We're back from vacation! Farz went to Dollywood, was brave, and rode all the rides! Then, he came home and researched Roller Coaster accidents so the rest of us would never go on a ride again! First, he tells about 52-year-old Rosa Ayala-Gaona Esparza, who was violently thrown from a coaster at Six Flags Over Texas. Then, the story of John Harter, a 17-year-old who met his end in a fake Eifel Tower in Ohio. Finally, a 10-year-old met the most violent of deaths on the most giant waterslide of all time. We're very nervous. This week's episode is brought to you by NauTee Studio! Check them out on Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/shop/NauteeStudio
We're back from vacation! Farz went to Dollywood, was brave, and rode all the rides! Then, he came home and researched Roller Coaster accidents so the rest of us would never go on a ride again! First, he tells about 52-year-old Rosa Ayala-Gaona Esparza, who was violently thrown from a coaster at Six Flags Over Texas. Then, the story of John Harter, a 17-year-old who met his end in a fake Eifel Tower in Ohio. Finally, a 10-year-old met the most violent of deaths on the most giant waterslide of all time.
We're very nervous.
This week's episode is brought to you by NauTee Studio! Check them out on Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/shop/NauteeStudio
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow
Americans ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your
country we are recording and we are live
and back from a trip and the holiday first holiday out of a series of two
holidays um I know that t for okay I might as well start with introducing us welcome Doom to fail the podcast where
we cover things that we're doomed to fail I cover True Crime usually uh Taylor covers history although we kind
of mix and match our premise for the show I'm fars joined here by Taylor hi Taylor
hello uh I I was going to start with something there and I totally lost my C of
thought cool sweet to be back holidays that's what it
was first round of holidays complete second round of holiday is about to start up Taylor and I took a very very
lovely two weekends off from recording or editing Taylor stay incredibly busy
releasing additional content old episodes re-releasing them as well as putting out content on social media
which has been incredible so thank you for your contribution there Taylor you're welcome I took a while to set up
but once it was set up it just like happened on its own which was very nice perfect perfect so and Taylor and I just
got a chance to actually hang out in person we hung quite a bit we were in North Carolina we were in Asheville
together and went to a friend's wedding congratulations to our friends Jan Beth on their nuls and on their Panama
Colombian bayay that they're on now and got to see lovely lovely builtmore to a
little road trip out there with um with Taylor and got to do that which was really really fun it was awesome yeah we
had a great time I can't believe that was only a week ago I'm like what has happened so wild all this [ __ ] goes just goes by so fast but we had a really good
time so yes and as part of my episode for today which is kind of part of the theme of
the episode today my trip out after the wedding extended past just North
Carolina into Tennessee which allowed me to visit Pigeon Forge Tennessee which if
you don't know is the home of Dollywood which is a Dolly Parton Resort I mean
it's like a dolly themed Resort basically not a resort it's a dolly theme amusement park with two Resorts
that are on site oh my God did you stay at one of them I did I did it was I stayed at the resorts were named after
her albums and so one of her albums called heart song and so I stated the heart song Resort which was brand new
actually like I literally think we're the first people to stay in that hotel room it opened I think they said eight
months ago and you could tell it was just so perfect so immaculate yeah it
was really really cool it was way too expensive like for what it was sure like
I mean they definitely alls yeah they're all all too
expensive oh it's cute yeah I mean one thing I would say so what I had several
thoughts I was going to share here with this so one first things first is when I first got there I went through stages
first when I got there I was like what are we doing here everybody hears like 80 years old they're all riding in rasal
scooters and they're all like all but just screaming Donald Trump in your face
for no reason and and I was like this I've made a
terrible mistake because now we're here we booked it for two nights I already bought the tickets to Dollywood and was
like what the hell I do I don't even like so here's the thing like I've always known who Dolly Parton was because I was always into country music
but I never liked her music so I was like what what am I doing here and the first night there was a blast had a
great time we're just joking amongst ourselves we're L the only people people under like 75 years old that were
hanging out there and so we just had a good time to ourselves the next day we went to Dollywood itself we literally
went there before the park opened it was like it was exactly out of National Lampoon family vacation we got there and
we're like this feels like Wally world like there's literally nobody here we got there before opening and then they
let you in ahead of opening and you can kind of wander around and I started getting enamored with it it's like this
old country Vibe this old timey Vibe and it they progress more and more younger
people came out and started doing their thing but oh yeah it opens at 11: that's late yeah I thought so too so look at
that up because I was like that's weird to get there early but no opens at 11 that feels like yeah I mean we woke up we had breakfast like what are we gonna
do like there's nothing to do like the resort isn't like a cool Resort it's not
like summer but there's a pool but it's not open right yeah you couldn't really use it anyways and so we got there like
10:30 and then like there this moment where they like did the Pledge of Allegiance everybody stops and like
starts like looking up with the flag and I was just like what what are we doing
like I mean not do the Pledge of Allegiance like does everybody have to like it felt kind of culty and I got
that Vibe anyways because like the day before we're hanging out the bar the resort and everybody's talking about Dolly oh my God I love dolly dolly is
the best person in the world she's so great she so I was just like oh my God you people are driving me insane she's like a human being she's not
like a symbol of something but then I started researching Dolly part and it was like she's actually a really great
person yeah she's she's pretty great and I think I think you texted me this but
it just she's definitely not a mega Republican like she gives she has that
beautiful charity that gives kids books she invested in the Mna vaccine like
she's not yeah yeah she donated for the development of the Mna covid vaccine she
gifts a book every month for every child you want to get read a book to until
they're like in first grade or something I forgot what it was like it's like beautiful thing that she has yeah yeah
she's been married to her husband for like 67 years like and then and then she owns half of Dollywood so obviously
she's not like a resort maker she's not like a amusement park maker so like she partners with people to do this stuff and then you really like oh this whole
area is obsessed with this woman because this was nothing it was like a blown out
nothing Town these people take so much ride in being in Pigeon Forge and being
associate with Dolly Parton and the kind of resources it was incredible I was I was
talking to Rachel about this I was saying that I went downstairs one day and I was just going of guessing from the snack bar they had in the resort and
this guy Wheels out this giant like cart full of tools and stuff and he just like
puts one dab of paint on like this one part that's like like and we and me and
it nice yeah like Taylor you didn't see the hotel we stay down in Asheville the shared to Four Points but that place was
like completely crumbling to the ground and nobody gave a [ __ ] like they take so much pride in everything there it was
really cool to see actually that looks nice and one thing I did there that um I
usually don't do but I did it because I was like there's nothing else going on was there's it's an amusement park Dollywood's an amusement park so like
they have all kinds of rides and like roller coasters and we went on one
roller coaster and it was fun because it like this slow little windy thing through this old Village it was like a
kids coaster basically like oh that was great yeah I this is my speed I was like I was looking around everybody hears on
rasal scooters like there's no chance they have like really thrilling rides so yeah let's go ride some roller coasters
we get on the next one and then we sit in sit in this thing and it's like empty it's like we're the only ones again it's
like opening and these harnesses come down over us and we look at each other and we're like is this going to go
upside down like why else would there be a harness that comes over us and like an geriatric amusement park this thing
Taylor just would do loop after loop after Loop and I was just like oh I was just screaming I had my eyes closed
screaming the entire time I'm not a roller coaster guy I can't do roller coaster sounds it sounds like you're not
a roller coaster guy like my thing is like everything is trying to kill you 100 times a day anyways so why introduce
the variable of a roller coaster you're trusting a 16-year-old in maintenance
workers who you probably wouldn't trust to like watch your house with your life in the most gruesome things that can
potentially happen to you and so that's like always was running in my mind regardless I ended up writing hold on I wrote it down here how many did I ride I
rode uh two roller coasters three times no three roller coasters twice and then
three additional roller coasters but one of them Taylor it was called Thunder head it was a looking at all them
completely um wooden roller coaster talk about scariest [ __ ] you're all the way
up on this narrow thing that's being supported by two it is terrifying and one thing it did
cuz it shoot it goes like 53 miles hour it shoots you down this hill and like at 100 100 foot Hill you go down it you're
going 53 miles per hour you go into this right turn and in your mind you're like all this wood holding this whole thing
together is just going to turn into like toothpicks like it is Terri you can feel
it shaking to you can feel it like flexing the woods flexing like how am I why did I do this like it was just
absolutely that one I did not do again um well I used to live next to a great a Great America Six Flags and I used to go
all the time now that I'm older I need to take like a dram mean and like get in the spirit and then I can do it you know
um but I'm looking at the Thunderhead and it says that during the Spring and fall there it has a lot of
bees yeah and probably a shitload of termites there's there's probably just
yeah is not going to let you die at her theme park I feel like while Disney would let you go so Del part wouldn't so
interestingly enough there was one ride that was right that's right outside of the Thunderhead it's one of those ones
where it lifts you all the way up and you're in like this like circular structure and then just drops you you
talk I know what you're talking about yeah yeah I was like I'm not riding that one that's like the one that I I will I will gladly opt out of what I found out
was that that same ride a duplicate of it like they produced several of those somebody died in it in Orlando and yes
he was too big oh was that it okay I think that was the one he didn't it
didn't like close on himly yeah yeah well what that Dollywood
ended up doing was they ended up shutting down that ride until that investigation ended because you're right again like they do things in a very very
family safe way um but then also like accidents can't happen right like should
happen so that's what course did you go to the bird show the bird show was closed it was too cold for the birds but
it is incredible when you walk by it you're like you're just looking at like um nature right
like there's nothing there like and then you like look up and you're like oh my God there's a bald eagle and you realize you're in an outside Avary there's like
50 bald eagles it was insane it was incredible it was so cool so 1010
recommend if anybody can make it to Pigeon forness see it is absolutely worth taking a trip out there those
people take so much pride in everything they do it was awesome so but it led me
to my topic for today which I'm diverting from engineering disasters into amusement park disasters because it
feels like it's timely because that's all I could think about after we got to like oh it's safe you're like oh here's
a bad thing that happened okay let me tell you what I'm most afraid of okay I'm most afraid of getting stuck upside
down oh my God is that is that in your story that's the thing that like I feel
like if you're some people get like it stops in the middle of the loop and you hang up down for like an hour and when
you are upside down even with the momentum on your body you know you're going up like you can feel your bodies
like pressing downward you're like this restraint is the only thing yeah keep me alive right now that is absolutely
terrifying yeah so in the course of exploring some of these tragedies that
happened in Amusement part several of things became clear number one amusement parks really really really hate talking
about this stuff so so so getting
details is so hard unless it's like a big old massive media unless it's the
worst possible situation yeah it is impossible to get details out of this my last story I'm going to do I'm going to
cover three stories I might cover four I don't know I feel iffy about one of them I'm going to definitely do three though
the last story I'm going to do had the most detail because it was the most tragic the most scary the most like
obviously [ __ ] up and had the most press coverage and so like I actually pulled the core transcripts for it went
through every detail it is yeah it is it is very well documented and that will point out to you that last case will
point out to you how bad the circumstances of um water park or amusement parks reporting injuries uh to
the public because in the court case that's the only place you'll go where you can actually get an itemized list of all the issues that OCC on the ride that
I'm going to cover at the very end so that means yeah I feel very I I have a little bit of a stomach bug so I might
have leave to throw up but you just then now I feel even more nervous like my stomach CS start being nervous so continue feel free to throw up so we're
going to start out with one of my first theme party experiences which is just like yours actually Taylor uh Six Flags
so Six Flags I was I was raised in Texas and Dallas and a city right next to
Dallas is Arlington and Arlington Texas is home of the very first Six Flags it's
also the home of the uh Six Flags HQ they're headquartered there
they currently operate 27 theme parks across North America and the Arlington
one happens to be their biggest their best the one that they spend all their resources on the most and that is home
to a specific roller coaster called the Texas Giant which opened in 1990 wait can you stop for a second yes
I just learned this I think on last podcast or somewhere that one of the Six Flags was the Confederate
flag I didn't I was going to ask like I didn't know what why they call him six
I just Lear this is what I just learned like recently they're the Six Flags of the different nations that have governed
Texas I mean minus the indigenous people who live there forever before that so it was Spain France Mexico the Republic of
Texas United States of America and the Confederate States of America but they must have replaced that Confederate flag
with some yeah probably good move I think they opened up I think they
first started in like the 1960s and at that time I guess like having a confederative flag everywhere was more normal yeah so depends and Texas depends
where you are continue yes so we're going to go back to 2013 we're going to go back to July 19th of
2013 there's this 52-year old woman her name is Rosa Esparza and she visits the
Six Flag park with her family she's in toad with her husband and she has like four kids but only two of them are with
her in this situation they're two teenage kids one's a son one's a daughter and the three of them mom and
son and daughter Bor the Texas Giant at the time the Texas Giant was the biggest roller coaster in the world
um it wasn't I mean when you look at the stats now you're like who cares like literally like the kid ride at Dollywood
was more intense on this but at the time it was like a big deal so and the when they rode the Texas
Giant it was actually called the new Texas Giant all they basically did was just remodel part of it but they called the new Texas Giant so when you do the
if you look at this sub yourself you're going to see it called the new Texas Giant they renovated in 2010 10 these will bu in 2013 uh the restraint for
this ride was a lap bar that came down from overhead to lock you in place so
nervous right now Taylor these things freak the [ __ ] out of me so like so I'm gonna tell you two stories okay so one
was when I was living in Florida we went to we went to um Universal Studios in Orlando and there was a line it was
right when the Harry Potter thing Universe opened and there was a crazy line for the actual Harry Potter ride we
decided let's just go to the f the hippo hippo drum hippo whatever like it was it
was like a smaller kids ride like right next to the bigger adult Harry Potter ride and I got in this thing and the
thing came down I was like this is a slow ride it's not that big of a deal anyways it didn't really click and they
just let it Let It Go like and I was like oh I just don't fit like I'm my my body's not g to fit in this thing or
like the the it's like a 15-year-old they do that thing where they just go like with their two fingers and they're
like yeah oh yeah exactly it's good I'm like oh really Brad you think this is
good you just did this it out a book I'm showing you what I'm doing you know what I mean I yeah no and and this thing
takes off I was like who car it's a kids's ride like how bad can it possibly be this thing started doing like like
going like almost like sideways and I was just like I I pushed
my feet as hard as I could into the base of this thing to keep myself in position because I was like nothing was restraining me I was lit just in there
holding myself into position sweater off and I'm getting hot I um so a couple
things there's one we went to Legoland a couple years ago and there's a picture of miles and my mother-in-law I'm one of
those and it's like turning really fast and they're she's like they're both laughing but I'm like she's holding on to him for dear life fall out of this
[ __ ] thing because miles is like way too small and then also another thing my friend I have a friend named Taylor and he's 68 and sometimes there's things and
they're like you can't go on this yeah yeah your head will get S so one thing
they do at Dollywood which is great I've been seen other theme parks do it I'm sure they do but one they do is that when you are before you even can enter
the queue for the line to get on the ride they have seats outside and the seats outside have lights on them yeah
so you sit in it and then you close the restraint and then if you get a green light you can go if you don't you can't go and so great idea yeah that me out of
one of the rides but that was basically it good Blair and I used to my sister and I used to stuff our shoes with paper
towels to be taller to be able to ride like the Batman ride like the bigger rides and like in a great America and
then by the end of the day we like couldn't ride them because the paper towels would be smooshed cuz their feet were like soaking wet you know I'm just
like being there all day you are way more of a daredevil than I am I can't believe I did that now I would go on a
couple maybe and then maybe throw up and then maybe be like I don't know if I want to do it again so yeah fair enough
um going back to Rosa uh she gets in this ride that the new Texas Giant in
theory she's getting locked into a place this overhead restraint because this is one of those loop-de-loop um L Loop uh roller coasters when when she's on the
ride she mentions to the attendee the the staffer there that she doesn't think
that the thing clicked into a place like she didn't think it was it fit right Witnesses reported that she asked the
Park employee if she was okay and basically the employee was like yeah it's fine as long as you heard a click we're fine Witnesses noted that everyone
else's restraint clicked a bunch it would go like like do that thing and they were saying like oh they notice it
was noticeable enough that hers went click and that was basically it I can't feel my
arms I had to like stand up and put a fan on I'm going to like put my head between my legs keep going I'm so
nervous so I mean everybody knows this but but basically like with a chain lift
roller coaster like now they have mag lb ones and all that stuff but with the chain lift one you basically the ride
starts by pulling the the train in the cars up this giant Hill and then when
you get to the top you have it it'll release and then you basically have all the momentum to go go down and drop and
in this case the drop is 153 ft which is like it's okay like now there's a thing
called Giga coasters which are 300 feet foot drops there's also thing called strata coasters which are 400 foot drops
but this was 150 so still um okay go ahead basically the what people reported
was as soon as a car goes up and crests and starts falling Rosa flies 70 ft away
from the coaster and and nobody knows what happened to her her kids see this
and they're still on it and they have to be on it the right last I think it was like three minutes and 20 seconds they still have to sit on this ride while
they saw their mom flying 70 feet 153 feet down to the ground which is like
bad really bad so the kids go through go through this and the second the ride
stops they hop out they start running and screaming they try to go into the restricted area they get pulled back the police are notified they start doing a
search trying to figure out what happened to this woman and it took hours to figure out what happened but she
ended up landing on the roof that's like adjacent to the que area where people
were standing in line to get on the the Texas Giant and know like heard it I guess nobody heard it I don't know I
don't or maybe like I me it's loud maybe yeah it's loud would you ever assume it's a body falling on you like no but I
mean feel like you'd see her like outline is it I don't know I don't know it's crazy that no one saw it or heard
it uh what they say is that based on how they found her body and the amount of
force with which she would have hit that roof she would have died instantly they just immediately died yeah yeah thank
God for that at least so they launched an investigation Six Flags blames the manufacturer the manufacturer blames Six
Flags the family shes the [ __ ] out of both of them they end up sellling for an underst some some say it was like about a million dollars which does which seems
like crazy light and and sixpacks ultimately never accept responsibility
for Rosa's death what they ended up doing though was they added a seat belt to every one of their roller coasters so
now you no longer only restrain restrained by the top thing you're also restrained with like a seat belt they
added to every single one of their coasters across their entire park Network it's worth noting that six flag's point on this was that all this
stuff about clicking their take on it was that's not possible all of our rides had this like magnetic thing going on
inside them where what's actually holding you in place is like a switch that is is flipped when you're in the
initial waiting area and that's what locks everything in place their point was you wouldn't have heard a click I
didn't go into research on this but I'm sure I could find it pretty easily if I asked like people hey have you been on the new Texas Giant was there a click
like and see who's lying who's not the end of the day woman's she's gone and
her kids had to watch her fa for her horrible horrible death 10 years ago oh my God that's horrifying well I guess so
wait so what do you mean so the click is like superficial well what what Six Flags is actually saying is they couldn't have heard a
click anyways like that's not even a possibility given how the safety
restraint is supposed to work um so that's their point their point their point is that this was like a
manufacturer error with like a faulty design defect uh and had nothing to do with maintenance or anything
else it's it's it's saying that her her body was nearly severed in half it was
yeah yeah she hit the thing with I mean it's a lot of force oh my God poor lady not
good yeah I read that like she came over from uh from some part of Mexico to like
get her kids a better life and like she's almost s in half by getting F out of a roller coaster this is why you know
like I've been in situation before where like my parents like they're they're not at all Risk Takers I've been like come on let's do it let's do it just don't do
it like you're people know what's good for their body especially when you're 52 years old like just yeah like you're
already you would have done it earlier it's like me and like I'm never going to learn how to ski because I didn't learn how to ski when I was like 10 so it's
over for me you know you can't learn to ski when you're 41 you'll die I've been
asked if I want to go on scuba trips before or like learn to scuba I'm like [ __ ] that it's like it's just it passed me there's a lot of other ways I can die
I don't need that to be added to it so 100% I don't want to lose you in an underwater cave like so scary um so
we're going to go from that story to Ohio but before that we're going to take
a quick commercial break and be right back this week's episode of Doom to fail
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thanks we're to go to a place called Kings Island uh which is a mum park in
Ohio and little bit of background on this so this park was originally called
Coney Island which is kind of interesting uh it was on the banks of the Ohio river and it was basically just a small little it looked like a county
fair type of a thing and it started in 1964 and the issue they were having was that every single time we would get
rainy in Ohio the Ohio river floods it washes away half the park and they have to rebuild it so like [ __ ] this we're
not going to do this anymore let's go more inlands they built this park a little north of Cincinnati essentially
which ended up actually resembling more what we currently look at as an amusement park what's worth noting is
that our cultural Fascination or interest in roller coasters started with this park this park was the first one to
introduce like more thrill rides uh and as opposed to like Campground Fair
amusement park or County Fair rides and one ride that's going to come in later
on this story it's called the racer and that was kind of the original impetus for revitalizing America's love and
interest and fascination with roller coasters so that's fun
as part of one of the themes within this park they had a onethird scale replica
of the Eiffel Tower still big and one through replica of an Eiffel Tower is still pretty huge it's about 300 feet
and it was kind of stationed near the entryway of the park I pulled up maps to this thing it's really meant to be like
it's kind of like how the golf ball is the centerpiece of Epcot the Eiffel Tower is the centerpiece of Kings Island
essentially okay why I don't know I never got a sense of why they decided to
build they and they did two of them there later on they also created another Eiffel Tower at what's it called King
cour there's another theme park somewhere that they this company also launched they also play Eiffel Tower
there it's actually really popular apparently like it's still functional still operational and everything hey so
more power to him it kind of functions as a little bit of a ride sort of so
basically it's like the Eiffel Tower right the Eiffel Tower is just a bunch of Steel trusses and in the middle of it
there's an elevator and the point of elevator was is to take you all the way to the top you get out there's an observation deck I I looked at YouTube
videos of this it looks actually really really cool get this amazing 360 view of like the area in the park itself which is really awesome especially you're
looking at all these massive roller coasters that you're now taller than so this story happens in May of
1983 Kings Island uh would host annually would host a grad night which is a night
for teens who are graduating from the area to come to the par they get discount tickets they get premium you
know line cutting all that stuff and so it's like a night for the grads like just enjoy your night with your friends you all go off and have your lives
destroyed by college loans and so exactly it's exactly what it is and so
on this night there's a 17-year-old guy named John harer he he was there with
his girlfriend Pam and a group of their friends and they were all basically there to have a good time long story
short was that they drank a lot well we don't if they all drank a lot we know that JN drank a shitload he like got
into fights with his girlfriend and stuff like it it sounded a lot like more my tulous relationships but what was
noted was that Ohio state law was very laxed when it came to like underage drinking and so it is presumed that he
was drunk as [ __ ] when he got to the park and he kept drinking when he was at the park not great so the group got on
the their first ride which was called the racer and that's a roller coaster ride and that's the one that I mentioned
it was actually it was actually um featured in The Brady Bunch sitcom um at one point they all went to a theme park
and they rode the racer it's the one that ignited our fascination with roller coasters but they get off this ride and
they end up kind of regrouping with each other a little bit down the road and trying to figure out what was going what
they're going to do next John was not with them in this group we're going to segue from the
experience of their friends now to the experience of what John was actually doing when he got off racer so if you
look at a map racer is kind of the first right off the left when you get to uh
the theme park and then directly next to it is this Eiffel Tower observation thing so the the
Eiffel Tower has two observation platforms one is 50 feet and the other is 275 feet up and usually what you do
is you get into the line you get on this elevator the elevator takes you up up you can get off the 50 Foot Mark you get
up at the 275 Mark and then you do your thing and then the elevator takes you all back down so that's that that's the point of it but the other thing it has
is a flight of stairs so there's a flight of stairs that takes you almost to the very top but to get to the very
top you need have like special access and all that so Mak sense you'd have to be able to walk down in case of an emergency yeah exactly exactly so what
John was trying to do is get to the very top but without running the elevator so what he did was being drunk he walked up
this elevator or the uh the stairs up the Eiffel Tower he gets close to 270 fet up high and can't go any further he
then crosses over to the railing he crosses over the railing and he starts shimming across
these eye beams because again it's like the Eiffel Tower it's just a bunch of scaffolding holding this [ __ ] together he shimmies
to the center of this Eiffel Tower stares down into the nearly 300 foot void below him kids like just drink at
home just drink no toally I understand wanting to drink at a theme park 100%
but you're going to throw up at the very best at the very best yes very worse is what's going to happen to you so what
ended up happening was the the ride was still operational
so as John's leaning over staring into this boy when he doesn't realize is that he's in the [ __ ] Elevator Shaft oh
no so what happens is you know the the way elevators work obviously is that you
have to have a counterweight right so when the elevator's going up the counter weight's going down goes down elevator
goes that's operational function of it and so what John's not seeing is the elevator going up the uh the thing is
coming down the counterweight is coming down the counterweight smacks him he lands on the top of the elevator and
like people hear he the sound like that's weird I wonder what that was goes all the way to the top impaling him on
exposed metal wires and rebar at the top of this thing so he's like he's like
semi alive no yeah and then and then
they end up going down all the way and he was impaled on the rebar enough to where his body didn't exit with the
elevator when it went down and so his elevator's going down he ends up somehow his body slips out from all the [ __ ]
blood that's probably pouring out of them and he lands on top of this thing and they like that's weird that's never
happened before none of the stories tell you this and it's hard to get details because
it's 1983 and they were not that fascinated with Gore I can only assume
there was just pools of blood falling from the roof on top of these people which would be like the most metal way
to go ever oh my God because that's ultimately how they discovered that Jon was on the roof of the [ __ ] thing
he'd Fallen after being impaled on rebar all the way back he was like up and then like back down oh my God meanwhile the
friends have been searching for John this whole time and the police are there on the scene and they're like we don't
know who this is there's he's he's 17 years old he has no ID we have no idea who this kid is the parks start shutting
down the kids go tell staff that their friends been missing the police eventually connect the dots and realize
that oh this is what ended up happening to this guy he ended up this this is the same guy and so that was it 17 years old
dead and buried yeah awful went straight into the ground not good well but when you're teenager you do so many stupid
things like there's so many times I could have died and I didn't die and it's just [ __ ] luck that I'm not dead
seriously I I think about the [ __ ] that I did when I was a kid or like a teenager and I'm like I shake thinking
about how Reckless I was yeah it's crazy totally totally H I remember one time
when I was in college my friend of the time we were in the same dorm he was like hey let's use the fire escape to
climb up to the roof of the building and like drink on the roof of this building sounds a good idea and I was like yeah
let's do it and then I got like half I was like oh my God this is for emergencies like there's nothing underneath me like like there's no
nothing hold if I let go like there's no backup like nobody's coming to save me it was the worst was but it's stuff like
that just done so many of those things yeah so stupid so onto our third and
final story I'm going to skip the other one it happened in China it looked sounded pretty gnarly but like again it's it's China like it's hard to get
the it's hard to get the details out of this stuff and so if I don't have enough details to make it fun and interesting I'm just not going to go through it
there's actually another one that I also thought about covering that I didn't cover that one I'll just tell you real quick so this happened in Disney and
this this girl's name was Deborah Stone I think she was 18 years old it was one of her first jobs and she was basically a host on America Sings which is this
ride sort of where the audience sits in one spot and then there's a rotating uh
stage so on one stage as you're looking at the they're seeing this they're doing
this one performance while they're doing a different performance on the stage over to you and a different performance on the other stage and there's audiences
at each one of the stages then the whole thing shifts puts you in in front of the new audience then you start seeing doing
good thing again de was supposed to be introducing people and doing all that so I'm kind of sing off to the side apparently what she ended up doing was
her hair or something got caught in like some of the machinery and she ended up being pulled in between this rotating
stage as it was rotating and just being crushed and what people could hear was every single time the thing would rotate
they just hear screams and they they hours later they realized that it was DEA in between there but this happened
like the 1950s so like the details are sparse like that's all we really know there's NOA yeah no other fun G details
but this one has plenty of G details which is very terrible this ride I'm sure most of you all heard this story
this ride is called varo and it's it was operated by schlitter bond which a water
park theme park that was based out of newbron Phils Texas that EXP exped into other states and territories
so this also took place in the sight of our horrific Hyatt disaster Kansas City
Missouri so I don't know what's haunting Kansas City but yeah my mar history
baroo are you g talk about what that means I was literally going to ask you if you knew what it means because you
surprise me sometimes I do I looked it up again because I wanted to make sure I was right but it it's it made the word
made me scared it means despicable loathsome like bad very bad
okay so the version that I read was that it means crazy or insane yeah that makes sense yeah so in 2014 um scherbon opened
this ride called Baro which is a giant water slide and on its opening day it
they got the distinction of being the tallest and fastest water slide in the world gu Booker world record showed up
they had a whole festival about it it was it was a big deal the drop the initial drop on this water slide is 168
ft tall which for a roller coaster isn't that big of a deal but for water slide a lot more random elements that you can't
really control this is a 17 foot 17 story drop is what it basically amounts to right that that's helpful because I
don't really know like the feet of things right you know so that's helpful thank you yes the way the ride Works was
Riders who um would start the very base and all this is bad so riters would
start at the base and they would be weighed and so they would put Riders
because they had to meet a minimum weight threshold the raft without riders
or sorry the raft with riders had to weigh a minimum of 400 pounds the maximum it could possibly weigh was 550
you'll know why in a little bit later so what they would do is they would weigh everyone and they say okay you're 100
pound you're 200 that guy's 100 yall are together yall right together basically that's
got then you walk 17 stories up to get loaded onto
this raft and then go to the ride so what do have happening is the way the ride is designed is
that when you get dropped you start going downhill you do the 17 story drop
which looks crazy steep like it doesn't look like a great G at all then the ride curves up and it's pushed up a second
Hill mostly by momentum but also through like these water jet propulsion systems under in in the slide
and then it's supposed to go down a second smaller descent then it lands in this like waterfill area where it's
supposed to be like a breaker to slow down the slide and and get you stopped there's a problem with the slide
the problem well there's a lot of problems with the slide but one of the bigger more obvious problems was that on
this Second Ascent over the hill every now and then there was a tendency for
the these rafts to go Airborne which you don't want at all
so it is around so also one of the things they were
trying to do to kind of slow down the amount of people that were going airborne was they designed what what are called brake bats so these are just like
mats that are installed on the slide there's friction that causes when the raft goes over it it's supposed to slow the raft down so that you don't go
Airborne some of these were installed some of these were not but it was part of one of the part of the initial design
it's just like that is God telling you not to make them this tall yeah yeah there's so much I'm going to tell you so
many things about that Taylor like that was a big part of this so during the main descent and uh second Hill paror
ride there was a net that was suspended over Riders and it was fastened to the
slide with loops so there's a loop this is this slide and then there's a net
above you on August 7th 2016 a 10-year-old boy
named Caleb Schwab and two sisters named matraka Bates and Hannah Barnes got into
what is going to be referred to in court documents as raft B at Vero
and they crested the they went down and they crested the second Hill and the
raft became Airborne we're going to talk about weight people don't like to talk about weight I'm G to talk about weight Caleb
weight 70 this is math weight this isn't like math weight Jim this is math weight
yes oh my God Caleb the the the position of the individuals and their individual
weights is super super relevant to this so Caleb was in the very front so he was
the first one in the raft he weighed 74 pounds 10-year-old boy uh one of the women mraa weighed 275
pounds The Other Woman Hanah weighed 197 pounds okay so what that essentially
means if you have uh what's his face Caleb in the front it need you have 472 pounds on the back of
this thing with 74 pounds on the front that gives you a weight distribution of 87 to 13 really bad super janky like
really not a good evenly disre to weight situation right because it doesn't matter like it matters like how much
they weigh combined but it also matters like you can't have like 499 pound person and a one pound person yeah
exactly exactly exactly so the r goes down this goes up the second
Hill and Caleb's head was or his body was forced upward because you have 472
pounds of drag on the back of this thing so like imagine that like it's going up and then and then it just basically does
this you can't nobody can see my hands I'm making hand motions sa I wish you could see the frown I was making the biggest frown I could possibly make
great big frown very pronounced Caleb's neck makes contact with one of those
metal hoops at 70 mph which immediately decapitates them I mean I feel like if you hit that oh my
God if like how can that be safe how can hitting that net be safe or those Loops
be safe at that fast anyway it's um I mean it's almost indicative of somebody
who has no engineering background which is a big part of why what happened ended up
happening oh my God uh in addition to this decapitation one of the women in
the raft suffered a broken jaw the other one had broken orbital muscle orbital bones in her face I can't even imagine what this
scene look like if you're one of these two women in the back of this thing what does it even look like like you you're
on a raft with a decapitated child did they know they knew him right they
didn't know him they didn't know him it doesn't it doesn't matter it's still decapitated child whether you know him or not I'm aware I know know but I mean
oh my God and then and then like and then I was just doing the M I was like where did his head like did the does his
head land in your lap does it land on the lap of the girl behind you and then you're writing down with this thing
there's there's um there's not videos obviously well actually there is a video but it's never been released publicly um
there is images of way after this happened so like five seven 10 8 minutes
after this happened because there's police on site and like that's not going to happen super quick and there's still
everywhere and this is like a a this is like a water so it's constantly Rushing Water there's still streams of blood all
over the sin because you just squirted out like 10 ounces of blood or whatever how how much a 10-year-old boy has so
horrible situation what's really interesting is also this guy's dad was a um State Representative for Ohio and
that was critical later as well so several things off here so the weight
distribution was obviously ly entirely off like what they should have done if they were going to do this right at all
which nobody should have was put the kid in the middle put him in the middle like the two will balance well like mostly
even each other out and then he's just kind of in the middle doing his thing and like you could hold on to them like we did we went to the water park in New
York this summer and miles is very very small he is and he we were on one where
he was like definitely too small to beond but it was like a small thing we went through a tube we were in like a double person tube and he was blow me
holding on to my feet and I was like you hold on to my feet for [ __ ] life miles and he just hold my like his
little shoulders and I was like oh my God it was very very scary so instilling trust young I like it yeah yeah um the
other one is that kale probably shouldn't have been on the ride in the first place so when this thing was in its design and planning stages the
people who actually designed this were not Engineers but they would consult with Engineers every now and then and one thing Engineers told the owners of
the of the water park and the designer of the slide was that there should be an age limitation on this and the age
limitation they gave him was 16 nobody 16 should ride this slide and then the
owner originally said I don't agree with that I going to set it to 14 and then
when the slide opened he removed all limitations completely there's no age
limitations the other one was what I mentioned earlier break mkks that should have been installed in the slide were
not installed and they would have in theory slowed the slide down so that it could have prevented going
airborne the other which is insane is at the time Missouri state law allowed
water parks to self-inspect and self-certify that their attractions were safe which is like obviously a horrible
idea oh my God it's most obviously transparently horrible idea I've ever heard so as you can imagine there's a
ton of criminal and civil suits that end up following after this the owner of schlitter bond the owner of this water
park he was also the contractor he also owned the construction business that built and designed the ver Vero and
obviously he came on under severe scrutiny there's a lot behind the scenes here and I've watched a lot of content
around this but it's really convoluted so I'm going to like the top level overview of it because you'd bore
yourself to death if I give you every detail the long and short of it was that in 2012 or so the Travel Channel had
this program called Extreme parks and they would go around they'd review like
the craziest rides and all that stuff this guy his name is Jeff Henry he's he's the owner and the designer he wants
to be on Extreme parks and in his mind he's like the way to do this is to have the most extreme Parks so he goes to
Travel Channel and says hey I have an idea for a water slide 17 stories high never been done before no engineer will
ever certify it we do an episode on this like yes build in will come and so that
was the impetus for this thing so H yeah so they said they said they would do it
and so now this guy's thinking oh [ __ ] now I have to build this thing so it's worth noting Jeff had a high school
diploma zero zero engineering experience but once the Travel Channel Express
design interest interest in this he basically started getting to work trying to build this thing out and so again
super convoluted story but the design phase of the slide was 36 days so what
they did was they built a scale version of this slide at the Texas version of
the the water park that he owned and they would test there and you can see videos of this you can see videos of the
thing going airborne just flipping left and right they loaded up with 700 lb sandbags and thing would go flying like
basically what what I think what it said was they tested it with humans four
times like Jeff Henry himself wrote down it four times four times it didn't go airborne and it stayed working as they
wanted it to and they were like that's it that's good enough we're we're ready to go that's when they started breaking
ground on building the actual one on on site in Kansas City
originally when the travel CH said they would do this Jeff Henry set a timeline of seven months he wanted to have this
thing tested designed tested built released in seven months which is insane
to think about in the court filing in the criminal case his accomplice in
designing this thing was a guy named John schooly he was quoted saying quote if we actually knew how to do this and
it could be done that easily it wouldn't be that spectacular so they were legit trial and erroring
things they were just testing stuff out and throwing it throwing it at the wall and seeing what would what would stick and what wouldn't stick I mean it's like
if you were a child and you were like what do
you think we should do for a water slide and be like make it taller yeah literally that's what it is like a drawing of like a one big loop in a
thing like that'd be perfect like it's like a it's obviously there no Engineers involved or very obviously yeah um
and one thing to note is that when they start started building this thing and testing this thing out they realized
that their designs were flawed at the full scale level and so they would have to keep trying to increase the gradient
to slow down the velocity at which you go up that second Hill so people would stop flying off and and potentially
getting hurt the problem was this thing got so much media attention
that they didn't want to show that the thing was faulty and so because there's
always people there trying to film it and so what they would do is they would do all their testing in re revisions of
of the slide at night times in the early morning hours so [ __ ] up yeah yeah they want people to know that they
didn't really know what they were doing they so and they so like there's I mean if I were a lawyer I'd be like this is
[ __ ] dangerous of course absolutely so the slide itself was actually only
operational for 182 days despite the fact that it was around for two years because the thing kept having to get shut down getting revised uh and also
it's water park so like most half the year at least it's shut down anyway it was operational for 182 days until
Caleb went on it and ended up dying again I went through the court records here are the things that nobody would
have ever known if this if Caleb hadon died none of this information would have gone out so there was two people that
suffered concussions on this thing there was one person who suffered a SLI spinal disc there's two folks who hurt their
neck in ways that were not entirely obvious um on the court court documents somebody got whiplash there was
abrasions and bruising to the Head um there was somebody reported broken toes this happened because the restraints on
the slide or the raft failed and the guy had to do what I had to do for that Harry Potter ride Force his feet into
the thing so hold himself in position but at the very end of this slide there's a concrete
wall and so this guy slammed into this concrete wall breaking his feet oh my
God throw up you have head lacerations other foot injuries you have herniated spinal disc and then you have the broken
jaw the orbital fracture and the decapitation oh my God yeah this is all
within 182 days like it's a crazy air rate it's a super high air rate oh my
God so ultimately uh the family uh Caleb's family won a 20 million
settlement against schlitter Bond and Jeff was arrested on criminal charges but they eventually dismissed the
criminal charges because prosecutors were trying to present evidence that the they're trying to show the Travel
Channel show as like factual in when they filmed it for Baro and they're like yeah this this isn't the stand want to
follow basically the court case the criminal case against them ended up getting dropped entirely Caleb's father
as a state representative um went and argued for legislation they removed this
self-reporting and self-certification concept um which is great like that's
that should have happened that should have happened yeah and they ended up selling a big chunk of schlutter Bon all
the parks ended up getting sold out except for this one because this was a giant liability situation veru ended up
getting knocked down anyways doesn't really matter but Jeff continued to prove what an absolute [ __ ] worthless
piece of [ __ ] he was he ended up getting arrested last year last year he got arrested on possession of meth and he
just looks does he just look if you've seen a picture is I'm look I didn't look him up but I hate him find Give me the
give me show me someone who just makes in math and also designs insane water
slides it's like this is the guy yep my God that what a piece of [ __ ] yeah yeah
um he ended up getting 36 months of probation unfortunately so he's out and about and I looked him up on LinkedIn
and he still says that he his title now is principal at schlutter Bond I have no idea what that means a part of me Taylor
was like should I reach out to this guy and be like hey can I just can I interview you like what does he say I
maybe he'll could be fun oh my God so so yeah
but thing the thing not so the court case that document all this stuff so like that's what I'm saying like these folks really don't want you to know
anything that goes on all get settled hush tush right it's like oh you have a har disc we'll pay your medical expenses
also here's like you know $50,000 cash just go just we don't need to talk about this you and so all these rides that you
ride like sure you haven't heard of anything bad happening on them that doesn't mean something bad hasn't
happened on them you will never know until a 10-year-old kid is decapitated
and then the court case digs up all the records and proves what up happening so
100% anyways have fun uh have fun next summer at your music Parks I know I feel
terrible that is so sad I'm so sad for those that poor
boy God and those girls Jesus you imag no I mean I feel like the biggest thing
is all the [ __ ] therapy you have to do for the rest of your whole entire life and you never have you're never going to sleep again so that sucks yeah
I I I read that one of the women gave an interview and for the life thing I couldn't find it I dug I dug and I could
not find where her interview lived um but if anybody knows let us know because
that would be amazing to see po thing so yeah that's my story for
today um hopefully y'all enjoyed it I feel I'm going to throw up Taylor
what I was going to do originally was I was going to like do the history of roller coasters and then talk about like
the sterious roller coasters and then talk about like a few incidences with them and then when I started getting into this I was like that is so [ __ ]
boring like just talk about the death that's fair I mean i' like to hear
about the history of them sometime you ever seen the uh sketch of
the suicide coaster where it's supposed to kill the off that's fun yeah the idea is that it
goes so fast that you die like really realize it and you just like pass out pass out I mean I feel like just I don't
know just calmer ways to go there's um there's there was one roller coaster at Dollywood it was called um flying eagle
or Eagle Eagle something I don't know what it was but uh it was so so outlandish it was the Central track and
then your legs are suspended and it's off the side so like above you and Below you there's nothing and all you can
really see is the sky on the ground and it just does a loop after loop after Loop and point it says in the uh in the
uh entry way that you will experience 4 and a half G's which means like someone like me would weigh like for a brief
instance like 1,200 lb and I'm pretty sure I actually blacked out like there was one point when I like I just kind of
like looked around and was like I there was spit all over myself and I was like oh I just blacked out I wish I wish you
had a video that I do enjoy watching videos of people on roller coasters when they pass out and it's like their bodies are just
like contorting yeah yes which is horrifying why would you do
that yeah yeah if you're if you're a thrill definitely ride that one because that was like outlandishly terrifying oh
my God it's amazing so that's it that's our story is there anything any emails
we want to read or I have a couple things that I wanted to share with you one is from me you know um I feel like
when we got back from vacation everyone was talking about the the documentary on Max about love has W did you watch it
yet that cult so like the cult the cult where this like woman obviously like
thinks she's God and like she it's like so dumb she thinks she's God and has
like a couple followers and they just like really believe it and they believe that she like is Guided by all these
like famous dead celebrities like mostly Robin Williams and like and then she also and there's like a whole bunch of
people that guided her um and then one of them is Donald Trump even though he's not dead and you're like okay that's
weird and then there's like a little bit of like there's a little bit of weird racism that you're like okay there it is you know but she obviously was like and
then she was like selling this like colloidal colloidal silver stuff not collidal but you know what I mean like
the like silver that you drink Turns You Blue and she like turned blue and she ended up dying and like they kept her body for a few days like in in their
place CU they expected her to come back a lot of things but she was like one of those people who was like oh I'm
reincarnated but I was like all the great people she said that she was like cetra and Marilyn Monroe because of course everybody says that blah blah
blah but I wanted to tell you that at one point in the documentary they go to Hawaii and she decides that she's The
Reincarnation and she's also like the the Volcan the volcano goddess Pelle and
um they kick her the [ __ ] out of Hawaii every people go to her around the house and they're like get out of here how
dare you and she they they don't they don't even get to see there very long at all it's amazing because the Hawaiian
people are like [ __ ] you so hard you're not our Goddess get out of here that's like one of the things I will say that
like being like from a culture that just doesn't tolerate nonsense which like is
also like the Polynesian way as well um is it's like it's like here it's like I
am this thing and you have to look at it and then you're like it's like no get the [ __ ] out of here like who do you
think you are just shoot sh get out of here leave immediately so that was lovely I really I enjoyed I enjoyed that
um kicking her out and then um we also have some mail so we have um Brad
emailed us a couple a couple things is this is this a thing well one about the farts cuz they are definitely in that
one re-release and I heard them and I laughed so hard and then because I listened to it on the plane and then Brad emailed us about it so we know that
in one of our re-releases there were fart sounds they came off Taylor's microphone did not we'll never know
Taylor on wait on the drive home before you go into that on the on the flight home from uh from Asheville uh I was in
the left seat Rachel was in the middle and there was someone on the right and I swear to God this guy had to be ripping
it every like 10 minutes to the point where this stewardess came by to do like card service and I was like hey someone
in this area is like ripping ass every 10 minutes do you have any other seats you can put us in and she was like the
flight's totally booked I'm so sorry and she was like can I bring your garbage back to vomit in and I was like no I'm okay let's I don't need the garbage p
and then they didn't charge us for wine and they're like here just take it like okay this is it's not worth it but still
anyways oh my God that's so funny um so anyway we know that happened anybody heard that that's very funny um and then
Brad also emailed us about IQ tests um because he listen to the one about IQ tests as well did you read that email
from him um no basically he said we talked about wondering how IQ is scored
and far he said far as you have the gist of it that it should be determined from standardized testing interpreting
interpreted by a sid or a PHD psychologist the most common IQ test especially in America is the westler
adult intelligence scale um and what it measures is like like a huge can of
worms and it can mean a bunch of different things it correlates closely to socioeconomic status obviously you
know cuz people like learn different things via their culture norms and via the way that questions are worded and
you can also like take it over and over again and get better at it so it's sort of up in the air about what it actually
means you know it's fair fair it's a good point thanks Brad Brad uh I we will if
y'all really want more fart episodes we'll just see more far episodes It's the only choice we got we could we
could um cool well that's it thank you fars thanks everyone I'm glad to be back
um we are at Doom toil pod gmail.com Doom toil pod on all social media please
tell your friends please rate US on Apple podcast if you haven't as a Christmas present to us it'd be lovely
if you share we' appreciate it thank you bye all