WORLDS OF FUN
& Oceans of Fun
Kansas City, MO
Six Flags Entertainment
Park News - (11/1/2025) An odd incident happened at Worlds of Fun on the Mamba coaster this week, which at first sounds a little overblown by the mainstream media. The report started with a young girl riding on Mamba who said her seat-belt came unlatched in mid-ride prompting those around her to “hold her” in place for the remainder of the ride.
Those who know the coaster also know that the seat-belts are just a backup form of restraint, something that typically isn’t even required by the ride manufacturer, as Cedar Fair was known to add non-required seat-belts to the vast majority of their roller coasters in the chain over the years. The lap-bar restraint, as designed by the manufacturer, is the true primary restraint and it was just fine. Meanwhile the back-up seat-belts are really just like the ones in a car or airplane and riders are typically able to buckle and un-buckle them as they ride at will. So with this in mind, at no point was the girl unrestrained by the coaster’s true lap bar restraint, so all should have been good.
The odd thing is that the reports now claim that during inspections of the trains, they found several of the seat belts to not be working properly. In fact, after the incident, it was confirmed that a total of 18 of the belts were replaced before Mamba was cleared to reopen. For clarity, 100% of the Mamba’s lap-bars were found to be “fully functional in multiple inspections”.
This now makes me a little curious about what kind of belt system Worlds of Fun has in place on Mamba. Is this a standard belt, like what you might find on an airplane, where once you lock it shut, then you just pull the end of the belt to tighten it to your size? Or this is the retractable style belts, like Cedar Fair would commonly install on their wooden coasters, that pulls back like a car seat belt and is able to lock into place automatically as needed, based on the rider’s size?
I’m suspecting the later, but while the incident itself was harmless, the inspections have revealed that perhaps there is a more serious problem at Worlds of Fun, as the internal maintenance team and even the ride ops should have noticed and reported that such a large number of the seat belts were failing. The fact that this did not happen, quite honestly, makes me wonder just what else may be slipping through the cracks in terms of safety and quality control. Keep in mind that at the start of the Summer season, Worlds of Fun staff were affected by a number of layoffs, as was the entire chain, due to Six Flags management attempting to keep the investors of the merged company “happy” with cost savings. Worlds of Fun also had some serious issues with their own Maintenance team who went on strike for the majority of 2024 and only voted to approve a new contract with the park in October 2024. So it does sound like there may still be some issues to work out in terms of ride maintenance and procedures.
(9/22/2025) A quick update, as we’ve heard that Worlds of Fun has reopened Timber Wolf for the rest of the season. The odd thing is that nothing really appears to have changed, and it is now rumored that the park may be considering going with an RMC style conversion to the coaster, which would involving closing it down for good (possibly at the end of the year) in order to spend all next season transforming it into a new RMC style hybrid coaster in time to reopen for the 2027 season. Anyone know more?
2026 - Nothing is known to be added at this point in time...
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