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Just think, you could have gotten flung 70' by a trebuchet!

Middlemoor Trebuchet

Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be via Wiki Commons

Pictured: a real trebuchet. Somehow less dangerous than the theme park
version you’re about to read up on.

There’s one pretty reliable test you can run on your theme park ride
before you make it to decide if it’s going to mess up a lot of people:
does it have the name of a medieval device that killed a lot of goddamn
people? If yes, maybe scoot on back to the drawing board. But, over in Middlemoor, England, they went right into the design phase at Middlemoor
Water Park.

The design, you ask? Well, damn, it’s simple, just a big ass cannon that launches people 70 feet into the air, and you just have to close your
eyes and pray that the bastard comes down into the net. And a lot of
English bastards did go up and come down into that net. Until one
didn’t. And that’s what it took to finally shut down this absolutely
mental ride. Someone missing the net and dying.

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Not just ONE person, ONE, who might have passed by it and been like,
“Ey, bruv, you seen wot they’re doin’ over there at Middlemoor? Launchin’ wankers into the air like Mr. Bean and prayin’ they land in a
net and not in one of them phonebooths or big busses or whatever the
hell we have because I’m out of English references, innit?” As a general rule of thumb for theme park designers going forward, maybe just take
one step back and see if your plans look like some big blue concept
sheet Wile E. Coyote would decide against before you strap humans into it.

Thumbnails: Charles Wilgren/Flickr Creative Commons/CC BY 2.0, PXHere

to see the pictures, and video, go here:
from https://www.cracked.com/article_35565_hell-ride-4-theme-park-attractions-that-should-never-have-existed.html

And they do show a fair number of people being flung!

the rest of the story is:

ARTICLES WEIRD WORLD 'HELL RIDE': 4 THEME PARK ATTRACTIONS THAT SHOULD
NEVER HAVE EXISTED
'Hell Ride': 4 Theme Park Attractions That Should Never Have Existed
By:
Mac FaberMac Faber
October 07, 2022

'Hell Ride': 4 Theme Park Attractions That Should Never Have Existed
Charles Wilgren/Flickr Creative Commons/CC BY 2.0

We sign a sort of unseen contract when we go to a theme park. One that
says we waive over all rights to get mad about watching people dig into
their crotches to retrieve denim shorts that have lodged inside of their
body after hitting a few G’s on a coaster. We waive over any
responsibility for how we’re about to coat our arteries in deep fry
batter and powdered sugar. And, most importantly, we basically waive
over any leverage we have to be mad if we get straight-up Mortal Kombat Fatality’d by a ride named after some fuzzy sidekick from a superhero movie.

Though we don’t expect it to happen to us, there’s no denying that some
of these coasters are more like Rube Goldberg machines designed to
capture the exact moment you get the same level of CTE as a 15-year NFL
running back in one photo you can purchase at the end for $29.95. Yet,
even though just about every theme park has a ride that makes you wonder
how it was ever greenlit in the first place, some go to another level
and force you to consider that the person running the place is actually
just a villain from an Eli Roth movie ...

4
Dragon Challenge (Dueling Dragons)
When the whole wildly dangerous concept of rollercoasters just isn’t
enough, try making them fight each other:

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You know what’s probably not such a good idea? Putting a hunk of steel
atop a bunch of other steel and sending it ripping around a track to
spin about and zip just inches from the steel that’s keeping the one
little steel car barely in place. You know what an even worse idea is?
Putting another steel cart on the opposite side of that and having them
tango inches from each other like some kind of weird mating ritual you’d
see on Planet Earth.

But instead of some birds showing off their beautiful bright plumage,
we’ve got a set of regretful couples in matching Mickey Mouse t-shirts
trying not to puke Butterbeer on each other with each pass by. Nature. Beautiful.

Shockingly, this design ended up causing some problems, probably partly
because it was like letting a destructive nine-year-old treat real-life
guests the way he does his action figures, and they eventually decided
to just stick with the non-dueling version of high probability vomiting
until the ride was shut down for good in 2017.

3
Alpine Slides
It’s like Mario Kart, except this one can kill you:


Charles Wilgren/Flickr Creative Commons/CC BY 2.0

Let’s be real; any list like this couldn’t leave off Action Park. Though
it may be well-covered by now, there’s a reason for that. It’s like the Hitler of amusement parks. We still talk about it because we need to
remember the messed-up crap that it did. Though most like to point to
Action Park’s human Bull Ring, I think it’s the Alpine Slide that may be the most diabolical of the entire property. Basically, the Alpine Slide
is what happens if you take arguably the most critical element of a
waterslide away, the water, then before the slide part, you just plugged
in, asphaltandconcreteandstuffthatwillliterallyripyoudowntoaskeletonifyousomuchassneezeslide.

Riders would be pushed down the mountain track on a flimsy wheeled cart
and were on their own from there. You essentially had to ride this thing
with the focus and precision of a big wave surfer, knowing that one
little mistake could alter the course of your life forever. You do have
to give it to the designers on this, though. The absolute balls to
believe that people are dumb enough to line up for a waterless
waterslide speaks not only to the brilliance of the modern American scam
artist but also of the truly criminal stupidity of the average amusement
park goer who’d happily hop in that line.

2
Living with the Land
Allow me to present the theme park equivalent of missionary:

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Some rides can kill you by sending a hunk of steel into your chest. Some
can launch you into the goddamn parking lot. And then some, well, some
can kill you gradually. Over time. Through absolute, pure, unfiltered
boredom. While every other ride on this list features some kind of
over-the-top design or diabolical twist, Living With the Land at Epcot
is simply a middle school textbook brought to life. Taking riders on a
slow, crawling 15-minute tour of agriculture science and what it takes
to get food in this country, Living on the Land is more torture than ride.

Look, I like to learn. It’s fun. It’s good. It’s fine. It’s not what I go to an adventure park for. When I just spent the last four rides
actively blasting brain cells from my nose as my head bashed back and
forth on an upsidedown loop, it’s probably not the best time to drop me
in a Magic Schoolbus episode that was left out of the season for being
too boring. And your average episode on that show featured the bus
shrinking down and going into an IRS agent’s butthole for 28 minutes. At least the rollercoaster that makes me fight other rollercoasters has the decency to kill me swiftly; this slow drip is just heinous.

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