re: schlitterbahn’s tragic slide

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Had the attendant loaded the ride correctly

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.

Human life shouldn't be at the hands of a 16 yr old loading a ride correctly. I would hope that in trials they would have put the rafts through every possible loading scenario, but I guess not.

I remember the thread when this happened, particularly the picture that went out over twitter with the dark red water at the end of the slide, just awful

before the accident/possible homicide happened, shortly after the ride opened, bryan curtis did a story on grantland (RIP) on jeff henry, waterparks, and the KC slide

LINK

curtis and another person rode the slide in july 2014:

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The g-forces kicked in and the world became indistinct. The raft reached the bottom of the initial drop and Henry’s nozzle-drive system kicked in, launching us uphill five stories, higher than any Master Blaster had lifted a raft before. At the apex, the raft lifted off the slide a few inches. We slammed back into the flume, descended a final hill, and came to a stop in a water-filled runout — not unlike the first water brake Henry built at Camp Landa in the ’60s. The final sensation of Verrückt bolstered Henry’s claim that the slide was erotic. I got that postcoital, now-what-should-I-do? feeling. I unbuckled the straps and limped off through the runout. Then I heard the water tank inside Verrückt depressurize, and it was as if the whole slide had let out a magnificent sigh.

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