Thank you for all of the details, this is very very helpful!
1 Like
I was actually under the impression that there was no engineering involved at all in the development of the Verruckt ride which was part of the âproblem.â Iâm actually pretty shocked that someone from Disney was even tangentially related to that project.
2 Likes
Yes. This is correct. The âdesignâ of the Verruckt ride was effectively done by those who had no engineering experience.
As quoted from the Wikipedia page on the subject:
The 2018 indictment against Schlitterbahn wrote that Henry and Schooley âlacked technical expertise to design a properly functioning water slideâ and did not perform standard engineering procedures or calculations on how the slide would operate.[11] Instead they used âcrude trial-and-error methodsâ to test its performance, out of haste to launch the ride
And this as well.
The water slide was conceived on the spur of the moment by Henry, after a team from Travel Channelâs Xtreme Waterparks asked at a trade show what he was working on.[9] After initial attempts to pitch the idea to vendors at the show failed,[2] Henry decided to build the slide himself,[10] with assistance on the design provided by ride designer John Schooley.
By comparison, the water coaster at Disney was engineered by Disney Imagineering.
3 Likes
Iâm also glancing at the pictures of this ride now (my kids are too young to have ever been to water parks) and I donât think that the netting on the Disney ride is being used as a safety measure. It looks just like theming to me? Or maybe so sunglasses donât go flying down onto other parts of the ride. Just a guess though.
2 Likes
The wave pool is pretty hard core but everything else at TL was (to me) very ââfamilyââ et actually I thought it was a bit too tame for my liking. Still enjoyed it but didnât catch any major thrills.
I just want to add one more word of caution with the wave pool. The floor of it is like sandpaper. It is intentionally rough and it would be too slippery were it smooth. The wave is NO JOKE! Even if you are sitting way at the entrance of the pool and expecting to be like a wave at the beach. You will get WORKED if you do this. I used to work PhotoPass there and can not tell you how many people I saw just get torn up because they sat there not expecting it to be so forceful (despite many cast members warning them). You essentially end up with road rash. It is terrible and painful no matter what size you are. Please be especially careful of little ones.
If the big wave is not going at the time then it is fine to sit there, but when the surf wave comes - watch out.
Sorry just had to add that warning, but Typhoon overall is great.
4 Likes
I can reaffirm the danger of the wave pool. On our honeymoon, the only water park we did was Typhoon Lagoon. My wife, who did not go very deep in the water, ended up stumbling a bit and scraped up her toe so bad that she was literally in agony for the rest of the trip, trying to walk around the parks.
I HIGHLY recommend you get some water shoes to wear to prevent injury.
1 Like
Yes, this is so true. We did the photopass thing where the CM takes a few consecutive pictures while the wave hits you from behind. While it gave us great photo souvenirs, we got scraped pretty bad. My at-the-time 4-year-old even cried for a few minutes after !!!
It has been previously mentioned, but I wanted to reiterate it. The slides at Schlitterbahn were not built by licensed / skilled engineers. The owners, the Henry Family, along with John Schooley designed, built & âtestedâ the ride themselves without ANY oversight from the state of Missouri. The Henryâs lobbied, which basically means paid, to get a law in place allowing the waterpark to âself-inspectâ their attractions.
Furthermore, the netting on that slide is to keep objects, like sunglasses, from falling on the ground below. It is not needed to keep you from flying away. To use your words âphysics keeps you from flying away.â The slide gives an illusion of high speed as thrill element of the ride.
I have worked Operations, a.k.a. âRide Operatorâ, at multiple theme parks for years. Itâs bad people, like the Henryâs, that gives theme parks the reputation that coasters and rides are unsafe. When properly designed and regulated theme park attractions are perfectly safe. The overwhelming majority of theme park incidents occur not to poor design, but to someone intentionally disregarding or disabling a safety protocol.
I will say that I do not go on any rides at âstate fairsâ or âcarnivalsâ as not every state inspects them regularly or even at all.
While no theme park, including Disney, is incident free you can feel better knowing that Disney does actively do preventive maintenance and is heavily regulated in both California and Florida.
8 Likes
This was in the news TODAY:
4 Likes
Physics can be harsh if you donât understand or respect it
I read about it earlier during a teleconference. I just managed to hit mute before laughing out loud at a quote that was something like âyou should see my arseâ.
Not to mention âpop upâ slides, usually for fundraisers. Iâve seen that once in my town, and weâre not talking about a gentle hill but rather the base of the Rocky Mountains. I thought it was insane, and my kids didnât go. How the heck can you inspect anything that wasnât there the day before and today is ready for riders? Iâm sure the manufacturers specify the safe angle of the incline itâs supposed to be on, but I canât believe the one I saw was actually within that limit.
I concur with a lot of whatâs said - especially the cuts and bruises from the wave pool! I donât get why they canât put something spongy on the bottom of that â itâs like being tossed around on rough cement.
As far as the Crush-n-Gusher, I actually found that the most fun of all the rides, mostly because you go forward the whole time. The ones that twist and turn more tended to get me rotated, and I hated not seeing where I was going.
Also, we spent more than 2 hours just floating around the park on the lazy river⌠it was great and relatively risk-free!!
1 Like
No. I rode every Crush slide at least once in June 2017 with my partner (our combined weight was ~300 lbs). It was super fun and never felt out-of-control.
My mother who likes her slides on the tamer side like Crush too.
The speed slides at Blizzard Beach have a reputation for making oneâs back hurt, but I didnât not have any issues with the speed slide at TL (Iâm in my early 30s).
I did get a welt on my back earlier in the trip from one of the trapdoor speed slides at Volcano Bay. Those I will probably avoid on my upcoming trip (next week actually).
I also rode all the tube slides and aqua coaster at VB in June 2017 including one that goes up a huge wall and one that intentionally gives air time (or feels like it does). I never felt out-of-control or unsafe on any of those.
Adding that we had 5 adults in all the group slides. At the blue slide, this was max capacity.
1 Like
When I was first thinking about this I got some mis-information from a DIS thread from 2016. That thread said that Crush had been designed by Schlitterban. Further research shows you, Ryan and others are correct, it was Disney Imagineering. They did use a âMaster Blasterâ water coaster type design pioneered by Schlitterbahn, but that is not the same thing, clearly, as the same design or being designed by them. Thank you all for clearing that up!
2 Likes
Aaaaand thatâs from our old Action Park (AKA Traction Park) in New Jersey. So bad, they made a parody film about the park starring Johnny Knoxville. 
It occurs to me what kind of trouble you might end up in if you go down the slide but fail to make it through the loop at the end. How, exactly, do you get out of there? Yikes. And being black and enclosed, it seems it would be dark and hot as you bake to death waiting to be rescued!
I think I read somewhere that is a hatch that opens at the bottom of the loop to get people out. They clearly put a lot of planning into this. Iâm guessing it was the kind of planning where nobody made it through the loop due to poor planning, so they said âLets add another section of tube and the top so people go faster! Then theyâll get through for sure!â
1 Like