I worked at Whitewater West when this happened, and we had partnered with Schlitterbahn a number of times - we'd built most of their waterslides for them. The day the boy was decapitated (yes, his head was ripped off), when I came in to work and heard about it, I had a mixture of reactions between "oh my god, that poor boy" to "oh my god that poor family" to "oh, my god, PLEASE tell me we didn't build that!!" - not only were we not involved in that particular waterslide, but apparently when they asked us to consult on the design of it, our engineers told them a flat NO - that thing was a stupidly dangerous design, and COULDN'T be made safe. So they went ahead and built it without engineers.
This was sadly a reverse of the "physics don't care about your feelings" mantra often said when it comes to amusement parks. Usually, that phrase is for those who don't meet the requirements for a ride and when denied access, they throw a fit and claim they're being discriminated against. But if you're too tall, short, thin or wide to fit a ride, it will not care about appeasing you. Physics will do what physics does...which usually hurts or kills people who think they're an exception from the rules of gravity. But in this case, it was the actual owners who decided they don't care about physics, and even if the child maybe would've survived had he been placed elsewhere on the ride, that fact that that's all it took for tragedy to happen shows how poorly designed it was.
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley even if that ride had not killed Caleb Schwab, it would have killed someone else - death was inevitable. it was a fundamentally, profoundly, unfixably flawed concept
I almost flew off the side of a waterslide at the Schlitterbahn park in Texas as a kid. That park scared me, and I way too small for the slide I was allowed on, any kid my size could've easily drowned. This was in the early 2000's, and that park felt like chaos. I actually hate water parks now. When this very tragic death of this child happened, I truly felt so bad for this family, just the absolute horror of it all.
I knew Caleb when I helped volunteer at our church's vacation bible school that year. I can still remember being confused as to why he missed a day, and when I got home I saw that my mom was freaking out on the phone. Seeing the news hit like a freight train. He was a good kid that was taken way too soon.
@@LindaFromSeaAtTull He really was. He was a kid with so much to live for. It's still a hollow feeling knowing he's gone when the times I knew him, he just barely got the ball rolling with his life.
@@funnyxusername The year it happened was when my church, Redeemer Presbyterian and Blue Valley were doing a joint VBS. I know his family was from Blue Valley if I'm not mistaken.
I love the historical details. Too many channels just cover the "abandoned" aspects of these locations. The maps, satellite images, and overlays add a lot of interest for me. I appreciate the research and effort that must go into these videos.
So here's a fact not as many people know: Jeff Henry did eventually get sent to prison, but it was for drug possession with the intent to distribute. In late 2018 he was arrested at a hotel in the KC metro area for "possession with intent to distribute methamphetamines, possession of drug paraphernalia, drug possession and knowingly hiring a person selling sexual relations." My wife was working at the front desk at that very hotel when it happened, so I heard all about it the next day. The fact that it took that to send him to prison and not the death of a child is ridiculous.
@fumoffu_ dude he had enough meth he could have been selling it, prescription and a lady paid to be there. Sounds like the cops did an excellent job! This ain't Oregon!
I've lived in the KC area for over a decade and I remember all of this going down. Schlitterbahn was pretty popular but it wasn't surprising that this tragedy killed not only the park but the company too. I remember a lot of people, myself included, being upset that they were reopening the park so soon. But it sounds like the company was overly ambitious and poorly managed, and its own hubris did it in. Also this is a hell of a way to learn that we're getting a Margaritaville
I consider amusement parks to be such monuments to modern America. Fat, wobbling parents on their scooters paying no attention at all to their pre-diabetic spawn, and not even the cringey music and gaudy lights can break through the haze of technological addiction. Dirty, unkempt, icons of greed and sin, miserable materialists desperately trying to deaden the pain of a sick society and purposeless existence. The boy killed never wanted to be an allegory for a civilization in decline, I’m sure.
if you are from KC then get stronger laws passed. the two men should be in jail for Manslaughter. They killed a child due to their greed and ineptitude. GET YOUR LAWS (and Judges) CHANGED to 2024 standards
@@esciteach7997 First off, settle down. Second, you sound poorly informed, so let me help you out. The metro sits on the state line between Kansas and Missouri. I live on the Missouri side, so I can't really impact the Kansas side. However, as the video stated, and you should already know if you had watched it, the laws have gotten stricter since then, and the main reason these men went free was because the prosecution screwed up and used improper material as evidence. As tragic as that is there's nothing I can do to change that
The Verrückt accident is one of the most horrifying incidents I’ve ever heard in an amusement park. No engineering background, flawed design, and rough testing. It should have been heavily modified or scrapped it because of too much danger.
They knew from the meager testing that this slide was dangerous, if not a complete death trap. If you have to add a “cage” to keep the ride from ejecting the passengers, that should have told somebody something.
It should have never been built in the first place. They were told it was ridiculously dangerous as a concept, but they built it anyway. The problem with that ride is the raft, on cresting the high hump, will be in one of three states - it's velocity is 'just right', 'too fast', or 'too slow'. "Just right is the ideal condition, the vehicle will behave as expected.... - this won't happen, because it'll never be perfect, the variables in water temperature, flow viscosity, surface friction, vehicle mass, rider mass, weight distribution, variances in wind speed, etc etc etc means it cannot possibly be predicted with enough accuracy to ever make it perfect - which means the vehicle will then go into one of the other two modes, either 'too slow', so it slides back down the wrong side of the hill, or 'too fast', which results in a potential disaster. Yes, this ride had 'potential disaster' as one of the MAIN possible outcomes. They built it anyway.
I didn't realize that ride was only open for 180 days. As a teenager I rode that ride about 2 months before that incident happened. I was a string bean teenager and they loaded me into a sled for Verruckt with a larger lady. Their only safety idea which I even found odd as a teenager was that they would weigh everyone and then just make sure that each sled was within the right weight to go down the slide. I remember as we got towards to apex I was rising out of my seat because the front of the sled was anchored down and the light back end was rising. It was a super stomach churning experience but I figured they had engineered it to only rise so far and assumed it was perfectly safe. I never rode it again because that feeling was so unsettling. So crazy to see these stories about it now.
I rode Verrückt in July 2015. I was there with my boyfriend at the time, who was visiting from Mexico and really wanted to ride the waterslide. There was a weight minimum that we barely cleared as he and I were paired with a young boy. By the time we got to the top, my hair had dried and without the water, we were at the weight minimum. We definitely caught some air on the way down. It was a bit fun but also crazy and did not feel safe. I still have a shot glass I got that day dust says, “I rode Verruckt. I AM INSANE” I feel very lucky nothing went wrong that day. Thanks for covering this!!
This video really downplays the horrific details of the accident. When the news broke, even the media was so stunned by it that they used coded language essentially meaning: "You don't want to know." Caleb was decapitated. The slide was literally covered in his blood while his two passengers, total strangers, finished the ride, trapped with his body in the raft. Verrückt stood over the site like a tombstone. A monument to greed, negligence, and hubris.
@@geoffh1 Ok, let's talk about "important details". Please go find videos on this channel of the news coverage from the day of the accident. Helicopters hovering overhead clearly show the deep red stains on the slide. They also show TWO yellow tarps at the bottom of the slide. One tarp for the body, the other for the head. Also, the many witness accounts stating that they saw the boys severed head roll down the slide along with the blood and other goop.
I think he “downplays” because it’s a sensitive topic and this isn’t a true crime/horrific incident channel. I know the detail from other channels that talk about that sort of stuff (and why safety regulations really matter) and you can find out more there.
As someone who has spent most of my working life a water park lifeguard, the fact that they lobbied the state government to not have state safety checks is rather disturbing to me
Scumbags. Only corrupt scumbags would agree to such a thing. But, they're politicians. If they're that bad at the state level, just think about how much worse it gets. If they're deemed good enough to enter the federal level. I guess that's why I don't have any respect for partisan politics, it's essentially different groups of people who are all trying to screw us over in exchange for their personal gain of power and financial wealth. Even though I'm in the United States, I would imagine that this comment about corrupt politicians is likely true politics exists, with MAYBE a rare exception here and there...maybe....
I’m a Kansas Citian. I remember being excited that we were getting a Schlitterbahn. I’m familiar with them in Texas and thought it was great they were expanding. As stated in the video, the plans were extraordinary. So to see the final product was disheartening. It seemed like an afterthought. I heard on the radio that they were going to be on tv and they made it sound like a negative thing. I vividly remember watching it, thinking that I would never ride that ride ever. Seeing those rafts fly off was enough for me. It was blatantly obvious they didn’t know what they were doing and that they came to Kansas due to the lax regulations. They day Caleb passed, Schlitterbahn allowed lawmakers and their families free admission. After Caleb’s untimely death, the water slide sat there as a reminder of what took place. It’s across from a popular shopping area and it’s hard to miss its presence against the horizon. There were rust stains present which many mistook as blood stains. The prosecutors knew not to bring about the fact that the water slide was featured on the tv show and they did it anyway. Because of that, Caleb never received justice. Thanks for the well informed video.
I went to this one so much as a kid I lived in Leavenworth I’m in Texas now and don’t know if there even is one I’ve never seen it lol but if there is I think I’ll just stick to the pool 😭 but I used to love this water park and I rode that slide it’s I remember when this happened and it made me sick to even think about it so I never went back
I rode Verrückt before the tragedy happened. The only time I had ever went to the park. My family was in KC for a family road trip and we had heard about the water park without knowing much about it and wanted to give it a shot. I was somewhere between 14 and 16 years old. We were just about to leave for the day and I wanted to make my mark and say I rode the ride. I rode it, and man it was fast. I remember not having the most amount of confidence once finally reach the top of the stairs. Lifeguards/workers didn’t seem to put the most amount of care into safety, as it seemed like they weren’t the most engaged/interested in the safety measures they had to have people follow. After hearing about the accident months later, it was scary to think I rode the ride that had taken a child’s life of one not much younger than me.
Im from kansas city, and Schlitterbahn feels like such a fever dream. I went there once or twice while they were building verruckt and it seemed pretty nice and fun. The accident was traumatic for the whole community, and there was no way they could recover from it. It felt like we spent more time waiting for Schlitterbahn than we ever had it.
I'm a KC local and was in high school when this happened- I remember knowing several teenagers who worked there and witnessed it happen. Needless to say they were pretty traumatized from it and it shook the entire community. The park knew before even building it that it wasn't safe, and it never even passed safety testing appropriately. Total negligence and very sad :(
I work across the street from where Schlitterbahn once was. When they built the slide, you could see the tower from our dock, and we constantly made jokes and quips about how it was going to kill somebody. When they began test runs, we literally watched the rafts fly off the slide, and at one point they were using weighted dummies as riders and we would watch them fly out of the boats as well (this was before the net was put in). I vowed never to ride that damn thing after watching that, and I’m def a coaster adrenaline junkie type. It was just too ominous for me to ever want to try it.
Living in Kansas City when this happened, it’s sad to see how all the events unfolded and eventually killed the park after so much anticipation of its opening. Such a tragic event that took place that day.
I did as well! I remember seeing Caleb’s face all over the news. It was truly heartbreaking. I was younger when he passed, I didn’t understand what happened. However, it touched my parents who had friends who had went to Shlitterban regularly. We prayed a lot during that time. It was very harrowing.
@@nok2102 Didn’t help the park that his father was at the time a state representative (now he's the Kansas Secretary of State) who put out legislation to prevent likes Verruct from ever being built in Kansas.
I lived east of legends about 3 miles. And passing by the slide everyday going to hs was crazy after the fact. And it's crazy they built this with worlds of fun/oceans of fun nearby
Oceans of fun could use the competition where as its not bad its not great. I remember being excited with the prospect of them stepping up their game with the new competitor. Aside from the tragic event the fact that Cedar fair owned oceans of fun is another reason they would have passed on buying it.
Kansas resident here. I used to celebrate my birthday at the park for years and on August 1st 2016 a week before the tragedy me and my buddies were at the park arguing if we should go on the Verrückt slide. I chickened out we chilled in the wavy lazy river all day and I’m glad I did. RIP caleb, he was so young and had his life taken from him on a day that was supposed to be fun. It was always grim driving past the decommissioned slide when it was still up. I’m glad they tore it down.
i was there july 31st that week too! 2 of my friends rode it. i also chickened out. really harrowing. first time we really realized how mortal we are, we were 13 or 14.
I worked at Schlitterbahn KC on the overnight security shift for 7 years till 2018 when they internally announced the park would close permanently. The day of the accident we were about to have our end of season party. That party was naturally canceled and I still remember driving in on my night off just an hour after the accident happened and learning about it from one of my fellow security officers. That place broke my heart twice. When the accident haooened, and then two years later when I learned the park would close. Six years later I still miss working there.
As a Kansas City local, I got to watch the slide slowly get built higher and higher. It was the talk of the town with if you would be brave enough to ride it or not. I finally got to go to the park one day and was very excited to ride it. Unfortunately at the time they were only taking riders with a premade reservation done days before. I watched people come down one after another disappointed I could ride. I saw on the news a few weeks later the news about the boy who was killed. Now I'm great full that I never took the chance.
When I was much younger and this park was still open, I had won two tickets to the park from my school and went with my dad. The visit is still vivid in my head. I can perfectly recall my father and I seeing that ride and his concern.
I’m a bit of a thrill seeker, and would have gone there incorrectly assuming it was all well engineered, and regulated, and had undergone massive safety checks. And, to be fair, far more people rode it WITHOUT being decapitated. I can’t blame the victim for seeing dozens of people safely exiting a ride and concluding it was safe to ride it.
Honestly, water parks seem do sketchy on safety. Wave pools, tube rides with lack of restraints, catching air. I personally had a group tube ride at a mojor park fold in half, causing my friend across from me to slam their head into me.
There was a water park in my city that had an infamous “Death Slide” that killed 3 people over the years, but all the deaths were from idiots not following the lifeguard’s instructions. The local teens loved the park for leaving the slide operational because it was a right of passage to go down that killer ride.
@@MarkRiverbank I was referring mainly to the people that paid for it, 'engineered' it, constructed it, rather than those who came and rode it. It doesn't take much to look at the profile of the hill compared to that drop and think it might be a bad idea.
Did you ever play Roller Coaster Tycoon? If the raft flies off the slide, just use the enclosed track for that section and things are gonna be fine. (sarcasm) I still wonder why the inflated rafts explode when hitting the ground though..
very glad to see this covered especially as someone who grew up in west kck. i was only a little bit older than caleb when he died, and i was incredibly upset when i first heard about him. it was just heartbreaking
Seeing Schlitterbahn fall so far has been crazy. I used to be a hardcore Xtreme Waterparks fan, watched every single new episode. I always wanted to go to any of the Schlitterbahn parks and I was in awe when they announced Verruckt. Watching how it all went so so wrong, to the point that it is now the subject of an episode of Abandoned (which I've also been watching since probably the 5th or 6th episode)... it's so surreal. RIP Caleb 🙏
Its so sad. I'm a Texas native and I loved Schlitterbahn. I moved back to texas after finishing college, and Ceder Fair has destroyed the Galveston location. Nearly half the rides were not operating and obvious cosmetic issues were everywhere. It made me nervous about what other upkeep was being neglected. I will really miss the Schlitterbahn of my childhood, but I'm never going back.
It’s now a Menards and Camping World. You could see the ride from the highway (quite a ways away) and it took awhile to get it taken down. It gave me the creeps every time I saw it.
One thing Jake didn't mention was that the court ordered the slide not be dismantled while the multiple civil and criminal cases were in progress, so it stood there, visible for miles around as a horrifying reminder of what happened, for more than two years after the acident.
I live there too and while it was disturbing I definitely think it was the right call. It kept it in the public eye for the entire time and ensured actual change would happen
One important thing to note about rep Scott Schwab. He supported a bill that capped personal injury compensation at 300k in Kansas. He and his family used a loop hole to sue the park under Texas law allowing them to seek more damages and were awarded millions. He has so far made no such overtures to turn over that law.
This whole situation reminds me of the whole Titan Sub situation where people were far more concerned with being seen as revolutionaries in their fields that they thought they were above safety and rules, and that tragedy would either be too impressed to hit them or they were just that clever to avert it.
Exactly this. Just by simply looking at it and knowing basic physics there is no way in hell I would get on it. If there are no fail safes, and something as simple as the wrong weight distribution could cause it to get airborne, then it wasn't a matter of if it would happen, but rather when. I also feel like there had to be some better solution to hold the nets in place than exposed metal poles. A lot of negligence went into that water slide.
Rich people get big egos. Anyone who tells them "no" doesn't get their money. So they're surrounded by enablers. That's how these things happen. These big shots have no humility. They actually believe they can do no wrong, that every comment they make is a pearl of wisdom and every joke they tell is funny.
The accident itself also reminds me of Russel Phillips' tragic 1995 NASCAR death, when he was exposed to the catch fence at full speed. In both cases, the safety nets did their job keeping the wayward vehicles inside the track, but at a terrible cost.
Human are often idiots. It's a shame when human hubris and arrogance says, "Physics? Engineering? Nah, we don't need no stinking physics or engineering! Hey! Y'all, watch this!" Then we know what happens when the laws of physics are ridiculed. Physics says, "Here. Hold my beer." It never ends well. Then engineers say, "We told you so."
@@NissanSkyline901 I was left wondering if there was some way to design interlocking rails for that hill to lock the raft in and prevent it from going airborne, but they sure didn't think of that, now did they...
Man, I’ve been waiting for a video of this quality about this park. I grew up in Missouri near Kansas City, so I grew up going to Cedar Fair’s Ocean’s of Fun. I loved the park, but when I finally made it out to Schlitterbahn I was really blown away by the park, between the circular wave pool, the water coaster and the long stretch of rapids. I genuinely loved the park, because it provided thrills that Oceans of Fun simply didn’t have. Despite all of that, I was NOT sold on Verükt. I love me a good tall rollercoaster, but the idea of a water slide that tall was really off putting to me, so during our visit in the summer that it was open I waited at the bottom while the rest of my family rode it. Little did I know, that literally the next day, tragedy would strike. That ended up being my last visit to Schlitterbahn. It was a very fun park, so I will always miss it. Despite everything, it was very sad to see it all get demolished and rot away in the elements.
Growing up in KC, this place was so hyped up and aggressively expanding... unfortunately, the accident dampened public perception of the park. My family got us season passes up until the tragedy, and my mom warned us after that we would never be going back. I rode Verruckt as a 12-year-old (only 2 years older than the victim), and it felt unsafe. The whole "aura" of the ride was based on going on it just to brag with your friends you survived. In the 3 times I rode it, the raft lifted up off the slide twice... and that's exactly how the kid died. It's unfortunate, this park was absolutely stunning, with a bright future ahead, and overall brought a much-needed sense of renewal in the Kansas side of KC. Everyone was excited for the expansion of the park, and excited to have another theme park in the area. I hold the good memories close to my heart (such as the surfing attraction), but because of what happened I can really only look back and think about the "What If?". I think without this Schlitterbahn would've thrived considering how much our city grew. This ride should have never been approved for opening, It was not safe, it was not properly maintained, and it tragically took the life of a little boy.
i remember visiting when the slide was still under construction they where about half way through setting up the support frames and had partially started on the slide itself, i remember it being higher than anything else at the park and a spotter for a crane or i don't remember a worker, said "Its going to be even taller than it is now, the tallest in the world"
@@noahrhodes1409 I remember that as well, I went in either 2013 or 2014, it was quite long ago so I don’t remember exactly which year, I saw the slide being built
I rode it twice in the same day... the line was nowhere near as long as the news hyped it up to be. Should've been a sign but I was also around 10-13, so I just figured "Heck yeah! One more time!".
Also a KC native ❤ glad you are safe and okay. Also glad they finally closed this disaster zone. That slide wasn’t their only problem at alllllllll. So many red flags at that place.
In RCT3: Soaked Expansion you can build an enclosed netted water slide like this one. You can also build hills with jets that push the cars up through the hill just like Verruckt. And guess what? Those rafts can absolutely fly off the slide lmao. But you already probably know this haha!
Seriously, my experience with RCT told me that was a bad design when they announced the slide's opening. (Also not a good design for a bobsled coaster either)
I remember the day that the Verrückt accident heppened so vividly, it was just a boring slow day, and nobody in my family was doing anything. I just randomly proposed the idea to my mom that we should go ride the Verrückt because it was something that we had always considered visiting. To my surprise, she said yes but strangely enough we didn't go, we just continued lazing around which was very unusual for all of us. We heard about the tragedy on the news later in the day... I was only a couple years older than that kid, we wonder if we dodged a bullet. We visited the park after it reopened but I've since moved to a different city. I didn't know the park shut down completely! Another great and very interesting video Bright Sun! Love your content.
i'm also from the area and was only a few years older than caleb. before they announced on the news who he was, i remember i was so terrified that someone i knew could have been killed. when his family began to speak out, and his brother said he watched the whole thing happen (or something along those lines), as an older sibling i still remember feeling his pain. what a horrible accident to happen so close to home.
wow . . . all I can say. Perhaps Devine Intervention that you got a "yes" you can ride just hours from the tragedy. NYC here; many true examples from 9/11 also. One gentleman on an upper floor , whose office had 2 coffee pots he used everyday, got a feeling he should go to the lobby (9/11 8:30 am) for coffee,; everyone in his office died. .many many more; . . . . a gentlemen from Boston who had never missed or been late for a flight, found himself driving strangely and very slowly toward Logan I. Airport. He missed his flight; Flight 11.
I remember this day, my parents told me and my siblings that we were gonna go, I really wanted to go on that same ride, but we ended up staying home and watched the Olympics opening ceremony,after the ceremony every news station were talking about the incident. I was also 10 years old when this happened and for a week I always wondered if that would’ve been me.
"If I had a nickle every time abandoned attractions turned into margaritavilles, I'd have two nickles. It's not a lot but it's weird that it happened twice."
The usual disaster youtube channels i watch covered this accident.. but just the accident. I like your whole story of how the park started, and how it ended. Appreciate it!!
I lived very close to this water park near The Legends Outlet Shopping Complex when the young boy died. I remember hearing just a massive amount of sirens in the area and then when we were watching the news later that night we saw the announcement of his death. It was very tragic and sad. I was glad the KS Rep (his father) was able to make some positive state-wide change out of such a heartbreaking event for his family. Thank you for your thoughtful coverage of this, my husband and I love your channel! :)
In 2020 I moved to Kansas City, one week prior to the pandemic. I spent the next several months exploring Kansas Cityand one day I found the abandoned Schlitterbahn park. I walked out there looking for birds (yes, birdwatcher) and was met by a friendly security guard. Yes, the site was neglected, but the guard pointed out an active beaver dam, and said he'd daily seen dozens of animals enjoying the de facto wildlive reserve it became. Months later, I returned but the beaver dam was destroyed along with much else. By this time, however, I was familiar with the backstory of the park; I hope the park's removal helps those affected by the tragedy. Like many abandoned places, it seemed oddly haunted, a full-size pirate ship silent in the sun, the real paddleboats creaking in the water. It still had a touch of magic, though, but the sheer arrogance and stupidity of the Verruckt engineers destroyed that park. It needed to go.
I worked at Target near the Legends. And when I saw it being built and then saw the test runs on the news for the slides, I just knew something was going to happen. Sure enough, that day I worked and it happened.
Howdy Bright Sun Films, I am a peer tutor for a handful of engineering classes at my college and every now and then the professor lets me take over the lecture if I have a good idea. I have used your and some other coastertubers videos to explain why the processes used in engineering are important. I have learned a lot from these videos about how engineers should work on their projects and I want to share that with the students. Thank you for your informational videos, I don't know if the students will ever remember these videos, but the lessons they learned will stick forever.
I've watched some other stuff about Schlitterbahn Kansas, and it really strikes me as the quintessential American story for the late 20th - 21st century. Some family makes a good business decision in the 80s and gets some money from it. The low interest rates of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s meant that they could expand said business while going more and more into debt, never paying it off. Nobody who knows what they're doing is in charge. Their dumbass son takes on more and more of a role in the company. 2008 hits and suddenly nobody can borrow money anymore, and it becomes obvious just how much things aren't working. The family gets more desperate to keep the money flowing and takes brazen steps to do so. Eventually a bunch of innocent people die or get hurt because nobody knows what they're doing. Nobody gets blamed for it, and the company gets sold off to d̶i̶s̶n̶e̶y̶ cedar fair
I lived in Kansas City when this happened, and remember the sense of community that united everyone, and how so many people came together to mourn. Another thing i remember is how many times i drove past the park, and just how ominous it was seeing the tall spire looming in the air after the accident
I went a few times. You definitely noticed the construction on the outside, but the inside of the park didn't feel barren or anything. The lazy river was really nice and the slides that I got to do were a lot of fun. I didn't end up doing verrukt in the end (probably for the best), but I had mostly seen the construction and barren areas as "Oh cool they are gonna keep adding more stuff" rather than "Oh man, look at how little is here". We also have Worlds/Oceans of fun here in KC, and overall I remember having more fun here than at Oceans of fun despite them not reaching the grand original goals.
Tragic event for us who live in Kansas City and Kansas City, Kansas. I live in KCK and grew up here.I live 10 minutes away from the site.I will never forget it.None of us here will.💔💔
I went to highschool with the grade that was in Calebs class. Everyone only had good things to say about him and i met his family, genuinely the sweetest people ever.
not that likely, it mainly happened because the kid was improperly seated in the ride by the attendant who was not doing their job that day, there were two larger women on the ride with him and he was seated in the front instead of in between them in the middle and the uneven weight distribution made him fly up in the air and get killed, of course the gap shouldn't have been there in the first place and why they used metal netting instead of mesh is beyond me.
One of my friends lives in Kansas City with his wife and they confirmed the sad events since they used to live near the water park. Let’s just say I’m glad you kept the sad details to a minimum. Very sad what happened to that kid. Good video man and ty again for what you do man. Keep the fantastic content coming please.
Seeing the abandoned kids pirate ship area and then remembering me and my siblings playing tag on it is a incredibly weird feeling.... I still vividly remember hearing the news about that poor kid
I'm from San Antonio Texas and when I was younger I used to got to the New Braunfels location often. I also have family in KC and would go visit them every summer and would go to the KC park before it was abandoned. I remember being scared of the tall water slide, since you could see it from the nearby highway when passing by. I remember the summer when the tragedy happened, which occurred a few weeks before. We drove by the water park and my grandmother was telling me a story that shook me to my core. Someone around my age died while at a waterpark. Which honestly is still why I get scared when riding anything steep even when its perfectly safe. I kind of forgotten about Schlitterbahn until this video, use to be fun when I was younger. Definitely a core memory of my childhood.
Right across the interstate from the former Schlitterbahn site is a massive abandoned office complex, formerly housing the HQ for Cerner before they were bought out by Oracle and moved to Bannister Mall.
I live near the original Schlitterbaun in New Braunfels, Texas. It’s unlike any other water park out there. Built into the hills, it sits along the Comal river and has a really unique look and feel. It really cannot be replicated, especially on a flat piece of land. I’m really surprised they even tried.
Lived in KC all my life. Never went to Schliterbahns one time because it was in the middle of nowhere Kansas, whereas the competing waterpark, Oceans of Fun, was closer to the action and had an amusement park attatched.
These videos are truly incredible! So much information in one video! I went here a handful of times as a kid. I had no idea about the issues or the scale at which they wanted to build but even as a kid wanting to enjoy a summer day it was very apparent that it was just unfinished. Strange walkways to get to the pools with not much around. I never did ride the big slide.
You always know just the right amount of details to put in the video. Completely perfect. Somebody should hire you and give you your own TV show. Another wonderful addition to the abandoned series. Thank you for posting.
I rode the Verrukt in summer 2014, right after opening. I was then working out in Idaho in the summer of 2016 and was SHOCKED when I got the news that someone died on the slide. My buddy was working at the waterpark that summer, and has told me horror stories of seeing the body and the blood running down the slide. Very sad… RIP.
I grew up in the KC area (Shawnee to be exact) and I remember the park from its inception and construction, to it's opening and quick demise. I even remember the Verrückt waterslide was featured in a Travel Channel show the summer it opened. I never even visited the park but always wanted to, at least until the Verrückt incident...
I rode this ride 2 weeks before the accident, the slide structure and tube "seat belt" did not seem safe at all but I learned about the accident and I felt so bad for the kid and I felt really lucky.
I almost drowned in their lazy river thing when I was 10 or so. You were supposed to use a tube but it was poorly enforced. I slipped out of mine and got trapped underneath of someone else’s tube as it was extremely crowded. Almost lost consciousness and I have been terrified of being help underwater since. As for Caleb, I actually know one of his close childhood friends through college and the incident affected him greatly.
I remember going here as a kid, loved the wave pool. For years afterwards, we'd occasionally pass by the abandoned park on the highway, and the tower and slide were visible for miles.
i grew up in austin and used to visit the New Braunfels park all the time. i have so many great memories at that park. it’s sad that the kansas city park was a failure and especially sad for the family of the child who died. :(
@@ydneHow to demonstrate you do not understand how statistics work, but more than that, is your argument... are you arguing that pedestrian deaths are acceptable? I can counter that Kansas was too lax on standards, and that our pedestrian deaths owe much in part to poorly designed infrastructure, improperly enforced speed limits in areas that see heavy foot traffic, and drivers not receiving enough punishment when their negligence leads to deaths of others.
@@ydne What the actual hell are you trying to say with your comment?? Genuinely confused as to why you would say such a ridiculous statement under a comment that really has nothing to do with whatever point you're attempting to make.
I remember when that accident happened. I was a kid, and my parents were going to bring us to the park to go on that ride. The only reason we didn't go is cause me and my older sister had gotten really sick and were stuck at home. To this day they refuse to go to any waterpark that isn't Oceans of Fun in Kansas City.
I feel so dumb that I didn't realize Schlitterbahn KC closed. My Dad works in the amusement industry here in Texas and a lot of the people who've worked at Schlitterbahn are family friends of ours. He had a really hard time grappling with the cognitive dissonance that something that some of his friends worked on resulted in SUCH a horrific accident so I just have really never talked to him about it, so I guess I never heard that news that it closed. Crazy. The original Schlitterbahn park here in Texas is really lovely and a completely unique place for anyone who's wondering. Totally worth visiting, there's really no other waterpark like it.
It’s NOT your dads or his work friends faults!! (Lifetime KCMO resident here) I was in high school when this happened. This ride was doomed before it opened! They were just trying to build the biggest and craziest thing to drum up attention for the new park! We ALL wanted to go to the new park to ride it! (Also something that most videos don’t seem to mention) part of the reason for Caleb’s decapitation was the ride operators (teenagers) hadn’t balanced the weight in the raft correctly so Caleb was in the wrong spot in the tube, leading to his head popping up and hitting the bar holding the (questionable) netting in place around the side…
I rode the verrukt…probably the dumbest thing I ever did. Rode it with my son and my brother in law…we were within the weight requirement and we made it down but was shocked to see the only thing holding you in the raft was a Velcro strap across your waist and one over your shoulder but was unhooked at the bottom. I remember I didn’t even scream going down because i was in utter shock…I just remember thinking “oh god I’m gonna die and this stupid”. It made my decision to ride it on that Saturday worse because the day after because that Sunday the little boy died on it.
I went to Schlitterbahn countless times when it the first couple years it was opened. It was really cool to see it grow and see all of those (at the time) new waterslides go up. I had no idea about the criminal cases after the accident on Verruckt. Awesome video!
So I was born and raised in Kansas, and I remember seeing all of this in the news about this. And I remember seeing the water park all the time, being able to see the super high water slide, then, as tragedy stuck, I remember asking my dad what happened and hearing about it at the age of 10, now years later, I’m watching a video about this water park i remember seeing. It’s crazy how the world works. This was such a sad story and is terrible for the family, like imagine having to watch you’re 10 year old brother get decapitated. I remember the fall out for all this, gosh this makes me think because it’s so sad. Gosh.
I grew up in KCK and remember whispers of Schlitterbahn coming to the area back in 2001. We laughed at how dumb of an idea it was, and I remember my parents saying, “This is gonna end badly.” And sure enough, it did.
I live in KC and remember taking the stairs at work to get in better shape to ride Verrückt. Everyone I knew were either on the side of really wanting to go, and the others said no way not a chance. When the accident happened, luckily someone stopped the mother from running to the scene and basically telling her you do not want to go there. It was so sad, especially having to keep the ride up until all the court cases had been completed.
The only thing not mentioned in regard to the horrific accident was that the company had heavily lobbied the Kansas state legislature against heavier safety regulations. As part of that effort, on that particular day, members of the legislature and their families were admitted for free. Otherwise, it’s plausible that this legislator and his family would not have been at the park on that day. And the accident was truly horrific, more than the video relates. Essentially the boy’s neck vertebrae was completely, but internally severed. It was essentially what is called an internal decapitation. The fact that the two designers had zero engineering training should have set off alarm bells. There are reasons why corporations need to be regulated. It’s sad that such a preventable tragedy was what it took for the state of Kansas to alter its laissez-faire approach to safety regulation of amusement parks.
Not to mention the woman directly behind him had her jaw broken and the woman at the back received a bone fracture on her face - both of which I can only imagine occurred when hit in the face at 60mph with a decapitated head. I cannot imagine the trauma they must feel to this day.
Had to scroll way too far down to find this comment. It is incomprehensible to me that individuals with zero background in engineering are allowed to open a waterpark
@@dollarstorevodkawhen people say that the “government screws everything up and can’t manage anything” and “government isn’t the solution but the problem”remember your comment left here.
@@wolfsmith Hmmmm. I guess I missed that part? 🙄🙄. I guess they owed millions to their creditors because the government built the park? Make it make sense?
My family went to the water park and rode the Verruckt. The place looked rundown, with areas that had once been under construction but now with just building materials laying around, bleaching out in the sun. It was evident the park wasn't doing well. The Verruckt ride itself looked "slapdash", with crudely molded seats stuck in the rafts, and Velcro shoulder straps that certainly wouldn't hold you in an accident. It was a thrilling ride, with a near vertical drop and a high G pull going up the hill. Sorry it had to end with a tragedy.
I remember watching the Extreme Waterparks special of that waterside being bulit. At that time, I knew that nothing good could come out of it being bulit and unfortunately I was right. They had no business buliding that ride and RIP Caleb
Thank you for covering the full development history of these grifters and the park. I grew up in KCK and it was clear from the beginning this was a fly by night project that would never be fully realized. The child's death was predictable. We discussed how badly managed and run in open council meetings at the time. Some even pressed the Unified Govt of KCK and the state to pull the operational liscences long before the accident.
I was at this park two weeks before the incident. It was the jankiest theme park I'd ever been at. The slide shook when we went up it and the velcro literally rolled off at the end of the ride. Not to mention the damn lazy river had concrete rocks in it. What were they thinking? We actually left after a few hours because of how sckechy it all was.
Even before Verruckt, the park felt half-baked and unfinished. They should have built a broader variety of slides. Though I don't remember the water looking that gross IRL.
@@HPSmugscraftyeah i would have just packed up and went to Oceans of Fun instead. Was much more safe and clean from what I remember. Don't know how they are now but I enjoyed both it and Worlds of Fun quite a bit. And they seemed to keep the place clean and organized.
my siblings and i always used to ask our parents if we could go to schlitterbahn! everyone from school always had birthday parties either there or at great wolf lodge like right across the street. my dad would always suggest going to schlitterbahn, but my mom thought it looked too run down, and so we never went. yes, at the time we'd always be annoyed, but i'm convinced some moms have a sixth sense about these things.
I remember when this happened, it honestly shocked and horrofied all of kc. My family and i were actually planning on going to the park right before this had happened but our plans got cancelled so we didnt end up going.
I grew up just on the other side of the border in Kansas City, Missouri, just twenty-five minutes from Schlitterbahn. We passed it every week going to visit my grandparents who lived a several blocks down the street from the park. We would always pass the entrance and see those tall sandcastle towers and ask our parents "Can we go there next summer?" This was of course always met with "Maybe. We'll see." The rafts going down the famous slide made a sound so loud that it could be heard from the road if you passed at the right time. We all couldn't believe it when we heard the news that a little boy had been decapitated while going down. What happened is so horribly sad. A family went home that day with one fewer family member in the back seat. It should've NEVER happened.
I loved going here as a kid and local of KCMO. It was such a shame and a sad day when that happened. It eventually ended what was almost objectively the best waterpark in Kansas and Missouri combined. I still have fond memories of going there and having disney's local radio station being hosted live, the lazy river going all over the park, and the some of the slides and pools being mainly accessible from the river. And the massive sky swing that was there before they started on Verrückt.
I cant imagine being the designers of that coaster right now. Even 8 years later, they will forever be known as "the guys who designed a rollercoaster that decapitated a kid"
I’m a native Texan, and so damn old I would go to the original Schlitterbahm when it was 2 water slides, a “wave” pool, and a zip line across the pool. That was kind of it. To know how it started, and learn how it kind of went… Jake, proud to support your work on Patron. Mega-blaster totally sounds like the name of a fully loaded convention store foot long hotdog that was definitely going to rip through your colon…
The Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels was the best growing up in the 80s and 90s in San Antonio. Practically lived there every summer and worked there in the late 80s for 3 summers.
I remember when that water slide was first built. Everyone you talked to was very weary of it as it looked very unsafe. We were all shocked when the news came out.
I worked at Whitewater West when this happened, and we had partnered with Schlitterbahn a number of times - we'd built most of their waterslides for them. The day the boy was decapitated (yes, his head was ripped off), when I came in to work and heard about it, I had a mixture of reactions between "oh my god, that poor boy" to "oh my god that poor family" to "oh, my god, PLEASE tell me we didn't build that!!" - not only were we not involved in that particular waterslide, but apparently when they asked us to consult on the design of it, our engineers told them a flat NO - that thing was a stupidly dangerous design, and COULDN'T be made safe. So they went ahead and built it without engineers.
This was sadly a reverse of the "physics don't care about your feelings" mantra often said when it comes to amusement parks. Usually, that phrase is for those who don't meet the requirements for a ride and when denied access, they throw a fit and claim they're being discriminated against. But if you're too tall, short, thin or wide to fit a ride, it will not care about appeasing you. Physics will do what physics does...which usually hurts or kills people who think they're an exception from the rules of gravity.
But in this case, it was the actual owners who decided they don't care about physics, and even if the child maybe would've survived had he been placed elsewhere on the ride, that fact that that's all it took for tragedy to happen shows how poorly designed it was.
Jesus Christ
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley even if that ride had not killed Caleb Schwab, it would have killed someone else - death was inevitable. it was a fundamentally, profoundly, unfixably flawed concept
That's so stupid of them. How do you hear that and convince yourself that everything will end up fine?
I almost flew off the side of a waterslide at the Schlitterbahn park in Texas as a kid. That park scared me, and I way too small for the slide I was allowed on, any kid my size could've easily drowned. This was in the early 2000's, and that park felt like chaos. I actually hate water parks now. When this very tragic death of this child happened, I truly felt so bad for this family, just the absolute horror of it all.
I knew Caleb when I helped volunteer at our church's vacation bible school that year. I can still remember being confused as to why he missed a day, and when I got home I saw that my mom was freaking out on the phone. Seeing the news hit like a freight train. He was a good kid that was taken way too soon.
He seemed like a sweet kid.
@@LindaFromSeaAtTull He really was. He was a kid with so much to live for. It's still a hollow feeling knowing he's gone when the times I knew him, he just barely got the ball rolling with his life.
Blue Valley Baptist?
@@funnyxusername The year it happened was when my church, Redeemer Presbyterian and Blue Valley were doing a joint VBS. I know his family was from Blue Valley if I'm not mistaken.
I was on the same soccer team as him for a bit, crazy stuff
I love the historical details. Too many channels just cover the "abandoned" aspects of these locations. The maps, satellite images, and overlays add a lot of interest for me. I appreciate the research and effort that must go into these videos.
Same here. You can tell the creator does his research and takes time to make the videos which I definitely appreciate.
same bro the dedication in these videos are amazing.
He wouldn’t have the amount of subscribers he has now if he’d done that.
@@cvlogz7 even on the first abandoned video you can tell he has been dedicated. hes deserves all the views.
@@cvlogz7 absolutely. My favorite one he’s ever done is about Blockbuster and it’s history.
So here's a fact not as many people know: Jeff Henry did eventually get sent to prison, but it was for drug possession with the intent to distribute. In late 2018 he was arrested at a hotel in the KC metro area for "possession with intent to distribute methamphetamines, possession of drug paraphernalia, drug possession and knowingly hiring a person selling sexual relations." My wife was working at the front desk at that very hotel when it happened, so I heard all about it the next day.
The fact that it took that to send him to prison and not the death of a child is ridiculous.
LOL all I saw was " ... hiring a person selling sexual relations." My wife" and though oh my
Yup. In Kansas being in possession of drugs is more important to prosecutors than wrongful death. There's a reason I keep my ass on the MO side of KC.
I could tell by his photos and emails that he had a substance problem.
@fumoffu_ dude he had enough meth he could have been selling it, prescription and a lady paid to be there. Sounds like the cops did an excellent job! This ain't Oregon!
@@fumoffu_l im also from kcmo and can confirm to everyone that fumoffu is correct. KCK sucks ass
The most surprising thing about Verrückt is that it wasn't built 20 years earlier in Action Park.
This! 😂
This was Schlitterbahn equivalent to the Cannonball Loop.
Thankfully, Action Park was too incompetent to ever build something this ambitious lol
@@jamesbraun9842But nobody ever got decapitated on the Cannonball Loop.
@@GiovanniCloudtrue but that ride was only open for like 5 mins.
I've lived in the KC area for over a decade and I remember all of this going down. Schlitterbahn was pretty popular but it wasn't surprising that this tragedy killed not only the park but the company too. I remember a lot of people, myself included, being upset that they were reopening the park so soon. But it sounds like the company was overly ambitious and poorly managed, and its own hubris did it in.
Also this is a hell of a way to learn that we're getting a Margaritaville
I consider amusement parks to be such monuments to modern America. Fat, wobbling parents on their scooters paying no attention at all to their pre-diabetic spawn, and not even the cringey music and gaudy lights can break through the haze of technological addiction. Dirty, unkempt, icons of greed and sin, miserable materialists desperately trying to deaden the pain of a sick society and purposeless existence.
The boy killed never wanted to be an allegory for a civilization in decline, I’m sure.
seriously! i didn’t know either till this video.
if you are from KC then get stronger laws passed. the two men should be in jail for Manslaughter. They killed a child due to their greed and ineptitude. GET YOUR LAWS (and Judges) CHANGED to 2024 standards
@@esciteach7997 First off, settle down. Second, you sound poorly informed, so let me help you out. The metro sits on the state line between Kansas and Missouri. I live on the Missouri side, so I can't really impact the Kansas side. However, as the video stated, and you should already know if you had watched it, the laws have gotten stricter since then, and the main reason these men went free was because the prosecution screwed up and used improper material as evidence. As tragic as that is there's nothing I can do to change that
@@TimReeb he didn’t catch that part. some people listen with their ears closed!
The Verrückt accident is one of the most horrifying incidents I’ve ever heard in an amusement park.
No engineering background, flawed design, and rough testing. It should have been heavily modified or scrapped it because of too much danger.
Although the accident was due to weight distribution which really just opened the door to other shady practices
They knew from the meager testing that this slide was dangerous, if not a complete death trap. If you have to add a “cage” to keep the ride from ejecting the passengers, that should have told somebody something.
Crazy how even testing the design in a game like Rollercoaster Tycoon would've made it more than clear it was terrible >>
It should have never been built in the first place. They were told it was ridiculously dangerous as a concept, but they built it anyway. The problem with that ride is the raft, on cresting the high hump, will be in one of three states - it's velocity is 'just right', 'too fast', or 'too slow'. "Just right is the ideal condition, the vehicle will behave as expected.... - this won't happen, because it'll never be perfect, the variables in water temperature, flow viscosity, surface friction, vehicle mass, rider mass, weight distribution, variances in wind speed, etc etc etc means it cannot possibly be predicted with enough accuracy to ever make it perfect - which means the vehicle will then go into one of the other two modes, either 'too slow', so it slides back down the wrong side of the hill, or 'too fast', which results in a potential disaster.
Yes, this ride had 'potential disaster' as one of the MAIN possible outcomes.
They built it anyway.
Really fits in there along with the infamous Action Park of New Jersey. Really hits it on lists like this.
I didn't realize that ride was only open for 180 days. As a teenager I rode that ride about 2 months before that incident happened. I was a string bean teenager and they loaded me into a sled for Verruckt with a larger lady. Their only safety idea which I even found odd as a teenager was that they would weigh everyone and then just make sure that each sled was within the right weight to go down the slide. I remember as we got towards to apex I was rising out of my seat because the front of the sled was anchored down and the light back end was rising. It was a super stomach churning experience but I figured they had engineered it to only rise so far and assumed it was perfectly safe. I never rode it again because that feeling was so unsettling. So crazy to see these stories about it now.
Dude I was like 75 lbs 🤣 and they through me on there never went back after that happened to that poor kid and his family
Margaritaville do be the Spirit Halloween of abandoned parks
I rode Verrückt in July 2015. I was there with my boyfriend at the time, who was visiting from Mexico and really wanted to ride the waterslide. There was a weight minimum that we barely cleared as he and I were paired with a young boy. By the time we got to the top, my hair had dried and without the water, we were at the weight minimum.
We definitely caught some air on the way down. It was a bit fun but also crazy and did not feel safe.
I still have a shot glass I got that day dust says, “I rode Verruckt. I AM INSANE”
I feel very lucky nothing went wrong that day. Thanks for covering this!!
"my boyfriend at the time" clearly something did go wrong at some point.
@@adamrandall5163 no he was great. i’m gay
I love the 2008 curse for these Abandoned places. Always comical to see that year and know nothing was going to go their way
2008 and now 2020 😅
It's usually depressing ngl.
The end of affordable housing
There are four years that seem to stand out as a complete restructuring period for the tourism industry
1973, 2001, 2008, and 2020
It's like knowing the Black Death's coming in any medieval game.
This video really downplays the horrific details of the accident. When the news broke, even the media was so stunned by it that they used coded language essentially meaning: "You don't want to know." Caleb was decapitated. The slide was literally covered in his blood while his two passengers, total strangers, finished the ride, trapped with his body in the raft. Verrückt stood over the site like a tombstone. A monument to greed, negligence, and hubris.
Internally decapitated. Important detail.
So, a monument to America itself?
@@geoffh1wrong. You people who keep saying that don’t understand physics or how witness statements even work.
@@geoffh1 Ok, let's talk about "important details". Please go find videos on this channel of the news coverage from the day of the accident. Helicopters hovering overhead clearly show the deep red stains on the slide. They also show TWO yellow tarps at the bottom of the slide. One tarp for the body, the other for the head. Also, the many witness accounts stating that they saw the boys severed head roll down the slide along with the blood and other goop.
I think he “downplays” because it’s a sensitive topic and this isn’t a true crime/horrific incident channel. I know the detail from other channels that talk about that sort of stuff (and why safety regulations really matter) and you can find out more there.
As someone who has spent most of my working life a water park lifeguard, the fact that they lobbied the state government to not have state safety checks is rather disturbing to me
And the ironic part
The kid thst died father was primarily the reason why, state rep
Scumbags. Only corrupt scumbags would agree to such a thing. But, they're politicians. If they're that bad at the state level, just think about how much worse it gets. If they're deemed good enough to enter the federal level. I guess that's why I don't have any respect for partisan politics, it's essentially different groups of people who are all trying to screw us over in exchange for their personal gain of power and financial wealth. Even though I'm in the United States, I would imagine that this comment about corrupt politicians is likely true politics exists, with MAYBE a rare exception here and there...maybe....
That’s Kansas for you.
I used to work here and the literal reason they built in ks is specifically so they could get around the regulations
Red State mentality. We don’t need no gub’mint regulatin’
I’m a Kansas Citian. I remember being excited that we were getting a Schlitterbahn. I’m familiar with them in Texas and thought it was great they were expanding. As stated in the video, the plans were extraordinary. So to see the final product was disheartening. It seemed like an afterthought. I heard on the radio that they were going to be on tv and they made it sound like a negative thing. I vividly remember watching it, thinking that I would never ride that ride ever. Seeing those rafts fly off was enough for me. It was blatantly obvious they didn’t know what they were doing and that they came to Kansas due to the lax regulations. They day Caleb passed, Schlitterbahn allowed lawmakers and their families free admission.
After Caleb’s untimely death, the water slide sat there as a reminder of what took place. It’s across from a popular shopping area and it’s hard to miss its presence against the horizon. There were rust stains present which many mistook as blood stains.
The prosecutors knew not to bring about the fact that the water slide was featured on the tv show and they did it anyway. Because of that, Caleb never received justice.
Thanks for the well informed video.
I went to this one so much as a kid I lived in Leavenworth I’m in Texas now and don’t know if there even is one I’ve never seen it lol but if there is I think I’ll just stick to the pool 😭 but I used to love this water park and I rode that slide it’s I remember when this happened and it made me sick to even think about it so I never went back
I rode Verrückt before the tragedy happened. The only time I had ever went to the park. My family was in KC for a family road trip and we had heard about the water park without knowing much about it and wanted to give it a shot. I was somewhere between 14 and 16 years old. We were just about to leave for the day and I wanted to make my mark and say I rode the ride. I rode it, and man it was fast. I remember not having the most amount of confidence once finally reach the top of the stairs. Lifeguards/workers didn’t seem to put the most amount of care into safety, as it seemed like they weren’t the most engaged/interested in the safety measures they had to have people follow. After hearing about the accident months later, it was scary to think I rode the ride that had taken a child’s life of one not much younger than me.
😮
Glad you made it thru safely!
I rode it to in middle school lived like an hour away from the park
My Son rode it before the tragedy too. Sad a kid lost their life. Test runs of that thing were scary enough.
Im from kansas city, and Schlitterbahn feels like such a fever dream. I went there once or twice while they were building verruckt and it seemed pretty nice and fun. The accident was traumatic for the whole community, and there was no way they could recover from it. It felt like we spent more time waiting for Schlitterbahn than we ever had it.
I'm a KC local and was in high school when this happened- I remember knowing several teenagers who worked there and witnessed it happen. Needless to say they were pretty traumatized from it and it shook the entire community. The park knew before even building it that it wasn't safe, and it never even passed safety testing appropriately. Total negligence and very sad :(
I work across the street from where Schlitterbahn once was. When they built the slide, you could see the tower from our dock, and we constantly made jokes and quips about how it was going to kill somebody.
When they began test runs, we literally watched the rafts fly off the slide, and at one point they were using weighted dummies as riders and we would watch them fly out of the boats as well (this was before the net was put in). I vowed never to ride that damn thing after watching that, and I’m def a coaster adrenaline junkie type. It was just too ominous for me to ever want to try it.
Living in Kansas City when this happened, it’s sad to see how all the events unfolded and eventually killed the park after so much anticipation of its opening. Such a tragic event that took place that day.
I was pretty surprised when they tried to keep the park open anyways.
Heartless investors.
Every time.
I did as well! I remember seeing Caleb’s face all over the news. It was truly heartbreaking. I was younger when he passed, I didn’t understand what happened. However, it touched my parents who had friends who had went to Shlitterban regularly. We prayed a lot during that time. It was very harrowing.
@@nok2102 Didn’t help the park that his father was at the time a state representative (now he's the Kansas Secretary of State) who put out legislation to prevent likes Verruct from ever being built in Kansas.
I lived east of legends about 3 miles. And passing by the slide everyday going to hs was crazy after the fact. And it's crazy they built this with worlds of fun/oceans of fun nearby
Oceans of fun could use the competition where as its not bad its not great. I remember being excited with the prospect of them stepping up their game with the new competitor. Aside from the tragic event the fact that Cedar fair owned oceans of fun is another reason they would have passed on buying it.
Kansas resident here. I used to celebrate my birthday at the park for years and on August 1st 2016 a week before the tragedy me and my buddies were at the park arguing if we should go on the Verrückt slide. I chickened out we chilled in the wavy lazy river all day and I’m glad I did. RIP caleb, he was so young and had his life taken from him on a day that was supposed to be fun. It was always grim driving past the decommissioned slide when it was still up. I’m glad they tore it down.
i was there july 31st that week too! 2 of my friends rode it. i also chickened out. really harrowing. first time we really realized how mortal we are, we were 13 or 14.
Margaritaville looking at abandoned parks: “it’s free real estate”
It’s like plastering a “HAKUNA MATATA” sign at the location of a national tragedy.
@@AndreaC_303were else whould you put a HAKUNA MATATA sign?
I'm Aussie, so what margarritavile typically builds on abandoned parks?
I worked at Schlitterbahn KC on the overnight security shift for 7 years till 2018 when they internally announced the park would close permanently. The day of the accident we were about to have our end of season party. That party was naturally canceled and I still remember driving in on my night off just an hour after the accident happened and learning about it from one of my fellow security officers. That place broke my heart twice. When the accident haooened, and then two years later when I learned the park would close. Six years later I still miss working there.
As a Kansas City local, I got to watch the slide slowly get built higher and higher. It was the talk of the town with if you would be brave enough to ride it or not. I finally got to go to the park one day and was very excited to ride it. Unfortunately at the time they were only taking riders with a premade reservation done days before. I watched people come down one after another disappointed I could ride. I saw on the news a few weeks later the news about the boy who was killed. Now I'm great full that I never took the chance.
When I was much younger and this park was still open, I had won two tickets to the park from my school and went with my dad. The visit is still vivid in my head. I can perfectly recall my father and I seeing that ride and his concern.
How could anyone with even an ounce of sense, look at that hill and think "yeah, that looks right"?
I’m a bit of a thrill seeker, and would have gone there incorrectly assuming it was all well engineered, and regulated, and had undergone massive safety checks. And, to be fair, far more people rode it WITHOUT being decapitated. I can’t blame the victim for seeing dozens of people safely exiting a ride and concluding it was safe to ride it.
Honestly, water parks seem do sketchy on safety. Wave pools, tube rides with lack of restraints, catching air. I personally had a group tube ride at a mojor park fold in half, causing my friend across from me to slam their head into me.
There was a water park in my city that had an infamous “Death Slide” that killed 3 people over the years, but all the deaths were from idiots not following the lifeguard’s instructions. The local teens loved the park for leaving the slide operational because it was a right of passage to go down that killer ride.
@@MarkRiverbank I was referring mainly to the people that paid for it, 'engineered' it, constructed it, rather than those who came and rode it. It doesn't take much to look at the profile of the hill compared to that drop and think it might be a bad idea.
Did you ever play Roller Coaster Tycoon? If the raft flies off the slide, just use the enclosed track for that section and things are gonna be fine. (sarcasm)
I still wonder why the inflated rafts explode when hitting the ground though..
very glad to see this covered especially as someone who grew up in west kck. i was only a little bit older than caleb when he died, and i was incredibly upset when i first heard about him. it was just heartbreaking
Seeing Schlitterbahn fall so far has been crazy. I used to be a hardcore Xtreme Waterparks fan, watched every single new episode. I always wanted to go to any of the Schlitterbahn parks and I was in awe when they announced Verruckt. Watching how it all went so so wrong, to the point that it is now the subject of an episode of Abandoned (which I've also been watching since probably the 5th or 6th episode)... it's so surreal.
RIP Caleb 🙏
I used to live in texas and went to the new Braunfels schlitterbahn in the 90s seeing this all just blows my mind, what happened?! Woah!!
Its so sad. I'm a Texas native and I loved Schlitterbahn. I moved back to texas after finishing college, and Ceder Fair has destroyed the Galveston location. Nearly half the rides were not operating and obvious cosmetic issues were everywhere. It made me nervous about what other upkeep was being neglected. I will really miss the Schlitterbahn of my childhood, but I'm never going back.
12:29 that massive bloodstain on the slide is so haunting. I can't imagine how traumatizing for all the guests and staff that witnessed it.
The kid was decapitated, some news footage shows the body
That's rust, not blood.
@@teebob21 that shit didnt rust after a single season
@teebob21 rust less than 6 months of being open???
@@johnna4487 Yep. That's what happens in the Midwest where the water has a ridiculously high iron content.
It’s now a Menards and Camping World. You could see the ride from the highway (quite a ways away) and it took awhile to get it taken down. It gave me the creeps every time I saw it.
One thing Jake didn't mention was that the court ordered the slide not be dismantled while the multiple civil and criminal cases were in progress, so it stood there, visible for miles around as a horrifying reminder of what happened, for more than two years after the acident.
@@jonathankleinow2073 that’s awful. It affected the entire community.
I live there too and while it was disturbing I definitely think it was the right call. It kept it in the public eye for the entire time and ensured actual change would happen
There’s a church in leawood Ks that has his baseball bat, cleats, and home plate from his home park, it was sad as hell when all this happened
The abrupt transition from the relatively somber intro to the breathless “WHATSUPGUYS” at 0:33 is just wonderful. I died laughing.
0:26 Unstable supports. They're too thin.
One important thing to note about rep Scott Schwab.
He supported a bill that capped personal injury compensation at 300k in Kansas. He and his family used a loop hole to sue the park under Texas law allowing them to seek more damages and were awarded millions. He has so far made no such overtures to turn over that law.
This whole situation reminds me of the whole Titan Sub situation where people were far more concerned with being seen as revolutionaries in their fields that they thought they were above safety and rules, and that tragedy would either be too impressed to hit them or they were just that clever to avert it.
Exactly this. Just by simply looking at it and knowing basic physics there is no way in hell I would get on it. If there are no fail safes, and something as simple as the wrong weight distribution could cause it to get airborne, then it wasn't a matter of if it would happen, but rather when. I also feel like there had to be some better solution to hold the nets in place than exposed metal poles. A lot of negligence went into that water slide.
Rich people get big egos. Anyone who tells them "no" doesn't get their money. So they're surrounded by enablers. That's how these things happen. These big shots have no humility. They actually believe they can do no wrong, that every comment they make is a pearl of wisdom and every joke they tell is funny.
The accident itself also reminds me of Russel Phillips' tragic 1995 NASCAR death, when he was exposed to the catch fence at full speed. In both cases, the safety nets did their job keeping the wayward vehicles inside the track, but at a terrible cost.
Human are often idiots. It's a shame when human hubris and arrogance says, "Physics? Engineering? Nah, we don't need no stinking physics or engineering! Hey! Y'all, watch this!" Then we know what happens when the laws of physics are ridiculed. Physics says, "Here. Hold my beer." It never ends well. Then engineers say, "We told you so."
@@NissanSkyline901 I was left wondering if there was some way to design interlocking rails for that hill to lock the raft in and prevent it from going airborne, but they sure didn't think of that, now did they...
Man, I’ve been waiting for a video of this quality about this park. I grew up in Missouri near Kansas City, so I grew up going to Cedar Fair’s Ocean’s of Fun. I loved the park, but when I finally made it out to Schlitterbahn I was really blown away by the park, between the circular wave pool, the water coaster and the long stretch of rapids. I genuinely loved the park, because it provided thrills that Oceans of Fun simply didn’t have.
Despite all of that, I was NOT sold on Verükt. I love me a good tall rollercoaster, but the idea of a water slide that tall was really off putting to me, so during our visit in the summer that it was open I waited at the bottom while the rest of my family rode it. Little did I know, that literally the next day, tragedy would strike. That ended up being my last visit to Schlitterbahn. It was a very fun park, so I will always miss it. Despite everything, it was very sad to see it all get demolished and rot away in the elements.
Growing up in KC, this place was so hyped up and aggressively expanding... unfortunately, the accident dampened public perception of the park. My family got us season passes up until the tragedy, and my mom warned us after that we would never be going back.
I rode Verruckt as a 12-year-old (only 2 years older than the victim), and it felt unsafe. The whole "aura" of the ride was based on going on it just to brag with your friends you survived. In the 3 times I rode it, the raft lifted up off the slide twice... and that's exactly how the kid died. It's unfortunate, this park was absolutely stunning, with a bright future ahead, and overall brought a much-needed sense of renewal in the Kansas side of KC. Everyone was excited for the expansion of the park, and excited to have another theme park in the area.
I hold the good memories close to my heart (such as the surfing attraction), but because of what happened I can really only look back and think about the "What If?". I think without this Schlitterbahn would've thrived considering how much our city grew.
This ride should have never been approved for opening,
It was not safe, it was not properly maintained, and it tragically took the life of a little boy.
I won tickets for a trip to the park as a child but I never dared even go on that ride, and regardless, my parents never allowed it, good on them
i remember visiting when the slide was still under construction they where about half way through setting up the support frames and had partially started on the slide itself, i remember it being higher than anything else at the park and a spotter for a crane or i don't remember a worker, said "Its going to be even taller than it is now, the tallest in the world"
@@noahrhodes1409 I remember that as well, I went in either 2013 or 2014, it was quite long ago so I don’t remember exactly which year, I saw the slide being built
I rode it twice in the same day... the line was nowhere near as long as the news hyped it up to be. Should've been a sign but I was also around 10-13, so I just figured "Heck yeah! One more time!".
Also a KC native ❤ glad you are safe and okay. Also glad they finally closed this disaster zone. That slide wasn’t their only problem at alllllllll. So many red flags at that place.
This was an episode of Abandoned, Bankrupt, and Cancelled all in one!
😂
@9:11 Anyone that has played Roller Coaster Tycoon is looking at those water slide blueprints in horror right now....
In RCT3: Soaked Expansion you can build an enclosed netted water slide like this one. You can also build hills with jets that push the cars up through the hill just like Verruckt. And guess what? Those rafts can absolutely fly off the slide lmao. But you already probably know this haha!
Still gonna do it though!
I literally just downloaded that for my phone recently lol. I’ve been so happy lol.
Seriously, my experience with RCT told me that was a bad design when they announced the slide's opening. (Also not a good design for a bobsled coaster either)
A very nice documentary of a very sad and tragic failed water park. Thank you for covering this.
I remember the day that the Verrückt accident heppened so vividly, it was just a boring slow day, and nobody in my family was doing anything. I just randomly proposed the idea to my mom that we should go ride the Verrückt because it was something that we had always considered visiting. To my surprise, she said yes but strangely enough we didn't go, we just continued lazing around which was very unusual for all of us.
We heard about the tragedy on the news later in the day...
I was only a couple years older than that kid, we wonder if we dodged a bullet.
We visited the park after it reopened but I've since moved to a different city. I didn't know the park shut down completely!
Another great and very interesting video Bright Sun! Love your content.
i'm also from the area and was only a few years older than caleb. before they announced on the news who he was, i remember i was so terrified that someone i knew could have been killed. when his family began to speak out, and his brother said he watched the whole thing happen (or something along those lines), as an older sibling i still remember feeling his pain. what a horrible accident to happen so close to home.
wow . . . all I can say. Perhaps Devine Intervention that you got a "yes" you can ride just hours from the tragedy. NYC here; many true examples from 9/11 also. One gentleman on an upper floor , whose office had 2 coffee pots he used everyday, got a feeling he should go to the lobby (9/11 8:30 am) for coffee,; everyone in his office died. .many many more; . . . . a gentlemen from Boston who had never missed or been late for a flight, found himself driving strangely and very slowly toward Logan I. Airport. He missed his flight; Flight 11.
It's basically the 9/11 of Kansas City.
I remember this day, my parents told me and my siblings that we were gonna go, I really wanted to go on that same ride, but we ended up staying home and watched the Olympics opening ceremony,after the ceremony every news station were talking about the incident. I was also 10 years old when this happened and for a week I always wondered if that would’ve been me.
"If I had a nickle every time abandoned attractions turned into margaritavilles, I'd have two nickles. It's not a lot but it's weird that it happened twice."
I’ll NEVER forget coming home from school that day and flipping on the news… there was *SOO* much hype around the ride. 😳
The usual disaster youtube channels i watch covered this accident.. but just the accident. I like your whole story of how the park started, and how it ended. Appreciate it!!
0:13 yoo that one might be too soon
Nah it’s perfect🤣
@@Xmtsiyrgmyou know that was a kid that died right ? you’re an awful person
I lived very close to this water park near The Legends Outlet Shopping Complex when the young boy died. I remember hearing just a massive amount of sirens in the area and then when we were watching the news later that night we saw the announcement of his death. It was very tragic and sad. I was glad the KS Rep (his father) was able to make some positive state-wide change out of such a heartbreaking event for his family.
Thank you for your thoughtful coverage of this, my husband and I love your channel! :)
In 2020 I moved to Kansas City, one week prior to the pandemic. I spent the next several months exploring Kansas Cityand one day I found the abandoned Schlitterbahn park. I walked out there looking for birds (yes, birdwatcher) and was met by a friendly security guard. Yes, the site was neglected, but the guard pointed out an active beaver dam, and said he'd daily seen dozens of animals enjoying the de facto wildlive reserve it became. Months later, I returned but the beaver dam was destroyed along with much else. By this time, however, I was familiar with the backstory of the park; I hope the park's removal helps those affected by the tragedy. Like many abandoned places, it seemed oddly haunted, a full-size pirate ship silent in the sun, the real paddleboats creaking in the water. It still had a touch of magic, though, but the sheer arrogance and stupidity of the Verruckt engineers destroyed that park. It needed to go.
I worked at Target near the Legends. And when I saw it being built and then saw the test runs on the news for the slides, I just knew something was going to happen.
Sure enough, that day I worked and it happened.
Howdy Bright Sun Films,
I am a peer tutor for a handful of engineering classes at my college and every now and then the professor lets me take over the lecture if I have a good idea. I have used your and some other coastertubers videos to explain why the processes used in engineering are important. I have learned a lot from these videos about how engineers should work on their projects and I want to share that with the students. Thank you for your informational videos, I don't know if the students will ever remember these videos, but the lessons they learned will stick forever.
Instantly knew what this was when I saw the thumbnail. It makes so much sense now that it was made for a TV show
I've watched some other stuff about Schlitterbahn Kansas, and it really strikes me as the quintessential American story for the late 20th - 21st century.
Some family makes a good business decision in the 80s and gets some money from it. The low interest rates of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s meant that they could expand said business while going more and more into debt, never paying it off. Nobody who knows what they're doing is in charge. Their dumbass son takes on more and more of a role in the company. 2008 hits and suddenly nobody can borrow money anymore, and it becomes obvious just how much things aren't working. The family gets more desperate to keep the money flowing and takes brazen steps to do so. Eventually a bunch of innocent people die or get hurt because nobody knows what they're doing. Nobody gets blamed for it, and the company gets sold off to d̶i̶s̶n̶e̶y̶ cedar fair
I lived in Kansas City when this happened, and remember the sense of community that united everyone, and how so many people came together to mourn. Another thing i remember is how many times i drove past the park, and just how ominous it was seeing the tall spire looming in the air after the accident
I went a few times. You definitely noticed the construction on the outside, but the inside of the park didn't feel barren or anything. The lazy river was really nice and the slides that I got to do were a lot of fun. I didn't end up doing verrukt in the end (probably for the best), but I had mostly seen the construction and barren areas as "Oh cool they are gonna keep adding more stuff" rather than "Oh man, look at how little is here". We also have Worlds/Oceans of fun here in KC, and overall I remember having more fun here than at Oceans of fun despite them not reaching the grand original goals.
Tragic event for us who live in Kansas City and Kansas City, Kansas. I live in KCK and grew up here.I live 10 minutes away from the site.I will never forget it.None of us here will.💔💔
I went to highschool with the grade that was in Calebs class. Everyone only had good things to say about him and i met his family, genuinely the sweetest people ever.
I went on Verruckt once. The line was 3 hours long. Both thrilling and scary knowing that could've been me.
Same here, I rode it a couple of times with my younger brother and it's crazy to think about.
not that likely, it mainly happened because the kid was improperly seated in the ride by the attendant who was not doing their job that day, there were two larger women on the ride with him and he was seated in the front instead of in between them in the middle and the uneven weight distribution made him fly up in the air and get killed, of course the gap shouldn't have been there in the first place and why they used metal netting instead of mesh is beyond me.
@@jadedheartsz the metal parts that killed Schwab were arches that the netting hung from.
@@HPSmugscraft I heard there was a gap between them that caused him to get killed. There should not have been metal arches though.
@@jadedheartsz look at 0:27
17:58 yeaaaah.... something else would've also prevented them from opening for the 2020 season even if they didn't go out of business 💀💀💀
One of my friends lives in Kansas City with his wife and they confirmed the sad events since they used to live near the water park. Let’s just say I’m glad you kept the sad details to a minimum. Very sad what happened to that kid.
Good video man and ty again for what you do man. Keep the fantastic content coming please.
Seeing the abandoned kids pirate ship area and then remembering me and my siblings playing tag on it is a incredibly weird feeling.... I still vividly remember hearing the news about that poor kid
The moment Jake mentions the year 2008, you know exactly what’s going to happen
I'm from San Antonio Texas and when I was younger I used to got to the New Braunfels location often. I also have family in KC and would go visit them every summer and would go to the KC park before it was abandoned. I remember being scared of the tall water slide, since you could see it from the nearby highway when passing by. I remember the summer when the tragedy happened, which occurred a few weeks before. We drove by the water park and my grandmother was telling me a story that shook me to my core. Someone around my age died while at a waterpark. Which honestly is still why I get scared when riding anything steep even when its perfectly safe. I kind of forgotten about Schlitterbahn until this video, use to be fun when I was younger. Definitely a core memory of my childhood.
I've been obsessed with this story and am so excited to watch this. Thank you for your service, Jake!
Right across the interstate from the former Schlitterbahn site is a massive abandoned office complex, formerly housing the HQ for Cerner before they were bought out by Oracle and moved to Bannister Mall.
the Verrückt made action park's cannonball slide look extremely tame in comparison.
But both had an issue in common designing a water slide like a roller coaster. Here’s a basic engineering tip water slides are not roller coasters.
The loop slide at action Park was rarely open, from what I understand.
I live near the original Schlitterbaun in New Braunfels, Texas. It’s unlike any other water park out there. Built into the hills, it sits along the Comal river and has a really unique look and feel. It really cannot be replicated, especially on a flat piece of land. I’m really surprised they even tried.
As a Kansas citian and a big fan of this channel I've been waiting sooo long for this video!
Lived in KC all my life. Never went to Schliterbahns one time because it was in the middle of nowhere Kansas, whereas the competing waterpark, Oceans of Fun, was closer to the action and had an amusement park attatched.
physically gasped at the thumbnail. Exicted to watch this
Isn’t the only way to gasp physically?
I’m metaphorically gasping 😂
ME TOO, my jaw dropped and I covered my mouth because I knew what was coming...
@@TestingTesting-tl7pzI’m telepathically gasping
@@SafwaanMohammd I think I heard it!
These videos are truly incredible! So much information in one video! I went here a handful of times as a kid. I had no idea about the issues or the scale at which they wanted to build but even as a kid wanting to enjoy a summer day it was very apparent that it was just unfinished. Strange walkways to get to the pools with not much around. I never did ride the big slide.
I can't wait to see what you do to celebrate the 100th episode of your "Abandoned" series.
You always know just the right amount of details to put in the video. Completely perfect. Somebody should hire you and give you your own TV show. Another wonderful addition to the abandoned series. Thank you for posting.
I rode the Verrukt in summer 2014, right after opening. I was then working out in Idaho in the summer of 2016 and was SHOCKED when I got the news that someone died on the slide. My buddy was working at the waterpark that summer, and has told me horror stories of seeing the body and the blood running down the slide. Very sad… RIP.
I heard his severed head hit one of the girls he was on the ride with and it broke her jaw.
@@joanna7350that’s a hot take. Please don’t spread rumors.
I grew up in the KC area (Shawnee to be exact) and I remember the park from its inception and construction, to it's opening and quick demise. I even remember the Verrückt waterslide was featured in a Travel Channel show the summer it opened. I never even visited the park but always wanted to, at least until the Verrückt incident...
Oh man I remember this.. man. Such a tragic story.
The OG Schlitterbahn is still an amazing park. A mix of a diy feel mixed with modern day rides. Highly recommend
I rode this ride 2 weeks before the accident, the slide structure and tube "seat belt" did not seem safe at all but I learned about the accident and I felt so bad for the kid and I felt really lucky.
I almost drowned in their lazy river thing when I was 10 or so. You were supposed to use a tube but it was poorly enforced. I slipped out of mine and got trapped underneath of someone else’s tube as it was extremely crowded. Almost lost consciousness and I have been terrified of being help underwater since. As for Caleb, I actually know one of his close childhood friends through college and the incident affected him greatly.
I remember going here as a kid, loved the wave pool. For years afterwards, we'd occasionally pass by the abandoned park on the highway, and the tower and slide were visible for miles.
i grew up in austin and used to visit the New Braunfels park all the time. i have so many great memories at that park. it’s sad that the kansas city park was a failure and especially sad for the family of the child who died. :(
All I knew of this place was "that waterslide that decapitated a kid", so thank you for giving me more background on the site!
600 kids a year are pedestrians killed by cars. Are we too tough on places that give kids somewhere else to play besides the streets?
@@ydneHow to demonstrate you do not understand how statistics work, but more than that, is your argument... are you arguing that pedestrian deaths are acceptable? I can counter that Kansas was too lax on standards, and that our pedestrian deaths owe much in part to poorly designed infrastructure, improperly enforced speed limits in areas that see heavy foot traffic, and drivers not receiving enough punishment when their negligence leads to deaths of others.
@@n8pls543 Your interpretation and rudeness make me think you live standing on your head.
@@ydne I wonder how many more children would've died had it stayed open...
@@ydne What the actual hell are you trying to say with your comment?? Genuinely confused as to why you would say such a ridiculous statement under a comment that really has nothing to do with whatever point you're attempting to make.
I remember when that accident happened. I was a kid, and my parents were going to bring us to the park to go on that ride. The only reason we didn't go is cause me and my older sister had gotten really sick and were stuck at home. To this day they refuse to go to any waterpark that isn't Oceans of Fun in Kansas City.
I’m still scared of water rides so when I go to oceans of fun I stay in the lazy river or the wave pool
I feel so dumb that I didn't realize Schlitterbahn KC closed. My Dad works in the amusement industry here in Texas and a lot of the people who've worked at Schlitterbahn are family friends of ours. He had a really hard time grappling with the cognitive dissonance that something that some of his friends worked on resulted in SUCH a horrific accident so I just have really never talked to him about it, so I guess I never heard that news that it closed. Crazy. The original Schlitterbahn park here in Texas is really lovely and a completely unique place for anyone who's wondering. Totally worth visiting, there's really no other waterpark like it.
It’s NOT your dads or his work friends faults!! (Lifetime KCMO resident here) I was in high school when this happened. This ride was doomed before it opened! They were just trying to build the biggest and craziest thing to drum up attention for the new park! We ALL wanted to go to the new park to ride it! (Also something that most videos don’t seem to mention) part of the reason for Caleb’s decapitation was the ride operators (teenagers) hadn’t balanced the weight in the raft correctly so Caleb was in the wrong spot in the tube, leading to his head popping up and hitting the bar holding the (questionable) netting in place around the side…
My family spent a week at the New Braunfels Schlitterbahn a few months ago and we had such a good time. We're going back next summer and I can't wait!
The original is one of my favorite places to go & that’s coming from someone who hates amusement parks
I rode the verrukt…probably the dumbest thing I ever did. Rode it with my son and my brother in law…we were within the weight requirement and we made it down but was shocked to see the only thing holding you in the raft was a Velcro strap across your waist and one over your shoulder but was unhooked at the bottom. I remember I didn’t even scream going down because i was in utter shock…I just remember thinking “oh god I’m gonna die and this stupid”. It made my decision to ride it on that Saturday worse because the day after because that Sunday the little boy died on it.
I went to Schlitterbahn countless times when it the first couple years it was opened. It was really cool to see it grow and see all of those (at the time) new waterslides go up. I had no idea about the criminal cases after the accident on Verruckt. Awesome video!
So I was born and raised in Kansas, and I remember seeing all of this in the news about this. And I remember seeing the water park all the time, being able to see the super high water slide, then, as tragedy stuck, I remember asking my dad what happened and hearing about it at the age of 10, now years later, I’m watching a video about this water park i remember seeing. It’s crazy how the world works. This was such a sad story and is terrible for the family, like imagine having to watch you’re 10 year old brother get decapitated. I remember the fall out for all this, gosh this makes me think because it’s so sad. Gosh.
I grew up in KCK and remember whispers of Schlitterbahn coming to the area back in 2001. We laughed at how dumb of an idea it was, and I remember my parents saying, “This is gonna end badly.” And sure enough, it did.
I live in KC and remember taking the stairs at work to get in better shape to ride Verrückt. Everyone I knew were either on the side of really wanting to go, and the others said no way not a chance. When the accident happened, luckily someone stopped the mother from running to the scene and basically telling her you do not want to go there. It was so sad, especially having to keep the ride up until all the court cases had been completed.
The only thing not mentioned in regard to the horrific accident was that the company had heavily lobbied the Kansas state legislature against heavier safety regulations. As part of that effort, on that particular day, members of the legislature and their families were admitted for free. Otherwise, it’s plausible that this legislator and his family would not have been at the park on that day.
And the accident was truly horrific, more than the video relates. Essentially the boy’s neck vertebrae was completely, but internally severed. It was essentially what is called an internal decapitation.
The fact that the two designers had zero engineering training should have set off alarm bells. There are reasons why corporations need to be regulated. It’s sad that such a preventable tragedy was what it took for the state of Kansas to alter its laissez-faire approach to safety regulation of amusement parks.
Not to mention the woman directly behind him had her jaw broken and the woman at the back received a bone fracture on her face - both of which I can only imagine occurred when hit in the face at 60mph with a decapitated head. I cannot imagine the trauma they must feel to this day.
Had to scroll way too far down to find this comment. It is incomprehensible to me that individuals with zero background in engineering are allowed to open a waterpark
@@dollarstorevodkawhen people say that the “government screws everything up and can’t manage anything” and “government isn’t the solution but the problem”remember your comment left here.
@@samfeldman1508 you forgot without the government funding the park wouldn't have been built in the first place 😅
@@wolfsmith Hmmmm. I guess I missed that part? 🙄🙄. I guess they owed millions to their creditors because the government built the park? Make it make sense?
My family went to the water park and rode the Verruckt. The place looked rundown, with areas that had once been under construction but now with just building materials laying around, bleaching out in the sun. It was evident the park wasn't doing well. The Verruckt ride itself looked "slapdash", with crudely molded seats stuck in the rafts, and Velcro shoulder straps that certainly wouldn't hold you in an accident. It was a thrilling ride, with a near vertical drop and a high G pull going up the hill. Sorry it had to end with a tragedy.
I remember watching the Extreme Waterparks special of that waterside being bulit. At that time, I knew that nothing good could come out of it being bulit and unfortunately I was right. They had no business buliding that ride and RIP Caleb
Thank you for covering the full development history of these grifters and the park.
I grew up in KCK and it was clear from the beginning this was a fly by night project that would never be fully realized.
The child's death was predictable. We discussed how badly managed and run in open council meetings at the time.
Some even pressed the Unified Govt of KCK and the state to pull the operational liscences long before the accident.
I was at this park two weeks before the incident. It was the jankiest theme park I'd ever been at. The slide shook when we went up it and the velcro literally rolled off at the end of the ride. Not to mention the damn lazy river had concrete rocks in it. What were they thinking? We actually left after a few hours because of how sckechy it all was.
sounds like it was worse then Action Park
Even before Verruckt, the park felt half-baked and unfinished. They should have built a broader variety of slides.
Though I don't remember the water looking that gross IRL.
@@HPSmugscraft The 'wave rider' surf simulator had junk all over mat where you rode on water jets. It was not a well managed park at all.
@@HPSmugscraftyeah i would have just packed up and went to Oceans of Fun instead. Was much more safe and clean from what I remember. Don't know how they are now but I enjoyed both it and Worlds of Fun quite a bit. And they seemed to keep the place clean and organized.
my siblings and i always used to ask our parents if we could go to schlitterbahn! everyone from school always had birthday parties either there or at great wolf lodge like right across the street. my dad would always suggest going to schlitterbahn, but my mom thought it looked too run down, and so we never went. yes, at the time we'd always be annoyed, but i'm convinced some moms have a sixth sense about these things.
I remember when this happened, it honestly shocked and horrofied all of kc. My family and i were actually planning on going to the park right before this had happened but our plans got cancelled so we didnt end up going.
He didn't say this in the video because of RUclips guidelines, but the kid was actually decapitated.
Wasn’t the son a congressman’s son?
@@monsG165yes I believe so
@@monsG165yes
@@monsG165 Kansas state congressman. I feel so horrible for Caleb and his family.
I grew up just on the other side of the border in Kansas City, Missouri, just twenty-five minutes from Schlitterbahn. We passed it every week going to visit my grandparents who lived a several blocks down the street from the park. We would always pass the entrance and see those tall sandcastle towers and ask our parents "Can we go there next summer?" This was of course always met with "Maybe. We'll see." The rafts going down the famous slide made a sound so loud that it could be heard from the road if you passed at the right time. We all couldn't believe it when we heard the news that a little boy had been decapitated while going down. What happened is so horribly sad. A family went home that day with one fewer family member in the back seat. It should've NEVER happened.
I loved going here as a kid and local of KCMO. It was such a shame and a sad day when that happened. It eventually ended what was almost objectively the best waterpark in Kansas and Missouri combined. I still have fond memories of going there and having disney's local radio station being hosted live, the lazy river going all over the park, and the some of the slides and pools being mainly accessible from the river. And the massive sky swing that was there before they started on Verrückt.
I cant imagine being the designers of that coaster right now. Even 8 years later, they will forever be known as "the guys who designed a rollercoaster that decapitated a kid"
I’m a native Texan, and so damn old I would go to the original Schlitterbahm when it was 2 water slides, a “wave” pool, and a zip line across the pool. That was kind of it. To know how it started, and learn how it kind of went… Jake, proud to support your work on Patron. Mega-blaster totally sounds like the name of a fully loaded convention store foot long hotdog that was definitely going to rip through your colon…
Never fails to put out the BEST abandoned videos on YT!!
The Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels was the best growing up in the 80s and 90s in San Antonio. Practically lived there every summer and worked there in the late 80s for 3 summers.
Nothing better than Schlitterbahn in the 80s and 90s!!! I miss it!
I remember when that water slide was first built. Everyone you talked to was very weary of it as it looked very unsafe. We were all shocked when the news came out.