It has been nearly nine months since we first broke the news that Busch Gardens Williamsburg was planning to construct what we believe to be a custom, dual-lift, Bolliger & Mabillard, family, inverted roller coaster on the former site of Drachen Fire, Festhaus Park. If you missed that story or feel like you need a refresher regarding the history of Project Madrid, the conceptualization and death of Drachen Spire, and/or an overview of Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2025 coaster plans, our December 2023 Holzfäller article remains essential reading. From this point on, a lot of previously reported information and analysis regarding the coaster and the larger project will be assumed. You have been warned.
With that heads-up out of the way, let’s take a little time to catch up with what has happened with Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2025 coaster since last December.
The Coaster
Our understanding of the attraction, which we codenamed Der Holzfäller (The Woodsman), has remained almost entirely unchanged since the original reveal. All rumors and evidence that have surfaced since December 2023 continue to align with our B&M family inverted coaster theory—almost certainly making this a sister coaster to Busch Gardens Tampa’s 2024 attraction, Phoenix Rising. With that being said, there were areas of our original analysis where we expressed uncertainty that—thanks to new information—we can now dispel.
Track Layout
Though we will again caution that the exact track shaping will differ in minor ways, we stand by our original, 2D, top-down, track layout analysis. All documentation and information obtained since December continue to align with the track layout presented in our original layout graphic from last year (included below for the sake of convenience).
New Footer Plan
Fascinatingly, though the coaster’s layout has not seemed to change, the coaster’s foundations and supports clearly have. The layout graphic above is based on the footer plan that was submitted to James City County for approval back in December. That said, due to a menagerie of different issues with Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s initial submission, the site plans went through an extensive revision process. One of those updates included an entirely new footer plan for the attraction. Below I’ve included the December 2023 plan (left) and the final approved plan (right). If you look closely, you may be able to spot some of the foundation changes I’m referencing.
Again, this change doesn’t really seem to have impacted the coaster’s layout in any notable way—at least as far as we can tell from the site plans. It is likely that Bolliger & Mabillard simply used the extra time afforded by the repeated site plan rejections to refine their structural design. The new plan appears to contain fewer footers and support structures than the original—likely allowing for some cost savings.
Previously Missing Footers
Speaking of footers, a few paragraphs in our original Holzfäller article were dedicated to an odd area of the coaster’s layout (the light blue segment in the original layout graphic), where there seemed to be far too large a track span between the coaster’s depicted foundations. We pitched a handful of theoretical explanations for this oddity in our December 2023 story, ranging from some sort of elaborate cantilever support off of the second lift, to a trench, to a simple mistake in the site plan.
Unsurprisingly, in the end, the correct explanation was also the most boring: The original site plan submitted to James City County was just missing some footers. Subsequent plan submissions included additional footers through this segment of the attraction that, fortunately, aligned nearly perfectly with the guestimate presented in our original layout graphic.
The Suspended Question
At the time of our original article, uncertainty remained surrounding Phoenix Rising’s trains—specifically whether or not they’d swing. Prior to the ride’s debut, Busch Gardens Tampa repeatedly claimed the coaster train would swing side to side. Unfortunately, when the Phoenix Rising trains arrived, it was clear that there was no joint which could facilitate such motion. It appears as though the swinging train claims made by Busch Gardens Tampa regarding Phoenix Rising were likely just the result of incredibly poor, uninformed, communication blunders by the park’s marketing department.
Given that Phoenix Rising debuted new B&M family invert trains (pictured above), that Holzfäller is almost certainly Phoenix Rising’s sister coaster, and that there are no signs that Bolliger & Mabillard has any intention of debuting a swinging, suspended coaster train (à la the original Big Bad Wolf), we assess Holzfäller is almost certainly not a suspended coaster (i.e., a coaster which runs trains with ride carriages featuring the ability to swing side to side independently of their trains’ chassis).
Lift Heights
If you’ve followed previous Busch Gardens Williamsburg projects, you will likely know that exact attraction heights are frequently a sticking point for our reporting. Oftentimes, the only indicators we have to work from are the height waivers that need to be filed for any structures reaching 60 feet or more above grade. This often provides us a height ceiling for a particular project, but we rarely know what the actual, final height of an attraction will be until its formal announcement.
Fortunately, this time around, James City County required that Busch Gardens Williamsburg mark the heights and locations of the tallest points of the attraction in the site plans before approval. These outlined high point areas not only confirm our previous assessments regarding the locations of Holzfäller’s two lifts, but also give us actual, solid, confirmed, max structure heights (above grade at the point in question).
As highlighted in the images above, the plans specify a height of about 63 feet above finished grade for the first lift hill and a highest point of about 67 feet above grade for the second lift. Do note that these are structure heights above grade and not drop heights. Busch Gardens Williamsburg will likely advertise the coaster with the coaster’s max drop height (the delta between the highest lowest track height on the coaster’s tallest drop).
On flat terrain, this theoretical max drop height have to be less than the heights above grade list above. That said, given BGW’s terrain, we can’t say that’s a given. In other words, I just want to make clear that the “coaster height” ultimately advertised by Busch Gardens Williamsburg is unlikely to match either the 63 or 67 numbers exactly. These height above grade numbers do give us the ability to estimate a rough ballpark max drop height for the coaster though—likely somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 70 feet.
Coaster Colors
There was another exciting detail regarding the coaster Busch Gardens Williamsburg was required to disclose to James City County during the permit approval process as well: Project Holzfäller’s color scheme. In our December article, we broke down why we believed Holzfäller was likely to be themed to the Big Bad Wolf. At that point, we theorized that, due to the coaster’s almost certainly short stature, James City County was unlikely to require that it blend in with the sky—meaning that Busch Gardens Williamsburg would likely have the opportunity to use a bold-than-normal palette.
Well, thanks to a last-minute revision to the Project Holzfäller site plan (above), we now know that the classic Big Bad Wolf color scheme is, in fact, returning to Busch Gardens Williamsburg! The specific, approved colors are RAL 3002 and RAL 070 3010. HEX versions of both officially approved colors for Holzfäller are included below. Presumably, Busch Gardens Williamsburg will follow the example set by The Wolf and use the red for the track and the brown for the supports.
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The Surrounding Area
We spent very little time discussing any of the work slated to take place around Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2025 coaster in our original article and, due to extensive revisions in subsequent site plan submissions, that ended up being a very good thing. Since the submittal of the original site plan to James City County, Busch Gardens Williamsburg has added a handful of additional thematic structures and an absolute boatload of new landscaping to their 2025 attraction plans.
Ride Area Landscaping Plan
I want to start things off by introducing you to the single most time-consuming piece of media that has ever been produced for BGWFans. What started as a simple attempt to better visualize the theming and landscaping planned for Holzfäller quickly spiraled into a multi-week slog in pursuit of absolute perfection. The graphic below presents a nearly-exact, colorized, top-down, 2D depiction of the landscaping and structures planned to enhance Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2025 roller coaster project. It’s based not only on the final, approved landscaping plan mentioned previously, but also integrates leaked portions of the actual track layout, our approximation of the rest of the coaster’s layout, and more. Every path, every foundation, every building, every service road, and every last tree, bush, and plant Busch Gardens Williamsburg is currently plotting is painstakingly and precisely plotted below.
As you can hopefully tell from the graphic above, Busch Gardens Williamsburg is slated to introduce an absolute smorgasbord of new landscaping as part of their 2025 roller coaster project. Almost all of the plants and landscape elements reflected in the graphic above are new additions—and they will be further bolstered by the existing wooded areas around the attraction area’s periphery. To better illustrate how the plan above fits into the park, I have overlaid my colorized landscaping plan onto Google Earth imagery in the image below.
Taken in totality, I believe it’s fair to say that Busch Gardens Williamsburg is, quite literally, reforesting Festhaus Park. Frankly, as far as I can tell, this is a legitimately unprecedented level of planting and landscaping for a Busch Gardens Williamsburg coaster. It’s a truly astounding plan.
With the broad overview out of the way, lets drill down and take the area plans section-by-section in the order in which guests will experience them.
Path from Oktoberfest
To get to Holzfäller, guests will have to traverse the roughly 500-foot-long path from Das Festhaus to Holzfäller’s planned entry. Along the way, they’ll pass the currently-unthemed, warehouse-looking side of Das Festhaus, the park’s largely-tree-obscured picnic areas, and the unthemed backside of Verbolten’s show building. The plans we have access to so far have very limited information regarding what we should expect to be altered or improved throughout this pathway.
That said, a few small, project-related structures adjacent to Das Festhaus, cordoned off in yellow below, are present in the documents we have reviewed.
Given its placement next to Das Festhaus and over the start of the guest pathway towards Holzfäller, the northernmost addition, Building 15 in the plan above, is almost certainly some sort of entry archway denoting the route to the new coaster.
The other two (southern-most) yellow rectangles, together, make up what this plan identifies as Building 20. It is possible that the horizontal rectangle is meant to represent the existing Festhaus Park archway (likely to be rethemed), but its placement would be a little off if that is the park’s intention here. The purpose of the vertical rectangle is a complete mystery to me, however. Maybe some sort of thematic structure to block the entry to the picnic area?
For the sake of completeness, I will include the portion of the site plan showing the pathway between the Festhaus-adjacent side plaza (addressed above) and the Holzfäller entry area, but as you’ll see, not much of anything is planned for this area—at least nothing evidenced in the publicly available documentation thus far.
Ride Plaza & Station Area
After the lengthy walk from Das Festhaus, guests will arrive at Holzfäller’s entry plaza. The first structure guests will encounter previously served as Drachen Fire’s ride photos and gift shop. Given the design of Holzfäller’s exit pathway, this building is almost certainly slated to be reused for this same purpose come 2025.
Behind the ride photos and gift shop facility is what appears to be some sort of secondary ride entrance or exit. Our guess is that this will be a dedicated handicap and/or Quick Queue entrance with an archway of some sort. Its placement directly across the plaza from the main queue entry building seems ideal for this purpose.
Given the size of the primary queue entry structure, this is likely a proper building, not just a simple entry arch or the like. Interestingly, this queue entry building may be a remnant of Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s scrapped Drachen Spire plans—blueprints for that coaster project included a nearly-identically placed and sized structure.
Directly next door to the ride entrance, there is what appears to be a locker shelter. Previous iterations of the plans had this off to the western side of the coaster’s plaza. Theoretically, the new configuration could serve to facilitate queue theming on the backside of this structure. Alternatively, it may just be cheaper to build the lockers directly next to the ride entrance.
Aside from those structures, everything else in the image above should be very straightforward. Now, let’s ride.
Ride Area
The graphic below notes all the major features slated to surround Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2025 coaster.
Few of the station and maintenance area buildings should be a surprise, given our previous reporting. Holzfäller reuses Drachen Fire’s old station building and adds a new maintenance/train storage shelter between Drachen’s station and her previous maintenance bay. Parallel to the new train storage area, there’s a second new building as well. This one didn’t appear in the original plans but was added to the park’s submittal this spring. My guess is that this is a second backstage storage or maintenance structure, but there’s nothing in the documents that I’ve found that specifically describes its use.
Speaking of Drachen Fire’s old maintenance facilities, that building is slated to remain with seemingly little to no change. This space is currently used for storage and, while Holzfäller is slated to cross directly above this building, I expect the current use to remain.
Moving a little further out, there’s another new backstage building directly next to the 2025 coaster’s second lift hill. The gravel pad it’s connected to acts as the evacuation route for Holzfäller’s second lift. Given that, it’s likely that this is another maintenance or controls-related building for Holzfäller. It’s worth noting that, like the small building added next to the train storage area, this was another late-in-the-game addition to BGW’s plans.
Okay, now let’s get to the part you’ve probably all been waiting for: Holzfäller’s village. Let me give you some good news right off the bat: It justifies its own section.
Holzfäller’s Village
Two words: Holy @!#?@!
Since Busch Gardens Williamsburg initially submitted their 2025 coaster plans to James City County, there have been two monumental, guest-facing changes: the landscaping has been taken up to eleven and, even more excitingly, there has been a huge expansion to the coaster’s village-area scenic plans. It is crystal clear at this point that BGW is making a Big Bad Wolf nostalgia play with this coaster, and, given that it will lack The Wolf’s signature swinging trains and iconic Rhine River drop, there’s only one real way that remains to seriously play tribute to its inspiration: by building a town for the coaster to fly through—at the speed of fright, as some might say.
While this new village area is not slated to be as large or elaborate as the original Big Bad Wolf’s was, it has been massively enlarged since we last reported on the documentation back in December. In fact, the officially approved site plans depict what would be the most extensive, on-ride, outdoor roller coaster theming Busch Gardens Williamsburg has attempted since the original Big Bad Wolf.
Entering the village area (top left track), Holzfäller riders first pass through a gap in what is believed to be a village wall. Presumably this break in the wall will be themed to a gate for the coaster to fly through—potentially providing some great near-misses with the gate or walls to the left and right.
After passing through the wall gap, we expect the coaster to rise up, turn to the right, and soar over the first of three full, 3D, themed buildings in this area of the attraction. From there it appears to pass over an upcoming track segment before descending into the coaster’s southern-most turn.
Entering this turn, riders should have a straight-on view of the second of the fully 3D buildings. Subsequently, the train will bank left to dodge the structure in question. From there, the coaster will fly by a series of 2D town facades—likely involving some great, heavily-banked, foot-choppers.
After passing the facades, we expect the coaster to rise up a little and pass either over (or through?!) the third 3D building before returning to ground-level and enjoying another near-miss with the first building the coaster crossed in this area. From there, the layout takes riders up and to the right—seemingly over or through another segment of the village wall we mentioned earlier.
Oh, and did I mention there is a water feature (probably a fountain) in the middle of this area? Riders should get a glimpse of this bit of the village set as they cross over the first 3D building.
I should also mention that at least some of these structures seem to be wired for electricity and, hence, lighting. It seems entirely possible that we could have candles flickering in windows just as you may remember from the original Big Bad Wolf. Especially given the remoteness of the site, the night ride potential here is unparalleled.
Oh, and one last tidbit for you: There’s a rumor goin’ ’round internally that one of the three dimensional structures is a church. Please give me a near-miss with a steeple, Busch Gardens Williamsburg!
The Current Status
Anyway, I think that’s just about all the new information I’ve gleaned from picking through every BGW 2025 document I have access to at the moment! Before I close though, there are a few odds and ends worth mentioning.
Preliminary site work on Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s B&M family invert began somewhere around May. Clearing, grading, and footer work really began to pick up in mid-July. By mid-August, plenty of footers were in-place with work seemingly taking place across the entire site.
Meanwhile, August 16th, National Roller Coaster Day, also brought the first BGW 2025 teaser from Busch Gardens Williamsburg! The park installed a mysterious, unexplained, working, bell tower in front of Das Festhaus. Seems like a great way to warn the townsfolk about a wolf sighting, no?
Then, on August 23rd, Busch Gardens Williamsburg took the teasing a step further and seemingly confirmed the long-speculated Big Bad Wolf throwback theme!
It’s anyone’s guess how many chapters Busch Gardens Williamsburg has planned for this teaser campaign, but I’d be surprised if we didn’t get an official announcement for Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s 2025 coaster by the end of September.
Closing Thoughts
Taking everything presented today in totality—the jaw-dropping landscaping plan, the extensive thematic package suggested by the village area, what looks to be a very solid family coaster, the Big Bad Wolf nostalgia, and the elaborate lore suggested by the first entries into Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s teaser campaign, it looks as though BGW intends to hit this thing out thing clean out of the park.
There are many, almost-certainly-justified criticisms to be made regarding the attraction’s make and model, the likely lack of swinging on a sequel to the Big Bad Wolf, and, of course, the placement of this coaster on such a hidden, remote, and storied site. We outlined all of those criticisms in-depth in our first article and I still stand by everything I wrote. That said, if you chose to accept the coaster model and placement as unfortunate realities and set those criticisms aside, every other inch of this attraction looks absolutely stellar thus far—so far above and beyond what we’ve come to expect from Busch Gardens Williamsburg in the last decade or so.
It is increasingly clear that the backlash to the presentation and (complete lack of) theming with Pantheon has been thoroughly heard and addressed. Pantheon debuted and everyone said, “This coaster is great, but it’s a hideous eyesore and Busch Gardens has to do better.” Then BGW gave us DarKoaster which, per rumors, had its original scenic budget slashed to bits mid-development. BGW fans proclaimed, “This could have been great, but the scenic is trash and the story is completely incoherent.”
The park followed DarKoaster up with the overhaul of Loch Ness Monster—a project that directly centered lore and scenic investments in a way that we haven’t seen in Williamsburg since Verbolten. During that project, park-level management reportedly fiercely defended its theming budget from attempted cuts. The public’s response? Overwhelmingly positive. Per multiple sources, internally, Nessie’s overhaul has been viewed as a massive success.
Now, with the plans laid out today, we see what appears to be the next step in Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s slow march back towards reclaiming their rightful place amongst the best regional theme parks in the country. Assuming Busch Gardens Williamsburg is able to fend off cost overruns and potential budget cuts over the next few months, the park stands to gain what I believe will likely be one of its greatest thematic accomplishments in decades.
For anyone who made it all the way to the end, thanks a ton for reading! Back in December, I had no intention of writing a Part II after pouring an unprecedented number of hours into the longest article in BGWFans history, our original Holzfäller piece. That said, given all of the additional information that has surfaced in the time since, paired with the shocking grandeur of Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s plans, we thought it necessary.
As alluded to earlier, this article also set a new record for us: The full, colorized, site plan presented throughout this piece took a truly embarrassing number of hours over the span of many weeks. It’s easily the most time-consuming graphic we’ve ever attempted and, frankly, we’re unlikely to bite off that much again in the future. That being said, if there ever was a time to take things this far, it was certainly this project. Busch Gardens Williamsburg opted for maximum effort, so I did too. BGW is intending to give us a true labor of love, so I did the same.
Though there WILL NOT be a Part III to our pre-announcement BGW 2025 coverage, if you’d like to keep up with any additional details that leak out in the weeks ahead, please give us a follow on Facebook and Twitter! If you’d like to keep up with the construction progress on the ground, follow along with the Holzfäller thread over on ParkFans! If you enjoyed the article and think you may know someone else who might be interested, please pass it along! ❤️