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Xobi's Water Slides
🛡️ Staying safeAction Park · 1985

What happened on the Cannonball Loop

The straight-up loop slide was so bumpy that riders got bloody noses and lost teeth. It was closed after one month.The full-vertical looping body slide ran for about a month in 1985 before New Jersey regulators closed it. Riders came out with bloody noses, back injuries and missing teeth; a hatch was added to pull out anyone stuck at the bottom of the loop, and staff hosed riders down first to reduce friction. It is the cautionary tale behind the AquaLoop's tilted loop.

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Engineers learned that loops have to be tilted, not straight up. That lesson made today's AquaLoop possible.

🛝Slides in this story

🇺🇸 Action Park

Cannonball Loop

A slide with a completely straight-up-and-down loop.An enclosed body slide ending in a full vertical loop, built in 1983 and open for about a month in 1985 before state regulators shut it.

🧭More in Staying safe

ASTM F2376 and EN 1069

The rule books

Engineers have written big rule books that say exactly how a slide must be built and looked after.Standard Practice for Classification, Design, Manufacture, Construction and Operation of Water Slide Systems, first published 2006 and now at F2376-24, with revisions in progress.
Inspectors

The slide checkers

Every year, special inspectors climb all over the slides, check every bolt and ride them, before the park is allowed to open.Every year, special inspectors climb all over the slides, check every bolt and ride them, before the park is allowed to open.
The surprising answer

What hurts people most?

It's not the slides!A Turkish emergency-department study (2005-06, 73 water-park patients) found 31.
WWA, IAAPA and Golden Tickets

Slide clubs and prizes

Water park people have their own clubs: the World Waterpark Association and IAAPA.Water park people have their own clubs: the World Waterpark Association and IAAPA.
Kansas City · 2016

What happened on Verrückt

In 2016 a raft on the world's tallest slide bounced up and a 10-year-old boy called Caleb was killed.Designed in-house by Jeff Henry and John Schooley without a formal engineering process.
Every day

Slide rules for YOU

Wait for "go".Minimum heights, weight windows, one rider or raft in the flume at a time, arms crossed and legs together on speed slides, no glasses or jewellery, lifeguards at dispatch and catch pool, daily pre-opening walk-throughs and an annual third-party inspection where the law requires it.

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