News about Oki Doki

Bobbejaanland offered a more detailed look at its first-ever winter opening in August 2025. Bobbejaanland Wintert was planned for December and January and would divide the park into six winter areas: A Winter Welcome, Land of Fire & Ice, Snow Valley, Santa City, Glacier Bay and Lake of Frost. One striking detail was that part of the published concept imagery had been created with AI, giving the announcement a distinctly modern edge.

The plans were meant to place the park in a different seasonal role. On the entrance square, mascots Bobbie and Jody would appear in winter outfits. Land of Legends, with Fury as its headline ride, became Land of Fire & Ice and would host a fire and light spectacle near the coaster. Adventure Valley turned into Snow Valley, Desperado City became Santa City with a Winter Circus, Mystery Bay continued as Glacier Bay with the Ice Slide tubing attraction, and the park’s lake would become an ice rink called Lake of Frost.

At the same time, Bobbejaanland made clear that winter opening required choices. Wondergarden stayed closed, as did El Rio, Big Bang, Naiads Waters, Terra Magma, Wild Water Slide, Glijbaan, Monorail and Oki Doki. For guests, this was therefore not a full summer day in winter decoration, but a new seasonal product built around atmosphere, shows and an adapted ride line-up.

Bobbejaanland introduced a new evening format for the summer of 2023. Under the name Summer Boost, the park stayed open until 9 p.m. on six Saturdays: 22 and 29 July, followed by 5, 12, 19 and 26 August. The programme was designed to stretch the regular park day with food trucks, live music and extra entertainment.

For guests, the most important promise was extra ride time. Almost all major attractions remained in operation until 9 p.m. There were clear exceptions, however: Typhoon and Oki Doki closed at 7 p.m., the park’s normal closing time. As a result, the evening offer was not spread evenly across every popular ride.

Around the attractions, Bobbejaanland built a broader summer atmosphere. Musical performances were scheduled in Desperado City between 3.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., mascot Bobbie appeared for photo moments, and the inhabitants of Mystery Bay were meant to bring the themed area to life after dark. PAW Patrol, a Nickelodeon show and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were also part of the line-up. Summer Boost showed how the park tried to get more value out of existing operating days without turning the season into a full music festival.

Bobbejaanland moved to another priority-access system in September 2022. The Express Pass, introduced earlier that same season, was replaced by Speedy Pass, a digital platform supplied by the British company Accesso. That shifted the park away from physical Express entrances with fixed usage counts and towards a model built around online wait times and virtual queues.

The options worked quite differently. Speedy Pass Bronze cost 14.90 euros and allowed guests to wait virtually instead of standing in the physical queue, while the waiting time itself remained the same. Silver cost 24.90 euros and cut the virtual wait by 50 percent. Gold and Diamond promised a 95 percent reduction; Gold was limited to one use per attraction, while Diamond was broader. One Ride tickets were available for a single queue.

Eleven attractions received a dedicated Speedy Pass entrance: Fury, Typhoon, Indiana River, Naga Bay, Speedy Bob, Revolution, Oki Doki, Wildwaterbaan, Dreamcatcher, El Rio and Bob Express. For guests, waiting became more visible and more commercial: live queue times moved online, and faster boarding became an even clearer digital premium product.

Bobbejaanland adjusted the Express Pass soon after its launch. The paid priority system had been in use for only a month when the park raised prices and changed several conditions at the same time. The move showed that the launch was not a fixed endpoint, but the start of a product that could be tuned quickly around guest behaviour and commercial goals.

The three versions remained. Small rose from 12 to 14.90 euros, but could now be used five times instead of four. Medium increased from 21.90 to 27.90 euros. Large went from 29.90 to 34.90 euros and still offered unlimited use. The Large version was personal and also included a 10 percent discount on food and beverage and part of the merchandise range. Small and Medium were not personal.

The Express Pass continued to apply to Fury, Typhoon, Naga Bay, Dreamcatcher, Oki Doki, Sledge Hammer, El Rio, Indiana River, Wildwaterbaan and Revolution with Mount Mara. For guests, faster boarding became more expensive, but also more clearly packaged as a premium product. For Bobbejaanland, the change marked the rapid professionalisation of a system that had only just been introduced.

Bobbejaanland finally introduced a paid queue-jumping system in 2022. The Express Pass had originally been planned for 2020, but the coronavirus crisis pushed the launch back. Once the system arrived, guests could use separate entrances to reach a selection of ten attractions more quickly.

The product came in three versions. Small cost 12 euros and offered four uses. Medium gave eleven uses for 21.90 euros. Large cost 29.90 euros and allowed unlimited use of the Express queues. The participating attractions were Fury, Typhoon, Naga Bay, Dreamcatcher, Oki Doki, Sledge Hammer, El Rio, Indiana River, Wildwaterbaan and Revolution, including its virtual reality version Mount Mara.

For visitors, this changed the rhythm of a day at Bobbejaanland: waiting time became something that could partly be bought down. That was notable because a former park director had still argued in 2013 that Bobbejaanland did not need such a system, thanks to its broad ride line-up and relatively manageable queues. The launch brought the park closer to competitors such as Walibi Belgium, where paid priority access had already become part of the operating model.

Bobbejaanland reopened in early July 2020 after a three-month delay caused by the coronavirus crisis. The return of guests was very different from a normal start to the season. Visitors first had to have their reservation checked and then scan their ticket or annual pass. In queues, shops, restaurants and toilet areas, green markers at two-metre intervals showed where groups were allowed to wait.

Ride operations changed as well. Rows were left empty in ride vehicles, and face masks were required on the more intense attractions, including Aztek Express, Bob Express, Dreamcatcher, Fury, Naga Bay, Oki Doki, Revolution, Sledge Hammer, Speedy Bob and Typhoon. Indoor queues such as Revolution received extra attention. Several crowd-pulling indoor experiences stayed closed for the time being: Kinderland, El Paso, Glijbaan and The Forbidden Caves. Roller coasters also ran without virtual reality headsets.

For guests, the park day became a sequence of new habits: keeping distance, disinfecting hands, paying by card and accepting that not every attraction was available. Historically, the reopening captured an exceptional moment in which theme parks traded spontaneity and full capacity for controlled visitor flows and highly visible health measures.

When Bobbejaanland was allowed to welcome visitors again at the end of June 2020 after the coronavirus closure, the park used the reopening to show several visible upgrades. The clearest change was Dreamcatcher. The suspended coaster, long known for lighter colours, had been repainted entirely black and received a new canopy at its entrance. The darker look was meant to make the ride feel tougher and more forceful.

The area between Oki Doki and Indiana River had also been redesigned. Bobbejaanland added more nature, wood and rockwork to the walking route and brought the pond more strongly into the visitor experience. An existing small beach was expanded, a water play area was added and a Monorail station gave way to a new path along the water.

For guests, the reopening therefore meant more than returning to a park full of health measures. It also offered a freshly presented environment. The work fitted a broader effort to make existing areas more attractive: Dreamcatcher gained a sharper identity, while the surroundings of Oki Doki and Indiana River were shaped to feel more relaxed and holiday-like.

Bobbejaanland used the 2019/2020 winter break to rework a very visible part of the park. The project focused on the route between the family coaster Oki Doki and the indoor water ride Indiana River, the attraction that would later continue as Terra Magma. Instead of keeping a long, rather plain avenue, the park wanted more greenery, a stronger waterside atmosphere and better views across the central pond.

The entrances to Oki Doki and Indiana River were refreshed, while the Monorail station in this section was removed to clear the sightline towards the water. Bobbejaanland stressed that this was not meant to be a fully named themed land like Land of Legends. The first priority was infrastructure, landscaping and a calmer sense of place.

For guests, the change meant a more pleasant walking route and a better arrival moment at two established rides. That made the work more important than a simple cosmetic touch-up: it showed how Bobbejaanland was also investing in the everyday flow and atmosphere of the park, not only in headline-grabbing new attractions.

Bobbejaanland prepared a paid priority pass for the 2020 season. For 12 euros, guests with the Express Pass could use a separate, shorter queue once at four different attractions. The pass was not personal: one visitor could use it four times, or share it once with three friends. Sales would take place at the ticket desks and information desk, with a daily cap on availability.

The attraction list showed that Bobbejaanland wanted to apply queue management widely. It was not limited to major thrill rides such as Fury, Typhoon, Dreamcatcher and Sledge Hammer; family and water attractions including Oki Doki, Naga Bay, El Rio, Indiana River and Wildwaterbaan were part of the system as well. Even Mount Mara, the virtual reality version of Revolution, was mentioned. For visitors, that meant more choice and predictability on busy days, but also a clear extra price on top of a regular visit.

The park had already experimented with a Horror Pass during Halloween, offering faster access to haunted houses and Land of Legends attractions. The Express Pass turned that temporary test into a broader seasonal product. Historically, the report fits a larger European theme park trend: waiting time was increasingly managed not only operationally, but also commercially packaged.

Noise complaints around Bobbejaanland resurfaced strongly in August 2015. Nearby residents complained about screaming and ride noise from the park, had reportedly called the police dozens of times and eventually went to court. Three attractions appeared again and again in their criticism: Typhoon, Oki Doki and Sledge Hammer, all opened in 2004 shortly before the former family company was sold to Parques Reunidos.

Oki Doki played a particularly striking role in the story. Resident Herwig Mertens said the screaming from the junior coaster made it difficult to make himself heard in his own garden. On busy days, he described the same sound returning every two minutes, from ten in the morning until seven in the evening. Another neighbour, Karel De Vos, claimed the rides had been built without permits and viewed the additions as an attempt to raise the park’s value shortly before the sale.

For guests, the ride experience itself did not change, but historically this is an important file. It shows that family attractions can have an impact beyond the park gates through dispatch frequency, sound and rider reactions. The court required owner Parques Reunidos to meet residents twice a year, yet according to the article both noise and wild parking remained unresolved.