At nearly 169 feet tall, Verrückt was taller than Niagara Falls. Riders flew down the world's tallest water slide at 70 miles per hour, challenging the laws ...
Extremely preventable if not for classic :ancap-good: attitude
Former Schlitterbahn worker. I worked at another location years after this, but thought I could provide some insight.
Schlitterbahn is almost entirely reliant on minimum wage teenage workers. Work hours could get pretty long. Most shifts were double shifts, about 13-14 hours long. It was pretty much always over 40 hours a week. One summer we had an especially bad manager and got over 70 hours in one week. During orientation, we were told we didn't need to be paid extra for overtime because we were all seasonal workers. I'm not sure if that's true. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't actually know. There were constant rumors of wage theft. I only know directly of one incident, caused mainly by lazyness, which they did eventually fix after everyone complained for months. As a result of that, I actually had managers telling me not to come back for another summer.
I talked to someone who had worked in the gift shops during this incident. Most Schlitterbahn merchandise is just generic garbage. I've seen a lot of it in gift shops in Mexico. Sometimes the only thing identifying it as Schlitterbahn souvineer is a literal sticker or piece of tape with the name printed on it. There are some Schlitterbahn specific stuff, like T-shirts and picture frames. However, these are not park-specific. This meant that even though they were at a different Schlitterbahn park, they had merchandise depicting the Kansas City slide that had just killed someone. So they had to go through the store and remove that stuff.
Given the standards of professionalism, I'm honestly not suprised this type of thing happened. Luckily we didn't have anything quite this dangerous, but I'm not sure why they trust teenagers to enforce rules meant to save people's lives. I suppose that's every waterpark though.
They also have a lady who's job is to monitor every mention on Schlitterbahn anywhere on the internet. Apparently they have a software able to monitor the entire internet and detect any mention of their name? They may have made that up. If not: Hello lady! I forgot your name.
Disclaimer: they apparently got bought out after I left, so some of this may have changed.
I remember hearing about it when it happened, but I figured it was sort of a freak engineering accident from a flawed design that slipped through the cracks. Obviously it was just a backyard waterslide project with a budget which is terrifying. It's also another case of libertarians creating their ideal environment which then teaches them why regulations exist in the first place (also see: Bitcoin).
but I’m not sure why they trust teenagers to enforce rules meant to save people’s lives.
They don't "trust" the teenagers per se. They just did the math that the savings in wages by hiring teens who don't have families to support (and presumably willing to work for less) more than offsets the potential costs of more lawsuits. Or just that the lower wages are "real" while a lawsuit is only a potential expense.
Former Schlitterbahn worker. I worked at another location years after this, but thought I could provide some insight.
Schlitterbahn is almost entirely reliant on minimum wage teenage workers. Work hours could get pretty long. Most shifts were double shifts, about 13-14 hours long. It was pretty much always over 40 hours a week. One summer we had an especially bad manager and got over 70 hours in one week. During orientation, we were told we didn't need to be paid extra for overtime because we were all seasonal workers. I'm not sure if that's true. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't actually know. There were constant rumors of wage theft. I only know directly of one incident, caused mainly by lazyness, which they did eventually fix after everyone complained for months. As a result of that, I actually had managers telling me not to come back for another summer.
I talked to someone who had worked in the gift shops during this incident. Most Schlitterbahn merchandise is just generic garbage. I've seen a lot of it in gift shops in Mexico. Sometimes the only thing identifying it as Schlitterbahn souvineer is a literal sticker or piece of tape with the name printed on it. There are some Schlitterbahn specific stuff, like T-shirts and picture frames. However, these are not park-specific. This meant that even though they were at a different Schlitterbahn park, they had merchandise depicting the Kansas City slide that had just killed someone. So they had to go through the store and remove that stuff.
Given the standards of professionalism, I'm honestly not suprised this type of thing happened. Luckily we didn't have anything quite this dangerous, but I'm not sure why they trust teenagers to enforce rules meant to save people's lives. I suppose that's every waterpark though.
They also have a lady who's job is to monitor every mention on Schlitterbahn anywhere on the internet. Apparently they have a software able to monitor the entire internet and detect any mention of their name? They may have made that up. If not: Hello lady! I forgot your name.
Disclaimer: they apparently got bought out after I left, so some of this may have changed.
I remember hearing about it when it happened, but I figured it was sort of a freak engineering accident from a flawed design that slipped through the cracks. Obviously it was just a backyard waterslide project with a budget which is terrifying. It's also another case of libertarians creating their ideal environment which then teaches them why regulations exist in the first place (also see: Bitcoin).
They don't "trust" the teenagers per se. They just did the math that the savings in wages by hiring teens who don't have families to support (and presumably willing to work for less) more than offsets the potential costs of more lawsuits. Or just that the lower wages are "real" while a lawsuit is only a potential expense.