lowquality.net

Last week Busch Gar­dens Europe announced the clos­ing of the Big Bad Wolf roller coaster after 25 years of ser­vice after Labor Day of this year. The pri­mary rea­son given has been that the Big Bad Wolf has “reached the end of it’s ser­vice life.”

Pretty lame excuse right?

Even Busch Garden’s powers-that-be have more or less stated that they really intend to close the Wolf it is to make room for some­thing else (but haven’t announced what, yet). In the past they’ve had no prob­lem with drop­ping a new coaster in some­where and call­ing it a day (and please note that the for­mer Drachen Fire site is still unpop­u­lated with a new ride). The Wolf’s age is a bogus excuse when you con­sider that it is only 25 years old. The Loch Ness Mon­ster is older and there’s sev­eral notably older coast­ers in the world: The Coney Island Cyclone has been going since the 1920’s and its made of wood (not to men­tion the only relic of Astroland still stand­ing). The excuse given on the FAQ tries to throw some kind of tech­ni­cal curve ball involv­ing “ride dynam­ics” and main­te­nance costs.

So, yeah, I am sort of skep­ti­cal. The Wolf is, for many peo­ple who have grown up in Hamp­ton Roads, the first roller coaster we ever road, if no other rea­son than because the height require­ment was less strict than the Loch Ness Mon­ster or any of the other coast­ers in the park. So, with that in mind I half believe that this might be some kind of ploy to get some nos­tal­gic vis­i­tors in the park to ride the Wolf one last time and, then, some­time in the Fall, announce that due to an over­whelm­ing protest, the Wolf has been spared when they had no inten­tions of clos­ing it at all.

But I’d more con­fi­dently wager that Busch Gar­dens just wants a new coaster but their new bosses (InBev) are mak­ing them cut back on over­all main­te­nance costs so they have to axe one of the older, lamer and more costly rides to make room in the annual bud­get for some­thing else. Last year, when InBev acquired Annheiser-Busch it was appar­ent that they weren’t pos­i­tive about keep­ing the company’s non-beverage related assets and that cost-cutting was a pri­or­ity in every aspect of the acquisition.

I’m sure the Busch Gar­dens and Sea World execs are keep­ing real quiet this Sum­mer for fear of being turned into a Six Flags. It looks like they also have plans for a Christ­mas sea­son this year, so they are prob­a­bly try­ing to max­i­mize Busch Gar­dens’ profit mar­gin how­ever they can. Won’t be sur­prised if we look back on the clos­ing of the Big Bad Wolf as the begin­ning of the end of Busch Gar­dens Williamsburg.

Nev­er­the­less, I don’t really think I’ll miss the Big Bad Wolf. At first I thought I would, but I don’t think I will. I ride it almost every time I go to the park and I always won­der why I both­ered wait­ing in line for so damn long.