So even if the park was 100% negligent and its totally provable, they only pay $250k? That is CRAZY.

Anonymous wrote:
Not only that but there are plenty of YouTube videos showing kids on the ride with adults and the ride attendants casually shooting the breeze before the ride starts saying things like "it's not scary!" Nothing like skydiving or whatever where a trained professional rides with you and goes over what can go wrong and how to avoid that. It's a ride ins family park that was bound to kill someone and finally did due to some combination of faulty equipment + bad judgment.

You have to watch a safety video at the bottom before you hike up the stairs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard it reported on the radio that his dad is in the Kansas State Legislature. Can you say "lawsuit"!

It was elected official day at the park, elected officials were allowed in the park at no cost. Why does this translate into a lawsuit?

Please--there will probably be a lawsuit b/c a kid died a horrible death regardless of parents' professions.

Not much good in Kansas. They have a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages.

The slide was built in Kansas because Kansas is the only state that didn't have regulations to prohibit it.

I know it's wrong, because a child just died, but I wonder how the father feels about tort reform and deregulation of industry now?

Yes, it's wrong, you creep.

Call it creepy, but there's one political party hellbent on dismantling regulations and this is precisely the sort of tragedy they're meant to prevent.

There is a time and place for politics. This is not that time. Please --please -- seek therapy.

Therapy? Seriously? For bringing up the point that regulations can help prevent this sort of tragedy? Wow.

Everyone knows that regulations can help prevent safety problems. That's an obvious point. Injecting politics into this tragedy is what is so very bizarre.

The Kansas Republican party would not agree with that statement. They would say that regulations hamper innovation and don't make anyone safer. Caleb's father is a member of the Kansas Republican party.

Karma is a bitch.

Not only that but there are plenty of YouTube videos showing kids on the ride with adults and the ride attendants casually shooting the breeze before the ride starts saying things like "it's not scary!" Nothing like skydiving or whatever where a trained professional rides with you and goes over what can go wrong and how to avoid that. It's a ride ins family park that was bound to kill someone and finally did due to some combination of faulty equipment + bad judgment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard it reported on the radio that his dad is in the Kansas State Legislature. Can you say "lawsuit"!

It was elected official day at the park, elected officials were allowed in the park at no cost. Why does this translate into a lawsuit?

Please--there will probably be a lawsuit b/c a kid died a horrible death regardless of parents' professions.

Not much good in Kansas. They have a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages.

The slide was built in Kansas because Kansas is the only state that didn't have regulations to prohibit it.

I know it's wrong, because a child just died, but I wonder how the father feels about tort reform and deregulation of industry now?

Yes, it's wrong, you creep.

Call it creepy, but there's one political party hellbent on dismantling regulations and this is precisely the sort of tragedy they're meant to prevent.

There is a time and place for politics. This is not that time. Please --please -- seek therapy.

Therapy? Seriously? For bringing up the point that regulations can help prevent this sort of tragedy? Wow.

Everyone knows that regulations can help prevent safety problems. That's an obvious point. Injecting politics into this tragedy is what is so very bizarre.

Anonymous wrote:A rider before Caleb actually stated that her velcro got loose during her ride.

Now the park people are stating that this was not designed to be a "family" ride in spite of being located in a family amusement park.
They are claiming that this particular water slide is appropriate for those persons who like extreme things.

Translation:
Every rider knows it is 50/50 on surviving this ride.
Only bungee jumpers, skydivers + idiots should ride this.

What the hell....??!

My thoughts & prayers are with the poor boy's family tonight.
I cannot even fathom their grief at such a terrible loss.

R.I.P. to Caleb.
Rest in Paradise.

O.k. if they really are using that as their "defense" that is truly offensive. They need to just stop that. No parent is going to take a risk like that with their child.

That precious boy was clearly adored by his family and have been absolutely shattered by this. My heart goes out to them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hmmmmmm


Comment from this USA Today 'article' in 2014.
They keep calling the guy who designed this an 'inventor' and 'creator' but I can't find any credentials that say he should be designing something like this except that his family has money. Rafts were flying off all over the place?
No self respecting engineers would have built something like that. None.
In the least this guy should have been smart enough to hire a team of actual engineers to advise him through every step of the process.
That cannot have happened.
I mean - it says that the 'mesh' was to keep rafts from flying off the ride- but when real people are in it a flying human head hits the mesh netting.
It's just astoundingly stupid reasoning.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2014/06/26/verruckt-worlds-tallest-water-slide-exclusive-ride-video/11421473/

This is a comment from 'Reagan Hackelman' at the end of the article.

Shame on USA TODAY for trying to pass this off as journalism. "Special to USAToday..." doesn't cut it. This needs to be clearly marked as an advertisement.

I truly hope no one gets hurt on this ride, but when they do, their lawyer is gonna love this quote.

"It's dangerous, but it's a safe dangerous now."

Velcro straps also burns me up.
So, you're going 65 mph plus and you're strapped in with Velcro.
Velcro? Not a seat belt with a click lock or a lap bar but Velcro.

I don't feel any need to visit Kansas anytime soon if this is the best they have to offer.

Lol be honest. You were never going to visit Kansas.

I guess not...

Anonymous wrote:The main "engineer" / designer had only a degree in biology.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-do-you-build-worlds-tallest-waterslide-180952069/
This is so sad. They consulted engineers but basically built this themselves with trial and error.
They built a death trap. That poor family....

I read that he coupled that with the visionary who dropped out of high school, Jeff Henry.
The guy who designed it is a high school dropout. He dropped out of school at age 14 and he's the 'inventor', the 'creative mind'.
Great idea.
http://grantland.com/features/the-wet-stuff-verruckt-waterslide-schlitterbahn/

Basically sounds like two guys with no engineering education whatsoever using their money to outduel others with their stolen water slide creations.
You are not supposed to 'test' your rides on actual humans and the fix them.

Excerpts:
**********
Henry never finished high school and never formally learned to draw. All his knowledge came from his work along the river.
**********
Henry often sleeps only a few hours a night. Ideas come to him in a waking dream state — that “weird space between his subconscious and what he’s seeing around him,” his assistant Steven Tyson explained. Recently, Tyson had talked to Henry about using some recycled telephone poles to make a shade structure. At Schlitterbahn, a “normal” shade structure consists of an old boat, rescued from salvage, that has been turned upside down and placed atop the poles. Henry stared at the poles, Tyson recalled, and suddenly announced a new idea: They would become the structural base of a tree house.

Henry doesn’t have Millay’s penchant for tantrums, but he can be a difficult boss. He likes to test his staff by introducing phony, off-the-wall ideas and gauging their reactions. “It’s amazing that people work with Jeff, because he’s so hard to work with,” Lochtefeld said. “But then again, that shows he’s got real charisma. He’s a real visionary, so people are willing to get through the rough spots to participate in the shining moments.”

************
Oh, and he was bored making the same old thing :

“I got bored,” Henry said. “You make money by building the same thing over and over and over again. I don’t like that. I don’t like building the same thing twice.”

He reflected on his boredom and said, “I guess that’s why I’ve been divorced so many times.”
************
So, these new rides are 'invented' by bored rich 'visionaries' but who tests the physics out? Apparently unsuspecting kids?

The cost of Henry’s one-of-a-kind marvels is that they’re unpredictable. Schlitterbahn Corpus Christi was nowhere near completion: The Master Blaster flumes lay in cross sections in the parking lot, like a dinosaur skeleton. Henry said he didn’t feel pressure, though Hawk Scott, the park’s director of operations, told me, “He feels he’s let people down, and he hates to do that.”

Verrückt is a very un-Henry idea. It’s a fiberglass monument — a George Millay kind of idea. It came to Henry at a trade show. “Some Travel Channel guys walked up to me,” he recalled, “and they said, ‘Hey, Jeff, we’re going to be doing this new show and we want to know what you’re doing new.’

“I said, ‘What is it that would get me to like no. 1 on your show?’

“They said, ‘Well, if it was the biggest, tallest, and fastest, that would do it.’

“I said, ‘I’m building the biggest, tallest, fastest.’

“And they said, ‘What?’

“I said, ‘It’s a speed blaster.’ Well, it didn’t exist. The concept didn’t exist. I just made it up on the spot. And then I came back and told my brother and sister. I said, ‘Mmmm, I just announced this major new ride.’”


************
In the mid-1980s, when he was in his thirties, Henry began playing with foam. He found it eased the impact of fiberglass slides, and he was able to sell foam to Millay. “George hated me,” said Henry, “and George didn’t want me there. But Rick Faber said, ‘I gotta have him, George. He’s the only one who can fix this stuff.’ They were breaking shoulders, arms. They were hurting people. And I was creating foam and soft technology and landing flaps and pads — methods of eliminating those accidents and those injuries.”

Henry would work for Millay in Orlando on weekends, then drive back to New Braunfels and plow his earnings into Schlitterbahn. “I’d take that money out of Orlando,” he said, “and bring it back to the old German people here in New Braunfels so we could brew more beer and have a bigger Wurstfest.”

***************
The original genius he followed:

About that: A few days before Wet ’n Wild opened, in March 1977, Millay invited the Orlando hotelier Harris Rosen to watch the first teenager test the Whitewater Slideways. These were the concrete slides Millay had seen in Placerville, California, now rebranded and lengthened. (They measured 400 feet.) The teen folded his arms across his chest, slid down the flume, skipped right across the surface of the splash pool, and landed in a heap on the concrete.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it, George?” Rosen said.

“Oh my god,” Millay said.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hmmmmmm


Comment from this USA Today 'article' in 2014.
They keep calling the guy who designed this an 'inventor' and 'creator' but I can't find any credentials that say he should be designing something like this except that his family has money. Rafts were flying off all over the place?
No self respecting engineers would have built something like that. None.
In the least this guy should have been smart enough to hire a team of actual engineers to advise him through every step of the process.
That cannot have happened.
I mean - it says that the 'mesh' was to keep rafts from flying off the ride- but when real people are in it a flying human head hits the mesh netting.
It's just astoundingly stupid reasoning.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2014/06/26/verruckt-worlds-tallest-water-slide-exclusive-ride-video/11421473/

This is a comment from 'Reagan Hackelman' at the end of the article.

Shame on USA TODAY for trying to pass this off as journalism. "Special to USAToday..." doesn't cut it. This needs to be clearly marked as an advertisement.

I truly hope no one gets hurt on this ride, but when they do, their lawyer is gonna love this quote.

"It's dangerous, but it's a safe dangerous now."

Velcro straps also burns me up.
So, you're going 65 mph plus and you're strapped in with Velcro.
Velcro? Not a seat belt with a click lock or a lap bar but Velcro.

I don't feel any need to visit Kansas anytime soon if this is the best they have to offer.

Lol be honest. You were never going to visit Kansas.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard it reported on the radio that his dad is in the Kansas State Legislature. Can you say "lawsuit"!

It was elected official day at the park, elected officials were allowed in the park at no cost. Why does this translate into a lawsuit?

Please--there will probably be a lawsuit b/c a kid died a horrible death regardless of parents' professions.

Not much good in Kansas. They have a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages.

The slide was built in Kansas because Kansas is the only state that didn't have regulations to prohibit it.

I know it's wrong, because a child just died, but I wonder how the father feels about tort reform and deregulation of industry now?

Yes, it's wrong, you creep.

Call it creepy, but there's one political party hellbent on dismantling regulations and this is precisely the sort of tragedy they're meant to prevent.

There is a time and place for politics. This is not that time. Please --please -- seek therapy.

Therapy? Seriously? For bringing up the point that regulations can help prevent this sort of tragedy? Wow.

Anonymous wrote:In addition to a civil lawsuit, criminal actions should be explored. How this horrific looking contraption could have been open for public use is beyond me.

The guy who designed it is a high school dropout. He dropped out of school at age 24 and he's the 'inventor', the 'creative mind'.
Great idea.
http://grantland.com/features/the-wet-stuff-verruckt-waterslide-schlitterbahn/

Anonymous wrote:In addition to a civil lawsuit, criminal actions should be explored. How this horrific looking contraption could have been open for public use is beyond me.

More than 500 people per year are killed in bicycle accidents. Accidents happen, but people prefer to think their child can't be gone in an instant.

In addition to a civil lawsuit, criminal actions should be explored. How this horrific looking contraption could have been open for public use is beyond me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect riders stand on a big scale before getting on. Even Dutch Wonderland had that feature for little water slides.

Not all parks. When we went to Busch Gardens, it was a teenager making judgement calls on who would go in which raft.

Which ride?

Log flume is individual seating areas. Roman Rapids is a circular raft and you can sit anywhere.

A rider before Caleb actually stated that her velcro got loose during her ride.

Now the park people are stating that this was not designed to be a "family" ride in spite of being located in a family amusement park.
They are claiming that this particular water slide is appropriate for those persons who like extreme things.

Translation:
Every rider knows it is 50/50 on surviving this ride.
Only bungee jumpers, skydivers + idiots should ride this.

What the hell....??!

My thoughts & prayers are with the poor boy's family tonight.
I cannot even fathom their grief at such a terrible loss.

R.I.P. to Caleb.
Rest in Paradise.