For its first decade after opening the park centered on water attractions and performance spaces. Numerous variety artists from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany appeared there. Following the advice of Phantasialand owner Gottlieb Löffelhard, Bobbejaanland evolved from 1975 onwards into a theme park, with rides becoming more important than music shows. It grew to fifty attractions with four hundred employees and received visitors from the Benelux countries, France, and Germany. As an independent family concern, it also supported educational and cultural projects. By the end of the seventies, Schoepen's wife Josée (a former opera singer and model) opened a museum with works of art from the Hopi and Navajo cultures, forming an extensive private collection of Native American art.

From the 1990s, three of his five children worked for the park. It added a 70 metres (230 ft) high windmill that provides the region with energy, and an adjoining museum of alternative energy generation.

In the winter of 2003, the park invested 12 million dollars (almost 11 million euros) in two new rides named the Typhoon and the Sledge Hammer. In a 2004 survey of 13 European amusement parks by Belgian consumer organisation Test-Aankoop Bobbejaanland was rated second after Phantasialand.

In the early 2000s, the founder was diagnosed with cancer and he sold Bobbejaanland to the Spanish-American Parques Reunidos group in April 2004.