Several months ago, someone asked me about a blog on Viking Voyager. It surprised me because, like Sky Hi, if there is any ride that I should have written a blog on, Viking Voyager is one of those rides. I know Voyager better than most, having been assigned as a ride operator for two seasons: 1994 and 2006. It’s sometimes easy to overlook Voyager, as it’s just always been there. We often expect it to be; still, its survivability shouldn't be assumed. Voyager wasn’t really anything special when it opened with the park in 1973; today it’s far more rare. A survivor when so many of its kind have long been removed to make way for the newest and greatest.
Before we go forward, a few terms and descriptions that will make the overall operation of the ride and reading this blog make more sense.
1- Lift 1: The small lift near the beginning of the ride. Allows for spacing of boats, can be stopped and started from both the station/dispatch, lift 1, and lift 2.
2- Lift 2: The large lift that completes the ride with a 40-foot drop. Lift 2 can only be started from the Lift 2 panel, and can be stopped from both Lift 2 and Dispatch. Boats are often stored for the night on lift 2, a process which is often referred to as jogging the lift or stacking boats. Lift 2 is a mandatory ambassador position during regular ride operation.
3- Dispatch: Ambassador position located on the loading dock that is responsible for overall safe operation, dispatching boats, and operation of lift 1.
4- Load/Unload: Ambassador load/unload operations. There can either be 2 or 4 ambassadors, depending on whether one or both sides are being used.
5- Gate/Unload: The Ambassador located on the outside unload position also operates the gate when both sides of the station are in operation. This staggers boats from one side to another. It is not used when only one side is in operation.
6- Pumps: There are three total pumps: two 75-Horsepower (HP) pumps that are needed for the ride to operate, and the third is a show pump located on lift 2, which provides the “show” water on the main drop (which is not needed for the ride to function).
7- Spillway: The “waterfall” that connects the splashdown to the lake below. Water spills from the splashdown area to the lake to later be returned via pump to the ride trough.
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| Arrow Development manufacturing badge. There would have been one on the original Voyager Panel, and if you see the photo of the original panel below you can tell where it would have originally been at. |
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| Arrow sales flyer, displayin several different boat design options, including Worlds of Fun's Viking boats. |
Viking Voyager was manufactured by Arrow Development of Mountainview, Ca. I’ve already covered some of the history of the Arrow Development flume in a previous blog, which can be read here:
http://unwof.blogspot.com/2021/04/from-voyager-to-express-to-mamba-legacy.html. When Worlds of Fun opened in 1973, Viking Voyager was the park’s most popular ride. In fact, it probably still IS, and was considered at the time one of two top-tier rides in the park that everyone wanted to operate, a trait it shared with the original Zambezi Zinger. While the park has changed a great deal over the last half-century, it sometimes feels that Voyager really hasn’t changed that much at all. The layout is the same, the basic mechanics of the ride are the same, the pumps are also still relatively the same, and the same surrounding lakes. Probably the lack of obvious change is why Voyager hasn’t had its own blog. Voyager is Voyager.
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| Early Voyager from the Scandi/Orient bridge |
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| And the same view today. Not much has changed except the trees are bigger. |
Anyone who has followed Worlds of Fun's history can attest that when a ride gets old, its days can sometimes be numbered. It’s a trend that occurs at theme parks and amusement parks across the world; it’s what brought down Zambezi Zinger. Voyager has been saved by a variety of aspects. As mentioned previously, Voyager is popular, being the most popular ride overall for many years of park operation. Voyager’s overall popularity has led it to achieve a type of “legacy” status, with the park actively considering overall public opinion when it comes to removing a ride. Another factor is Worlds of Fun’s sheer land size. Many parks are limited in size, and to add a new ride, an old one must be removed. That’s never been an issue at Worlds of Fun. Also important is the fact that Arrow parts, in some situations, are still available. Arrow Dynamics* declared bankruptcy in 2001 and S&S Worldwide of Utah bought the remaining assets. This allowed SOME parts to be easy to replace. Key in on that “some parts”.
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| pumps after there last refurbishment in 2018 |
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| Old pumps in the parking lot |
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Pump pits are pumpless
 | | Pumps being installed |
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| New pumps going in |
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New pumps
 | | Bonus, this is the show pump that pumps the water for lift 2.. |
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For the 2025 season, Voyager didn't open until June 7th, which brought up a lot of questions. Voyager didn’t open with the season because it was getting its 75-HP pumps replaced. So why couldn’t they do that during the 6 months the park wasn't operating, you may ask? We asked the park head of maintenance at the time, Gary Newman, and there was a pretty good reason. Every so often, the pumps are pulled for refurbishment. But instead of normal repair, they were told the original 1973 pumps were beyond refurbishment and needed to be replaced entirely. The only problem was that, though S&S provides parts for Arrow, they didn’t exactly have spare pumps for 52+ year old rides, sitting around. They had to be machined, brand new from scratch, a process that they were originally quoted could take the better part of a year. It’s worth noting that it was a similar problem with Zinger that caused its original downfall and removal. Through some diligent searching, the park was able to obtain pumps from an alternate source, which ended up being much faster (months instead of years), and Voyager made it to operation by summer 2025 instead of summer 2026.
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| Voyager's main drop, you can see the old cat walk up to the top of Lift 2 in this photo. This would have been from the 1980's |
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| Another look at Lift 2 drop. |
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2025 wasn’t the first major update Voyager had received either. In fact, Voyager has been receiving regular updates for the last several decades by both Hunt Midwest and Cedar Fair. When the ride opened in 1973, Voyager had 25 fiberglass boats with heads. In 1993, Hunt Midwest replaced the original boats. not de-headed as some think. A few years later, the catwalk up the lift would cease being a terrifyingly sketchy wooden walkway in the air and be converted to a far more sturdy steel stairway. Back in 2001, the show pump didn’t operate for an entire season; yes, the ride can operate without the “visual show” pump in operation, but it returned in 2002, though. In 2007, the park would completely replace the trough and steel support structure from the station to lift 1. Funny quick story… If you ever hear Jeff and I argue about “who saw it first,” it actually pertains to who saw the trough being replaced on Voyager first in 2007. I was first.
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| The main drop on Voyager with the show pump working. |
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| 2001, with no show pump, do you see the difference? |
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| 2007, I still saw it first. |
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| 2013, notice the wood catwalk |
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| 2015, shiny new catwalk (which was replaced around the entire ride) |
The 2014 season saw another update. Prior to 2014, the catwalk around the ride was painted wooden boards. So if there was a ride evacuation… yep; out on the slimy wooden boards to get off the ride. In 2014, the park replaced the old boards with catwalks of galvanized steel. 2016 saw the most impactful change, though, when the park replaced the ancient 1970s control system with an up-to-date, more modern control system. Prior to 2016, the ride was operating on nearly 50-year-old “tech,” mixed with a bunch of old park trash (a maintenance guy pulled a 20th anniversary plastic cup out from under the station during the refurbishment, the park celebrated its 40th anniversary a few years earlier). And, finally, the 2025 season had the major pump replacement.
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Panel in 2006. Notice that there is a lift 1 stop but not a button to start lift 1.
 | | Lift 2 operator's panel from 2006. buttons are lift 1 stop/start, lift 2 stop/start and e-stop. |
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| New Voyager panel added in 2016. Interesting enough this panel DOES have a lift 1 start button on it, but from what I've been told that will only operate in maintenance mode (no guests). |
I should add that these are the updates we KNOW about. I also know 100% for a fact that many updates have occurred, and that we have no idea when or what was actually updated. Case in point, I have photos with the entire Voyager trough being removed from the main drop and lift hill, I don’t know why or exactly when, but it did happen. My point with all of this is to prove that Voyager has neither been abandoned nor left to stagnate. It’s definitely regularly receiving improvements.
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| Original queue entrance to Voyager, which is very similar to today, except for the colors and the extension queue rails. |
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| Probably one of the favorite photos I've taken, this is Voyager in 1999 right before they changed its colors. |
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| 2000 color scheme, this was taken in 2016 |
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| New color scheme and new signage. The old signage is in maintenance. |
Besides how the ride itself has changed and been updated over the years, its queue line has changed in some ways, too. The basic structure of the queue hasn’t changed in 52 years. It still has its original, super-narrow queue rails that all the original rides had, and now only three rides continue to exist with them. What most don’t realize is that the queue rails used to extend outside of the queue house. There were at least two rows of permanent metal brown queue rails located on the midway that were removed in the late 1990s (they were there in 1994 but not in 1998). My favorite detail is the original orange and brown coloring of the queue house and station. It was a true 1970s color palette, and as horrible as the orange and brown color combination was on things like couches and wallpaper, it worked beautifully on Voyager. The queue would be re-painted twice since then, once in 2000 to the green/blue motif, and again in 2023 to the tan/brown color scheme it is today.
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| Splashing down in the 1970's. you can see the footer for Sky Hi in the background too. |
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| Probably one of the last photos we have of the boats with heads, from 1992. |
So how about those heads? Everyone LOVES those old dragon heads. For those youngsters reading this, prior to the boat replacement in 1993, the Voyager boats all had red dragon heads on their bows. This small but memorable detail is what sets Voyager apart from all the other Arrow flumes produced around the same time. Most arrow log flume boats were shaped like logs, giving these rides their common general public term “log ride.” Voyager was different, intentionally. Hunt wanted to create a unique world-themed theme park, and Voyager would anchor the Scandinavian section.
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Voyager boats all lined up by the Scandinavian gate in March 2013
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| A photo from the KC Star in March 1975... showing the Voyager boats lined up by... the Scandinavian gate. I guess if it works why change it right? |
Is there a more perfect way to do that than to take a typical “log ride” and theme it to a Viking journey on the high seas? To do so, the boat was redesigned specially for Worlds of Fun to look like a Viking longboat, complete with head, tail, and shields on the side. What happened, you may ask? The boats were replaced in 1993, and the new fleet was headless.
So the big question… why? And to be honest, I don’t know for sure. I do believe cost was part of the equation, but I do not think it was the only deciding factor. The old boats, with the heads, were heavier. Supposably causing damage to the trough, and also blocking the view of the new feature, the on-ride photo. I’ve learned over the years that a lot of historical research is guesswork, piecing together details to get as close as you can get to the truth.
Another detail that still shocks me to this day was that back in 1973, while the queue would appear very recognizable, the actual boarding station had no roof like it does today. My assumption is that the roof was added in 1974-1975 and definitely existed by 1976. I always cringe every time I see a photo of Voyager operating in the early years without any shade, both on the station dock and the ambassador position on top of lift 2.
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| Voyager from Sky Hi in 1973 |
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| Similar view, but a few years later, now Voyager's dock has a roof. |
There are several reasons for an ambassador at the top of lift 2. First, there is the safety issue. Ambassadors in the station can’t see the bottom or back of lift 2. On a ride with no restraints and full of people really concentrating on having fun, there is a good reason that someone is there to watch people. Second, and this is probably not something that would be obvious today, is that at one time, Voyager COULD operate all 25 boats at one time (back in 2006, we could operate 18 maximum). To keep things safe and things moving along, ride operators would “jog” boats on the two lifts to keep a safe distance between boats. You can actually see this happening in both of the photos below from 1973.
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| Lift 1, from 1973 with the ambassador on top of the lift. Photo By Kathy Luckman |
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| There are FOUR boats on the lift.. that just boggles my mind. Photo By Kathy Luckman . |
Another question I hear about Voyager sometimes, is why do the boats have wheels? In case you've never seen a Voyager boat out of the water, yes they have two axles with both road wheels and guide wheels on both sides, just like a roller coaster car. That's because the last drop on Voyager has much more in common with a roller coaster drop then a leisurely float ride, with the boats rolling down the last drop rather than cascading down it like a raft would do on a waterslide. This is why the water on the main drop itself is not actually part of the functioning of the ride, but instead is simply a "show" feature.
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| Some of Voyager boats sitting out of the trough during the off season. You can see the guide (side) wheels and road wheels. |
Probably some of the best stories to come out of almost any attraction at Worlds of Fun come from the ambassadors who operated the ride. There was an old tradition, I am sure many are familiar with, of sudding or soaping Voyager that existed until at least 1994. Coming in the morning in the summer of 1994 to soap suds rising several feet above the trough was a surprise to me as a 16-year-old, but I would later find out that that, and being taught to “clean out the rainbirds,” were stunts played on Voyager and its crew going back to nearly the very beginning. Usually happening at the end of the season, some unknown ambassador would fill the dry trough (after it was emptied at the end of the day) with liquid bathroom soap. When the pumps were turned on in the morning, and water began flowing, the liquid soap transformed into millions and millions of soap bubbles. Not exactly a park-sanctioned event, but such memories!
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| That white foam in the background is soap suds. |
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| More soapiness. |
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Even MORE soapiness (photos by Jeff Mast).
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| Pump pits from 2007 |
Some of those soap suds might come in handy on my next and last story. It occurred in 2006. I have mentioned the two operational pumps, which are located in the center of the lake, right below lift 1. The pumps are responsible for moving water from the lake to the actual ride flume, which then dumps back into the lake under lift 2. In recent decades, the lake has had trees that have grown, and in the fall, those trees lose their leaves, many of them in the previously mentioned lake. By 2006, the problem had grown exponentially so that a new position was created in the fall, that of cleaning the screens that protected the pumps from leaf debris. Ambassadors would literally pull one or both of the two screens protecting the pumps out of the lake, scrape leaves and mud off, then slide them back in and repeat every 10-15 mins. I have to say I pulled out far more than just leaves and mud…. Hats, glasses, and more hats. You don’t want a hat after it’s been through Voyager… very slimy. Ick.
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| Mystical blue water |
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| Even more blue water. |
I can hear everyone reading this… but the water used to be dyed blue! And you would be correct, it did used to be dyed blue (it still was back during the previous story). Worlds of Fun used to dye all of its water blue; it was a chemical algaecide. It was so synonymous with the park that I even personally nicknamed it the “mystical blue water” when I was younger. So what happened? I don’t know anything conclusively, but from what I’ve heard, the blue chemical dye was leaching into the natural underground water. We know for a fact that there is a natural stream that flows through the park, and it’s hard to miss the “protected stream buffer” signs all throughout the new Zinger queue line. Plus, we also know that both Prowler and Zinger had to be redesigned to accommodate endangered animals, so maybe the park weighed dyed blue water vs five-legged skunks and raccoons and decided to axe the dyed blue water? It makes sense.
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I love this photo it just captures the fun. Taken in 2023.
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| WOF Ride Summary from 1985, if you notice Viking Voyager beats them all with 137% of park attendance riding it. Zambezi Zinger was second with 106%, Orient Express was third with 95%. |
One important detail with Voyager is, as mentioned before, not just its numerical age but all the rides and memories it has created. 52 years, which probably means it’s given over 70 million rides over its lifetime so far. That’s enough people to fill Arrowhead Stadium 100+ times over and over again. And each of those people has had their own experience, their own stories to tell. I have tried in this blog to capture a bit of my own stories with the ride, as well as those of many others who have experienced Voyager as either a ride operator, or guest, or both over the years. The amazing thing here is that, unlike other rides and attractions I’ve written blogs on, Viking Voyager is still there, and with the recent news of Busch Gardens Tampa removing yet another Arrow log flume (Stanleyville Falls), it gives me pause to respect and appreciate that not only is Voyager still operating, but it is still significantly being invested in. Hopefully, Voyager has many more years of stories to tell and memories to provide.
*The difference between Arrow Development and Arrow Dynamics isn’t a typo. Arrow would go through several attempted mergers and reorganizations. Huss would attempt to merge with Arrow Development in 1981, but they would declare bankruptcy in 1984. The company would re-form in 1986 as Arrow Dynamics.
Special thanks for Lucie Lovesee-Edwards for proofreading this for me!
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