Bellewaerde – Belgium’s unique mix of animals, amusement rides and landscaping – has been entertaining Belgian, French and Flemish families for over half a century. This season the park has been taking guests into a new dimension – 4D – as it increases its range of allweather offerings and builds on its range of seasonal events.
”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.
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