Verbolten opened in 2012. If you know much about theme parks, you probably know that that was about the last moment of true extravagance in the story of Busch Gardens’ owner. After the 2013 release of the documentary Blackfish (critical of SeaWorld’s treatment of captive orcas), the park chain (which had, unluckily enough, only just been renamed SeaWorld Parks in 2009) experienced a sharp decline in esteem. So it probably isn’t much of a surprise that a post-Blackfish SeaWorld Parks quickly lost its taste for expensive, elaborate attractions.
Despite some earnest efforts to compete in the “destination parks” bracket otherwise owned by Disney and Universal, a SeaWorld of the 2010s clearly lost interest in the upkeep of rides like Wild Arctic, Empire of the Penguin, Curse of DarKastle, and Journey to Atlantis. To some degree, that makes sense – once these elaborate rides aren’t the motivator that’s bringing guests through the turnstiles anymore, of course enthusiasm for keeping fog machines filled, projectors bright, and lightbulbs replaced wears thin, and executives are left wishing they’d just build a bare steel coaster without all the fluff.
In 2016, off-season changes came to the four year old Verbolten. Among them, nearly all of the ride’s massive painted scrims – serving as visual backdrops to scenes and sectioning out various portions of the showbuilding from light and sound bleed – were pulled down. Insiders say that management blamed the move on the enormous artwork causing discombobulation that nauseated riders… but it’s probably also true that four years of being illuminated by harsh UV light meant that those scenes needed pulled down and repainted – an expensive luxury not worth conferring on a family coaster that was no longer driving clicks of the park’s turnstiles.
After the removal of the curtains, the ride experience was… different. Sure, you’d still be launched into that tunnel of pulsing, blacklight leaves, with the arcing lightning strike disorienting you just as you plunge into the building. But now, you wouldn’t dive into a forest or weave through branches. Instead, a pulsing purple light would actually illuminate the insulated rear wall of the building – allegedly, intended to help guests orient themselves to counter those complaints of nausea.
It feels unfair to post a “light-on” view of the ride post-2016 (above), but it’s necessary to see the impact that the removal of the scrim sets had on the ride. Unfortunately, pulling down nearly all of the painted velour curtains that had defined the showbuilding’s interior didn’t just mean there was nothing to see. It meant that there was no longer anything segmenting out the ride’s “scenes”; no scrims to control light or sound bleed…
the incredible effect of racing through keyhole cutouts of snarled branches was over, relegated to just a few flats left behind when the curtains were pulled. And worse, those scrims had really paid dividends on the coaster’s mid-course brake, when theatrical lighting would illuminate the layers of forest around you and begin to tease which of the ride’s random events you would encounter next. With no scenery to light up, the train would simply sit in darkness before rolling onward to the drop track.
That, at least, remained sectioned out from the rest of the building by a black curtain, and all of its flats remained in-tact… but as you’d expect, the “show” elements there degraded. Year after year, lights flickered out and weren’t replaced. Sound cues fell out of sync. Remaining blacklight flats didn’t seem to ever get repainted. When surrounded in “wolves,” the stylized red eyes might be “one-eyed” or not lit at all. And of course, video exposition from Gerta in the queue disappeared, as elements in the line were picked to death by guests and never replaced or repaired.
In 2021, the roof of the covered bridge was destroyed by a severe windstorm. It wasn’t replaced until 2025. Basically, times were tough, and Verbolten took a hit. Mechanically complex and bogged down in expensive-to-maintain show elements, one might’ve wondered if Verbolten would last only half as long as the Big Bad Wolf had. Maybe it was time to simply call it and be done with Verbolten. Short of having Universal purchase the park, it seemed like Verbolten would continue to degrade until it was a ride through a pitch black building with no story, no sounds, and no effects to speak of.
However, in July 2025, United Parks (formerly SeaWorld Parks, owners of Busch Gardens) began conducting some polling around what visitors would like to see at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. The survey signaled that the park was looking for “quality of life” additions – for example, the survey suggested that the park could add elaborate Roman ruins theming to Apollos’ Chariot or Pantheon (a world-class coaster that – in evidence of the chain’s dark times – was set down in a field with literally zero landscaping or sets).
But the most interesting was the idea of a Verbolten “retheme”….
New Directions
Said the survey:
Fully renovated and enhanced Verbolten roller coaster, with a fresh new storyline and setting, transforming the experience into an even more immersive and high-energy adventure. While the ride’s thrilling drops, sharp turns, and sudden surprises remain unchanged, new thematic elements and special effects will enhance the sense of speed, excitement, and cinematic intensity—putting you at the center of a dramatic, fast-paced journey.
That September, a trademark filing for the name VERBOLTEN: FORBIDDEN TURN seemed to confirm that Busch Gardens had made their choice. Now, the pessimist I am (and given my lived experience with SeaWorld Parks), I promptly responded to the mere suggestion with…
And look, I hate to be that way. Frankly, I tend to trust the leadership at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, who has largely demonstrated a real care for the park and a commitment to keeping it “world class” (or at least, as world class as a park owned by SeaWorld Parks United Parks can be). And clearly Verbolten could use a good eight month extended refurbishment, restoring the ride’s extravagant original sets and improving lighting, sound, and more. A real infusion of cash and care into Verbolten would be a win, even if it only restored the ride to its 2012 opening form.
Sure, add in some projection mapping if you really have to, or reconfigure the trains for on-ride audio. But Verbolten already had a strong story (however poorly communicated) and a very strong, defined style. There were definitely opportunities to restore all that and tidy up around the margins (perhaps planting more trees, building a vine tunnel around the second launch, refining and refreshing the three randomized dark ride encounters, etc). But re-engineering the experience around a new story or style seemed… unwarranted… and especially given that Busch Gardens’ follow-up to the Lost Legend: Curse of DarKastle had been DarKoaster – a ride whose result I was very charitable in describing as “somewhat mixed” – perhaps unwelcome.
At least at first, I was happy to be proven wrong…
Details discovered by my friends at BGWFans.com pointed to some substantial new additions to the ride experience. Their reporting uncovered plans to not only vastly refresh the queue, but to make serious upgrades to the ride experience. For example, a new, stylized billboard was set to be constructed on the initial S-turn out of the station, with new, faux coaster track suggesting that we were meant to go left, but entangling vines would require that we turn toward the stone wall, kicking our adventure into gear. So far, so good!
Likewise, documents demonstrated that Busch Gardens was going to “fix” the ride’s weakest point, by finally continuing that stone wall down toward the ground floor rather than leaving it standing mid-air on stilts. (It would’ve been better to extend it horizontally as well, and to plant trees all around the S-turn, but oh well. A good start!)
And most astoundingly, documents suggested that the park would finally restore the interior elements of the show. In no small part, that would come in the form of a giant tree that would loom at the end of the mid-course brakes, whose gnarled “teeth” the train would dive into en route to the drop track. That tree’s motif would continue in new sculpted branches “gripping” the drop, replacing the blacklight flats of old with dimensional set pieces.
And most astoundingly, that drop track would now terminate in the unthinkable: an animatronic figure.
On November 8, 2025, the park confirmed all that BGWFans had discovered, announcing that Verbolten would close for the season and re-emerge in 2026 as Verbolten: Forbidden Turn. And throughout the off-season and into the spring, everything that came out of the project appeared to suggest that this would be among the most extraordinary “plusses” in theme park history… From the sidelines and through the trees, fans watched as the discrete elements of the “Forbidden Turn” refresh came online…
The billboard and false track appeared just outside of the ride’s station; signage from the original ride that had been painted flats was replaced with dimensional sculpts; teases from inside the showbuilding revealed that those sculpted set pieces were filled with lighting effects, suggesting that the forest would be aglow once more – just with fully built-out props rather than the flat scrims of yesteryear.
And slowly but surely, we came to learn more about the reimagined ride’s story: that Gerta and Gunter had moved on (perhaps lost in the Black Forest themselves) as a new proprietor of the tour company had come into ownership: Frau Hexel, a sort of hook-nosed storybook witch, guided by her enchanted broom, Brüm. Hence the wrecked car out front now advertising Hexel’s take on the business: Frau Hexel’s Magical Motor Tour.
Okay, it was a little cloying and on-the-nose, but hey – that car was now gripped in fully-sculpted vines covered in detail painting. Surely, that suggested that Verbolten was being taken seriously. Indeed, any criticism fans could level against early, over-the-fence shots of designers’ work was almost immediately proven wrong when a finished product was revealed. Seriously, it seemed almost inevitable that Busch Gardens had done the unthinkable and actually taken the ingredients of Verbolten and ramped them up to be a world class experience that the ride had always been so close to embodying.
With so much evidence of how brilliantly designers had seemed to upgrade every aspect of the queue with the built-out version of what had come before, I sort of recanted my earlier worry on Twitter and boldly declared:
So maybe the whole “Witch” thing was a little saccharine, but as long as that ride experience was restored (even plussed!), then who cares what they stuff into a backstory no one listens to anyway!? Sign me up to launch into the glowing, all-encompassing Black Forest once more. It could only be good, right? … Right?