Busch Gardens Tampa bids farewell to Kumba as new coaster plans emerge
Tampa Bay, Fla. – For thirty-three years, Kumba has rolled and roared into the hearts of many roller coaster enthusiasts. Its iconic double corkscrew became the image of many promotional photos and videos over the years, but its time has finally come. With reports of Kumba closing being confirmed, we dive into the history of this legendary ride and look at what Busch Gardens Tampa Bay has planned next.
Photo by Jon Self
After 33 years of interlocking corkscrews, a bone-rattling dive loop, and that unmistakable steel roar echoing through the Congo section of the park, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay has confirmed what fans have quietly feared: Kumba is closing for good! The park announced today that the Bolliger & Mabillard coaster will take its final ride on Sunday, August 2, 2026.
However, its legacy will live on through a still-mostly-mysterious successor called Kumba’s Revenge. The announcement, shared across Busch Gardens’ social channels and website (see the full ride page), and further detailed in an Instagram reel from the park, confirms one last hurrah before the general public says goodbye.
What Busch Gardens Tampa Bay is saying
The park’s official announcement pulls no punches on nostalgia while also teasing what’s next. Here’s the statement, in full, as shared by Busch Gardens Tampa Bay:
“After 33 years, it’s time for Kumba to take its final roar on August 2nd… Debuting in 1993, Kumba set a new standard for thrill rides! It was Florida’s tallest, fastest, and longest roller coaster when it opened, and it featured the world’s tallest vertical loop. From its 7 exhilarating inversions to its iconic roar sound, Kumba has left its mark on Busch Gardens and will be remembered as an icon of the park.
“While Kumba may be retiring this summer, Busch Gardens is dedicated to thrilling the next generation of coaster enthusiasts by continuing the Kumba story. As part of our evolution and commitment to delivering innovative attractions, we are happy to announce Kumba’s Revenge! This new attraction is a part of our $100 million investment that will elevate Busch Gardens as Florida’s thrill leader and enhance our guest experience.
“Kumba’s Revenge is an extension of an already legendary coaster, and it will allow its spirit to live on as we enter a new era of thrills. The legend of Kumba will continue… Stay tuned for this brand-new adventure!”
Photo courtesy of Busch Gardens
Busch Gardens Tampa Bay president Jon Vigue echoed that sentiment in comments provided to local media, framing the closure as more of a transformation than a farewell: Kumba “has inspired generations of thrill seekers and earned its place as one of the world’s most iconic roller coasters,” and that Kumba’s Revenge “will honor everything guests loved about the original while delivering an entirely new level of thrills.”
Photo by Jon Self
The new attraction is part of a broader $100 million investment Busch Gardens Tampa Bay is making across the park to modernize its attraction lineup, though the company has not released any details about Kumba’s Revenge. At this time, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay has not indicated whether it’s a full retrack of the existing structure or an entirely new build.
Pass Members get one last ride before Kumba closing
Before Kumba closes to the general public, Busch Gardens is giving Annual Pass Members a private send-off:
Photo courtesy of Busch Gardens
“Enjoy exclusive ride time on Kumba on August 1 from 8:00 AM – 11:00 AM, reserved just for Pass Members. Be part of Kumba’s Final Roar and take one last unforgettable ride to celebrate this iconic coaster.” After that three-hour Pass Member window on Saturday, August 1, the coaster remains open to all guests through closing on Sunday, August 2.
A look back: The coaster that redefined Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
It’s hard to overstate what Kumba meant to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay when it opened on April 21, 1993. Designed by Swiss manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard, Kumba wasn’t just a new ride, but a major statement. At 143 feet tall with a 135-foot first drop, it became Florida’s tallest, fastest, and longest roller coaster overnight, and it opened with the world’s tallest vertical loop.
The ride’s name comes from a Central African word meaning “roar,” a nod to the distinctive rumble produced by its hollow steel track. Over its nearly three-minute layout, Kumba sends riders through a 60-mph, 135-foot plunge and seven inversions, including a diving loop, zero-gravity roll, cobra roll, and the interlocking corkscrews that were considered groundbreaking for a B&M coaster at the time.
Park attendance jumped in Kumba’s debut year, and the coaster went on to become a fixture of Amusement Today’s Golden Ticket Awards, ranking in the publication’s top 50 steel coasters every single year since the award began in 1998, debuting as high as No. 4. Today, Kumba is the third-oldest Bolliger & Mabillard coaster still running anywhere in the world, trailing only Patriot at California’s Great America and Vortex at Carowinds.
Why does the Kumba closing hit different
Kumba isn’t just another attraction on a list of closures. For many Florida coaster enthusiasts, it was a childhood rite of passage and a career-long favorite. It became Busch Gardens Tampa Bay’s oldest operating coaster after Scorpion closed in 2024, effectively making it the elder statesman of the park’s thrill lineup.
Losing a ride with this much competitive-era pedigree will be a different kind of loss. It’s the closing of a chapter that helped put Busch Gardens Tampa Bay on the map as a serious coaster destination, alongside later additions like Montu, SheiKra, and Iron Gwazi.
There’s also some added weight to the timing. Kumba only just returned from an extended, nearly 10-month closure. The permanent Kumba closing happens less than a year from that reopening at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay.
What made Kumba special
- First B&M coaster with a dive loop and interlocking corkscrews
- A relentless, non-stop pacing rare among coasters of its era, with seven inversions packed into under three minutes with almost no downtime between elements.
- An unmistakable audio signature: the hollow-track “roar” that gave the ride its name and became part of the park’s ambient soundscape.
- Consistent, decades-long enthusiast acclaim, including annual top-50 rankings from Amusement Today for over 25 straight years.
- A visually striking layout, with the lift hill threading directly through the middle of the vertical loop.
The case for Kumba closing at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
- Age and maintenance burden: at 33 years old, Kumba is one of the oldest operating B&M coasters on Earth, and large steel coasters of this vintage typically require increasingly expensive track work, retracking, or full modernization to keep running safely.
- It already needed a nearly year-long shutdown (November 2024 to September 2025) just to keep operating. That is a strong signal that routine upkeep was no longer enough.
- Guest capacity and modern ride systems have moved on. Kumba has a fixed 1993-era trains-and-track configuration, which limits what upgrades are realistically possible without a full rebuild.
- Busch Gardens has a funded mandate ($100 million) to modernize its attraction lineup, and an aging coaster occupying prime real estate is a natural candidate for reinvestment.
- Kumba opens at 11:00 a.m. each day at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. In contrast, all the other roller coasters open by 10:30 a.m. It also closes before park closing on most days.
Photo by Jon Self
Kumba closing: How we got here
Kumba’s closure didn’t come out of nowhere. The boiling pot of rumors of Kumba closing has been simmering for years.
- 2022: Early speculation first spread online that Kumba could eventually be removed as Busch Gardens reshaped its attraction lineup. The park pushed back directly at the time, telling fans the coaster was “not going anywhere.”
- November 21, 2024: Kumba quietly closed for what the park described only as maintenance, with no return date given. Enthusiasts immediately worried this was the beginning of the end.
- Spring/Summer 2025: With Kumba still down, Busch Gardens confirmed via social media that the coaster would return “this summer,” and testing with water dummies was spotted by fans as early as mid-August 2025.
- September 27, 2025: After roughly 10 months offline, Kumba reopened to the public, with Pass Members getting early access from September 24–26.
- July 2026: Barely 10 months after that celebrated reopening, Kumba closure rumors resurfaced again, with enthusiasts and industry watchers openly questioning the roller coaster’s long-term future.
Photo by Jon Self
That whiplash—a high-profile refurbishment and reopening followed less than a year later by a permanent closure announcement—is a big part of why this news has landed so hard with the coaster fan community. It suggests the 2024–2025 shutdown may have served as a stopgap to keep Kumba operating safely just long enough for Busch Gardens Tampa Bay to finalize its long-term plans for the site.
What’s replacing Kumba?
Busch Gardens has been deliberately vague about Kumba’s Revenge, but a few clues are worth watching.
The name strongly implies some continuity with the existing ride, raising questions about exactly what Busch Gardens Tampa Bay has planned. Does ‘Kumba’s Revenge’ represent a re-track and re-theme of the current coaster, similar to Universal Orlando Resort’s transformation of The Incredible Hulk Coaster, or will it be an entirely new attraction built on the same footprint? It also remains possible that the project could take the site in a completely different direction.
So far, the park has declined to confirm whether ‘Kumba’s Revenge’ will feature new track and trains on the existing layout or be a ground-up rebuild, a distinction that could significantly affect how new the experience feels.
With Busch Gardens Tampa Bay already home to acclaimed coasters including Montu, SheiKra, Iron Gwazi, and Tigris, coaster enthusiasts are largely expecting something more ambitious than a straightforward retrack, with speculation ranging from a modernized B&M rebuild to a long-rumored hybrid or even giga coaster on the site.
Photo by Jon Self
Part of a bigger pattern: Scorpion and Stanley Falls Flume
The Kumba closure continues a pattern that has reshaped a large section of Busch Gardens Tampa Bay over the past two years. In August 2024, the park announced the permanent closure of Scorpion, the Pantopia-area coaster that had operated since 1980, with its final day landing on Labor Day 2024. As with Kumba, Busch Gardens offered no specifics on a replacement at the time, saying only that the closure would “pave the way for exciting new future attractions.”
A year later, in September 2025, Busch Gardens said goodbye to Stanley Falls Flume, the park’s opening-day log flume that had been running since 1973. Its closure on September 8, 2025, ended more than five decades of service and, again, came with only a teaser about an “exciting new future attraction” rather than concrete details.
Taken together with the Kumba closure announcement, that’s three legacy attractions retired in roughly a two-year window. Enthusiast speculation has connected the dots to the park’s ongoing $100 million investment and to long-circulating rumors that the northwest corner of the map, home to Kumba and the neighboring Congo River Rapids, could eventually be reworked into a larger, more cohesive land.
Could this possibly be built around whatever Kumba’s Revenge turns out to be? Whether that reshaping ultimately includes Congo River Rapids remains unconfirmed, but the pattern of aging, record-setting attractions giving way to unannounced “next-generation” projects is now well established at this park.
What this means for your visit this summer
If you want to experience Kumba before it’s gone, here’s what to plan around:
- Pass Member exclusive ride time: Saturday, August 1, 8:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m..
- Final day of general operation: Sunday, August 2, 2026.
- Expect longer waits as the closure date approaches, especially over the final weekend.
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