He was the first one ever to ride Busch Gardens’ Kumba way back in 1993. And he was the last to ride it as well.
Mark Rose, 76, also happened to be the man who designed and built the steel roller coaster. Serving as the Tampa park’s vice president of design and engineering for 33 years, he oversaw the creation of all but three of its rides and two of its animal enclosures by the time he retired in 2018.
On Sunday, Aug. 2, he boarded Kumba’s last ride, sitting in the front row, with this Tampa Bay Times writer right behind him.
About 100 die-hard customers lingered at the exit to cheer on Kumba’s final passengers. At the “One last ride on the beast” sign that had become a selfie staple for coaster enthusiasts in Kumba’s last days, someone had even left flowers — a sign of respect, and, perhaps, mourning.
Rose is full of stories about Kumba. With its seven inversions, it put Busch Gardens Tampa on the coaster map, competing against Six Flags parks around the country as a destination for thrill-seekers. But the suits were initially worried about being compared to Six Flags.
“Our corporate people did not want anything that looked like a Six Flags coaster back then,” Rose said. “So we had to avoid a primary color, because all the Six Flags coasters were primary colors.”
That led to the unique aquamarine shade for the track on top of burnt-orange pillars. The entire track was assembled in place by manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard, per Rose’s design, before they added any of the colors — adding an additional challenge for the painters. Rose also wanted to integrate the contours of the land into the coaster in a way that was novel for 1993.
Kumba has inspired a following in the decades since, and as we marched toward it on Sunday, there was a surprise: A group of fans had hidden out so that they could enter the queue right at 8:59 p.m., a minute before the park’s closing, in hopes of becoming the last paying customers to ride it.
So much the better, because that meant that by the time of the final, final ride, when Rose got to occupy its front row, the rain that had poured on the park all day had lifted. It was pitch dark as we embarked on the last hurrah, but that only added to the thrill.
Rose remembers getting reports in the early ’90s of Kumba being so popular that parents would hire babysitters just so that they could go on it by themselves. And he recalls school buses slowing down on East Bougainvillea Avenue to watch the train as it neared the summit of the lift, before that curved 135-foot first drop. Several astronauts even made a pilgrimage and told him how much they loved the coaster.
“Kumba’s impacted this park incredibly,” Rose said, accompanied by Andrew Schaffer, the park’s current head of design and engineering. “Every coaster we’ve done since, we’ve tried to do bigger, better or different — because not every coaster can be bigger or faster. Kumba’s shaped the way the park has grown through the years.”
As the coaster finished its corkscrew inversions and pulled into the station, the passengers all applauded — while those who lingered by the exit began a “Kumba! Kumba! Kumba!” chant that lasted, off and on, for almost 10 minutes. They then even cheered the college-age ride attendants in their green shirts as they filed out one last time, their watch over.
What did Rose want from his final ride? “Closure,” he said.
Not every bit of closure involves a whole bunch of your fans wanting to take selfies with you. That’s the kind of adoration Rose received upon filing out. For this crowd, an engineer was a rock star.
