Couple riding KC roller coaster may have saved a life. Now, they hope to help more
The teenage girl riding behind Chris and Cassie Evins on the Mamba let out a dramatic scream as the roller coaster zipped down the track last month.
“I thought, ‘Hey, everybody reacts differently to thrill rides,’” Chris Evins said, recalling the couple’s Oct. 11 visit to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City. “Then she said, ‘My seat belt came undone!’ It went from a normal roller coaster experience to, ‘Oh my God, this girl could possibly die.’”
The Lenexa couple turned and found the girl’s seat belt was not latched and there was a gap of about a foot between her body and a lap bar that serves as a primary restraint on the ride, leaving her unsecured, they said.
The couple and another teen riding with the girl snapped into action and reached over to grab onto her for the duration of the ride, each bracing hard against the car as the ride zoomed at highway speeds through its hills, drops and turns. Nearby, other riders enjoyed the thrill ride, unaware of what was going on.
Chris Evins ticked down the seconds they had to get through over what felt like the longest roller coaster ride in the world, he said. Two minutes, 90 seconds, 30 seconds. The girl was hysterical, he said.
“In that moment, she probably was watching her life flash before her eyes,” he said.
They locked on to each other, and he assured her they were all going to get off the ride safely. A flashing park camera that normally captures souvenir images of joyful riders recorded the four of them flying down the track in a moment of crisis.
After they pulled into the station, the couple demanded to see a supervisor to relay what had just happened, and the ride was closed, inspected and then reopened that night, according to the park.
A few days later, the mother of the girl they helped reached out on Facebook, grateful for what they did in that moment, Cassie Evins said.
“It could have potentially been really tragic,” Chris Evins said.
They later heard about a related incident involving a report of a malfunctioning seat belt on the ride the following day, Oct. 12, and heard that riders had to be evacuated from the top of the Mamba’s tall lift hill on the weekend of Oct. 25, they said. Last week, the park said it replaced a group of belt buckles on the ride after a state inspection on Oct. 30 found the belts did not work as they should.
During contract negotiations last year, Worlds of Fun maintenance workers raised concerns about staffing and safety issues at the park. They said then that park officials were not ordering parts in a timely manner when workers identified pieces that needed to be replaced.
“To me, it just reads as one big systemic failure after another,” Chris Evins said. “Frankly, something has to change or somebody’s going to die at Worlds of Fun.”
In a statement, park spokesperson Sara Gorgon said throughout multiple inspections, there has been “no evidence of restraint failure in the lap bar system or the buckles on any seat belts during any of the ride inspections and the ride has operated safely since the initial concern was raised.”
Lap bars serve as the primary restraint on the ride, and the seat belts serve as a secondary restraint, she said.
“The safety of our guests and team members is a top priority,” Gorgon said. “Following the report of a guest concern on the ride several weeks ago, our team immediately closed the ride and completed a thorough inspection before reopening it that evening.”
Noting the review by the state inspector on Oct. 30, Gorgon said, “Again, the lap bars and buckles were found fully functional, and we implemented slight modifications to a number of seat belts to ensure they met or exceeded all applicable safety standards before the ride opened to guests that evening.”
Worlds of Fun closed for the season Sunday. The park is run by the amusement park giant Six Flags, which completed an $8 billion merger with Cedar Fair, the park’s previous owner, last year.
Oct. 12 complaint
Last week, a mother raised concerns about a similar situation involving her son and his seat belt during an Oct. 12 ride on the Mamba, and that complaint prompted state officials to send a safety inspector to the park on Oct. 30. While there, the inspector found multiple belts on the ride were not working properly, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Safety told The Star last week.
“Replace worn not latching seat belts,” the inspector wrote on a report.
The park claimed a group of seat belt buckles on the ride were functional but said 18 of them were replaced “out of an abundance of caution.” The ride was then cleared to reopen.
In an email to officials in the state’s Division of Fire Safety, which oversees amusement park rides, the woman wrote that her son’s seat belt malfunctioned while they were on the ride and that her son could have slipped out of his seat. The email was provided to The Star in response to a Sunshine request.
The woman said she initially told a worker that her son’s belt wasn’t secure before the ride launched, and the worker reportedly told her that it would lock once the ride started to move. The ride started to move, and it didn’t secure, she said.
She yelled repeatedly about the problem as their car left the station and began to click up the ride’s large hill, and eventually staff stopped the ride before the drop, she said.
“I was able to show them I could literally pull the seatbelt up to his ears,” she wrote. “But they insisted their ride was working normal and nothing was malfunctioning. But everyone else on our train wasn’t able to pull their seatbelts...because theirs were locked.”
“The issue is the seatbelts are worn and twist easily into the retractor mechanism which prevents the seatbelt retractor from locking,” she wrote. “This particular ride has a black bar that rests close to a child’s knees and does very little to hold in smaller riders. They rely almost entirely on the seatbelt to hold them in.”
All three times they rode the Mamba that day, staff didn’t pull up on their retractable seat belts to check they were secured, she wrote.
“Thankfully son just happened to notice and I was loud enough to finally get them to listen,” she wrote. “Others might not be so vocal or notice until it’s too late.”
Proposing a change
Chris and Cassie Evins have been season pass holders at Worlds of Fun for more than a decade, they said. They’ve gotten bumped around on rides plenty of times and know that sort of thing comes with the territory, but this moment was different for them. Will they ever return to the park?
As it stands, Cassie Evins said, she isn’t comfortable bringing her kids.
“It’s definitely going to take some convincing on their side for sure,” she said.
Chris Evins described himself as a moderate Republican and said he recognizes conservatives typically believe in less governmental oversight. As a result of the experience at Worlds of Fun, though, he’d like to see more governance for theme parks. While not heavily political, he said, he took it on himself to write a bill he’d like to see Missouri lawmakers take up.
His measure would require amusement parks to make their own inspection reports public shortly after they are completed and would give state officials “a little more teeth” when working with non-compliant operators, he said.
He has been in touch with several Democrats in the Missouri House of Representatives about sponsoring the bill, he said.
“It’s an experience,” he said, “that’s caused a profound enough ripple effect through my life that it has changed my stance on a long-held belief.”
This story was originally published November 7, 2025 at 11:01 AM.
