Dinner is the ride at this new strawberry-themed attraction coming in 2027
Have you ever wanted to enjoy a full meal while experiencing a theme park attraction at the same time? If so, a trip to Europe should be in your future. The Mack FlowDiner opens in 2027 with a Strawberry Dining Journey at Karls Erlebnis Dorf, blending a three-course meal with five themed scenes.
For some, the phrase “theme park dining” brings up only images of cold chicken tenders and bad pizza.
Still, for some of us, theme park dining matters. We’ve eaten a lot of food to find the best and the worst.
However, a long-rumored theme park dining upgrade is becoming a reality. Germany’s Mack Group unveiled eatX, a new “dark-ride dining” concept that turns the act of eating dinner into an attraction of its own.
The centerpiece is the FlowDiner, a patented, self-driving dining table that carries guests as a group, up to four adults and two small children, through a sequence of themed scenes while they work through a full meal.
All images are courtesy of Mack Rides
The first installation, “Erdbeer-Speisereise” (“Strawberry Dining Journey”), is set to open in summer 2027 at Karls Erlebnis-Dorf in Elstal, just outside Berlin. Karls becomes the first operator of eatX anywhere in the world, and the concept was first shown publicly at the IAAPA Expo Europe in London.
What to expect when the Mack FlowDiner opens in 2027
Here’s how a visit is supposed to work: guests climb aboard a FlowDiner table, which then rolls itself, battery-powered, at a leisurely top speed of about 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) per second, through five themed scenes.
Along the way, a three-course meal is served course by course, timed to projections, sets, lighting, sound, and motion built around each scene.
The story focuses on the humble strawberry. The 1714 discovery of the garden strawberry, reimagined at Karls as a multisensory strawberry-themed narrative, carries guests from scene to scene. Given that Karls is a German farm and strawberry-themed attraction is already known for its strawberry fields and strawberry-shaped everything, this is about as on-brand a debut story as Mack Group could have picked.
The FlowDiner itself took two years to develop. Mack is billing it as a new category that sits between a restaurant and a ride. This is not a dining room with a show bolted on, and not a ride with a meal as an afterthought.
Karls founder Robert Dahl put it this way in the official announcement: the goal was never a restaurant with an accompanying experience, or an attraction with a meal tacked on, but both fused so tightly that guests forget the outside world exists for an hour.
Significance of this new technology
eatX ride concept could grow
Karls Erlebnis-Dorf will be the first attraction to use eatX, but Mack Group developed the system for other operators, too. The concept builds on Eatrenalin, Mack’s immersive dining experience at the Europa-Park Resort.
At Karls, guests will share a moving table that carries them through themed scenes during a three-course meal. If the first installation succeeds, other parks could use the FlowDiner system to tell their own stories through food and a ride.
However, eatX and the FlowDiner take that same engineering, storytelling, and culinary DNA and repackage it as a family-friendly format built around a shared table that travels together.
Thomas Mack, who leads both Eatrenalin and the new eatX initiative, framed the FlowDiner as combining Mack’s engineering pedigree with hospitality know-how and storytelling to create an entirely new genre of culinary experience.
Related: Mack rides interview about developing Miner’s Mountain Express
Mack FlowDiner opens in 2027
For the theme park industry, the bigger idea is the business model as much as the technology. eatX gives operators a way to turn ordinary food and beverage square footage into its own standalone, reservation-worthy destination. This offers more than just a themed supporting dining to the real attractions.
If a family-oriented dark ride meets a dinner-table format built around strawberries in Elstal in 2027 works well, don’t be surprised if larger parks start eyeing the FlowDiner for their own menus.
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