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Accidental death at Schlitterbahn in Kansas City.


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The plot keeps thickening about the guys who made this ride...

 

https://www.expressnews.com/business/local/article/Charges-against-Schlitterbahn-in-decapitation-12796259.php

 

Very sketchy past is coming out about not only the building of the ride....but there personal past including substance issues, domestic abuse, and safety issues at other parks (including other deaths).

 

Smoking weed? Whatever, IMO. Not really an issue considering that it's legal. Moving over a pound of weed and having a bunch of concealed weapons on you and managing to get off? Man, if he was black and/or poor instead of a water park guru....

 

That's not even getting into the allegations from his wife. Dear god. Honestly seeing interviews of him call his collaborators "idiots" and such does him no favors. It isn't like this stuff was hidden. But why would we go looking for it until now? If we dug like this in every GM's background, we'd probably find a lot of salacious stuff, especially at the family run parks.

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This individuals less than desirable lifestyle or past has nothing to do with the current legal situation. This is the media digging up the worst they can find. If Verrukt was a success, we would never know a thing. I ponder what effect this will have on the whole Schlitterbahn orginization. The New Braunfels location is my favorite water park and I've had so much fun there.

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This individuals less than desirable lifestyle or past has nothing to do with the current legal situation. This is the media digging up the worst they can find. If Verrukt was a success, we would never know a thing.

Agreed. This guy killed a kid and endangered a bunch of other people, and we're supposed to believe that pales compared to *gasp* using drugs? WTF? Whatever helps you through the day, man. Plenty of people use drugs all the time and don't kill kids with waterslides. This country needs to get its priorities straight.

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That's not even getting into the allegations from his wife. Dear god. Honestly seeing interviews of him call his collaborators "idiots" and such does him no favors. It isn't like this stuff was hidden. But why would we go looking for it until now? If we dug like this in every GM's background, we'd probably find a lot of salacious stuff, especially at the family run parks.

 

He's an alleged murderer now. His past is suddenly interesting, and arguably relevant in the sense that people will just now be looking for the things that should have been potential red flags years ago.

 

All this would have likely still come out in the lawsuits/bankruptcy proceedings, but it wouldn't have been as newsworthy.

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That's not even getting into the allegations from his wife. Dear god. Honestly seeing interviews of him call his collaborators "idiots" and such does him no favors. It isn't like this stuff was hidden. But why would we go looking for it until now? If we dug like this in every GM's background, we'd probably find a lot of salacious stuff, especially at the family run parks.

 

He's an alleged murderer now. His past is suddenly interesting, and arguably relevant in the sense that people will just now be looking for the things that should have been potential red flags years ago.

 

All this would have likely still come out in the lawsuits/bankruptcy proceedings, but it wouldn't have been as newsworthy.

 

LOL, understatement of the year. A dude who keeps getting caught with bricks of weed could easily be helping fund his industry developments with illicit sales for all we know. Plus beating up and abusing his wife? It would be nice to have a day when this story doesn't get wilder.

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I have always loved going to schlitterbahn since I was little, because they have some really unique rides and play areas and always win best lazy rivers and not so lazy river contests. Correct me if I'm wrong but they pretty much invented the uphill water coaster. But it seems in this case that they answered the question; what if the old Action park had a billion dollar budget? One cannot build extreme things with out extreme mathematics and a good bit of engineers skepticism. Normal Accidents are generally unavoidable and are the result of Incredibly complex systems operating in unpredictable patterns. This doesn't seem like a Normal Accident because you can attribute this death to one obvious cause; Overloading the of raft. To all involved and the public, overloading of the raft had very obvious consequences and the lack of control to prevent the most obvious failure to ride safety is most likely going to result at the minimum of a guilty of negligence verdict.

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Yeah, I read the entire thing and this is insane. It's not like this guy was just smoking weed, he was caught with up to 5 pounds of it, weapons and $7,000 cash in the car (in the 90's). He was clearly selling it.

 

Also the allegations about his domestic abuse are insane... sexually assaulting his wife in front of their minor child, false imprisonment of his ex-wife, threatening to kill her, using a Schlitterbahn company car to ram into hers on purpose. It's insane that it got to the point that they claim that Schlitterbahn was negligent for even entrusting him with motor vehicles since he was known for being an " incompetent, wreckless, intoxicated and drug-impaired driver."

 

The fact that he told his brother that he belonged in hell, was his sworn enemy and had sworn on his dad's grave to avenge a few days before their father passed away sort of shows you how insane this dude was too. It's not on the same level as everything else, but it gives you some insight into his mindset.

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^ I went back and read the original announcement thread for the Verruckt slide just to see how the conversation has shifted from "I trust Schlitterbahn" to this. Every time I check back in this thread, there's another crazy thread revealed in this story.

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Hard not to think about the irony of every other post on this board now talking about this being "insane". Which is German for this rides name Verruckt.

 

Here is the Dailymail's summary of the Verrucktity...(get it)...you can see he isn't looking too good...

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5568419/Owner-water-park-boy-decapitated-tells-court-suffering-drug-problems.html

 

and....I'd challenge you all to think twice about going to one of these parks. I glad millions have gone safely and I'm know it's probably true other parks are just as bad or worse.....but I wouldn't support this company until there leadership changes now that we've seen behind the curtain.

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I always thought it would be their torrent lazy river that would kill someone...

 

Schlitterbahn has always been sketchy. It's just crazy to read how sketchy things were!

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Hard not to think about the irony of every other post on this board now talking about this being "insane".

The word "insane" has only been used in 9 posts out of 42 pages of this thread.

 

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Edited by robbalvey
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Tragic incident. If they can prove charges they deserve what they get. But...

 

Call me crazy, buy I'd still ride Verruckt or any of the park's rides.

 

Given the number of loaded rafts that cycled v/s the injuries known, the odds favor a safe ride.

 

Sucks that operations (improper loading) and maintenance (worn out Velcro)were so bad. Safety margins could have been better and allowed for more variance in loading.

 

Now you have to travel out of the USA to get a similar experience, and unlikely any US park will build a comparable ride before I'm too old to ride it.

Edited by TEDodd
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Articles posted online show 13 injuries in 182 days of operation. That's an injury once every 2 weeks. Not a number that really fills me with confidence.

 

I spent two days this Summer at Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels. I loved the park, but admittedly with eveything here I would be at least hesitant to go back. I'm curious what the correct actions are for the chain in this situation.

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And I can't quite think of any other water park in the US with those torrent rivers except the ones at the Schlitterbahn parks. And no, I'm not counting concrete water slides.

Aquatica in Orlando has one, but they had to tone it way down since the opening.

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Articles posted online show 13 injuries in 182 days of operation. That's an injury once every 2 weeks. Not a number that really fills me with confidence.

 

One unspecified injury every 14 days with how many cycles per day? 400? 500?

 

Say 1 injury in 5600 cycles (400 per day). 3 riders per cycle, so 1/16800 = 0.0006% chance of injury on any given cycle.

 

Need to see what the odds are on other activities.

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I've been waiting for news on the drug arrests to come out. I was told by someone years ago (summer of 2013) that had a business meeting with Henry several months prior and he was several hours late. The reason for for his tardiness? He had been held up in court dealing with an arrest for possession of a drug much more serious than weed. This guy was floored that Henry was so upfront about the whole thing. I have a feeling the two drug arrests mentioned in the Daily Mail article will be the tip of the iceberg when this while trial is over with...

 

 

One unspecified injury every 14 days with how many cycles per day? 400? 500

 

If you go back and read the thread when the ride opened (Here), they were only averaging about 400 riders per day. That's a LOT of injuries in a short amount of time given that capacity.

 

Also they weren't unspecified. Read the indictment. Concussions (plural), broken toes, herniated spinal disks,jaw bone fractures, and orbital bone fractures. Those are major injuries.

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Tragic incident. If they can prove charges they deserve what they get. But...

 

Call me crazy, buy I'd still ride Verruckt or any of the park's rides.

 

Given the number of loaded rafts that cycled v/s the injuries known, the odds favor a safe ride.

 

Sucks that operations (improper loading) and maintenance (worn out Velcro)were so bad. Safety margins could have been better and allowed for more variance in loading.

 

Now you have to travel out of the USA to get a similar experience, and unlikely any US park will build a comparable ride before I'm too old to ride it.

'

How about I call you insane instead...lol

 

I'm not sure I'd ever ride an attraction at a theme/water park that included a signed death waiver and two weigh-in's before you load the ride. If I'm going to do something like that I'd better be jumping out of an airplane, jumping off a bridge, or getting to be in control (drive) of something crazy.

 

I could go on about how dumb that rides design was/is...and point to post on other sites where I gave my opinion before it opened....but that all playing Monday morning quarterback at this point.

 

I don't see any reason why a reputable ride maker couldn't make a safe slide attraction like that in the near future. I have no idea why a slide like that would need a 'airtime' hill.

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I'm not sure I'd ever ride an attraction at a theme/water park that included a signed death waiver and two weigh-in's before you load the ride.

 

You have two weigh-ins before you can ride Flying Turns at Knoebels and lots of rides weight you and you don't even know it's happening (like the Great Adventure parachute tower). Tons of water slides have weight limits and many of them are quite low (like King Cobra at Hurricane Harbor in NJ and tons of rides at Volcano Bay).

 

I agree that it's sort of insane to want to ride the ride now, but before the incident I don't think I would have been that turned off by that. Most people who rode it claimed that there wasn't a waiver, but if by some chance there was I would have assumed it was either a publicity stunt or just America being America. I mean... we signed a death waiver the other day to go snow tubing. Snow tubing...

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