>Great Adventure (Six Flags) wasn't as much fun but we all came back in one piece.

Central Jersey dude here. Yeah I did the Action Park alpine slide. And saw that water slide your dad mentioned (I opted for the smaller one).

But not everybody was so lucky at GA. I was there the day a girl died falling off Lightning Loops. And the family with us also happened to be there previously the day a fire broke out in the Haunted House, killing several people.

In high school I volunteered at the local hospital. One of the patients was the guy who stood up on Scream Machine to impress his girlfriend and fell out.

Fond memories of childhood visits to a local "flume" ride, essentially a long concrete-lined ditch dug in a switchback pattern down a big hillside. Painted to make it slick, and they pumped a continuous stream of water all along it. You rode it by sitting or lying on foam mats, about 3x4 feet in size.

A ton of fun, you could get going pretty fast and you definitely wanted to have your legs crossed when you hit the pool at the bottom. Never heard of anyone getting hurt though, other than some mild abrasions if you slipped off the mat -- the concrete wasn't totally smooth. The curves were pretty steeply banked and the most you could really do if you went over the side was end up in underbrush.

Terrible that adults who should know better are making rides without apparent regard for safety of the (mostly) kids that will be riding them. Those elevated trough rides do worry me, they really need to be fully enclosed anywhere there is any chance of going airborne or over the edge.

Hmm… The indictment mentions that normal engineering practice would include an “upstop”, which is apparently a wheel or other part of the vehicle that rides under the track [1] to prevent it from going airborne. In addition, it says the restraint should have been a “Class 5 restraint consisting of rigid overhead shoulder bars with a locking lap restraint”, which would effectively prevent the rider from going airborne. So it seems like if both of those things had been present, designed properly, and of course tested and maintained, that would provide a high degree of safety without needing to fully enclose the track.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-do-roller-coasters-stay-on-the-tra...

I have memories myself of a summer camp with a nice long slide that was waxed with the insides of McDonalds cups. You rode down on a burlap sack and if for some reason you touched the slide itself you would get a gigantic friction burn (ask me how I know!).

> you definitely wanted to have your legs crossed when you hit the pool at the bottom.

Why? This is a serious question, since I am not that experienced in crazy water slides.

Because otherwise the water slams into your crotch. Crossing your feet or keeping them pressed together directs the water away.

Because otherwise you strike water at high speed with your unprotected crotch area.

My dad recalls one summer where three people died on coasters and another incident where someone lit a (very unsafe as per fire code) haunted house on fire.

It's gotten considerably better since then though when I stopped going they were in the middle of a serious nickel-and-diming phase.