”Bellewaerde park was founded in 1954,” confirms Filip de Witte, who joined in 1993, initially as its finance director. “At first it was a bird park, then a kind of safari park. In the 80s it really developed as a theme park, but the thing for us is that we are still combination of rides, animals and landscaping, which is quite original in this region.” De Witte is now the park’s general manager, as well as a leading member of several regional, national and Europe-wide trade associations.

Located at Leper, close to the France-Belgium border, Bellewaerde entertains around 750,000 guests a year at a 54-hecatre site shrouded in greenery. “We invest a lot of time and money in the gardens and because we exist a long time, a lot of it is very mature.”

Tall trees provide plenty of shade of sunny days, preventing the exodus to the beach that can occur at other parks. “The general feeling is very good, the most important thing about Bellewaerde is the soul of the park.”

For this reason, adds de Witte, the park does not concentrate on signature attractions (“we do not have a Kingda Ka or whatever”).That said, it was the first park to open a Huss Topple Tower (El Volador), and the Vekoma Boomerang that sits close by is still high on many thrillseekers to-do lists, but they don’t dominate as certain attractions do at some parks.

Even this year’s big new investment, a 4D effects theatre (4D Cinema) by 3DBA/Kraftwerk Living Technologies, did not form the sole focus of the 2006 marketing campaign.

The 4D Cinema, a 132-seat installation, makes use of an existing building in the Mexican Plaza area of the park and will be a useful addition to the line-up when the park hosts its second winter opening this Christmas.

“We are trying to extend season,” explains de Witte, “and we thought it was a good idea to do something indoors. There is also an opportunity for the business market because we can rent it out for presentations and seminars. What attracted us about the 4D Cinema is that we can adapt films for different seasons, we will do a Halloween film, then a winter film, and we will also change the films every year because we have a very loyal audience.”

This summer guests were treated to a 12-minute performance of Forest Adventure, by Showscan. The film was shown with dialogue in ether French or Dutch. This choice of languages, with French appearing much more popular during our visit, lead to an uneven flow of visitors through the attraction, and de Witte concedes they probably accommodated even less than they could have done by showing a film of this length, rather than 7 or 8 minutes.

You watch and learn, which is exactly what the Bellewaerde MD did at sister park Walibi Belgium, already home at a 4D theatre by SimexIwerks. “It took a couple of months of going to other parks and seeing what they had done, to meet different kinds of suppliers. We did a lot of investigation, but we found that there are not many players in this market. With some companies, if you want their films, you must buy their hardware. We do not appreciate that and want to buy the films we want.

“With 3DBA our hands were not tied. We have a strong technical team here and did our own sound, the show control was with Alcorn McBride, and we got a fantastic deal of a projector from Barco because they are located not far from here and I think they wanted a local reference project. If you have one turnkey project you pay 15, 20 or even 30 per cent more, and maybe if I did not have a very good technical director we would have been better off going that route, but we are convinced we have got much better quality by splitting it all up.”

The arrival of the 4D Cinema was complemented this season by another new addition to the Mexican Plaza, El Toro, a themed Huss Breakdance ride formerly at Walibi World in Holland. Money was also on refurbishing a lot of the park’s restaurants and eating areas, and on a new island for the apes.

The Walibi family

Bellewaerde has been a sister park to the Walibi parks in Europe since 1992 and is now part of Compagnie des Alpes’ (CDA) leisure parks portfolio, and before that StarParks/Six Flags.

Despite this history, the park has retained a unique identity and still proudly parades its lion mascot in front of guests on a daily basis. “The question [of a rebrand] has never been raised too much, I think because we came out of being an animal park, we have our own character.”

And de Witte is against introducing the Walibi name at Bellewaerde, even though CDA executives have suggested extending it to other parks in the group. “In a small country like Belgium, we should not become also a Walibi park, because then you become like McDonald’s. We have to diversify from Walibi Belgium, our sister park, which is only 100km from here. In Flanders we have the same potential audience, so if we also become Walibi the public think it’s the same and maybe they go to Plopsaland or Bobbejaanland instead, which is not the purpose!”

In terms of attendance, “We are now pretty stable,” says de Witte. “We had at a certain period in 1999/2000, just when Six Flags took over, with a peak of more than 800,000 visitors, but that was more a volume strategy, with very cheap season passes alongside our sister park Walibi. We generated a lot of attendance, but not really revenue. Now we are coming back to the more regular strategy, so we might have a few less attendance, but revenue has not decreased.”

Helping generate a certain amount of repeat business are a series of special events, including three night openings in August, two Wild Wild West weekends in September, a month-long Halloween season and, for the second time this year, a winter opening beginning December 26.

Winter work

“The winter openings are still something we have to develop,” concedes de Witte. “It’s a lot of work, you cannot overestimate how much, but it’s something we hope to continue with. If it becomes really successful maybe we can extend it from the beginning of December, but first we must walk before we can run. The most important thing for us in the first year was to see that we could do it, the financial results were less important; you cannot judge it after one year. On the other hand, with Halloween we saw success from the first year. It just worked, and it continues to work. Our busiest ever day in the park was during Halloween.”

The winter opening has also proved successful in bringing new people in to the park. “In the first year we attracted a lot of visitors who would not normally come to a theme park, because in this period there is not too much to do, ok there are Christmas markets, but that is already a bit déjà vu; they want a new experience and we are the only ones in Belgium to give them that.”

Bellewarde’s 2006/7 Winter Season runs from December 26 to 30 and then again from January 2 to 7.

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