The Most INSANE Water Slide & Theme Park Deaths Ever

Name: The Most INSANE Water Slide & Theme Park Deaths Ever
Uploaded: 2026-09-15T12:10:09+00:00
Duration: 49 min 55 s
Channel: Mr. Paint

00:00The safety net. On the 7th of August 2016, 10-year-old Caleb Thomas Schwab, son of Kansas

00:07State Representative Scott Schwab, rode Verruckt at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City

00:12during a special day for state lawmakers and their families. Verruckt was German for insane,

00:19marketed as the world's tallest waterslide at about 168 feet, and Caleb sat in the front of

00:25a three-person raft with two adult women behind him. Riders climbed 264 steps to reach the top.

00:32The raft cleared the near-vertical first drop, then hit the second hump. Investigators say the

00:38design never accounted for the extreme speeds and combined weights, and the raft launched off the

00:43flume and went airborne. That safety structure became the killer. As the raft left the slide,

00:49Caleb's head and neck struck one of the metal hoops. Police initially described the injury as

00:54a fatal neck injury, and subsequent investigations and reporting indicated that the metal support

01:01hoop struck Caleb's neck and effectively decapitated him. The two women riding behind

01:06Caleb were injured. One suffered a broken jaw, and the other sustained a facial bone fracture

01:11and needed stitches. Prosecutors said Schlitterbahn used crude trial-and-error methods instead of proper

01:18engineering calculations, and that Verruckt had caused more than a dozen documented injuries

01:23before Caleb's ride. After Caleb's death, Schlitterbahn announced in November 2016 that Verruckt would be

01:29permanently closed and removed from the tower, and news reports state the Schwab family received

01:35nearly $20 million in legal settlements with multiple parties. Clogging. Quimby Galati, a 17-year-old

01:44senior from Napa High School, was at Waterworld USA in Concord, California, on the 2nd of June 1997,

01:51on a graduation trip with hundreds of classmates. The Banzai Pipeline was a three-story fiberglass

01:57tube slide built for single riders, one at a time. Napa seniors had a year-end tradition of trying to

02:03clog it packing as many bodies into the tube as they could to set a school record.

02:08Approximately 33 students crowded onto the Banzai Pipeline slide at once, far exceeding its design

02:13for single riders. Witnesses said they ignored an attendance order to go one at a time.

02:18The Consumer Product Safety Commission later estimated that the crowd created a load of

02:23roughly 5,000 to 6,000 pounds, about four times what the slide had been designed to safely support.

02:29A single bolt failed at a flange joint. That failure pulled the remaining bolts through the

02:34fiberglass like a zipper, and a 20-foot section of tube sheared away, roughly 30 to 40 feet above

02:40the ground. Witnesses described bodies falling out of the sky onto concrete, wood supports,

02:45and landscaping. Quimby was ejected in the collapse. The coroner's office reported a crushed chest.

02:52Later reporting cited a skull fracture and internal trauma. She died within hours.

02:5732 people were injured in the collapse, according to officials.

03:01A $10 part. On the night of the 9th of June, 1991, around 9 p.m., 21-year-old Timothy

03:10Binning was

03:11standing at a shallow decorative pond near the beer garden at Kings Island near Mason, Ohio.

03:18It wasn't a ride pool, just a landscaped pond with submerged aerator pumps to circulate the water

03:24and control algae. One of those pumps had faulty grounding, and it was leaking electricity into the

03:30water. There was no ground fault circuit interrupter on the circuit, a safety device that cost about $10

03:36and would have cut the power the instant current leaked. Binning was splashing at the water when

03:41the shock hit him, dropping him unconscious into the pond. Then came the rescue. William Haithcote,

03:48a 20-year-old visitor, Daryl Robertson, a 20-year-old Kings Island security guard, went in too.

03:54The moment they entered the electrified water, both were caught in the current. Investigators

03:59determined that William Haithcote died from electrocution in the pond, while Daryl Robertson

04:04was knocked unconscious by the electrical current and subsequently drowned. Both men were transported

04:10to University Hospital in Cincinnati, where they were pronounced dead. Binning survived with burns.

04:16OSHA cited Kings Island for seven safety violations, including improper grounding, lack of ground fault

04:22circuit protection, and inadequate railings, and imposed fines totaling $23,500. A federal official said

04:32the $10 device would have prevented both deaths, 93 feet. A 14-year-old boy was swimming on the 16th

04:39of

04:39August 1985 at a public pool facility in Ogden, Utah, that included a water slide, along with his

04:46younger brother and two friends. They weren't on the slide. They were playing in one of the receiving

04:51pools at the bottom, a splash basin only four feet deep. The pool bottom had three submerged drain pipes

04:58feeding the recirculation system, and the middle one was uncovered. The boy was hanging onto the edge of

05:04the pool with his hands, his feet dangling directly over that open drain opening. He let go. The CDC report

05:12states that the instant he released the edge, he disappeared into the pipe. The pump suction pulled his

05:17whole body through the uncovered intake, and there was no grate, no anti-entrapment cover, nothing to stop it.

05:23The suction carried him 93 feet horizontally through the recirculation line before he lodged at a 90-degree

05:30vertical bend inside the pump house. Rescuers located and removed him from the pipe in approximately 15

05:37minutes. Resuscitation failed. The autopsy ruled the cause of death drowning. The case became a landmark

05:44in pool safety literature, a gap in the tube. Davi Lucas de Miranda, an eight-year-old from Consuljero

05:51Lafayette in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was visiting de Roma Aqua Park in Caldas Novas with his father and

05:57baby brother on February 13, 2022. The attraction was the volcano, four enclosed tube slides emerging

06:05from a volcano-themed tower. The volcano was closed and under maintenance. Three of its four tubes had

06:12sections physically removed for repairs, leaving open gaps mid-course. It should have been sealed off,

06:18but investigators found the barrier at the base of the stairs had been removed on the park manager's

06:23orders. One gate reportedly had only a piece of tape across it. After a trip to the bathroom, Davi ran

06:31off alone, passed the poor isolation, climbed the tower, and entered a tube. He slid down until he

06:37reached a section where the tube had been removed and fell from the slide structure, dropping around 15

06:43meters and striking the supporting scaffolding before landing near a shallow pool. He was

06:49rescued alive and airlifted to a hospital in Goyenia, but went into cardiac arrest and died that day.

06:55Forensic examiners confirmed he did not drown the trauma, came from the fall and impacts.

07:00An inch or two, Kostadin Yankov, a 19-year-old Bulgarian biochemistry student at Oxford, took part in an

07:08extreme sports event on the 24th of November, 2002, at Middlemore Water Park near Bridgewater,

07:15Somerset. The attraction sat on land beside the water park, a replica medieval trebuchet,

07:20a human catapult built to fling strapped-in riders through the air into a suspended safety net about 100

07:26feet away. The machine had a history. In 1999, a 44-year-old woman fractured her pelvis, being

07:34fired from it. On this day, about 20 club members lined up, and Yankov was the sixth to be launched.

07:40He was strapped into a harness on the trebuchet's arm and launched through the air toward a safety net,

07:46suspended some distance away. He didn't fly far enough. The organizer said Yankov missed the net by

07:53an inch or two, clearing the trajectory short and hitting the edge and the ground instead.

07:57The net itself never failed, he simply never reached it. He was airlifted to Frenchay Hospital

08:03in Bristol, where he died from multiple injuries. Two organizers, David Aitkenhead and Richard Wicks,

08:09were charged with manslaughter. At Bristol Crown Court, the judge cleared both men. The court found the

08:15device had worked as designed, and no specific act amounted to criminal negligence. No one was convicted.

08:21The boulder. George Larson Jr., 19, rode the Alpine Slide at Action Park in Vernon Township,

08:28New Jersey, on July 8, 1980. The slide was a gravity ride. Small wheeled carts with a handbrake

08:36sent down a long concrete track cut into a steep hillside. The ride was already notorious. State

08:42records later logged 26 head injuries and 14 fractures on it in a single 1984 to 1985 stretch.

08:50Larson started down the concrete chute. As he descended, Larson's cart left the concrete track,

08:56and he was thrown from the sled down the hillside, tumbling about 25 feet down the embankment head

09:02first. Then came the boulder. He struck his head on a rock formation that regulators had previously told

09:08the park to remove. Accounts describe a crushed skull. He was rushed to the hospital, lapsed into a coma,

09:15and died eight days later, on the 16th of July, 1980, of catastrophic head trauma. It was Action

09:24Park's first ride death.

09:30The Christmas Eve Catastrophe

09:34Okay, so for the first story, we rewind back to 1998. Christmas Eve, 6 p.m. at Disneyland in Anaheim,

09:42California to be exact. The sailing ship Columbia, a massive multi-ton replica of an 18th century vessel,

09:50was docking after its final voyage of the day. On the dock, 33-year-old Luanne Fee Dawson was waiting

09:58with

09:58his wife, ready to continue their holiday celebration. A cast member on the dock grabbed the mooring rope

10:05to secure the ship, wrapping it around a heavy, cast iron cleat bolted into the dock. But the cast

10:12member pulled too hard. The metal cleat, weakened by years of corrosion and inadequate maintenance,

10:19sheared off its bolts. It became a projectile. The eight-inch piece of cast iron flew through the air at

10:27high speed, striking Luanne Dawson directly in the head. The impact was so severe that it caused

10:34massive blunt force trauma, crushing his skull and torso. He was killed instantly, collapsing in front

10:41of his wife. Bro, if one hair on my head knew that a piece of the dock was about to

10:48go airborne,

10:48I'd be in another zip code. But the horror wasn't over. The same metal cleat ricocheted off Luanne and

10:56struck his wife in the face, shattering her cheekbones, nose, and eye socket, causing permanent

11:02facial disfigurement. The cast member who had pulled the rope was also injured by the flying debris.

11:09Three victims from a single catastrophic failure. Children were crying. Parents were covering their

11:15eyes. The ship just sat there, motionless, as paramedics worked on the victims.

11:21An investigation by OSHA later revealed that Disney's maintenance and safety procedures were

11:27woefully inadequate. The bolts on the cleat were corroded, and the docking procedures were improper.

11:33The Dawson family filed a wrongful death lawsuit, detailing Luanne's instant death, his wife's

11:39permanent disfigurement, and the emotional trauma of it all. Disney, facing a mountain of evidence of their

11:46own negligence, settled for an undisclosed but undoubtedly massive sum. The incident forced a

11:53complete overhaul of the park's safety protocols. All the dock cleats were replaced, and docking

12:00procedures were completely rewritten. But for the Dawson family, the damage was done. Luanne's wife would

12:07spend years undergoing reconstructive surgery, a permanent, painful reminder of the day the

12:13happiest place on earth became the site of a Christmas Eve tragedy.

12:20The Matterhorn's second victim.

12:22Alright, next up we're heading to a Disneyland classic, the Matterhorn Bobsleds.

12:28It's a high-speed coaster that sends you careening through the icy caverns of a man-made mountain.

12:33On June 3, 1984, 48-year-old Dolly Young was on that ride with her family.

12:40At some point during the ride's sharp turns and sudden drops, she was ejected from her bobsled.

12:46Dolly landed on the track, likely dazed and injured. But she had no time to react.

12:51The bobsled directly behind her, traveling at nearly 30 miles per hour, struck her with incredible force.

12:59The impact crushed her skull and torso, killing her instantly.

13:04But the horror didn't end there. The bobsled that hit her became trapped on top of her body,

13:10pinning her to the track. The ride's safety system kicked in, stopping every bobsled in the mountain,

13:16leaving the passengers in the car that struck her sitting directly above her crushed remains.

13:22Rescue crews had to evacuate the entire ride before they could even get to Dolly.

13:27They had to carefully lift the bobsled off her body before she could be pronounced dead.

13:32The incident was a horrifying echo of a death that had happened 20 years earlier,

13:37in 1964, when a 15-year-old boy named Mark Maples was also ejected from the ride and killed.

13:45The fact that it took two deaths two decades apart for Disney to finally install adequate safety

13:50restraints on the Matterhorn is just insane. The image of a bobsled stopped in the dark with a

13:58crushed body pinned beneath it is a grim reminder that sometimes the magic is just a thin veneer over

14:04corporate negligence. The slow death on the Jungle Cruise. This next one, this one is just infuriating.

14:16On August 22, 2021, 66-year-old Joanne Aguilar, who used a wheelchair, wanted to ride the Jungle Cruise with

14:24her daughters. The wheelchair accessible boats weren't available, but cast members told her it was fine.

14:30They'd help her onto a regular boat. They did. She enjoyed the eight-minute ride, at the Skipper's

14:36terrible jokes. But when she tried to get off the boat, she fell, and her leg snapped. A clean break

14:44of the femur.

14:45Now, a broken leg is bad, but what happened next, according to the lawsuit filed by her daughters,

14:51is what makes this one of the worst. As Joanne lay on the dock in excruciating pain,

14:58the cast members allegedly laughed. They stood around and laughed at an injured 66-year-old woman.

15:07It took several minutes for them to even call for paramedics.

15:12That fall started a five-month-long nightmare. Joanne had surgery to pin her femur, but the wound

15:19got infected. The infection spread to the bone, a condition called osteomyelitis,

15:25which is notoriously difficult to treat. She spent months in a rehab center, in constant pain,

15:31unable to walk. The infection then spread to her bloodstream, causing sepsis. Her organs began to fail.

15:38On January 29, 2022, five months after that fall, Joanne Aguilar died of septic shock.

15:47Her daughters filed a wrongful death lawsuit, and Disney's response? They denied everything.

15:54In court filings, they claimed they weren't at fault and that Aguilar's injuries were due to her

15:59own negligence. They are actually trying to blame the victim. The lawsuit is still ongoing,

16:05but the fact remains. A woman died a slow, agonizing death that started with a broken leg

16:11that should never have happened in the first place. All because Disney employees couldn't

16:16be bothered to wait for a wheelchair accessible boat, and then allegedly found it funny when their

16:21negligence caused a woman to get seriously hurt. It's a level of corporate indifference that is,

16:27frankly, is just gross.

16:32The monorail skin scraper. Okay, let's rewind to the swinging 60s. It's grad night at Disneyland in

16:39Anaheim, California, June 1966. The park is buzzing with teenagers celebrating the end of high school.

16:47But 19-year-old Thomas Cleveland wasn't a graduate. He was just a guy trying to sneak into the park

16:52for the

16:53party. And he had a really, really bad plan. Instead of, you know, buying a ticket, Thomas decided to

17:01climb the 16-foot-high chain-link fence and get onto the monorail track. The monorail, the sleek,

17:08silent highway in the sky, was the first of its kind in the western hemisphere, gliding on a concrete

17:13beam 20 feet above the ground. Thomas figured he could just walk the beam into the park. A security

17:19guard spotted him from a tower and yelled at him to get down. Thomas, realizing he was caught, started

17:25to jump. But it was too late. The monorail, nearly silent and traveling at 15 to 20 miles per hour,

17:32was already upon him. He was struck by the train and wedged underneath it. The operator didn't even

17:39know he'd hit anything. The monorail kept going, dragging Thomas along the track for about 40 feet.

17:45Now, 40 feet doesn't sound that far, until you realize the track is basically a giant concrete

17:52cheese grater. By the time the train was stopped, most of his skin had been scraped from his body.

17:58Yeah. He was, for all intents and purposes, flayed alive. When the emergency crews arrived,

18:06they found a scene so gruesome it was hard to comprehend. Thomas was still alive, but just barely.

18:12His body was so mangled, with his skull crushed and bones broken, that he was pronounced dead at the

18:19scene. The image of his body, wedged under the monorail 20 feet in the air with a 40-foot blood

18:25trail behind it, haunted rescue workers for years. In the aftermath, Disney increased security around

18:31the monorail track, adding more fencing and warning signs. But for Thomas Cleveland, it was a brutal end

18:38to a very stupid plan. He died a horrific, painful death, all to save about $5 on a Disneyland ticket.

18:49The Space Mountain Body Count

18:52It's a classic. A high-speed indoor roller coaster that whips you through the pitch black darkness of

18:58space. It's also, statistically, one of the deadliest rides in Disneyland history,

19:03with at least five deaths to its name. Yes, seriously. But these aren't your typical

19:10fell-out-of-the-ride stories. These are…weirder.

19:15Let me explain exactly what happened.

19:18In 1979, at Walt Disney World in Florida, a 31-year-old woman named Cheryl got off the ride

19:25feeling sick. She couldn't walk, and her husband had to carry her to the first aid station.

19:30She died in the hospital a few days later. The cause? Cheryl had an undiagnosed heart tumor the

19:37size of a golf ball. The violent shaking and G-forces of Space Mountain caused the tumor to dislodge

19:44from her heart. The tumor traveled through her bloodstream, entered her brain, and killed her.

19:51I mean, what are the odds? You go on a roller coaster, and it literally shakes a tumor loose in

19:57your

19:57body. It's like a one-in-a-billion cosmic-level bad luck.

20:02Then there's the case of James Higgins. In 1985, at Disneyland in California,

20:09James was riding Space Mountain when he was allegedly thrown from his seat during a sharp turn.

20:14He fell, struck the track, and his spinal cord was severed. He was instantly paralyzed from the waist down.

20:22He survived, but spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, requiring 24-hour care.

20:28He sued Disney, but a jury ruled against him, buying Disney's argument that he must have stood up during

20:34the ride. And it gets worse. In 2000, at Tokyo Disneyland, a nine-year-old boy was found unconscious

20:42at the end of the ride. He died three months later from a congenital heart defect that no one knew

20:48he

20:48had. And back at Walt Disney World in 2006, a 73-year-old man lost consciousness on the ride

20:56and died in the hospital. The cause was, again, a pre-existing heart condition.

21:02You know, the thing about Space Mountain is that it's not a flaw in the ride itself that's the problem.

21:09It's the perfect storm of darkness, speed, and g-forces that seems to find any hidden weakness

21:15in the human body and exploit it. It's a ride that, for a handful of unlucky people across the globe,

21:22turned a fun trip to space into a one-way ticket to the morgue.

21:30The eight-year death of Brandon Zucker. Roger Rabbit's cartoon spin.

21:36It's a kid's ride where you get into a two-person car that spins and moves along a track through

21:41dark

21:42cartoon scenes. There's a steering wheel in the middle that lets you control how fast you spin.

21:47But let's talk about the car's design. There's a lap bar, but no seat belts. There are no side

21:54barriers. And there's a huge cutout on one side for people to get in and out. It's a massive safety

22:01gap.

22:02On September 22, 2000, four-year-old Brandon Zucker and his family got in line.

22:08Now, Disney had its own safety rule for this ride, and it's critical. The smallest child is

22:14supposed to be seated farthest from that giant cutout opening. Brandon was the smallest. He

22:21should have been placed on the inside seat. He wasn't. The cast members loaded him right next

22:29to the opening. Then came the second mistake. They lowered the lap bar, but according to the

22:35official state investigation, it was not fully lowered. There was a gap between the bar and

22:41Brandon's small body. A four-year-old in the seat right next to a giant hole with a loose lap

22:48bar.

22:49You can see where this is going. The ride started. As the car spun, Brandon was thrown through the gap.

22:57He fell onto the track, and the car that had just ejected him rolled over him, folding his small body

23:04in

23:04half and pinning him underneath. For 10 agonizing minutes, Brandon was trapped. When they finally

23:12got him out, he had no pulse and wasn't breathing. The oxygen deprivation caused catastrophic, irreversible

23:20brain damage. Brandon Zucker spent the next eight years in a vegetative state. He couldn't walk,

23:26talk, talk, or eat. He was a prisoner in his own body. He died on January 26, 2009, at the

23:35age of 13.

23:37The Zucker family sued Disneyland, detailing Brandon's horrific injuries, the eight years of suffering,

23:44and the mountain of medical bills. In the face of their own catastrophic negligence,

23:50Disney settled for an undisclosed sum. After the incident, the state of California ordered Disney to

23:57make major safety changes. They had to install a sensor-equipped guard around the bottom of each car,

24:03improve the lap bar design, and completely retrain their staff on loading procedures.

24:09It took a four-year-old being crushed and spending eight goddamn years in a vegetative state

24:15for them to fix a problem they should have seen from a mile away.

24:26Universal Studios, the place where you can ride the movies. But sometimes, the horror isn't just

24:33on the screen. Sometimes, it's waiting for you, right around the corner. Our first story takes us

24:39back to Halloween night, 1986. Universal Studios Hollywood was hosting its annual Halloween Horror

24:46night special event. The main attraction? The Terror Tram, a nighttime version of the famous studio tour,

24:53where trams would drive through dark, foggy sets, and scare actors would jump out and, you know, do their

24:59thing. One of those scare actors was 20-year-old Paul Ribalde Brooks. It was his job to lunge at

25:06the trams,

25:07getting as close as possible to give the guests a good scream. But on this night, something went horribly

25:13wrong. It was dark. The trams were moving. Paul was working in the narrow space between two tram cars.

25:20He either lost his balance or misjudged the distance. He fell into the gap, right into the

25:26path of the moving tram behind him. The tram, weighing several tons, rolled over him. He was crushed

25:34instantly between the heavy vehicles. He died right there, on the tracks, in the middle of the horror

25:40show he was supposed to be a part of. The official cause of death was severe crush injuries to his

25:46torso

25:46and a presumed skull fracture. It was a horrific, tragic accident, a combination of poor visibility,

25:53moving vehicles, and the inherent danger of having actors working so close to the machinery.

25:59After the incident, Universal shut down its Halloween events in Hollywood for six long years.

26:04When it finally returned in 1992 as Halloween Horror Nights, the safety rules were much,

26:11much stricter. A tragic lesson learned at the cost of a young man's life.

26:20The collapsing floor. Just a month after the terror tram tragedy, death visited Universal Studios

26:27Hollywood again. This time, it wasn't a guest or an actor. It was one of the people building the magic.

26:34Unbelievable! On November 28, 1986, a construction crew was working on a new project on the studio lot.

26:42Two workers were in the bucket of a massive 30,000-pound, about 13,600-kilogram, crane.

26:49They were high above a temporary work floor made of plywood. Now, I'm no engineer, but putting a 15-ton

26:56piece of machinery on a temporary wooden floor sounds like a bad idea. And, um, it was.

27:03The floor suddenly gave way under the immense weight of the crane. The entire structure collapsed.

27:10The crane plunged through the floor, throwing the two men from the bucket.

27:15One of the workers, whose name was never publicly released, fell onto the steel and concrete structures

27:20below. He suffered massive head and chest trauma and was rushed to St. Joseph Medical Center,

27:26where he was pronounced dead. His partner, miraculously, survived with only minor injuries.

27:33An investigation by OSHA later pointed to what everyone suspected. The temporary floor was simply

27:39not strong enough to support the crane. It was a catastrophic failure of planning and risk

27:45assessment. A man went to work to build a place of fantasy and dreams, and died because someone,

27:52somewhere, didn't do the math right. Just… wow.

27:59The Mummy's Curse

28:01We jump forward now to 2004. Universal Studios Florida. The brand-new, high-tech indoor roller coaster,

28:09Revenge of the Mummy, had just opened. It was a huge hit. But on September 21st,

28:15the ride's name took on a grim new meaning. A 39-year-old man from Apopka, Florida was at the

28:22loading station, about to board the coaster. It was a normal day at the park, guests getting on and off

28:28the ride. As he went to step from the stationary platform into the coaster car, he missed his step.

28:34It was a small mistake, a simple loss of balance. But the consequences were devastating. He fell into the

28:41gap between the platform and the ride vehicle, dropping about four feet onto the hard concrete

28:47structures below. He hit his head. Hard. Really hard. He was immediately in severe pain, showing clear

28:55signs of a serious head injury. Paramedics rushed him to the Orlando Regional Medical Center for emergency

29:01surgery. But the damage was too severe. He died the next day. Investigators found no mechanical problems

29:09with the ride. It was a tragic, freak accident. A simple misstep. But it led to a man's death and

29:16raised questions about the safety of loading platforms. After the incident, Universal made

29:21changes to the area, adding extra warning signs and visual markers on the floor to guide guests and

29:27prevent another fall. The Dragon's Bite

29:33It's July 1st, 2009. The sun is just coming up over Universal's Islands of Adventure in Orlando.

29:41Before the gates open, before the first guests rush in, the park is a hive of activity.

29:47Maintenance crews are checking every nut, every bolt, every sensor. And on Dueling Dragons, one of the

29:53park's most iconic coasters, they're running test cycles. An employee, whose name was never released,

30:00was working that morning. He was in a restricted area, a low zone underneath the track where the

30:05coaster whips by at high speed. We don't know why he was there. Maybe he dropped something,

30:11maybe he was taking a shortcut, but he was in the wrong place at the worst possible time.

30:18During a test run, one of the empty coaster trains came roaring through that section of the track.

30:23The employee was struck. He suffered multiple severe head injuries. And was rushed to Orlando

30:31Regional Medical Center, where he underwent intensive treatment and a long recovery.

30:35After the incident, the park closed the ride temporarily and installed new fences and barriers

30:40to physically block off those restricted areas. It's a grim pattern we see over and over. A tragedy happens,

30:48and only then are the obvious safety measures put in place.

30:54The King's Toll

30:57This next case is a little different. It's not about a mechanical failure or an employee mistake.

31:03It's about a hidden danger and a family's fight for justice.

31:08On December 10, 2016, Jose Calderon Arana, a 38-year-old businessman from Guatemala,

31:14was visiting Islands of Adventure with his family. They decided to ride Skull Island Reign of Kong,

31:21a big, intense, 3D dark ride. The ride has standard warnings posted outside. If you have heart problems,

31:28back or neck problems, or are pregnant, you shouldn't ride. The problem? Those signs were only in English.

31:36Jose didn't speak English. He saw the pictograms, but they didn't convey the seriousness of the warning.

31:41He had a pre-existing heart condition. He got on the ride. After the ride, he told his wife he

31:48didn't

31:48feel well. Thinking it was just motion sickness, she suggested he rest on a bench while she and their

31:54son went on another ride. When they came back, they found him collapsed. He had suffered a massive heart

32:01attack. He was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. Two years later, his family filed a wrongful

32:08death lawsuit against Universal. Their argument was simple. Universal knows it has millions of

32:14international visitors who don't speak English. Why weren't the life and death warning signs

32:20multilingual? The family argued that the simple pictograms weren't enough to communicate the risk

32:25to someone with a serious heart condition. Universal, for its part, pointed out that their blog and some

32:31other materials were available in Spanish, but they didn't comment on the on-site signage.

32:37The outcome of the lawsuit was never made public, but it raises a huge question. In a place that

32:43attracts people from all over the world, how much responsibility does a park have to make sure its

32:48warnings are understood by everyone? For the Arana family, the answer was written in the most tragic terms

32:55imaginable. The CityWalk showdown. Our next story doesn't take place inside a park, but right on its

33:05doorstep. Universal CityWalk in Orlando. A place of restaurants, shops, and nightclubs. On April 22, 2011,

33:14it also became the scene of a fatal confrontation. 33-year-old Adam Spencer Johnson was at CityWalk around

33:22midnight. According to police reports, he was acting disorderly and erratically near the movie theater.

33:30Off-duty Orlando police officers, who were working as security for Universal, confronted him.

33:36The details of what happened next are murky. The police said Johnson became aggressive and got into

33:41a struggle with them. One of the officers deployed his taser, hitting Johnson and sending him to the

33:47ground. They handcuffed him, but moments later he became unresponsive. The officers tried to resuscitate

33:54him. He was rushed to the hospital, but he died. The incident sparked a huge controversy. Was the use

34:02of a taser justified? Was it a proportional response? Johnson's death became part of a national debate about

34:09the safety of stun guns, especially when used on people who might have underlying health conditions.

34:16While the legal liability fell on the Orlando Police Department, the death cast a dark shadow

34:21over Universal. It was a violent, public death that happened right in the middle of their

34:27entertainment complex. A grim reminder that sometimes, the real world and its dangers can intrude on the

34:34fantasy. The final launch. This last one is… tough. It's a story that's still unfolding, and it raises some of

34:47the

34:48most difficult questions about accessibility, risk, and who gets to decide what's safe. On September 17th,

34:562025, just after the grand opening of Universal's brand new theme park Epic Universe, 32-year-old Kevin

35:03Rodriguez Zavala decided to ride the new high-speed dueling coaster Stardust Racers. Kevin had a congenital

35:11spinal cord condition and used a wheelchair, but he wanted to experience the ride just like everyone else.

35:17He boarded the coaster, secured by the restraint system. During or immediately after the ride,

35:25he was found unresponsive in his seat. He was rushed to the hospital, but he was pronounced dead.

35:31The medical examiner's report was chilling. The cause of death was multiple blunt impact injuries.

35:38The ride itself had, in essence, killed him. Now, here's where it gets complicated. Universal

35:47and state investigators said the ride was functioning normally. No mechanical defects, no malfunctions.

35:53The coaster did exactly what it was designed to do. But the lawyers representing Kevin's family

35:59tell a very different story. They claimed that Kevin's head repeatedly struck the restraint harness

36:04during the ride and that those impacts are what killed him. The case sparked an immediate and intense

36:11debate. Universal maintained that the ride was safe and functioned as intended. Disability advocates

36:17and guests argued that the restraint systems on these increasingly aggressive coasters are not

36:22suitable for people with certain body types or physical conditions. The man knew his own condition,

36:28but did he truly understand the risk? Did Universal do enough to warn him? It's a tragic and complicated

36:36case with no easy answers. A man wanted to experience the same thrill as everyone else. He wanted to ride

36:42the

36:43new big coaster. And for that, he paid the ultimate price. It forces us to ask a very difficult question.

36:51Where do we

36:51draw the line between accessibility and safety? And who gets to make that call?

37:00Caitlin Lasseter, June 21, 2007. Six Flags, Kentucky Kingdom, Louisville, Kentucky. Low 90s,

37:11mostly clear sky. A short line on the Superman Tower of Power. Caitlin Lasseter, 13, had already ridden it

37:19once that afternoon with her friends. The line was still short, so they went again. That second ride

37:26mattered because the hydraulic cable that was about to snap had been deteriorating for a while. Intamin,

37:33the Swiss manufacturer, had specified that technicians should inspect the cables with a cotton rag every

37:39six months. Six Flags had not followed that protocol. As the car climbed on that second ascent,

37:47a steel cable snapped near the top of the 177-foot tower. Witnesses heard the crack.

37:54One eyewitness told 911 dispatchers,

37:57It went up and the cable snapped. I saw it go up, then it came back around and hit people.

38:03The operators heard it snap. They noticed the screaming change pitch. They did not press the

38:10emergency stop button before the car dropped. And it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The ride cannot be

38:17halted once the descent begins. The cable, swinging free, looped across the falling car's path and

38:24wrapped around Caitlin's legs as she plummeted 154 feet at 54 miles per hour. Both her feet were

38:33severed above the ankles. Her left femur was shattered. She landed at the base of the tower,

38:40sitting in her own blood, reportedly calm and quiet from shock, which somehow made the scene worse for

38:46everyone watching. A 911 dispatcher instructed a park employee to place the amputated feet in a clean

38:53plastic bag. No ice, no water, apply pressure, keep her calm. Surgeons successfully reattached her right

39:02foot. Her left leg required amputation below the knee. The ride was demolished during the off-season.

39:10Eight similar drop towers across the country temporarily closed for inspection.

39:15The family's lawsuit ended in a multi-million dollar settlement. Six Flags' Kentucky Kingdom

39:21itself shut down in 2009, partly due to its safety reputation. The ride had been renamed Superman,

39:29Tower of Power, and given a fresh coat of paint at the start of that same 2007 season.

39:35The cable failed in June. It had been there since 1995.

39:43YOSHINO KOGOARA

39:44May 5, 2007

39:46Expo Land Amusement Park, Suita, just north of Osaka, Japan

39:52Children's Day, the centerpiece of Golden Week, when every family in Japan descends on theme parks and

39:58the queues are long and the mood is festive and loud.

40:02YOSHINO KOGOARA, 19

40:05A company employee from Higashi Omi in Shiga Prefecture,

40:08is at the park with her friend Sayori Furukawa, 20

40:13They board the Fujin Raijin II, a Togo stand-up roller coaster, 15 years old,

40:19more than a kilometer of track, speeds reaching 75 miles per hour.

40:2420 passengers loaded for the run. Just another ride on a busy holiday.

40:30The axle on the second car had not been replaced or disassembled for inspection since the coaster's 1992

40:36installation. Expo Land's scheduled January or February maintenance check for that year had

40:41not been completed. Inside the metal, stress fractures had been forming across 15 years of

40:47load cycles. Investigators would later note that the axle's safety factor measured at only 1.6 to 2.8,

40:55against an industry standard of 10. At 12.50 p.m. as the train crested the second hill,

41:03the axle snapped. A sharp crack beneath car two. Riders had no idea what it was.

41:10The second car tilted outward at roughly 45 degrees. Yoshino's head in the front row was driven

41:17into a maintenance catwalk guardrail at the side of the track. The impact was instant. The train,

41:23still moving, dragged her over 300 yards along the track before it screeched to a halt,

41:29leaving a trail of blood across the structure. Her body remained lodged in the wreckage when the

41:34coaster finally stopped. Her friend Sayuri, seated nearby, was seriously injured.

41:40Eighteen other passengers suffered fractures and whiplash. Yoshino died instantly.

41:46Three former Expo Land officials were later charged with professional negligence,

41:50resulting in death and injury. Court documents stated they had detected visible cracks in the axle

41:57and continued operating the ride for commercial reasons. The park briefly reopened after three

42:03months. Nobody came. We couldn't regain the people's trust, the company spokesman told the

42:10Japan Times when Expo Land announced its liquidation in 2009. Yoshino's mother, Miyoko, said at the trial,

42:17I don't forgive Expo Land because it betrayed my daughter and other people who only wanted to have

42:23fun. Joshua Smurfat, August 23, 1999. Paramount's Great America, Santa Clara, California.

42:33The drop zone is a 207-foot free fall tower. You sit in a harness, get hauled straight up, and

42:40drop.

42:42Joshua Smurfat is 12, from Sunnyvale, and has mental and physical disabilities. This is his first ride

42:48like this. His height clears the minimum requirement. The operators strap him in. The shoulder harness on

42:56a free fall tower works on the assumption that the person inside it fills enough of the seat to be

43:00held

43:01in place. Joshua's frame was slight. The harness appeared secure during the check, but it was not

43:07properly fitted against his small body. The inspection was rushed. His specific fit was not verified.

43:15The ride had a perfect safety record. Zero prior incidents. No reason to flag anything.

43:21The car climbed 207 feet above the concrete. At the apex, as the car dropped,

43:27Joshua slipped free of the harness entirely. He fell the full height of the tower with nothing slowing

43:34him down. Massive blunt force trauma. He died at the scene. The ride was halted immediately. The park

43:42added dual harnesses and additional restraint verification procedures following the accident.

43:48No lawsuit details entered the public record. What the press had was the outline. A 12-year-old boy with

43:54disabilities on his first free fall ride. A harness that looked correct and wasn't. And a perfect safety

44:01record that ended on a Tuesday afternoon in August. Gabriela Garin. Before we get to Gabriela Garin,

44:09we need to talk about May 22, 2004. Rye Playland. Rye, New York. The 1928 historic park used as a

44:18filming

44:18location for the Tom Hanks film Big. The Mind Scrambler is a spider arm ride that spins two-seat

44:25cars in a darkened tent to flashing lights and loud music. That evening, seven-year-old Stephanie

44:31Doudonnet wriggled free of the restraining bar, knelt on the seat, and fell. She died of severe head

44:37injuries. The park was not cited for violations. Officials announced plans to add seat belts, a second

44:44attendant, and better lighting at the Mind Scrambler. Three years later, none of those improvements were

44:49fully in place. Gabriela Garin, 21, had worked at Rye Playland since she was 14. Seven years. She had been

44:59there the day Stephanie died. She was the Mind Scrambler's manager and knew that ride, as the county

45:04executive would later say, like the back of her hand. She was a single mother to a two-year-old

45:10daughter.

45:10On the night of June 29, 2007, near the end of her shift, Gabriela swapped briefly with the

45:17ticket-taker and climbed into a car for one last ride. Impatient riders were already shouting for

45:23the ride to start. The new operator, his view partially blocked by the high seat back, started

45:29the Mind Scrambler. He hadn't seen that Gabriela was kneeling on the seat bench instead of sitting.

45:35He noticed within 20 seconds and killed the power. She had already been thrown from the car.

45:41Gabriela Garin died from her injuries. The county confirmed the promised second

45:46attendant had not been on duty that night. It was the fourth death at the county-owned park

45:51in four years. The Mind Scrambler was shut down for the rest of the summer and removed from the

45:57park entirely afterward. She grew up in this place, her sister Ruby said outside the park,

46:02and this place took her away from us.

46:06The Siam Park Flume

46:082007, Siam Park, Thailand. A water flume ride, the kind where boats crest a hill and slide down

46:16into a splash pool, the most benign-looking thing a theme park offers. A woman in her 30s is riding

46:22with her group. The boat crests the hill, and then the power goes out.

46:28When the pump driving a flume ride loses power, the water flow that keeps the boat on track stops.

46:34The boat, now unpowered on a structure built entirely around constant water pressure, derails.

46:41This section was approximately 66 feet above the ground. The boat left the track and went airborne.

46:47It plunged 66 feet down into a combination of concrete and shallow water. The woman died from skull

46:54fractures, a severed spine, and drowning in the seconds after impact. Five other riders were injured,

47:01some seriously. The park attributed the incident to an unexpected power outage,

47:06as if the absence of a backup generator was a force of nature rather than a maintenance decision.

47:11International coverage focused on the complete lack of fail-safe systems. No generator, no

47:17mechanism to arrest a derailing boat when the power simply stopped. Flumes look safe because the speed

47:23is low and the drop is modest. But everything about their design assumes the water keeps flowing.

47:29The woman in her 30s sat in a boat on a sunny afternoon and had no way of knowing that

47:34the ride's

47:35entire safety margin was a pump staying on. When it didn't, the boat became a 20-meter drop into concrete.

47:43Upgrades were mandated. The lawsuits followed. The park called it a blackout.

47:49Kings Island, June 9, 1991. Kings Island Amusement Park, Kings Mills, Ohio.

47:57This entry is different from the others, because the horror of this particular day doesn't concentrate

48:03in one person or one moment. It spreads. Three people are dead at the same park before the

48:10afternoon is over. The first is Candy Ann Taylor, 32, a mother from Ohio at the park for the day.

48:17She's riding the flight commander, a ride that suspends passengers in seats and swings them outward in a

48:23spinning arc. Mid-flight, her seat restraint fails. She is ejected approximately 30 feet and lands on the

48:31pavement. Cervical fractures. Massive internal trauma. She dies at the scene.

48:38That would be enough for one day. It is not the end of the day.

48:42The same afternoon, two maintenance workers in their early 20s are carrying out repairs in a flooded

48:48section of the park. It had been raining. There are live electrical cables running through the

48:53maintenance zone. Wet conditions, live wires, workers in the water. Both men are electrocuted.

49:01They are found in the flooded area, the cables still live around them. Two more deaths. Same park,

49:09same afternoon. Three fatalities. One park, one day. The park faced significant OSHA fines for both the

49:18electrical violations and the ride restraint failure. Investigators confirmed none of the three deaths

49:24were unforeseeable. Wet weather around live maintenance wiring is a documented hazard,

49:29and a mid-flight restraint failure is a mechanical maintenance question. Candy Ann Taylor's name made

49:35the news. The two maintenance workers were largely reported as a footnote to the ride death.

49:40All three left the park in the same direction that afternoon.

49:44Thanks so much for rocking with the channel for real. Hit that subscribe and turn on the bell so

49:49you don't miss a single one. And got a topic you want me to dig into next? Drop it in

49:54the comments.

The Most INSANE Water Slide & Theme Park Deaths Ever

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