Never read the comments at Fox News. Here’s a sampling of the reaction to the news that a woman is suing Disney for injuries she received on a ride. The good folks commenting are torn; some think it’s great that “woke Disney” is getting sued, others are offended that anyone would sue a capitalist enterprise, and want to blame the woman.
I’m pretty sure this is a frivolious lawsuit. They planned it.
In the liberal world, there is no such thing as personal responsibility.
How predictable. The lawsuit doesn’t say they didn’t warn her. It’s says they didn’t tell her WHY she needed to cross her legs.
Then you read what happened to this woman.
(I’m going to put it below the fold because it’s rather horrific.)
She took a ride on a water slide at Disney World.
“The risk of injury to a rider’s genitalia and internal organs can be eliminated by using shorts or other protective clothing to act as a barrier and to prevent clothing or water from being forced inside his or her body when slammed into the pool of water at the end of The Slide,” the lawsuit says. “Disney does not instruct riders to wear protective clothing, does not make such protective shorts available to riders, and does not warn riders of the risk of injury if protective clothing is not worn while using The Slide.”
After Emma’s thrilling ride down the slide, the lawsuit said that she “experienced immediate and severe pain internally” and when she stood up, blood rushed from in between her legs.
The lawsuit says that Emma was immediately rushed to the hospital where she, “suffered severe and permanent bodily injury including severe vaginal lacerations, a full thickness laceration causing Plaintiff’s bowel to protrude through her abdominal wall, and damage to her internal organs.”
Disney has a ride that, if you don’t cross your legs, water will jet up into your guts and rupture your bowels, and some people think that is perfectly reasonable.
She’s suing for $50K, which sounds a bit on the low side. Sue to shut down the dangerous ride, at least.
When Dubya was a Texas politician he joined in the effort by corporate interests ro raise the bar for lawsuits.
We have all heard the story of the lady who burned herself with coffee and this was used as a prototype for a frivoviolus lawsuit.
In reality, her injuries were severe and her lawsuit perfectly justified.
Jesus, did Disney hire ride designers from Action Park?
What in the Action Park fuck did I just read?!
And she should sue for 10 times that amount. JFC
You would have thought that the risk of such injuries on that kind of water slide would have been fairly obvious even if they are relatively rare. I’ve been down kids water slides when I was a lot younger but you didn’t build up any real speed, as I remember, but even then there was always the risk of banging your head or some jerk crashing into you because they followed on too quickly.
$50K won’t even cover her hospital bills. $5M would be more appropriate.
“You would have thought that the risk of such injuries on that kind of water slide would have been fairly obvious…”
No. The kind of injuries you described, sure, but serious internal injuries just from going down the water slide? Nope. That wouldn’t be obvious to most people.
I roll my eyes when conservatives talk about personal responsibility considering how the MyPillow guy is blaming “lawfare” and the media for how he can no longer pay his lawyers in the multiple lawsuits against him due to his lies. Then you have all the Jan 6th terrorists who are all, “Please don’t punish me. I was a victim of Trump, who still won in 2020 BTW.”
Instead of suing, the lady should be thanking Disney. Afterall, just the day before, they removed all the razor wire they had installed in the pool at the end of the slide.
Larry @ 8
The “Rio Grande Adventure Water Slide”?
I suspect the woman loves Disney, and her lawyer and her feel that $50K is just compensation so they only sued for that amount.
I also suspect Disney’s lawyers and management are stumbling all over themselves to get a $50K check in the woman’s bank account ASAP in exchange for dropping the suit.
I received a $40k settlement from breaking both legs at a water slide. The operator was clearly negligent and my useless lawyers should have gotten at least an order of magnitude more. The wier that should have formed a stopping pool at the end of the slide was simply never installed that season. Most people came to a stop anyway; I didn’t. That was 40 years ago and I remain permanently disabled. Three weeks after my accident at the same place a boy was sucked 40 feet into a drain pipe because the drain cover was left unlocked.
Sorry, just venting my personal gripes. Not a fan of waterslides.
Disney has become the new (Class) Action Park.
I’m pretty sure that I have more personal responsibility than any magas. Remember that in Republican world, every accusation is a confession.
$50K is a little over twice the price of the appendectomy I got in 2019. Whatever surgery or other treatment this person needs, I’m sure it’s a lot more than twice as complex or involved.
One modest correction for PZ. She decidedly didn’t rupture her bowels, she ruptured her vagina, causing a vaginal hernia.
Which is decidedly worse in quite a few ways and equally agonizing.
@Raging Bee, yep, it’s a fair bit more complex, as a muscular and mucosal wall has to be reconstructed and antibiotics have to be administered. The surgery is outlined well in Benson’s handbook of OB/GYN.
As for liability, yeah, that’s a beyond fucking reckless design. If you have to warn guests to cross their fucking legs, you’ve got a massive liability on your hands. Mitigation is easy, a bit of explosives and the reckless risk is gone to rubble. But, to keep the risk of demolition at the same level, allow guests to sit a few meters away from the blast.
Seriously though, what fuckwit approved such a ride? Risk analysis is performed for every ride and amusement in such parks, whoever approved that shouldn’t be permitted to cross a fucking street without a babysitter!
It’s right up there with hiring a blind crossing guard for students to cross a superhighway.
And this is my mentally edited version, otherwise a lot more profanity would be present in my scathing review of such an idiotic entertainment venue. The unedited version would likely result in the executive that approved the damned thing committing suicide.
What’s next? An amusement park entertainment of having children go play in traffic on a superhighway?
A good advertisement for the ride is, “This ride is so fast, it’s literally like a good solid kick in the balls – with steel toed boots installed on a horse”. And pay good money to experience that genital kick.
Personally, I’ll just do a cannonball into the water, the modest tsunami is equally entertaining to Cuba.*
*Yeah, I’m around 10 tons or pounds or something overweight, felt it coming back from the store yesterday big time and my shopping cart only was weighing in around 100 pounds.
Now, to break down the bag of chicken leg quarters into thighs and drumsticks, as I don’t have both with a meal, typically it’s a thigh or drumstick, the rest veggies and spuds or rice. I’ll be tuning the carbs a bit to drop the extra tonnage, thereby avoiding insulin resistance and retaining my familial outlier title of being the eldest family member to not be diabetic.
Considering certain vulnerable externalities, I wonder why a big load of men haven’t sued about that slide long ago…
Pierce R. Butler @ 16
The skin inside the vagina is probably significantly thinner and much more vulnerable than the skin outside those dangly bits. After all they are exposed to chafing all day long (unless you are a tribe in the Amazonas).
birgerjohansson @ # 17 – I did not have skin in mind as the loci of greatest risk exposure…
@15 Seriously though, what fuckwit approved such a ride?
The people that have decided, over several changes of administration, that Disney parks are about making as much money as possible from people, not, “making the happiest place on earth”. That said, there have been a few rare instances of accidents, even at the original Disney Land, and at least one of those attractions was shut down, permanently, and eventually replaced, after it killed someone (and no one noticed for a while).
Compared to at least one water park, which was open for decades, closed, reopened, closed again, etc., with multiple deaths, before it was finally permanently ended, its still, ironically, a far better track record…
It left a lasting impression on me, but I recall a cousin years ago recounting her experience at some water park slide resulting in, if my vulgar expression can be forgiven, a forceful power douching. Being a guy, I didn’t quite fully understand what she meant, but this horrific event in the OP is worse than what my cousin suffered as she didn’t mention hospitalization or serious injury.
My dad got a nasty crotch injury on some rope sliding into water pit ride at a water park when I was a kid. Rope burn to the inner thigh and scrotum if I recall correctly. It was kinda bad but not quite hospitalization bad.
I’m just not into sharing water with a shit ton of other people no matter the chlorine level. Keeps me away from public pools and water parks.
@wzrd1 #15:
Only in pansy-assed liberal cuck world. Not in Real Menz world, where we each take personal responsibility by checking every bolt for shear risk and assessing every corner for signs of cutting before climbing aboard. Those entrance signs don’t just mean no-one under 60 inches in height gets to ride, but no-one under 60 IQ points gets to inspect the electrical cabling for correct installation. Anyway, ain’t nuthing bad gonna happen if you right with Jeesus.
I believe the victim here.
It does surprise me that her injuries were quite that bad and that no one else has been hurt that badly before if it was that easy (?) for such damage to be done just by not crossing ones legs as warned & I wish I could grok why that is. But yes, I do believe her here. Just uber-unlucky in hydrodynamic pressures and kinetic trajectories at point of splashdown?
I also love water slides and have many fond memories of them and water parks as a kid. FWIW.
To think of shorts as actually being protective clothing also seems strange to me.
But yeah. See & stress first sentence here.
Reminds me of a water slide from my childhood (not at Disney). I was maybe 10yo? …cajoled into going down some monster that was so steep, I recall leaving the surface and free-falling for a bit before the surface curved back under me. I also remember the feeling of the water cutting into my butt and anus as it leveled out at the bottom.
As a child, I thought it was going to kill or seriously injure someone and never went down it again.
I guess the engineers and execs know more than children when it comes to what’s safe though.. because this thing sounds even more dangerous.
Rich Woods @ 21, well, there always is my fall-back solution.
There is absolutely no problem in life that cannot be resolved with the judicious application of high explosives.
For that, I most heartily approve of the utilization of nitrowhsiperin.
I do wonder though, is their next entertainment going to be handing out sledgehammers and inviting a gonad striking contest?
Or are they going to up the ante and hand out cheese graters for a masturbation contest?
Cum on here! I’ve got cheese graters available for free here, no takers?
I’ll get my hat…
Oh, sorry about the snot, PZ.
In person, I suspect we’d get along quite well. I don’t say some things this way in public.
And well, I’m an information sponge, whatever education is there gets absorbed.
And worse, I don’t like dietetic methods vs Socratic, save for preparatory to Socratic. Necessary evil, preach, then teach.
My rough edges, due to a modest divergence of experience base and one that I welcome such input to avoid, erm, mayhem.
And yeah, I know that you snorted at a minimum.
Back to cheese graters, got them on cheap!
The cheese, alas, not so much, no earthquakes in Italy recently.
And I’ve been restricting my salt intake anyway.
My youngest daughter was a lifeguard at Sea World. I remember that she racked up quite a few “saves” during the summers that she worked there, and that she mentioned that most of them involved the water slides.