Busch Gardens Tampa announced on its social media on April 21, 2025 that Kumba would be returning this summer! This announcement came on the rides 32nd birthday and it’s currently the oldest roller coaster at Busch Gardens. The ride’s future had been in doubt for just this reason after sitting idle for months with no official word from the park about its future. However, with this announcement it appears rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated.
Busch Gardens is a year round park in central Florida and that’s hard living for a roller coaster. It probably run a similar amount of ride cycles as a coaster half its age at a seasonal northern park. B&M is known to make a quality ride, but every piece of machinery has a lifespan. There are some way older coasters out there, so an older ride can be kept going, it is just a matter of if the increased maintenance costs are worth it compared to replacement with a newer ride. Universal did a complete retrack of the similar aged Incredible Hulk Coaster (also by B&M) back in 2015 after it faced issues of the track just being worn out from excessive use.
There are no details yet as to what’s happening with Kumba for the long term. We don’t know what issue had it down all this time and if a retrack coming or is this more of a short term fix. There were rumors of everything from structural instability from sinkholes to replacing it with a Giga coaster to just simple cost savings by not operating an older expensive ride for a while. Hopefully we get more details soon, but at least for now we know Kumba will return this summer and hopefully for the foreseeable future. Also, please check out our previous post if you are curious about how Kumba makes that characteristic roar!
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