Forbidden Turn
It’s true what they say – Gerta and Gunter are long gone, with any trace of the siblings relegated to the same queue TVs they used to occupy, jut now covered in static and test patterns as the old proprietors’ message short-circuits. (To the ride’s credit, even trying to tie the two versions together in one continuity instead of simply pretending the old story never existed is a nicety to fans.) You can hardly argue with the replacement: the wonderfully-stylized Frau Hexel, now present in the Tour Office’s long-empty desk as a genuine animatronic figure.
In between trying to locate her assistant (“Tall, slim, and with long, scruffy whiskers that could sweep you off your feet.” He’s an enchanted broom), Hexel drives home the would-be viral tagline of the updated ride, clearly laboratory tested to be printed across notoriously bad theme park t-shirts: “Don’t turn right.”
Even if I loved this updated ride, I think I’d still take issue with this given that unlike, say, Indiana Jones Adventure tasking us to not lock eyes with Mara, or the genuinely-tantalizing “What’s in the shed?” of Kings Island’s Mystic Timbers, there’s no actual role for us to play in this; no “choice” to make. And even if there somehow were, the only roller coaster on Earth that would meet Hexel’s challenge is that Frankenstein roller coaster on top of a Burger King in Niagara Falls.
Wait, scratch that. New exposition in the queue suggests that our cars are flying (via Hexel’s witchcraft), but our thoughts can influence its direction. So if we think too hard about turning right, it may do so. And that would be particularly disastrous if we do it near the tunnel to “Verbolten Hollow” – the part of the Black Forest we’re forbidden from turning into. Again, we can debate whether or not this is all a little convoluted and saccharine and unnecessary, providing exposition we don’t need to enjoy the family coaster to come, whose surprises (like the indoor section and the drop track) are secrets the remain lovingly hidden for a new generation to discover. At least those aren’t “spoiled” for queueing guests.
So as the line continues through what used to be Gunter’s former office (but is now where the dutiful assistant Brüm is sweeping), and then into the garage (now with screens representing windows overhead, now showing silhouettes of Hexel and reminding us not to turn right), we can “take or leave” the new additions while just being excited to get back on the ride and see the forest brought back to life after years of neglect.
The witch’s voice now replaces Gerta’s as the train departs the station: “Remember, when you get to Verbolten Hollow: Don’t turn right, because I’m not going to save you!” It’s far less effective (and certainly less “iconic”) than Gerta’s final warning, “Remember, don’t turn back as you brave the Black Forest…” leaving the station on a bit of a weirdly comical note.
(Unfortunately, that’s not all? The calm male voice of the park’s other announcements decides that he, too, needs to chime in, weirdly breaking the fourth wall by saying “Thank you, and enjoy your ride on Verbolten Forbidden Turn. And remember – don’t turn right.”)
As the train exits the station, it idles for a moment alongside the scaffolds where the old, orange VW Beetle used to be hoisted. (It’s been relocated further on in the ride as part of the reimagining, which is fine, but certainly removes the “iconic” throttling of bass as our waiting trains idle alongside it. Just another small but mighty absence. But then, we’re dispatched into the course.
And yep, there’s our first from-scratch “plus” – a lovely billboard advertising the Black Forest to the left, complete with a gnome holding aloft a giant, stylized arrow. And naturally, as we approach, that arrow rotates as if with the wind, diverting us to the right. Now, our absorption into the Black Forest via the wall has been changed into flying into Verbolten Hollow, as evidenced by new signs adorning the expanded wall, gripped by vines.
(Obviously I’m being overly critical already, but I’ll add: the faux “left turn” track may as well not have been added. It can barely be seen, much less appreciated as a “gag” meant to trick us into thinking we might turn left. And it being gripped by vines actually makes more sense in the old story of Gunter’s experiments with the sinister plants of the forest than the new, where we’re never really teased with the power of the forest at all since 100% of our exposition is centered around not turning right, which – now that we have – feels like a waste of precious opportunities to set up a proper story or threat.)
Anyway, we align with the launch tunnel as always, but already something is different. Instead of staring into the endless darkness, we can instead get a glimpse of what lies ahead: the last Day-glo, blacklight leaf remnants of the “old” Verbolten, still there in our upward launch into the dark… But instead of being lit by strobing blacklights that activate as we approach in the darkness, they’re just… lit. There is no “show” element here. Even the “iconic” arcing lightning bolts that struck as we reached the launches apex are dark.
Instead, a blinding set of spotlights lofted further back on the ceiling illuminates. It’s just as disorienting, but totally lacking in the “show” that the lightning strike offered.
Now, we take that familiar plunge into the forest. Did the suspended curtain scrims return? No… As if a consolation prize, there’s a stretched fabric image of a forest stretched along a portion of the back wall of the warehouse, but the lighting projected up onto it only exposes the back wall and industrial ceiling as badly as ever. And so kicks in the strangest addition yet: a sort of… musical score? It makes sense that since there are no longer keyholes for us to “woosh” through creating a chaotic soundscape of wind and wolves and thunder, there needs to be some kind of sound. And this… kind of fits? It’s a sort of eerie, hyper, Danny Elfman-adjacent soundtrack of a youth chorus. Weird.
Anyway, the train races through the course we know, but now without any of the blacklight flats and keyholes that gave the Black Forest its “iconic” appearance. There are instead a few dimensional tree sculpts affixed to coaster track, created by the architecture firm GuernseyTingle. They may give some of the same “near-miss” effect that the keyholes did, but critically, they’re all lit from beneath, flooding the showbuilding with their green lights and again exposing the warehouse’s structure. There’s no sense of being lost or of narrowly missing or of threading between branches as you race through the darkness of the segmented showbuilding. Instead, it’s very apparent that you’re in a warehouse.
Remember how the ride’s upward double helix circled around that massive flat of the moon being strangled by branches? It’s been replaced with… nothing. Just the exposed concrete floor.
Then, we arrive at the mid-course brakes. What was really a scenic highlight of the original Verbolten – that weirdly quiet moment when various layers of the Black Forest began to glow around us – had become one of the ride’s biggest misses when the scrims were removed since it left us sitting in darkness. That’s certainly been corrected in the new ride given that we now spend our time on the brakes staring into the maw of a gnarled tree, its interior glowing red and its branches (not flats, but full sculpts with leaves, mind you!) extended out toward us as if to grab us.
Of course, it doesn’t grab us. It’s static, as you’d expect. But it’s another moment where there’s a weird absence of “show.” One imagines that we could arrive on the brakes in darkness and use surround-sound audio to make it sound as if we’re being surrounded in the creaking limbs of an approaching tree, only to have a first phase of lights come on to unveil the surrounding branches, then another set of lights that rise up the tree’s trunk, then finally to have interior glow red just as we dive in to the sound of its wooden teeth gnashing.
But nope. The whole thing is entirely illuminated from the moment we enter the showbuilding, so now we just sit on the brakes and stare at this unmoving giant tree. And stare it we do, because it’s nice! But as with every other element of this reimagined ride, replacing blacklights with upward-pointed, gelled floodlights that are always on means that we can see every wire holding the limbs, and also, that the tree terminates in a ceiling. It’s just such a weird divergence from the absolute brilliance of the original ride, where the forest literally seemed to stretch on forever that we now end up with a single tree whose beginning and end are clearly defined.
I guess this is where I just have to say out loud that I really think that the design firm contracted to develop the ride’s more “evolved” look just… totally missed the mark. The simple, stylized blacklight motif that followed throughout the ride was so perfectly done and so cohesive and so coherent. Leaves, vines, and branches with a uniform, otherworldly glow… I understand why the impulse would be that replacing flats with sculpts, and stylization with realism, would automatically feel like an improvement. But it so misses the mark not just in meeting the ride’s unique blend of beauty and brawn, but it just logistically doesn’t work to uplight sets in a warehouse.
Clearly, the trade-off was, “If we want to axe the dream of putting back up fresh scrims and want to pull out all of the remaining flats in favor of full sculpts, we’re going to have to have less stuff in there, but better stuff.” But unfortunately, it doesn’t turn out to be either more or better.
Anyway, speaking of a distinct lack of “show” that we’re likely to sense during the tree scene, you may also wonder about those three randomized “events” that used to befall us in the Black Forest, each of which was first hinted at by a varied show element here before really coming alive on the drop track. Well… they’re gone. There’s only one show now.
The car dives into the tree when, weirdly, a random rock music score kicks in as we align with what we know to be drop track. (This weird heavy metal guitar riff is maybe one of the things I maybe hate most about the reimagining? It just makes so little sense, especially when this was such a great little swing into the randomized event that had been chosen for you train, with different set pieces being illuminated as you heard either an approaching pack of wolves, the serene call of a spirit, or a bass-rattling thunderstorm with rain and lightning effects.)
And as the permits teased, the old curved flats of pinkish-purple, stylized branches twisted into “hands” have been replaced with full sculpts of real branches, with real leaves. And for genuinely the first observable time yet, there’s actual show programming to accompany them, as each branch is lit in turn as we slowly advance down the length of the straightaway to the drop track.
Throughout the length of the track, we hear Hexel’s overlapping voices echoing – “Don’t turn right,” “Don’t turn right!” “Don’t. Turn. Right.” “Don’t turn right.” (A first-timer might think that the “right turn” we’ve been warned about is about to happen given that we’re being reminded of those instructions as we reach what’s clearly set up to be a climax of the ride, but of course, the titular “Forbidden Turn” was the second thing the ride did, so this is more of a reminder of how we got ourselves into this predicament, even though it sort of wastes the ride’s actual climax by being confusing as to what exactly we’re doing right now.)
The reason for the lights advancing alongside us becomes clear once we train parks on the drop track. A final light turns on, illuminating another figure of Hexel against a hung fabric backdrop. Calling it an “animated figure” would be a stretch. It’s a mannequin whose arms are extended, with a twist in the hips that conceals its (un-moving) face from our view. Her voice is no longer disembodied as she chides us directly.
“Fine, I’ll save you. But you have to give me five stars!” Yep, a Yelp joke. With a twist of the hips, the witch pivots as the drop track activates. In maybe the most (or… gulp… only?) really compelling “show” element of the new ride, veins of light in each tree branch turn bluish white as we plummet, then fade to red as we find ourselves on the ground. There, we’re surrounded in red eyes (a last homage to the Big Bad Wolf, and by extension, the wolf pack event on the old Verbolten). “Now go on,” Hexel’s voice commands, “Back to the garage.”
With that, we hit the second launch, out to the covered bridge, and back to the ride’s finale.
Verdict
This much is clear: Busch Gardens Williamsburg took a look at Verbolten and recognized, correctly, that this unassuming, 14-year-old family coaster was a gem waiting to be polished. There is no question that millions of dollars were spent on this overhaul and relaunch, which is a statement on just how much potential they (again, correctly) saw in the “bones” of Verbolten.
Where we disagree is exactly what form that polishing should take.
It’s no wonder that hopes ran high as we saw the queue come to life with new detail, new dimension, and even an Animatronic. Every move made signaled that this would be a reimagining that would tug on the margins of Verbolten in ways far and above what we would’ve expected from United Parks. But in practice, it turns out that the part of the upgrade we couldn’t watch evolve – the ride experience – has some major misses.
Image: Just Out ‘n About, Facebook
1. THE “FRAU HEXEL” STORY JUST ISN’T VERY GOOD TO BEGIN WITH, AND THE CRINGEY EXECUTION MAKES IT WORSE. I mean, obviously, I get it. The park wanted to really embody that something new was at play here – enough to genuinely market the ride as “New for 2026” versus the sort of essential-but-unsexy improvements I may wish it had gotten instead. Let’s be honest – even in the multiverse where Busch Gardens restored the interior of the showbuilding to its 2012 height (or better), installed an animatronic Gerta in the queue, and added on-ride audio, it would’ve been a tough sell to call the ride “new.” But a new character and a subtitle does the trick, even if it’s not necessarily a better character or story than the one we already had. “Don’t turn right” indeed. Adding a hokey witch with a joke about leaving a positive review in what had been this weirdly serene, poetic, stylized, randomized show moment at the old ride’s climax really speaks volumes.
2. REMOVING THE RIDE’S STYLIZATION WAS A VERY BAD DECISION. It was just a colossal mistake to change the ride’s visual language from the otherworldly abstracted danger and glowing storybook beauty of the old Black Forest into something literal. Sure, on paper, it’s nice that investment went into dimensional set pieces… but who cares if there’s a VW Beetle gripped by a beautifully sculpted and painted brach if the whole ride is lit by LEDs, with embarrassing fabric backdrops, rock music, and warehouse walls?
3. IT’S FAIRLY INEXCUSABLE HOW LITTLE “SHOW” IS LEFT ON THE RIDE ITSELF. It would seem that one of the perks of the refresh for management must’ve been a promise that they could basically scrap the show control system entirely by ridding the ride of its randomized events or show-triggered lighting entirely. The fact that the initial launch keeps the blacklight leaves (which is weird in its own right) then leaves them continuously lit is so… bad. It’s bad. Why turn off the arcing lightning strike? Why leave all these sets continuously lit as you weave around in the showbuilding? Early riders disembarked basically saying, “Umm… I think maybe it’s… not done yet?” But no, it appears that it is done. Just gelled spotlights pointed at a whole bunch of static sets, flooding the showbuilding with light.
Look, so far, the consensus seems to be that – at least compared to the state the ride had been in for years – Verbolten: Forbidden Turn is a great reimagining and an excellent refurbishment that extends this ride’s lifetime by decades. It’s good that people think so, even though I of course secretly wish that folks would disembark saying “Gee, I wish they’d just restored the ride to the state it was in when it opened instead of changing it in a whole bunch of weird ways.”
But I can admit when my tastes are counter to the general consensus. Even BGWFans.com – whom I’ve cited across this article and many that reference Busch Gardens Williamsburg – softens their own criticisms from the thread linked above by summing up that this is definitely an improvement over the Verbolten we’d had for the 2020s – one with burned out lights, missing scrims, and a mostly incoherent story. I guess that’s fair. But one step forward, two steps back would be my takeaway.
I’ll admit: what I felt was probably what a lot of people walking out of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace felt. Like… what? Wait, no. That can’t be. We waited so long… and it looked like it was going to be… No, I mean, maybe it was good? Maybe I just need to try it again? It’s different, but that doesn’t mean it’s worse. Let me try again.
As most of us theme park enthusiasts tend to be, I cared too much about Verbolten. (See my tattoo, at left, for proof). I had too many great memories with it, shuttling friends from Ohio who’d grown up with me on the sun-drenched blacktop midways of Cedar Point to this luxurious, green, themed park called Busch Gardens, where this weird, mystical, mysterious family coaster packed with secrets was waiting… I can’t tell you how many people I surprised with Verbolten, so it’s inevitable that now I find myself thinking, “Well… they had one chance to restore it, and they got it wrong.”
I know, I know. That’s a lame thing to be upset about. And hey, if a new generation loves this version of the ride and it becomes their version, then great. But as for me, I think my current feelings are to imagine that the Verbolten I loved closed in 2025, and that something else is there now – something a whole lot less artful, cohesive, and ambient. Oh well. Such is the life of a theme park fan.