The Most Dangerous Waterslides

Waterslides may look tamer than roller coasters at a glance, but their simplicity can make them more dangerous. Where in a roller coaster you've got a bar or harness holding you in place, on a water slide you typically have more room for shenanigans. Also while roller coasters obviously need inspection and regulation, it's not as self evident for waterslides: but as you will see, they clearly do need oversight.

Wet Willie's

While most waterslides are plastic tubes attached to towers, Wet Willie's in Fenton, MO had three 500 foot long slides made of unforgiving concrete built directly into a 40 foot hill. This meant that if you lost your mat (as was sure to happen at least once a visit) you were going to get scraped up on the way down.

A big part of what made Wet Willie's dangerous was its length. While it is usually standard to only send a customer down a slide after the last person has completely finished, at Wet Willie's it was impossible to actually see the bottom from the top. And the slide was so long that it would have made the lines unbearably slow if you only had one person at a time going on the slides (the park only consisted of a speed slide and two parallel slides, there were no other attractions). So there was a line marked on the slides, once a customer past that point, the next person would be sent down. However, people aren't all going to go down at the same speed. If a skinny boy was immediately followed by a fat man the two could end up crashing into each other. This is not a hypothetical, I was the skinny boy.

Having long stretches of slide that was not visible to the few employees also meant that there was room for mischief. On the parallel slides it was possible to completely stop yourself and then climb into the adjoining slide. Once I slid pass teens who had stopped on the side of the slide and were heckling those going by them. The next time I went down I stole their mats.

On June 5, 1999 Six Flags Hurricane Harbor opened up 12 miles down the road from Wet Willie's. Wet Willie's would close down the following year. For a while it had a second life as an underground skate park before being demolished in 2009.

Verrückt

"At 169 feet tall, Verrückt was the tallest waterslide in the world. Riders plummeted down the nearly vertical 17-story chute—taller than Niagara Falls—at speeds up to 70 miles per hour. German for “insane,” Verrückt was designed to challenge the laws of physics."

The slide had problems before it even opened. No matter how the designers tweaked it, the rafts would occasionally fly off the slide, flip over and come crashing down, killing the hypothetical occupants. The solution: a netting was put around the slide so that even if the raft flew up it wouldn't be able to get away.

On August 7, 2016 the raft flew off the slide as it was wont to do. Occupant Caleb Schwab, a 10 year old boy, was instantly killed when he hit a pole holding up the safety netting, decapitating him.

A subsequent investigation found the park had continue to operate the ride despite there having been numerous prior injuries. The entire Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City closed in 2019.

Action Park

The infamous "Traction Park" as been pretty thoroughly documented at this point, a shoddy theme park designed by people with no engineering knowhow and operated by drunk teenagers. That said, I can't write an article about dangerous water slides and not mention it. So, here are some of the highlights:

Cannonball Loop: Possibly the only water slide to ever have a loop in it. It had to shut down almost as soon as it opened because it caused so many injuries. The cause of mysterious scratches guest received wasn't discovered until the slide was disassembled: knocked out teeth had become lodged within the slide.

Aqua Skoot: You rode down it on a hard plastic sled. You were supposed to skip across the landing pool at the bottom, but if you weren't positioned just right, you'd be flung head first off the sled.

Roaring Rapids: A raft slide noted for causing injuries and is still open!

Surf Hill: Also caused numerous injuries but was particularly known for ripping off bikini tops. When learning of this effect, owner Gene Mulvihill "took immediate action ... by building a grandstand so spectators could watch this teenage burlesque show."

This was just the worst waterslides. Action Park was a cornucopia of danger. There were countless injuries and at least six deaths. It was repeatedly shut down and reopened. It currently operates as Mountain Creek Waterpark.

Disney’s ‘River Country’

Didn't see Disney coming on this list, did you? River Country opened in 1976, themed as a watering hole from a Mark Twain story. One of the slides, the Whoop ’n Holler, had a pretty good drop at the end. In 1982 a 14 year old boy drowned in the landing pool.

"The boy’s family sued the corporation, saying there was no sign posting about how deep the water was. After one of the park’s lifeguards attested that dozens had to be rescued from the ride each day, the family received $US375,000 in compensation."

This wasn't even the first death at the park. Because the swimming area was integrated with the lake, it allowed a microscopic organism to bypass the park’s filtration system and infect an 11-year-old boy, attacking his brain and nervous system.

It wasn't the last death either. In 1989 a drowning 13 year old was unnoticed by lifeguards until it was too late.

These three deaths didn't seem to phase the park though. River Country would continue to operate, only losing business when Disney built the more modern water parks Typhoon Lagoon (1989) and Blizzard Beach (1995). The tourism downturn after 9/11 finally killed it off in 2001.

The park sat and rotted for years after that. In 2018 plans were announced to turn the space in to Reflections Lakeside Lodge. However, COVID put construction on hold and the space still isn't in use today.

But hey, at least they got rid of that dangerous park!