 Welcome to the 7th installment in the series Whatever Happened To. In this episode we are taking a look at the Vekoma wooden roller coaster model. I will be discussing why I think three were built initially and why I think none were ever built after that, as well as if I think we could see a new generation wooden coaster from Vekoma being built in the future. There were only three of these Vekoma wooden roller coasters ever built, and they all basically came at once. The first one, Robin Hood, opened at Wallaby Holland in 2000. The other two opened in the year 2001. These were Loop Guru, or Werewolf in English, at Wallaby Belgium, and Thunder Coaster at Tucson Frid in Norway. So all three of these were built in Europe. Robin Hood closed for good, however, on October 28th, 2018, as it was transformed into a phenomenal looking RMC iBox coaster called Untamed. The other two still currently operate, and I am not sure about how the future is looking for Loop Guru at Wallaby Belgium, but Thunder Coaster at Tucson Frid received brand new timber liner trains from Gravity Group for the 2015 season. So I imagine this one will be around for some time yet. I'm just going to address this immediately here. These coasters are known for being pretty bad. I think parks were simply not interested in buying this model after hearing about the reception of the three built in Europe. For a few years in the early 2000s, Six Flags actually owned the Wallaby parks that received one of these. So there may have been a contract with Vekoma at the time to build so many coasters, and Six Flags built a lot of coasters in the years 2000 and 2001. Looking at videos of all three of these rides, I have to say that Thunder Coaster does by far have the most interesting layout out of all three of these, and all of these wooden coasters are visually very nice looking. Even Robin Hood didn't look too bad with many airtime hills, but from what I heard, the ride experience was not good at all. The stats were pretty similar for all of them. Thunder Coaster and Robin Hood are 105 feet tall, while Loop Guru is 91 feet tall. Thunder Coaster is the fastest at 57 miles per hour, while both Robin Hood and Loop Guru top out at just under 50 miles per hour. Robin Hood and Loop Guru also have the same length at 3,395.7 feet, while Thunder Coaster has 3,116 feet of track. All pretty average for wooden coasters. I haven't been outside of the US, so I haven't experienced any of these, and I'm not particularly yearning to experience either of the two that remain. I think Vakoma realized that wooden coasters are not their strong suit, and just continued to focus on what they were known for at the time. Affordable, cloned, compact thrill coasters that could be easily placed into many parks and attract attention, which they did well. Of course Vakoma has went through a sort of change of identity in the past five years or so, and has now known for much more quality rides which have been built outside of the US, such as Let Coaster at Legendia in Poland. In the early 2000s, when these three wooden coasters were built by Vakoma, there was of course Great Coasters International, who was still fairly new at the time and finding much success. Custom Coasters International was coming to the end of their tenure, but in 2000 was still building many world-class wooden coasters. And then there were the Intamin Prefab wooden coasters, another model I've talked about in the series, which are outstanding top-tier coasters. Vakoma just wasn't in a good position, simply, to build wooden coasters. And their reputation for building extremely uncomfortable rides at the time seems to have extended over to these, and wooden coasters are much more difficult to maintain as it is. I would not be surprised to see Loop Guru converted by RMC in the near future. These are outdated models that were never very popular, and I don't think they will stick around for a whole lot longer. That is about all I really have to cover with these, to be honest. They really were just never well liked, and no more were ever built beyond 2001. I don't think Vakoma will be building another wooden coaster at any point in the future. I would be incredibly surprised. And if they do build another wooden coaster, they had better improve upon these old standard wooden coasters by a huge margin, especially with all the competition out there dominating the wood market, like Great Coasters International, Gravity Group, and RMC. Additionally, Vakoma actually has a contract with RMC to sell RMC coasters outside of North America, and Untamed has been quite successful for Wallaby Holland, so it would not be surprising if the chain decides to give her similar treatment to Loop Guru. I want to just point out how amusing I find it, that Vakoma essentially RMC'd one of their very own coasters. Fantastic. Let me know what you all thought about this episode, and be sure to leave your suggestions for what I should talk about in the series next if you have any ideas. I'm going to try to do at least one or two more of these. Have you had the chance to ride any of these Vakoma woodies, and how was your personal experience? I would love to hear it. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it, and like my page Coaster Daddy on Facebook, as well as following me at Coaster Daddy Official on Instagram. Thank you all so much for watching and supporting my channel, and getting me to 600 subscribers. This is Coaster Daddy. Bye.