News about LOUP-GAROU

One week after the major RMC announcement, Walibi Belgium gave Loup-Garou's farewell a tangible form. The park introduced a special souvenir line called The Last Full Moon, a direct reference to the wooden coaster's werewolf identity. Shirts, hoodies and a poster show a werewolf on top of the lift hill, alongside the ride logo and the years marking its opening and closing.

The news shows that Walibi is not letting Loup-Garou's final phase pass quietly. The 2001 coaster may not be a perfect ride for every visitor, but it is a recognisable part of the park's history. By turning the farewell into merchandise, Walibi created a fan moment: a way to capture memories before the coaster disappears into its RMC hybrid transformation. For the attraction's timeline, this detail matters because it marks the moment when Weerwolf shifts from controversial wooden coaster to nostalgic icon with an official send-off.

On 1 June 2026, the long-running debate around Loup-Garou finally reached its answer. Walibi Belgium officially announced that the wooden coaster will be transformed into a Rocky Mountain Construction hybrid coaster. The ride will operate in its current form for the last time in 2026; construction work starts in January 2027, with the successor planned to open in spring 2028.

The impact is substantial. Looopings reported that the Belgian RMC is intended to be higher, longer and faster than Untamed at Walibi Holland. At 49 metres tall and 1,231 metres long, Walibi Belgium is preparing a new signature coaster that also responds directly to Loup-Garou's reputation as a rough wooden ride. The coaster will anchor Festival World, a new area themed around Mardi Gras and New Orleans. For fans, this is more than a renovation: it is the end of Weerwolf as guests have known it since 2001, and the beginning of a far more ambitious chapter for Walibi Belgium.

In late 2024, the future of Loup-Garou shifted into a much higher gear. Looopings reported that Walibi Belgium was in talks with Rocky Mountain Construction about a possible conversion of the wooden coaster into a hybrid coaster. The comparison with Untamed at Walibi Holland was obvious: there, too, an older Vekoma wooden coaster had been radically rebuilt by RMC with steel rails and much more intense elements.

The article was not yet an official announcement. Walibi only confirmed that it was considering retracking Loup-Garou and that nothing had been signed. Even so, the news mattered to guests and coaster fans. Weerwolf, long discussed because of its ride comfort and long-term value, appeared to be more than a candidate for maintenance; it could be heading for a full reinvention. That shifted Loup-Garou from nostalgic wooden coaster to possible future European headline ride. The report laid the groundwork for the later, far more concrete announcement of Festival World and the RMC transformation.

In June 2024, Loup-Garou gained a striking piece of Walibi family history. Walibi Belgium took over a four-car train from Robin Hood, the former Vekoma wooden coaster at Walibi Holland that had made way for Untamed. Because both coasters came from the same manufacturer, the connection seemed logical, but the train could not simply be placed on the Belgian ride.

E&S Rides modified the cars so they would work with Loup-Garou's safety systems. That gave the attraction a third train alongside the two it already had. According to the article, Walibi could then keep two trains available more often while one was being serviced. For visitors, the benefit was practical: more operational flexibility and potentially better capacity, especially with Walibi Belgium also opening in winter. For fans, the detail carried extra weight because Robin Hood itself had become Untamed, the exact transformation model that would increasingly define Loup-Garou's future.

In October 2023, Loup-Garou received a small but telling update. Walibi Belgium introduced new music around the wooden coaster: a mix of epic, bombastic library tracks that, according to the park, was meant to improve immersion. It was not a technical change to the ride itself, but it did show how the park was starting to reshape the identity of Weerwolf.

That mattered because Loup-Garou had not yet been firmly embedded in a dedicated themed area. Looopings connected the soundtrack to longer-running plans to make the 2001 coaster part of a New Orleans-inspired zone. For guests, the change mainly added atmosphere around the queue and ride area. For fans, it carried more meaning: Walibi appeared to be refining the story around a coaster known for its roughness, while thinking about a future that went beyond routine maintenance and day-to-day operations.

A visitor experience in the summer of 2022 made Loup-Garou's rough reputation painfully tangible. A Dutch family told Looopings that their 13-year-old daughter suffered severe pain after riding the wooden coaster and later visited doctors and a hospital. According to her father, the train shook so violently that the lap bar kept tightening, turning a day at Walibi Belgium into a worrying experience.

The story touched a sensitive point in Loup-Garou's history. The Vekoma wooden coaster from 2001 had long been known as a ride with character, but also as one where comfort was far from guaranteed. The comparison with Robin Hood at Walibi Holland, which had already been transformed into the hybrid coaster Untamed, made the question of a major renovation even more visible. For guests and coaster fans, the incident became a sharp snapshot of the wider debate: should Weerwolf be preserved as a classic wooden coaster, or had the time come for a fundamental transformation?