Busch Gardens brings back the Big Bad Wolf with a new coaster
The sounds of guttural growls and bone-chilling howls will once again echo throughout the pitch-black forest outside a Bavarian village when a new roller coaster with a familiar name and glowing red eyes returns to Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
Busch Gardens has announced Big Bad Wolf: The Wolf’s Revenge will debut in May without setting a specific date, but the new coaster is expected to open in time for the park’s 50th anniversary on May 16.
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Big Bad Wolf will pay tribute to the Arrow Dynamics suspended coaster of the same name that operated at the Virginia theme park from 1984 to 2009.
The new Bolliger & Mabillard family inverted coaster will reach a top speed of 40 mph over 2,583 feet of track while bolting through an abandoned Bavarian village.
Busch Gardens’ eleventh coaster will take over the station house of the former Drachen Fire coaster in the Oktoberfest area of the park.
The 2012 Verbolten coaster reused the original Big Bad Wolf station house and some of the track layout.
The backstory of the new Big Bad Wolf takes riders into a bustling Bavarian village during the eerily quiet Festival of the Silent Bells, the annual event that honors the haunting history of a terrifying wolf attack 41 years ago when the original coaster opened.
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As fate would have it, the past repeats itself when the wolf returns. The coaster riders are transformed into werewolves as the steel beast sweeps through the town amid screams and chaos. The townsfolk run for cover as the glowing red eyes and bone-chilling howls signal the return of the terrifying creature.
Busch Gardens initially planned to pay tribute to the Big Bad Wolf without reusing the ride’s original name. The park asked fans to pick from three names for the new ride: WolfsReign, GeisterWolf or WolfSturm.
More than 30,000 voters responded with an overwhelming choice: None of the above.
Fans told the park “loud and clear” that only one name would work: Big Bad Wolf. The park relented and chose a twist on the original — Big Bad Wolf: The Wolf’s Revenge.
The Wolf’s Revenge is not meant to be a copy of the original ride, but rather a reminiscent tribute and a new chapter in the story.
The original Big Bad Wolf was a little longer (2,800 feet), a little faster (48 mph) and had swinging seats.
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The Wolf’s Revenge will be similar to Phoenix Rising at Busch Garden Tampa — a much shorter and slightly faster B&M family inverted coaster that opened last summer.
The original 1984 Big Bad Wolf was created by Arrow Development, a legendary ridemaker that helped build Disneyland and shaped the modern theme park landscape of roller coasters, dark rides and water rides.
Arrow ushered in a period of gimmicky coaster configurations that came to define the ride wars of the 1980s and ’90s with the world’s first suspended coaster in 1981 at Ohio’s Kings Island.
The prototype Bat flipped the traditional coaster concept on its head — with the trains swinging from side to side while hanging below the track.
The Bat prototype never really worked very well and was retired after only a few years, but a reworked version of Arrow’s suspended coaster eventually evolved into the Big Bad Wolf at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
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The success of the original Big Bad Wolf led to the installation of Arrow suspended coasters around the world, including the 1988 Ninja at Six Flags Magic Mountain.