Simonland What you should take into account in your comparison between Universal and Efteling is the vast difference in financial resources between the two parks.
Besides, the overall number of practical effects and animatronics in Efteling is way larger than in Universal, which, as you say, has only recently started moving away from using screens for almost everything. So I would argue that in Efteling there are way more things that can break down.
Another important difference is that Universal has a history of removing older attractions, while Efteling makes it a point of keeping them. Meaning that the maintenance burden increases every year. And I would argue that maintenance in Efteling is quite good; at any day in the year there are multiple maintenance projects underway. But again, there are so many effects that it is impossible to have everything working all the time. A problem we also see in the Disney and Universal parks.
Finally, most people on this forum visit Efteling many times in a year and the Universal and Disney parks once every few years at most. So obviously we notice broken effects in Efteling sooner than in Universal.
