Most water slides are safe.
More or less.
But some water slides are responsible for a constant stream of bumps and bruises and
even worse.
Here are some of the most dangerous water slides in the world.
The VertiGo is a 108-foot tall water slide at Aqualandia in Benidorm, Spain.
Riders get dropped through a trapdoor, down a steep slide, and into the water.
That all sounds like a real rush... as long as you make it through the trap door.
According to Australian Broadcasting Corporation, British tourist Jamie Norman enjoyed the VertiGo
so much he went down it three times.
Unfortunately, the third time was not like the others because the trap door failed to
open all the way, crushing his arm, legs, and face.
As he told the ABC:
"As I fell I felt it scrape all down my legs and arms and then smack into my face.
When I got to the bottom the pool was full of blood."
Norman was treated by an on-site doctor and rushed out of the park with some free zoo
tickets for his trouble.
The VertiGo was also reopened about 10 minutes later, which doesn't seem like enough time
to clean up blood or to fix a malfunctioning trap door.
Canada.
It's the United States, only way more sensible... as long as we're not talking about water slides.
The Steamer is one of the most notorious rides at the Calypso Water Park, though it isn't
the only one there that has been linked to serious injuries.
Steamer riders sit in tubes and then circle a giant funnel before washing into an exit
slide.
Sounds fun if your inner tube doesn't flip over before you get to the exit.
Unsurprisingly, the park was accused of failing to report injuries on the Steamer to the regulatory
body in charge of keeping Ottawa's amusement parks in line.
Ultimately, the park was hit with 20 safety violations charges, and 14 were directly related
to three separate incidents that occurred on the Steamer in 2011.
Don't worry, though, because the Steamer didn't close — if you enjoy a good spinal injury,
there's plenty of room for you in line.
"You want to kill yourself?"
"Shut up!
Yes or no.
You wanna die?"
The Peninsula Aquatic Recreation Center in Frankston, Australia has a pair of notorious
slides, but the AquaSphere has been linked to an unusually high number of accidents.
On one occasion, two adults hit their heads inside the slide's tunnel and suffered head
injuries.
Park officials shut the slide down for 10 months, but just days after the reopening
there was another accident — this time a woman experienced severe back pain after riding
the AquaSphere.
And on another occasion, a boy fell off the tube inside the ride and was battered around
the inside of the ride before he was ejected.
According to one witness, the boy lost consciousness for nearly 15 minutes.
Here's the worst part: when the PARC facility originally opened in September 2014, the AquaSphere
didn't open along with it.
That's because the employees who tested the slide suffered minor injuries.
Evidently, PARC thought they had fixed the slide's safety issues, which obviously didn't
happen at the time.
The good news is the AquaSlide has since been dismantled and rebuilt as The Python, so you're
welcome to try it out for yourself.
Action Park, if you haven't heard of it, was one of the most notorious water parks in the
world.
It was so notorious it was affectionately known as "Traction Park," or sometimes "Class
Action Park."
"There's nothing in the world like Action Park!"
It was so notorious that it was supposedly shut down in 1996 after a total of six fatalities
and so many injuries that no one was able to count all of them.
Action Park didn't stay closed, though — it reopened in 2010, but instead of expressing
remorse for the park's long and sordid history, the owners seemed to embrace it.
For a while it was still called "Action Park" and the gift shop even carried T-shirts with
the oh-so-adorable slogan, "I survived Action Park."
One of the more notorious Action Park rides is one that closed down relatively recently
— it was called Cannonball Falls and it featured a 10-foot drop into a mountain pool.
It was the most dangerous water slide in the state of New Jersey, with six injuries during
the 2015 season alone.
Still, that's tame compared to the overall number of Action Park injuries that season
which amounted to 27.
Still, even that number pales compared to the number of injuries in 2012, which added
up to a whopping 70.
Cannonball Falls was permanently closed a few weeks before the end of the 2015 season,
finally putting the dangerous slide out of its misery.
One of the most critical safety procedures on any water slide is the one that tells the
ride operator when to send the next rider down.
Because if the last person hasn't come out the bottom yet, you probably don't want to
send the next one down.
That was the malfunction at the Hawaiian Falls Waterpark in the summer of 2015, when Lauro
Castrejon suddenly realized that he was stuck in the middle of a slide.
That by itself wasn't especially terrifying until he realized that someone else was coming
down the slide behind him and worse, that person was big and picking up speed.
When the second rider slammed into him, Castrejon lost consciousness and woke up again at the
bottom of the slide.
He was taken to a hospital by ambulance and treated for injuries to his shoulder, head,
leg, and back.
Castrejon sued the park for $100,000, which included $12,000 in hospital bills.
He later told CBS Austin that he thought that the slide should have a light system that
lets operators know when a rider has safely exited the pool.
The Wet 'n Wild Water Park in Orlando is no more, and that means its most notorious water
slide has gone the way of things that normally go into Black Holes.
"A star.
More than three times the size of our sun ought to end its life… how?
With a collapse."
Fittingly, many of the park's troubles revolved around a ride called the Black Hole, which
the Orlando Business Journal described as:
"...a twisting ride where guests shoot down a dark tube on a two person float."
The Black Hole injured one man in 1994 so badly that he won a $1.73 million judgment
against the amusement park in 2000.
The man said he was struck by something in the dark, and when he arrived at the bottom
of the slide he couldn't move his legs.
Doctors had to insert a titanium plate into his neck.
During the trial there were employees who testified that rafts were constantly getting
stuck and that attendants would send a new raft into the ride before the first one was
confirmed to have exited.
That was probably the Black Hole's worst injury, but there were plenty of others, too.
So goodbye Wet 'n Wild and Black Hole, we won't really miss you that much.
It's awful when anyone gets injured or killed while out doing something that's supposed
to be fun.
But the absolutely horrific way that this child died makes it hard to even ponder, let
alone put down in words.
The Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City wanted bragging rights as the world's tallest
water slide, so they built a 170-foot-tall monstrosity and named it "Verruckt," which
means "crazy" in German.
Then a 10-year-old boy named Caleb Schwab got on the ride and was decapitated after
his raft caught air and his head struck a pole.
According to The Independent, state attorneys actually brought criminal charges against
the park, but they were later thrown out by a judge who said the evidence against the
park was "improper."
Caleb's family did receive a $20 million settlement from the park and some of the companies involved
in its design, but it's impossible to put a price on the loss of a child, particularly
in such a horrific way.
Fortunately, Verruckt was permanently shut down and dismantled in 2018 after two years
of looming over the park as a horrible monument to one of the worst tragedies in waterpark
history.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the world's most infamous water slide.
So infamous that riders had to be hosed down to improve their chances of actually making
it to the end.
So infamous that even Action Park's most daring adventurers didn't want anything to do with
it.
So infamous that it closed down after a single season.
This was Cannonball Loop, which frankly looked like an interdimensional hamster habitat.
It was long and black and ended with a loop at the end that looked so improbable you had
to wonder if it ran on a pact with the devil because it certainly didn't have anything
to do with the laws of physics.
The Cannonball Loop was opened in the summer of 1985, but it only lasted for around a month
before it was shut down by the New Jersey Carnival Amusement Ride Safety Board, an organization
that somehow managed to ignore all those other crazy Action Park rides.
So who were the few people insane enough to ride the thing?
Mostly Action Park employees, who were given $100 in exchange for maybe never seeing their
families again.
In Action Park's defense, though, they did send dummies down the thing first.
According to urban legend, many of those dummies that rode the Cannonball Loop came out missing
crucial body parts.
"Poor Mr. Highway.
He’s thinking about the end, he's had enough of this terrible life.
Say goodbye!"
Cedar Point Waterpark in Sandusky, Ohio, modestly refers to itself as "the best amusement park
in the world."
Chances are, they're hoping you won't remember the accident of 2013 when you're deciding
between Cedar Point and Disney World.
In July 2013, guests were on board the river rafting simulation ride Shoot the Rapids when
something went horribly, horribly wrong.
The boat they were sitting in suddenly rolled backward 187 feet down the lift track, hit
the edge of a concrete flume, hit another boat, and then flipped over.
Riders were belted in and trapped upside down in the water, and it was probably only the
quick action of park employees and bystanders that kept the incident from turning tragic.
According to the Sandusky Register, the accident happened because two of the ride's safety
features failed — one that was designed to keep the boats from sliding backward and
the other that was supposed to keep the boats on the track.
Both of which sound like they were critical safety features.
The ride wasn't officially shut down until 2016, and most Cedar Point fans weren't especially
sad to see it go.
And finally, here's a water slide you had no idea was dangerous even though you've almost
certainly heard of it.
In fact, you may have even bought one for your kids because as you probably already
know, real water parks are too expensive and dangerous.
We're talking about the Slip 'N Slide, that icon of everyone's childhood.
The answer to a hot summer day.
The giver of bruises.
The deliverer of brain-eating amoeba.
And, evidently, the paralyzer of adults and teenagers.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, adults and teenagers who dive onto a Slip
'N Slide, especially with gusto, are in danger, saying:
"[They] may hit and abruptly stop in such a way that could cause permanent spinal cord
injury, resulting in quadriplegia or paraplegia."
According to a report from 1993:
"The slider's forward momentum drives the body into the neck and compresses the spinal
cord."
Okay that was 1993, though, surely WHAM-O has improved the Slip 'N Slide's product design
since then?
Nope.
It's still basically the same the same design, and in 2018 it landed on the "World Against
Toys Causing Harm" top 10 list of "summer safety traps."
So all those years and colorful additions haven't made the slippery toy any safer.
Basically, if you weigh more than 125 pounds, you have no business being on a Slip 'N Slide,
no matter how much you want to relive your childhood.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.