Waterfalls The history of the park starts in the 15th century, when the first small waterfall of Coo was created. Two centuries later monks built a second larger waterfall to protect the village of Petit-Coo from flooding. From the 18th century, as mobility grew, more and more tourists came to see the waterfalls, therefor a self-service restaurant was opened in 1920. It wasn't until 1955 that a first attraction appeared at the site, when
Professor Gaston Dugardin opened a chairlift - called
Le Télésiege - that took visitors to the top of a 220-meter hill. In the decades that followed Dugardin opened a go-kart track, mini golf and a playground.
Télécoo In 1976 Gaston handed over the operation to his son, Didier Dugardin. He turned the area into an amusement park and called it Télécoo, a combination of the first attraction
Le Télésiege and the village where the park was located
Petit-Coo. In the 1980s Télécoo expanded with a number of attractions, including a simulator, a classic car track, two bobsleigh tracks and in 1989 a roller coaster and a wildpark
. In the 1990s Télécoo had a hard time, they could not compete with
Walibi Belgium and
Bobbejaanland, which grew strongly. In this decade the park opened just one attraction, a tree trunk attraction called
Splash. At the end of the 1990s other Belgian parks were taken over by large companies:
Premier Parks took over Walibi and
Bellewaerde and Meli Park was taken over by Studio 100. Didier Dugardin also decided to sell his park. However no buyer wanted to do that, which made that in 2004 Télécoo was the only Belgian amusement park that was still in the hands of the family that originally built it.
Plopsa Coo In December of 2005 Studio 100 / Plopsa took over the entire domain of Télécoo for € 6 million, the company took over so they could make their characters popular in
Wallonia. The domain of Télécoo also included
Targnon Adventure (
team building activities),
CooKayak (kayak rental) and
Château de Targnon (room rental). The first two were also taken over by Plopsa, but the Château (through the company Immosoirheid) was personally taken over by
Gert Verhulst and
Hans Bourlon. After the takeover, the park opened in the 2006 season as it did before, while the new owner started working on various adjustments. Various attractions - such as the go-kart track and the roller coaster were renovated, various shops were removed and the greenery was embellished. Several attractions were also added, such as the dancing fountains, pedal boats and a carousel. On March 31, 2007 the renovated park was officially opened under the new name
Plopsa Coo. == Future ==