• Catoblepas
    80·
    8 months ago

    There’s a documentary about this called Class Action Park that’s absolutely wild. They interview a bunch of former employees, and I can’t emphasize enough to people who don’t remember it how much the attitudes described epitomized a large portion of 80s and 90s youth culture in America. Which was simultaneously rad and a fucking nightmare, because so much of it was synonymous with just being a reckless shithead, lol.

    • FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
      5·
      8 months ago

      I just finished watching that after seeing your comment. Damn, that was really interesting.

      I grew up going to a similar, but seemingly much less dangerous (I assume…) park here in Australia called Jamberoo which looks like it’s still open. Like looking into a weird dangerous alternate reality world lol

  • (⬤ᴥ⬤)OP
    70·
    8 months ago

    in case the Wikipedia article is too hard to read:

    in 1983 GAR built an enclosed water slide called the Cannonball Loop. This was not unusual for that time. In fact, the park already had several such slides. On this one, however, they decided to build a complete vertical loop at the end, similar to that of a roller coaster The resulting slide, called the "Cannonball Loop”. was so intimidating that employees have reported they were offered $100 (equivalent to $252 in 2021) to test it. Fergus. who described himself as "one of the idiots" who took the offer, said, "$100 did not buy enough booze to drown out that memory." The slide was open for only a month in 1985 before it was closed at the order of the state's Advisory Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety. a highly unusual move at the time. One worker told a local newspaper that "there were too many bloody noses and back injuries” from riders.|! Some early riders came back with lacerations to their bodies: when the ride was closed to determine what had caused therm. teeth that had fallen out were found lodged in the interior walls. A former Navy physician found that riders were experiencing as much as nine Gs of acceleration as they went through the loop.

  • Valmond@lemmy.world
    51·
    8 months ago

    Imagine not getting enough speed and getting stuck before the loop, feeling water building up, hearing new peopje slide towards you…

  • kernelle@0d.gs
    40·
    8 months ago

    A while ago I went to Terme 3000 in Slovenia, they had a looped style waterpark ride. Just as crazy as is looks, I guess the tilt angle prevents major injuries? Because that slide has been open for a long time. It took no effort to clear the loop as well.

    Edit: For those curious, it’s a pod-style release you can see on the image, the floor disappears under your feet. The green one next to it is one of the steepest in Europe IIRC.

    • Zron@lemmy.world
      54·
      8 months ago

      I think it’s more to due to the radius.

      It’s hard to tell the exact size from the picture, but the diameter of that loop seems to be at least several meters.

      The one at action park was like 2 wide.

      A bigger circle means less G forces while going around the loop, and less injuries. But action park rides were designed and built by the owner, who was not an engineer and apparently did not know any engineers. I’m pretty sure if you mentioned angular velocity to him, he’d just say that’s a sick name for a ride and then run away to get to a hardware store as fast as possible.

      • normacenva
        6·
        8 months ago

        The loop is also a circle, rather than the inverted teardrop shape (clothoid) it should have to spread those g-forces more evenly through the turn.

      • xantoxis@lemmy.world
        5·
        8 months ago

        This, but also, for the loop to work they have to be accelerating VERY fast into it. Look how steep the drop into is, compared to the angle of any of the slides in this photo. (Well, maybe not that green one back-right. That looks like one of those things where you slide down on your back on a hard sled and get a hundred feet of runway at the end.)

    • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
      14·
      8 months ago

      In this one you aren’t expected to be flipped upside down and then right side up in the span of 2 seconds. It’s the loop diameter and the angle making this one safer.

  • temmink@feddit.de
    26·
    8 months ago

    The ride reopened a few more times over the years. In the summers of 1995 and 1996, it was opened for several days before further injuries forced its permanent shutdown.

    • lad@programming.dev
      62·
      8 months ago

      They generally seem like fun people 😱

      Action Park was formally opened on July 4 of that year, with two opening-day promotions: a Dolly Parton look-alike contest and a tobacco juice-spitting contest

      Gene didn’t want to do the same old shit, where you just get strapped into something or it twirls around. He wanted to take the idea of skiing, which is exhilarating because you control the action, and transfer it to an amusement park. There’s inherent risk in that, but that’s what makes it fun

      the park eventually bought the township extra ambulances to keep up with the volume

      But especially this:

      The Bailey Ball was an Alpine Center attraction developed and tested, but never opened to the public, as a result of those tests. It consisted of a large steel sphere in which a rider could be secured, and then rolled downward. The plan was to do it on a track with PVC pipe as its outer rails, and one was built alongside a ski trail.

      The designers neglected to take into account the tendency of PVC pipe to expand in heat. During the first test, with a state inspector present on a hot summer day, the ball, with a man inside testing it, went off the track as a result of the pipe expanding and bounded down the adjacent ski slope. It continued through the parking lot, across Route 94, and came to rest in a swamp. After it came to a natural stop at the bottom, the inspector left without saying anything and park management abandoned the project

  • lad@programming.dev
    22·
    8 months ago

    To me the slide does look interesting, but I guess 9g of acceleration was not advertised to clients and that’s quite a bit of nope

    • bambooEnglish
      23·
      8 months ago

      Jesus, that is horrible.

      State legislators from the area passed a law allowing Schlitterbahn to self-inspect its attractions without state oversight as it did in Texas, unlike all other amusement parks in Kansas, which were subject to state inspection.

      Verrückt permanently closed in 2016 following a fatal incident involving the decapitation of Caleb Schwab, the 10-year-old son of Kansas state legislator Scott Schwab.

  • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
    17·
    8 months ago

    I still remember going to this park as a kid, I’m talking young, just before it closed. There were these electrically powered counter-rotating foam cylinders, large diameter, rotating into each other. You were supposed to bop your friends with foam covered nunchuks while maintaining balance.

    As a little kid, I was able to easily identify the danger of falling into the middle and getting pressed down into the very shallow ballpit below. Anyone more than 4ft tall would probably get hurt.

    And this little monstrosity, like 10ft in length plus a little ball pit around it, was just chilling in the middle of the path, like there was nothing out of the ordinary. Sun beaming down on it and all. Just wow.