The History of Tumbili

Tumbili's lift hill is a 90-degree vertical chain lift rather than the traditional inclined chain. Riders climb straight up, then tip over the top as their seats spin freely, flipping head over heels down a pair of beyond-vertical drops. It opened in 2022 as the centerpiece of a whole new corner of Kings Dominion.

A monkey in the jungle

Tumbili opened in March 2022 as the first ride of the park's new Jungle X-Pedition area, built where a movie-themed spin ride called The Crypt once stood. Its name is Swahili for monkey, and the theme casts the ride as a temple to a jungle monkey god. It is a spinning coaster: the seats are not locked in place, so they rotate on their own as the train moves, and no two rides are quite the same.

The ride

The train climbs the 112-foot tower straight up, then rolls over the top and down two "raven drops" that go past vertical. Along the way the freely spinning seats flip riders upside down again and again, controlled by magnets rather than by the track, so the coaster technically has no fixed inversions at all. The whole thing lasts under a minute.

One thing to know

The name Tumbili is Swahili for monkey.

Tumbili is one chapter in the fifty-year history of Kings Dominion.

Tumbili at a glance