The Tragedy Of The World's Tallest Waterslide: The History of Schlitterbahn 

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"They based the slide off of roller coasters." Guess they forgot the part where roller coasters are ATTACHED to the tracks. Not just carts speeding through bends and loops on nothing but hope and prayer.

I work with Schlitterbahn in South Padre Island back in 2012 as a lifeguard. The company didn’t want to hire professional cleaners, so they LITERALLY made us scrub the river ground AND the sewers. At one time, a team of lifeguards were cleaning inside the machine that made the waves of the river. The machine somehow turned on, crushing one lifeguard inside the tank. I remember seeing the ambulances helicopter taking him away. He was declared dead the same week. This company did everything they did to save a dime, and threatened us our jobs if we didn’t scrub the tanks. I’m so glad Schlitterbahn got what they deserved

The terrible thing was that they were already fully aware that the raft would sometimes go airborne, and yet they covered this up. This wasn't even just a one-time accident, people were already getting injured repeatedly and they ignored it until someone finally died.

I happened to be in New Braunfels in 1979 that first weekend that Schlitterbahn opened. I didn’t know anything about the park, but I spent a day there. It was a fun day. I was 19. Years later, my daughters and I visited the then expanded park frequently. The slides became more aggressive and my middle daughter and I were hurt on one of them when our heads hit the top cover. The slides were too steep and fast. I never took my daughters back. The park wasn’t fun anymore. I was heartbroken to hear about the ten year old boy’s death and the other riders’ injuries. Jeff lied and lied some more. Greed.

I'm a structural engineer. I know how much we get paid for jobs like this. There is 0 chance that paying an engineer for a safer design is more money than building the slide over and over and over again.

Imagine killing a 10 year old and destroying your family's business because basic engineering was just too much of a hassle for you.

"Rafts were launching into the air" Me: Oh no... "Nets were added to the slide" Me: *Oh no...*

See, every time I hear about this Schlitterbahn, I think about the original Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels, Texas. Which is still open, and still super popular in the summer. Here in Texas, Schlitterbahn still has a great reputation and most people never even knew there was a Schlitterbahn park outside of the state.

the fact that this guy ended up getting more punished for using drugs than killing a child is insane

33:10 "I'm not going by the standards. This has never been attempted, so I'll be redefining those standards." Me having heard this same explanation regarding the Titan sub and hearing about its implosion due to "redefining standards":

My best friend is a design engineer, and he pointed out that the ride should have been called Klage instead ("lawsuit" in German). This was a disaster waiting to happen.

I love your style. A lot of channels focus on the gore and horror of what happened to this poor young boy, wheras you focus more on the story of the slide and WHY this happened, going in detail with the measures taken by the park to hide the issues with the slide. Really nice work, love your channel!

I remember this all happening and thinking "well, some rider must have done something dumb" and not realizing till later how much the builders disregarded accepted safety standards. Really sad story

33:07 Not following industry standards and "redefining standards" reminded me of the Oceangate debacle.

Jeff: "No model for this exists" RollerCoaster Tycoon 2: "Am I a f****n' joke to you?!"

I remember seeing this. A 10 year old decapitated in front of others and what was supposed to be harmless fun. Horrific. Apparently there was blood all the way down the slide. RIP Caleb. Your loss of life may have saved many more.

as an engineer, I dont think the biggest contributing factor was just his lack of formal education albeit lacking strong foundation is dangerous but there's plenty that is certainly learned throughout your career. I think it was likely his disregard for other professionals and his own arrogance to think he knows better than anyone that did him in. Money, power, and a hungry ego are the most dangerous thing in the universe.

What really bothers me is that this all could've been avoided if they didnt have an "airtime hill" on a slide.

I remember this slide from before it opened. My mom said that it was gonna kill someone. I didn't believe it. But just wow.

First of all, great video on this topic. I was unaware of how much the builders were hiding from the public about the lack of safety for the ride. My father was a carpenter working for someone higher up at the park and our family was given season passes for a few of the first years. What I remember most about the park was the wavy river and the wet handprints of all the kids along the walls trying to time their jumps with the waves and leave the highest handprint. My brother and I would have a blast doing this for hours. Now as a grown-up, all I can think about is Caleb's brother and family, and all the time and fun they will never get back with him. RIP Caleb, I'm so sorry.

My brother and I rode that three days before the accident. It's not a ride. It was extremely rough all the way down. Like being tossed of a 40 story building in a raft with a weight on it. It wasn't fun. It wasn't even thrilling to be honest. Just felt dangerous.

I remember The Atlantic did a short documentary about this slide that used many clips from the slide and news of the tragedy to tell the history of the slide, and there this was one clip from the opening of the slide where a news reporter was interviewing this boy where they asked if he was going to go on the slide. The boy said no, and when he was asked why, he said the slide looked very scary. Little did they know that boy ended up being the smartest person there that day.

This guy builds waterslides like how I build stuff in Minecraft, just keep making and re-making it until it’s good enough.

As a 4th generation New Braunfels citizen and former Schlitterbahn lifeguard and bartender, great job researching for this video! Such an extremely sad situation for everyone but it was very interesting to see this level of detail about a major event so close to home

I don't understand how it's even cost effective to build, tear down, rebuild, and delay openings. It would have been cheaper and obviously safer to have professional consultants throughout the process.

*_"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."_* - Richard Feynman

I was a lifeguard at the New Braunfels location around when this happened. It was absolutely horrific to hear about.

So there was nothing to keep the raft on the slide except the weight of the passengers? And that wire netting was a horrible idea.

This sounds a lot like the OceanGate thing where the CEO ignored safety because he thought he was redifining the industry. Both ended in tragedy.

I watched that episode they filmed for the slide with my dad when it was first released. My dad is an engineer, and when he saw the design he mentioned that it was very dangerous. The idea of the slide all hinged on the weight of the riders, which is not safe in my fathers eyes, or my own. I remember him saying that someone could get killed if the float ever went airborne during the finished ride. It wasn't long before we heard about the kid who was killed on the slide, and I realized that my dad was right. The whole story behind this slide has made me very weary of any water slides at the parks I have been to.

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a more well-researched video on RU-vid. Down to the small detail about how they opened their South Padre Island location to compete with Edinburg’s struggling Super Splash park (which happened to close a few years after). Great job!

You are hands down the best channel. You cover the history in such detail and background. I LOVE IT!!! DONT CHANGE A THING

I rode that slide *6 days* before Caleb was killed on it. I had gone to the waterpark with my twin brother's baseball team,. My dad was the coach, and a lot of the boys on the team had sisters who i really liked to hang out with, and they also got to go, so it was a really cool day. The slide was all we talked about on the car ride to the park. We sprinted to it the second we got in the park to get our names put in for a reservation. I remember spending all day excited to ride it. Then finally, it was our designated reservation time! The boys were all teasing us girls about how "dangerous" the slide was and how we could "totally fly right off!" Of course they were playing off of the news stories we had read about the crash test dummies coming out of the rafts. We all thought the news stories were greatly exaggerated for thrill and advertisement, and that there would be no way the waterpark engineers would *actually* open a ride if it was still dangerous. None of us got hurt that day, but less than a week later that boy died on it. The news constantly put up the photo of Caleb in his baseball uniform. I remember feeling so ice cold looking at that. I had just gone on the ride with a good number of boys that looked exactly like that, my brother included. Boys who would have almost an identical baseball uniform photo for the news to put up. Horrific. I hope Caleb's family is doing as alright as they can now.

They were so obsessed with having the worlds tallest slide that they ignored all the laws of physics.

Lived about 15-20 min from this park and went there a few times as a kid. I was always too scared to ride Verruckt but I had some friends that did. Looking back, I'm glad I stayed away from it.

Something like this happened to me on a water slide a few years ago. It was the kind you go down without a raft, and there was an overhead ceiling to the slide. The angle was so steep and I gained so much speed that I went airborne and hit my head on the ceiling several times and lost control of my body altogether for a couple seconds.

Jeff Henry talking about ignoring safety models because he was making something that models didn't exist for sounds exactly like what Stockton Rush said about his Titan submersible. We know how that went.

*Edit* - I wanted to post this on here because the video doesn't mention it. Caleb Schwab died on that waterslide, yes, but he didn't.... merely die. He was *decapitated*. His head was RIPPED OFF HIS BODY by that netting. The two women he was riding with were also injured, including skull fractures and a broken jaw - and from what I've heard from within the waterpark industry, the woman who was riding behind Caleb was injured by his detached head hitting her in the face. I'm not saying this to shock you, so much as I want you to understand just how shocking and horrific this incident was, far more than you think it is. I want you to hear this and know just how extremely criminally negligent the Henry family was in designing and building this thing. I am furious at these murderers and I want you to be furious at them too. When the Verrukt tragedy happened, I worked at in the engineering department of Whitewater West, one of the biggest waterslide manufacturers in the world. We had an ongoing relationship with the Schlitterbahn people, as we had built a number of their slides and had been consultants on a number of others. I recall the day this event happened, I came into the office, found the news of the dead child, and had a series of horrified reactions switching between "oh, that poor child" and "for the love of god, PLEASE tell me that wasn't us". Turns out that not only had we not built the slide, nor had we officially consulted on it, but apparently several of our engineers had told them that slide was a bad idea. The essential problem of that slide was kinetic energy. Water velocity is a variable, as it can be affected by a lot of different things including wind, ambient temperature, water temperature, slide temperature, variables in the contaminants and solutions in the water, etc. Friction is a variable, due to rider weight being a variable, so because friction and thus water velocity can never be an accurately known thing, you'll never be able to accurately predict the remaining kinetic energy of the raft as it crests them hump of the slide. This means you'll either get "close enough" and the vehicle follows the desired trajectory, "not enough", so the vehicle slides back down to the middle of the slide, or "too much", and the vehicle gets airborne when it goes over the hump. 'Close enough' is not a reliable category, it's like flipping a coin and needing it to land on its edge. Possible, but impossible to control or predict. 'Too little' is the next best thing, the ride did not go as desired but nothing tragic happened. 'Too much' is an absolute disaster, AND IF YOU'RE BUILDING A RIDE THAT HAS "ABSOLUTE DISASTER" AS ONE OF THE MAIN POSSIBLE OUTCOMES, YOU DON'T BUILD THE GOD DAMNED SLIDE, YOU F*CKING MORONS. I am, and will always remain furious at the fools who built this travesty. I'm even more furious with the prosecutors who fumbled the murder case, because it was, indeed, murder - these people KNOWINGLY put the public in danger of death due to their negligence and incompetence, but worst of all is they were TOLD the ride was fundamentally unsafe and they opened it anyway - that's not manslaughter, that's murder.

When a dropout stoner designs your water slide…

Ty for making this video. I first saw the Schlitterbahn on a show called The Most X-treme: Waterpark edition. I would never have known the truth if it wasm't for this. I spent the last 10 years thinking it was a safe Waterpark and that the Varrukt was safe too. Boy, I'm glad I was nowhere near that place.

The moment in RCT when you build the ride, but don't test it before opening

I lived in KCK at the time Verrückt opened. I remember anticipating the slide's opening, and every time we drove past the park, I was disappointed to see it still in construction. I was really small and thin, but I wanted to ride it so badly. I remember trying to gain weight just to meet the requirements to ride. I also went to Schlitterbahn every year with my dad's family and my old church, which have both since been cut off from my life. The memories there are bittersweet. I watched my older cousin ride the slide and was so jealous because I was still too small to go myself. My family told me that I'd be able to ride it one day when I'm older. Then the incident happened. The the court case followed and I followed it closely only to find that the slide wasn't properly made. Since I was around Caleb's age, I thought a lot about what could've happened if it were me. I had nightmares, I would pray for Caleb's family as if I knew them personally, and had a fear of waterslides after that. I'm not scared of waterslides anymore, but this video reminded me of that time. Everyone thought it was cute that I felt so much for a random kid because of a waterslide I was obsessed with, but it's anything but cute. Someone got decapitated. It's infuriating that they could let something like this happen.

The amount of time and research you put into this video is truly amazing. Very well done!

Only time in my life I thought I was going to die was at one of their Texas water parks. I was maybe 8-9, in a race track style wave pool, that had one big area to pull in water for the waves followed by a massive jet area to create them. I was pulled by the suction to the bottom of the pool and my feet were stuck the vents that were sucking in water. I was just spinning in circles. Even as a kid it’s crystal clear now. I thought after what felt like 20-30 seconds “whelp this is it, I’m done”. Had it not been for a heavy set Hispanic man grabbing my hand and pulling me away from the suction, I’m certain I would have died. To this day I wish I could thank him but have no information other than the glimpse of him I had the moment of breaking the surface. Thinking back what really bothers me is that I remember this specific part of the circular pool had a handful of life guards watching the swimmers. I don’t think any of them noticed. Was just a random good Samaritan that noticed me and acted.

My heart sinks every time I see that picture of Caleb. I still think about his older brother who witnessed the aftermath.

The horrific and tragic irony is that Caleb's family was there that day because it was Kansas lawmakers day at the park, as his dad was a state representative. The reason the park was built in Kansas was because of the lax laws Kansas had regarding waterparks. I cannot believe they ever allowed them to SELF INSPECT safety. Especially with safety experts having concerns with this ride from the beginning. Had Kansas had stronger laws regarding waterparks, this wouldn't have happened to Caleb. It probably would have happened somewhere else though.

That poor wee child an avoidable tragedy, your heart just breaks for the family. Safety should always be put first.

Very sad story. I will keep all of the people who were injured on this ride and their families in my daily prayers 🙏

I’ll never understand why they thought it was a good idea to put a *hill* on a water slide with no upstop system

I will never get over the discount prostitute for 10 day passes. This guy really messed up his entire family’s futures.

this was so thorough and well put together

Being a dad of 3 kids, I can't imagine the pain felt by that poor boy's family.

Jeez. I remember watching a show on television about this when they were still designing it. It was supposed to be this incredible waterslide. The dummies they sent down kept losing their heads.

This is a terrifying story. Thank you for telling it but man… this is going to stick with me. So many moments of people saying “no, you can’t do that”.

Thanks for the video. It was very informative, respectful to Caleb, and interesting.

Randomly got this as a suggestion. Casually opened it thinking I'd watch 30 seconds and move on. Ended up staying for the whole thing. What a story!

The first time I ever watched something about this accident, I remember there were a lot of comments where people blamed the other riders. They said the boy died because the woman riding behind him lied about her weight. I don't know how stupid one has to be to believe that the safety of a ride would depends on the words of riders about their weight, but even that aside, the fact that the safety of the ride was at all dependent on the riders' weight to the point where the weight being off could actually mean a possibly fatal accident would occur just says to me that the ride never should have existed in the first place.

Should have left the air time hill out. That was the dangerous part. Would have still been a record breaker without it

That was extremely interesting. Thank-you.

The horrific engineering aside, the cover up was so much a part of this tragedy too. It astounds me how the narcissistic need for power and adulation will validate any means one will use to get it. I could NOT live with myself. 😢

I was a lifeguard at that Schlitterbahn for four summers, '11 to '14 so I wasn't there for the accident but that slide always gave me a bad feeling. I never got to operated it because they only let the more experienced lead lifeguards run it. Which is understandable since most of the regular lifeguards weren't even 18. When the details of the accident came out, I was shocked that they let that kid ride in the first place. According to the rules when I was working there he was too young, too short and placed in the wrong spot on the tube for the ride. In front ahead of two larger adults the front of that tube catching air was almost inevitable with that kind weight imbalance.

I appreciate that you didn't use the channel's normal intro music for this one. It was a nice way to show respect for the tragedy of it. Kudos for that.

Over the years I think I can say that I have saw a several videos on that topic. IMO yours is one of the most detailed so far.

I remember seeing a special on the construction of this slide on Travel Channel years ago. And even in testing, the raft flew into the air and they did almost nothing to fix it. Even as a kid I was perplexed. Then years later I heard this on the news and all the memories came back. The engineering negligence on display was absolutely appalling.

Caleb Schwab hit the overhead hoop so hard he was decapitated. There was a news clip soon after the accident that showed the bloodstained slide - that was legitimately disturbing to see.

Amazing video! This is my first experience with your channel. I was amazed at the detail and depth of your research. You got a new sub from me!

I am so glad that I came across your channel! You have a new subscriber! 💛💛💛💛💛💛💛

I live in Kansas City and I remember watching it get built. I’m a huge daredevil, but something looked off about this slide. So I was never really keen on trying it. My best friend asked me if I wanted to go on it with him. I told him no, something is off about that slide. I think someone may actually die on it. Two weeks later I was proven right. How awful. I wish I had been wrong.

It's absolutely wild watching this because my dad was business partners with Jeff BEFORE Schlitterbahn was founded, and designed rides for it in the 80s. I've heard a lot more than this from his firsthand account.

My wife and kids and I were on a brand new “alpine coaster” in Leavenworth WA recently. It functions similar to a traditional roller coaster, but the rider has control over the brakes. I got mine to the bottom and stopped, and my daughter came in on the next coaster behind me. To my horror, I saw my wife come flying in to the unloading area full speed where she crashed into the car containing my daughter. She claimed her hair was in face from the ride down, and combined with the darkness of night, she was unaware she was at the end of the ride. Either there is no automatic braking function, or it malfunctioned and allowed this collision to happen. There was some soreness, but otherwise everybody was ok and walked away. If somebody were passing between the cars, a serious injury could have resulted. Watching this documentary makes me wonder if this attraction is just another accident waiting to happen. Most of the people injured on the slide probably never reported them to the park, or likely shrugged them off. I’m realizing now we may have made a mistake not bringing this to the attention of the owners of this ride.

Riveting! Thoroughly researched, using a wealth of resources to bring the history/tragedy/case to viewers in an informative, engaging and sensitive manner. Clear presentation, with events documented in chronological order covered with an impressive and professional narration. I'm very impressed with this video but devastated and frustrated that safety was once again third, behind profit and ego. My heart goes out to Caleb and his loved ones, especially as the demolition of the site moves to erase the tragedy. Thank you for ensuring viewers never forget.

This feels like something that would have happened in the 70s or 80s, not just a few years ago.

This is one of the most tragic theme park accidents ever [right next to Great Adventure's Haunted Castle fire, another accident that could've been avoided], and there were so many red flags that were ignored. I feel really bad for Caleb's family.

If you've ever seen this slide in real life, the pictures don't do it justice. It's incredibly high, and incredibly steep. It just looks wrong. It looks like exactly what happened, would happen. I prayed it would never open, and I swore none of my family would ever touch it.

This tragedy has always been in my thoughts. Being born and raised in Niagara Falls Ontario, where we had one of the first water parks, this story and tragedy always stuck with me. The fact that they first said there would be an age restriction of 16, but then basically crossed that out and said 14 and then the boy that was tragically killed was 10 is outrageous, for so many reasons! Age shouldn’t really have anything to do with it, it should definitely be on your height and weight when it comes to rides…… along with many many other safety factors, . But there were so many things wrong with this ride, these “designers”, “these engineers”, if you want to call them that, were extremely negligent. I hope that Caleb is flying high in a place that is actually fun, miraculous and most importantly where he can never get hurt… for all of eternity.. ❤🙏🏼

I remeber being at that park when theyre were still building it, and another time when they were testing it, and then one last time a week before the accident. It just looked like an accident waiting to happen. The whole kansas city park always felt rushed and half done to me. It was a weird feeling after seeing the news about the accident because a week before I almost rode the slide but bailed last seccond. Ever since then, before they took the it down, seeing the slide in the distance whenever I had to drive by felt so ominous.

Oh boy, ETP just uploaded, wonder what today's topic is. *Sees Verruckt on the thumbnail*....... Oh no

This is a cool channel. Love the content. Was thinking back to childhood summers at Action Park in NJ. Did you make a video on that? That place was Legendary in Jersey 😊

Schlitterbahn New Braunfels is still the best water park I’ve ever been to. I have so many great memories of that park, going every summer as a kid and now taking my kids there.

'Schlitterbahn' is not a made up german word. It realy exists in german language and means "sliding surface made of ice or smoothed and icy snow". We used to make these in winter in the schoolyard when I went to primary school 😊 Oh and the news anchors in the video funnywise pronounce 'Schlitterbahn' 'Schlidderbahn'. So it sounds like my regional german dialect 😅

Wow. You did a great job on this documentary. The manner in which you handled the child's death was respectful and considerate. RIP Caleb.

I just wanted to say this id the most thorough video I’ve ever seen on this topic. It really seems the creators knew the ride was dangerous and just….didn’t care. So sad that Caleb had to be the victim of that on a day when he was just supposed to be having fun.

I'll never forget this

"Neither did Henry Ford, but HE built a car!" Uh no sir, he did NOT build a car, he DESIGNED a car. He got his team to BUILD it.

It's despicable that nobody ended up going to jail for this. It's insane that they decided not to retry the case, especially when they concealed and destroyed evidence... Sounds like home cookin' at the DA's office to me. Unconscionable.

Good job!

Trial and error method of testing. Sounds super safe and smart. I also find it nuts that they would reused old steel and other building materials for their rides. Sounds dangerous too.

I am no engineer, but as soon as I saw the netting over the top of the slide, I instantly cringed as I imagined being shredded on the netting or my head slammed against the hoops holding up that netting if the raft went airborne -- which is exactly what ended up happening to someone. How could that not have been obvious to the designers? Did that basic insight actually require a higher education? Goodness!

What I don’t get is if it was so unsafe that they had to put a wire mesh cage around it to keep the rafts from going airborne, how would that have made it any safer? People would just hit the cage, which is exactly what happened. It boggles my mind that this ever got built.

Nice to know that the idea of getting on a TV show was worth a child's life.

This case is something I float back to from time to time. And thanks to this video, I've learned that these people sold slides to major corporations. The fact that there are/were wild Schlitterbahn slides is, to me, mildly terrifying.

8:05 for anyone interested, insano is still open and working, it’s located in Fortaleza, Ceará. i grew up watching people go down this slide (but i never had the courage to do it myself). they even made a mini version of insano in the 2010’s. the difference is that the park in brazil actually followed safety protocols and had qualified engineers building (and maintaining) the slide. it’s crazy to think that the same person who came up with the idea for insano was so horribly irresponsible and made something that put thousands of people in danger and killed that sweet boy. he and the other culprits should be rotting in prison

My sister could have been hurt on this ride. Something that wasn't mentioned in this video was the velcro seatbelts that would easily come apart. My sister's came undone on the hill and if she hadn't snapped it back down, she likely would have been injured or worse. I grew up going to this park. It was fun, unique, and worth going to with friends and family. But it hurts to know that after all the cover-ups and failures, the charges were dropped.

When people argue against government regulations, show them this video.

"neither did Henry Ford, but he built the car" no he didn't lmao

If my son died on that, 20 million wouldn't replace him.

I worked for a museum where accident reports were taken extremely seriously---everything double documented, scary lawyers in suit meetings once a month, video footage reviewed, recommendations for improvements that had to be implemented and documented in the form of who specifically took care of what and when and how....I say this to say take that stuff seriously as it should be taken. If you're ever working for a company that's asking you to shred such documents, or hide evidence, or lie about what you've seen, please know that you may be temporarily saving your job, but in the long run when the s---t hits the fan, you're going down with the ship, and usually it's the little guys that get thrown to the wolves first before they ever get to the ones at the top. Even worse is by helping cover up something like this, you put potentially other visitors, clients, employees, or yourself at risk for injury or death because someone thinks making a buck is more important than safety or human lives. Don't be the reason someone doesn't make it home.

I saw the design and was immediately reminded of Action Park’s Alpine Slides.

Galveston, Tx here!!!! Place definitely needed fix up!! You would get paint pieces on your skin on the slides and snakes in the water pit area.