Kansas City Can You STAND to Be First?

 We celebrated Worlds of Fun's 50th Anniversary only a few days ago, and today we have another significant anniversary to recall. On today's date: May 31st, 40 years ago, Screamroller was converted into the country's first stand-up coaster and became Extremeroller or E.X.T. In researching E.X.T. over the years, I have found very little about it before May 1983, and the 1983 map lists the ride as a sit-down and still named Screamroller. Extremeroller as a stand-up only appears on the 1984 map. My theory is that converting the coaster was not a multi-year planned one like most attractions but was instead a fly-by-night, "how about we try this? Sure, that sounds good" kind of thing. Like many historical details, this is just a theory based on the facts that I have. Worlds of Fun spent about $250,000 to convert Screamroller to Extremeroller. The conversion was completed by Arrow-Huss, the short-lived attempted merger of two great amusement manufacturing companies. Arrow Dynamics and Huss Manufacturing would eventually go separate ways only a few years later. 

To understand why E.X.T. happened, though, one only has to look at what was happening in the coaster world. From the mid-1970s until around 2000, the amusement industry was fully engaged in a "coaster war." Whoever could build the loopiest, fastest, tallest, longest coaster had a claim to "coaster capital," and Arrow was right at the forefront for much of it. Most reactions to the concept of E.X.T. were ones of disbelief, and according to Lee Derrough, that was exactly what they were looking for. 

The stand-up pods and fiberglass body.

Extremeroller would use the original structure of the Screamroller coaster, an Arrow Corkscrew, with only a slight modification to the rollover on the first drop to accommodate the larger and heavier trains. The trains themselves would be gutted, with new fiberglass cars and restraints added to the Screamroller trains' original undercarriage. Out went the seats, and in came tall, six-foot-pods with a shoulder harness, a thigh harness, and a seatbelt around the waist. Also, unlike modern stand-up coasters, there was no seat; it was a literal stand-up ride. 

Concept art by Byron Gash

In the true meaning of "coaster wars," Worlds of Fun wasn't alone in this attempted venture. Six Flags Mid America (St. Louis) was doing its own stand-up conversion to its aging Arrow, River King Mine Train. Many are familiar with this classic family coaster but unaware that it originally had two tracks. One track on the Mine Train received a similar conversion and was dubbed Railblazer. Railblazer, unlike E.X.T., wouldn't open until 1984. 

Extremeroller at Worlds of Fun

Railblazer at Six Flags Mid-America

Tragedy would strike at Six Flags on July 9th, 1984, when Stella Holcomb, aged 45, was thrown from the ride and died from her head and chest injuries. For many years urban legend would twist this story so that the actual culprit was E.X.T. which had already ceased operation by the time of the accident at Six Flags. An investigation after the death found that Railblazer lacked the waist belts that E.X.T. had, which may have contributed to the accident.

The deconstructed Extremeroller with Timber Wolf going up in the background.

So why did Extremeroller return to being a sit-down if it wasn't for an accident? The simple answer is that Screamroller was never designed to be a stand-up coaster. The stand-up trains were far heavier and had a completely different center of gravity, causing technical difficulties with the lift hill and breaking the lift hill chain on more than one occasion. The ride itself wasn't any less safe, but the problems did cause it to be a mechanical nightmare. Extremeroller would return to being a standard sit-down model in June 1984 and live out the rest of its short life at Worlds of Fun until its removal in 1988. Extremeroller would be sold to a park in Taiwan and live on until 2003-2004, known as the Spiral. 

Forty years have passed since Worlds of Fun's made its splash into the great coaster wars. To many, Extremeroller was a blip in amusement park history but a monumental part of Worlds of Fun history. When it played on T.V., the E.X.T. commercial is my earliest memory of Worlds of Fun, commercial, park, or otherwise; it's probably why I ended up going to Worlds of Fun for the first time in 1983. So for me, at least, I may not have been able to "Stand Being First," but E.X.T. is anything but inconsequential.