Featured in De Standaard: Belgian company successfully builds rollercoasters

What does an active fifty-year-old who has just sold their business do? Spend the winter in a southern country and offer a bit of advice here and there? Or set up a new venture, as Anja D’Hondt (58) and Benoit Cornet (63) did five years ago. Their new company, BoldMove Nation, certainly does not target people in their fifties: it builds high-tech, heavily themed rollercoasters.

“We’re a senior start-up,” laughs D’Hondt, who hails from Ostend. She welcomes us, along with Cornet, into their office. Anyone who imagines the bosses of a rollercoaster company sitting at desks overlooking a workshop where sparks fly as steel tubes are welded, bent and cut is mistaken. BoldMove Nation’s headquarters are housed in the stately Tour & Taxis building. It resembles a start-up loft, complete with scale models and figurines of their attractions. A few young people are sitting behind computer screens. “We have an architect, a 3D animator, graphic designers and a few engineers on our permanent staff here,” says D’Hondt. The rest is outsourced to partners. “It’s incredible the range of high-quality suppliers you can find in Belgium, from workshops making polyester sculptures to set builders and wheel manufacturers,” says Cornet, who lives a stone’s throw from Walibi in Wavre.

D’Hondt and Cornet’s history goes back a long way. “35 years ago, we worked for the same international tech company – I was in marketing and Benoit was in after-sales.” Neither of them stayed with the company for very long. D’Hondt set up her own PR agency with her husband, which she sold to Roularta a few years ago. After leaving, Cornet first set up a graphic design internet company, but it did not survive the dot-com crash. He then created Alterface, which marked his entry into the theme park world. “Alterface supplies the technology for ‘dark rides’. These are indoor rollercoasters or trains that run in the dark, where you can shoot at figures – real or virtual – with a gun. We supplied the technology, such as the guns and the figures.” Cornet grew a bit tired of that line of business. “Supplying the same technology over and over again became a bit monotonous for me.” The Walloon Brabant native sold his shares and wanted to set up a company that designs and builds rollercoasters and dark rides from start to finish. Given that marketing is very important in the theme park business and he had already been working with his former colleague D’Hondt’s PR firm at Alterface, she became the logical partner to help shape BoldMove Nation after she sold her company.

BoldMove Nation aims to integrate new technologies into its designs, for example from the medical and automotive sectors. “We focus on attractions where the cheapest version costs just under 2 million euros, and the most expensive around 6 million euros. That price range is affordable for medium-sized theme parks across Europe. In Germany alone, there are around 150 of these regional theme parks, mostly family-owned. They attract around 200,000 visitors a year.” They do not have the budgets to buy large rollercoasters from the industry’s leading players, such as Vekoma in the Netherlands, Mack in Germany or Intamin (the very largest), based in Liechtenstein. “We’re talking about amounts between 10 and 20 million euros. We don’t build those ‘hypercoasters’,” says Cornet. BoldMove Nation’s first attractions are not yet to be found in Belgian theme parks, but they are present in French theme parks such as Vulcania near Clermont-Ferrand, Le Pal in central France or the Grand Aquarium in Saint-Malo.

With BoldMove Nation’s themed and technologically advanced attractions, medium-sized theme parks can go a long way beyond what’s possible with standard, cheaper roller coasters. They can be seen as smaller, more affordable versions of mega-attractions found at the Disneys of this world. “At Disney, a single vehicle on some attractions costs almost as much as our entire attraction.”

BoldMove Nation currently has two product lines. They started five years ago with Smash & Reload, a very compact and interactive dark ride. These are high-tech vehicles that travel through a course without rails, featuring screens and projections, possibly supplemented with set pieces or figures. The company also creates the projections and the music. The car can perform all sorts of movements: accelerate, skid, turn... “These cars incorporate all sorts of technology from the automotive industry, such as autonomous driving and fast battery charging,” says Cornet, who protests when we ask a question about the “little cars”. “Little cars? They cost around 200,000 euros each; they’re worth more than many BMWs or Mercedes!”

The advantage for theme parks is that they can house such an attraction in an existing indoor space, such as a warehouse, which saves money. A ride vehicle can travel through certain sections multiple times. Because the projection changes each time, visitors still experience a long and varied ride within a small space. “We are currently building such an attraction for a Norwegian theme park. Next week, the vehicles will be at a supplier’s premises in Wommelgem for finishing.”

Female-friendly

The second ride is the Spinfinity Coaster, a compact, highly themed family coaster. “theme parks often buy a coaster first and only think about the theming afterwards. We design them simultaneously and tailor the ride to the theme.” D’Hondt and Cornet also describe their coaster as very female-friendly. “With families at a theme park, you often see fathers enthusiastically and briskly heading into the rides with the children. The mothers tend to hang back. Many women don’t find the falling sensation on a coaster or sharp bends particularly pleasant.” That is why there are no sharp bends or big drops on the Spinfinity. Visitors also face each other in the vehicles rather than looking at each other’s backs, which is intended to enhance the family experience. “It’s not a childish ride, as speeds reach up to 65 km/h.”

Over the coming years, the company hopes to increase their attraction portfolio “We’re aiming for around two attractions a year. Unlike a young start-up, we’re less focused on growth. We really want to make a difference,” says D’Hondt. Cornet, incidentally, comments on the sector’s conservative and chauvinistic nature. “theme parks are very slow to embrace innovation. As Belgians, we do have the advantage of our multilingualism and flexibility when it comes to collaborating. My experience with my previous company was that China was sometimes actually the easiest market,” he says. “And for the French market, you tweak your Walloon accent a bit to sound French. That way, they see you as half-French,” adds D’Hondt, offering this as an extra sales trick.

Nevertheless, BoldMove Nation is gradually reaping the rewards of its long-standing presence at trade fairs and in the trade press. Interest is growing, including from the Middle East. “What’s more, we now also have a representative in the US.” And what about the slightly more distant future, given the founders’ ages? “We’ll carry on for a while. Our staff are young, and my daughter also works in the company,” adds D’Hondt.