b'Jeff Henry in front of Verrckt, at 168 feet, 7 inches, the worlds tallest waterslide, and the fastest at 70 mph down the first drop. Verrckts second hill rose to 55-feet.experience like speed, gravitational force (Gs), centripetal force, friction, and thebe dismantled and rebuilt in an effort to resolve the dynamic engineering problem, like) was never calculated by the Verrckt team. Not that anyone on the team wasand even if the claim today is that Henry and Schooley were just hamming it up for trained or qualified to do it. In a revelation almost as shocking as the incident itself,the cameras, their frustration and, frankly, cluelessness, could not be more evident:it was revealed in the Kansas indictment that neither Jeff Henry, nor John Schooley, visionaries and designers of hundreds of waterpark rides across the world, possessJeff Henry on the subject of Verrckt design science: Im not quite sure yet. Many any formal engineering education or certification. Its all trial and error, and appar- things, I think. Theres a whole bunch of factors that creeped [sic] in on this one that ently it always has been for Henry & Sons Construction. we just didnt know about. Obviously, things do fall faster than Newton said.In fact, it was Jeff Henrys self-ascribed identity as the self-taught, water ride mastermind-maverick that was perfect for TV, and he knew it. As the drama of de- John Schooley on the subject of the rebuild to correct the problem of airborne rafts:lays, terrifying test rides and redesigns played out on Xtreme Waterparks, all cen- The worst possible thing that could happen is that we have miscalculated againtered on the danger of rafts flying off the slide path as they eclipsed Verrcktstheres many things weve changedand we again put the rafts into the air. second peak of some 55 feet, Jeff Henry the TV character took on a bigger than lifeThat would cause us to come back and redo what we just did and reconstruct and persona as an other-worldly genius who doesnt follow the rules but makes the new rules that the rest of the world, in his case the waterpark world, will learn to follow.redesign the ride again. It would be a disaster.Henrys recorded statements could not have been clearer in explaining his mindsetBased on the plot line of the Xtreme Waterparks episode in which Schooleys and his approach to creating Verrckt: words were uttered, one would presume the disaster to which he referred was one Were going to set the standards up, and set the education up, and were gonnaof continued delays and cost overrunsand in the end, those factors won out versus redefine many of the definables that have been defined in the industry that werider safety, and no one could have been clearer in that assessment than Jeff Henry couldnt find a good reason for. Like a 48-inch height rule. Why 48 inches? I couldhimself, who said, after two missed grand opening dates in the summer of 2014:never figure out why not 47 inchesit made no sense to me. And so were gonna[Verrckt] could hurt me. It could kill me. It is a seriously dangerous piece of change all this now in the park, and hopefully change it worldwide in equipment today because there are things that we dont know about it.all parks and get back to rational, reasonable, scientific decisions Every day we learn moreIve seen what this one has done to the crash dummies as to why and how we run our facilities. and to the boats we sent down it. Ever since the prototype, and we had boats flying in the prototype tooits complex. Its fast. Its mean.Fascinating words of profound wisdom and insight from the Steve Jobs of wa- If we mess up it could be the end. I could die going down this ride.terparkscue the dramatic bumper music and cut to commercial. The real-world result of what Schlitterbahn now refers to as acting, amounted to the willful dis- A week before Verrckts grand opening in July 2014, Henry & Sons hired an regard, to the point of condemnation, of long-established design, engineering andoutside engineering firm to conduct acceleration tests on rafts going down the slide. safety standards of the amusement park ride industry in the construction of Ver- According to the criminal indictment, the accelerometer tests indicated that rafts in rckt, as alleged in the indictment. the 400 to 550-pound range would likely go airborne at the crest of the second hill. Verrckts delays extended from weeks into months, into the next years sea- Prosecutors contend that Henry and Schooley either ignored the test data, did not son, all played out on the Xtreme Waterparks series, and almost entirely surround- understand the data, or understood the data and opened the ride anyway, a week ing the issue of rafts going airborne on the second hill. Half of the first ride had tolater.TheCooasastalBend.c THE COASTAL BEND MATHE CGAZINEOASTAL BEND MAFEATURED: The StGAZINEories that MattEarly Summer 2018ered 37TheC talBend.comom 83'