Verrückt

Verrückt (German meaning "crazy" or "insane", ) was a water slide located at the Schlitterbahn Kansas City water park in Kansas City, Kansas, United States. At the height of 168 ft, Verrückt became the world's tallest water slide when it opened on July 10, 2014, surpassing Kilimanjaro at Aldeia das Águas Park Resort in Brazil. The ride was designed at the park, led by John Schooley with assistance from park co-owner Jeff Henry. It was featured on an episode of Xtreme Waterparks on the Travel Channel in June 2014, shortly before the ride opened. Verrückt permanently closed in 2016 following a fatal incident involving the decapitation of Caleb Schwab, the 10-year-old son of Kansas state legislator (and later Secretary of State of Kansas) Scott Schwab.

Verrückt was originally scheduled to open in June 2013, but difficulties during various construction and safety testing stages resulted in several delays. Sandbags loaded into rafts during testing went airborne. The ride's final design made rafts reach a maximum speed of 70 mph. Verrückt was well-received upon opening, winning a Golden Ticket Award from Amusement Today in 2014.

After Schwab's death, amusement park safety laws were updated to require state inspection of all attractions. It was later revealed that at least 13 other people had suffered non-fatal injuries from hitting the netting above the slide. Criminal charges led to the arrests of several individuals, including Schooley and Henry. The charges were ultimately dismissed with the finding of multiple procedural issues with the case's presentation by the Kansas Attorney General. The incident's aftermath, however, resulted in a rapid decline in Schlitterbahn's reputation and financial standing, resulting in the park's closure in September 2018. Verrückt was dismantled two months later.

Background
Original plans for Schlitterbahn Kansas City, the first Schlitterbahn Waterparks site outside Texas, called for a US$750 million complex including hotels and resort areas. Officials in Wyandotte County, Kansas, where it was to be built, were delighted when the company announced the plans in 2005, seeing this as the culmination of efforts to draw residents of the Kansas City metropolitan area to spend their disposable income in Kansas rather than Missouri. State legislators from the area passed a law allowing Schlitterbahn to self-inspect its attractions without state oversight as it did in Texas, unlike all other amusement parks in Kansas, which were subject to state inspection.

However, the complete plans never came to fruition. Two years later, the Great Recession forced many amusement park operators, including Schlitterbahn, to scale back their plans and focus on making their existing parks profitable in the challenging economy. Schlitterbahn Kansas City was reduced to a US$180 million park without lodging and was not open for an entire season until 2010. It was successful, but not to the degree Schlitterbahn and co-owner Jeff Henry had initially expected.

Construction
In November 2012, Schlitterbahn announced plans to create the world's tallest and fastest water slide at its Kansas City park, to open in mid-2013. No name was given during the announcement, while specifications on the height of the ride were kept secret to ensure that the completed ride would set a world record for its creation.

The water slide was spontaneously conceived by Henry at a trade show after a team from Travel Channel's Xtreme Waterparks asked what he was working on. Initial attempts to pitch the idea to vendors at the show failed, so Henry decided to build the slide himself, enlisting John Schooley as the ride's lead designer. Henry had described the new ride to the Travel Channel crew as a "speed blaster", a term he had likewise improvised. He and Schooley knew that Schlitterbahn had to live up to the hype Henry had created and design something previously unheard of. "Basically we were crazy enough to try anything", Schooley recalled.

Henry pressed his design team to complete the ride faster than usual, forcing many staff to work almost constantly. Calculations that normally required three to six months were completed in five weeks. As they began testing, rafts repeatedly went airborne on the ride's large bottom hump.

In November 2013, the ride was officially named Verrückt, the German word for crazy or insane, with the opening date pushed back until the start of the park's 2014 season. The Guinness Book of World Records named Verrückt the world's tallest water slide in April 2014, before it was even finished. At 168 ft, it surpassed Kilimanjaro at Aldeia das Águas Park Resort in Brazil. When the park opened, delays in construction and testing of the ride led to its opening date being pushed back to June 5, and then June 29, after the lower portion of the ride was rebuilt, to coincide with a television special about the ride; the park later canceled this opening date and two days of media previews following further delays.

An unnamed lifeguard at the park told Esquire magazine in 2019 that the park primarily conducted some of the later tests after operating hours, with only select employees – usually those who had been with the company for the longest – allowed to watch. He further stated, "The only time I saw the slide run successfully was on the Travel Channel episode, but I wouldn't even call that successful", he recalled, because the raft in that case got stuck on the second hump. Sandbags on the raft frequently went airborne at that point, as in some leaked viral videos. "I told my friends and family it was only a matter of time until someone died on Verrückt", the lifeguard said.

A safety consultant hired by the park shortly before Verrückt's scheduled opening told Henry it was unfinished and unsafe. When complete, he recommended that only riders aged 16 and over be allowed on the ride. Henry, who had no formal engineering education, decided age 14 was better. Just before the opening, however, he eliminated the age limit.

Operation
Verrückt was eventually completed and officially opened on July 10, attracting national media coverage. Among the first riders was then-Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. The riders who had seen the videos of 110 lb sandbags flying off the rafts went on anyway. One local judge told Esquire later that she rode the water slide ten times that day, and an employee who had loaded the sandbags during testing said he went down twenty times over its first two days. "That should tell you something about how I felt about it," he said. However, Henry and Schooley, while watching riders that day, noted how many rafts seemed to be going airborne on the lower hump into the emergency netting meant to keep them on the slide.

Two months later, Verrückt was voted the world's "Best New Waterpark Ride" at the 2014 Golden Ticket Awards. However, at least thirteen riders suffered non-fatal injuries, such as concussions or slipped and herniated discs – many of which had long-term effects – after either hitting the netting or being thrown into it. After a Missouri man thrown from the raft suffered facial injuries in June 2016, the park's operations manager allegedly attempted to cover up the incident, telling lifeguards what to write in their reports; it is believed that this happened with other accidents.

Even some uninjured riders were unnerved by Verrückt. A Kansas City man who had made a point of riding due to favorable experiences with the Texas Schlitterbahn parks recalled having to grab the raft's auxiliary straps when the Velcro straps holding him came loose after the first drop; he was thankful that his son had used the weight limit as an excuse not to ride. A local woman whose boyfriend held her in the raft likewise noted to Esquire that the netting and hoops on the lower hump showed signs of many human collisions.

Design
Verrückt was designed to consist of two drops, the initial being a 17-story plunge, with a five-story uphill midsection. The ride was designed to accommodate three-person rafts, each weighing 100 lb and carried up by conveyor to the top of the slide, while riders climbed 264 steps to the top. To prevent the rafts from lifting off the slide, rider groups were weighed twice – once at the bottom and again at the top before riding – to ensure a combined weight between 400 lbs and 550 lbs, and that single riders are below 300 lbs.

The starting point of the ride, at 168 feet, was taller than either Niagara Falls or the foot-to-torch portion of the Statue of Liberty. Because it was beyond the 120 feet that zoning codes permitted, the design required a variance. The height was increased from its initial plan of 148 feet, which was also above the limit. After the announcement of the ride's height and the certification of its world record on April 25, 2014, Schlitterbahn tore down most of the lower part of the ride, to rebuild and re-engineer it because sandbags had flown off the ride during testing. As a result, the second drop was changed from 45 degrees to 22 degrees, an extra 5 feet was added to the uphill portion of the ride to slow the rafts, and a series of metal hoops supporting netting were added into areas where rafts had flown off in early testing.

Fatal incident
On August 7, 2016, Caleb Schwab, the 10-year-old son of Kansas state representative Scott Schwab, died while riding Verrückt. The raft he was riding went airborne during the ascent of the second hump and struck a metal support of the netting, decapitating him. The other two passengers, both women, were injured in the incident – one suffered a broken jaw, while the other suffered a facial bone fracture and needed stitches. In the immediate aftermath, Schlitterbahn Kansas City was closed pending an inspection. Although the park reopened three days later, the ride remained closed.

Reportedly, Caleb, who weighed 74 lb, had been allowed to sit in the front of the raft rather than between the two women accompanying him – one weighed 275 lb, while the other weighed 197 lb. This created an uneven weight distribution, which some experts concluded may have contributed to the raft going airborne. However, the total weight of 546 lb was less than the maximum recommended weight of 550 lb. Engineers who inspected the ride also commented that the ride's netting, used in areas where riders travel up to 70 mph, "posed its own hazard because a rider moving at high speeds could easily lose a limb if they hit it". Their findings revealed that the use of the metal brace and netting system in the design, along with the use of hook and loop straps to restrain the riders, violated guidelines set by ASTM F-24 Committee on Amusement Ride and Devices. According to the guidelines, Verrückt should have incorporated rigid over-the-shoulder restraints for riders and an upstop mechanism to prevent the rafts from going airborne.

Aftermath
After Scott Schwab spoke to his fellow legislators about his son's death and its effect on him, they voted to change the law that had allowed Schlitterbahn to self-inspect, requiring that the state regularly inspect all the state's amusement park attractions. In November 2016, Schlitterbahn announced that Verrückt would be demolished following the conclusion of a criminal investigation. The Schwab family settled with several involved parties, including Schlitterbahn, for approximately US$20 million in early 2017. Settlements involving the other two riders injured in the accident were undisclosed.

In July 2018, a judge approved a plan by the park to disassemble Verrückt beginning the following September. The ride's teardown was placed on hold indefinitely in August 2018, resulting from ongoing discussions in multiple court cases that were filed after the incident. The park eventually began dismantling the ride in November 2018, and the work to remove the ride was completed within two months. The park did not operate the following season, and Schlitterbahn's reputation and finances were negatively impacted. Two of the company's water parks in Texas were sold in June 2019 for US$261 million to Cedar Fair, a major owner of amusement parks nationwide, including Kansas City, Missouri's Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun.

With the dismantling of Verrückt, Kilimanjaro regained its title as the world's tallest water slide. Kilimanjaro lost its title in December 2023 to Meryal Waterpark in Qatar, the location of a slide 85 meters (260 ft) tall.

Criminal charges
On March 23, 2018, a grand jury issued an indictment against Schlitterbahn and Tyler Austin Miles, former director of operations, charging them with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated battery, aggravated child endangerment, and interference with law enforcement. The indictment accused the park of negligence, concealing design flaws, and downplaying the severity of previous injuries reported on the ride.

The 2018 indictment against Schlitterbahn wrote that Jeff Henry and John Schooley "lacked technical expertise to design a properly functioning water slide" and did not perform standard engineering procedures or calculations on how the slide would operate. Instead, they used "crude trial-and-error methods" to test its performance out of haste to launch the ride. According to court documents, Schooley conceded that, "If we actually knew how to do this, and it could be done that easily, it wouldn't be that spectacular."

Three days later, on March 26, Henry was arrested in Cameron County, Texas, in connection with the incident. One day later, on March 27, the Kansas Attorney General's office released a new indictment against Henry, Schooley, and Henry & Sons Construction Company — privately owned by Schlitterbahn — charging them with second-degree murder in addition to seventeen other felonies. Schooley was arrested at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport after returning from a trip to China on April 2, 2018. The defendants were arraigned in April 2018, and the first criminal trial began in October.

On February 22, 2019, criminal charges were dismissed against Henry, Schooley, and Miles because inadmissible evidence had been presented to the grand jury. The judge's ruling reprimanded state attorneys for presenting the Xtreme Waterparks episode to jurors as fact, instead of as a "fictional and dramatized version of events created for entertainment purposes," and expert witnesses for claiming that the designers of the slide were negligent in not following ASTM standards, though the law at the time did not require that those standards be followed.