers and ruined buildings and it's pretty bleak, especially in the middle of winter. Once you're in it's nice enough but with many areas inside undeveloped.

It's a bit like Filmpark Babelsberg and even some of the Berlin museums, there is massive potential, they have unique buildings/collections but they don't seem to be playing on the world class stage; it's all a bit mediocre.

The trouble is that developing it further costs money, and the company is losing money on it according to recent newspaper reports. They plan to do more with it apparently.

It is great to go here especially in winter. It is a great (if somewhat expensive!) place for kids.

It is not allowed tobring food/drinkinside with you.

I have never done the overnight camping on the beach there, but could be a good novelty in the future...

That is a very interesting idea, though from what I can see of photos of it, it does not at all resemble a rainforest. While I would love to get back that rainforest feel in Germany, a real rainforest does not have anywhere near that much dirt - in fact, there is almost no dirt, because the entire landscape is covered by so many different types of vegetation. But then again, the rainforest is an extremely complex ecosystem, and is hard to replicate. And also, the trees in the hangar look pretty young, so maybe they will fill out and make the place look nicer.

Unlikely that the trees will do well, it's a hanger not a greenhouse. There doesn't seem to be enough light and some of those young trees are just about ready to keel over.

This shade of white...

Went there last year and had a lot of fun.

There weren't many people there and so it was great.

If you go on your BIRTHDAY then it's FREE!

Has anyone been to the 'Tropical-islands' park near Berlin? I would like to get some feedback before we arrange a visit.
Tropical-islands web site
Danielle

Topics merged by admin

No, but please post a review if you go.

After all, every taxpayer in Germany is an inadvertent part shareholder given that the building it's in ended up being one of the biggest boondoggles of all time.

We happened across Tropical Island on our way from Berlin to Dresden. We got off the Autobahn to look, but decided not to go in. From what we could tell:

• Just to get in costs 27 Euros.
  
• Riding the water slide once is 3 Euros
  
• Getting the kids into the kid area is about 5 Euros
  
• Taking the rain forest tour is a few Euros.
  
• No food or drink can be brought in
  

Plus we had no towels, as we were not planning to go swimming. Overall, looks like it would have been about 40-50 Euros a head. So we kept on trucking to Dresden...

The kids were sleeping, so they never even knew we passed up a day at the beach in the middle of winter. Looks like it could be fun if you have plenty of cash. The building itself is a marvel.

Gatzke is completely wrong on almost everything here.

it costs 25 to get in but there are several different packages which make it cheaper -- two adults and one paying kid can then bring about a half dozen or so kids in for free. To get in the kids' area it's 3.50 euros but it is way, way worth it as it is the playground of DREAMS for any kid (tip: only have the kid pay and then carry them through the turnstile so you don't have to pay).

You can bring in as much food and drink as you want, so you can picnic to your heart's content there.

It's open 24 hours so you can stay as long as you want. They have tents inside you can spend the night in.

It's cheap and fun and we have a blast every time we go. We were there once when it was filled to capacity and it was still bearable and fun.

It's always about evenly mixed Germans and Poles.