ICYMI, the Royals picked up pitcher Luke Little yesterday. PJ Green at The Star also wrote about the transaction.
Jaylon Thompson profiled Luke Maile:
However, that’s exactly who Maile is. The journeyman catcher is a fearless leader and trusted voice in the Royals’ clubhouse.
“He’s always the mic man,” Royals utilityman Tyler Tolbert said. “And I
think when Maile came up, that was Isaac’s first time (seeing him), and we were all like hyping him up. Maile is awesome. He just gives a recap on a series, just hyping us up and giving us kudos for the good things we do.
“And then, he cracks jokes on things that we do that are great. He’s the ultimate teammate, and it’s a pleasure to take the field with him.”
Pete Grathoff shares Luinder Avila’s surgery update:
“All Good,” Avila wrote in a translated message on Instagram. “Thank you God and you guys for all your prayers my surgery was a success. “Another test I was living what I one day dreamed of when I was little but to work hard to come back and become a superstar and be able to help bring a championship to this beautiful city KC. “Thank you Venezuela Your world champion is doing well.”
Happier Times? At The Athletic ($), Rustin Dodd and Jayson Jenks write about that time Raul Ibanez inspired the 2014 Royals:
“We were playing against the White Sox, and we were in the crappy clubhouse they have on the visiting side,” Hosmer said. “He basically talked to us about what opposing teams thought of us: Did we realize how good we were? Did we realize other teams fear us?
“For us to hear that was so important.”
Blog Time!
At Royals Keep, Yirsandy Rodriguez asks “What Happened To Vinnie Pasquantino’s Power?”
Pasquantino’s decline in bat speed has changed how left-handed pitchers can attack him. Against lefties, Pasquantino averages just 66.5 mph in bat speed—ranking in the fifth percentile across Major League Baseball. That has given opposing pitchers far more freedom to challenge him up and in or work the lower part of the strike zone without taking the same risks they once did. Pitches that previously demanded precise execution can now be thrown with much greater confidence because Pasquantino takes longer to get the barrel to the ball.
Also at RK, Kevin O’Brien asks “Could A Change of Scenery in Kansas City Help Jacob Berry?”
The Royals have been making a much bigger push to acquire hitters who don’t chase.
They did that last year by acquiring Lane Thomas and Isaac Collins, both of whom had a history of strong chase rates. This year, Thomas (23.4%) and Collins (23.6%) had the second- and third-lowest O-Swing rates of Royals hitters this year. The only hitter with a lower O-Swing% was Jonathan India. However, the Royals’ second baseman had only 58 plate appearances this year before going down for the season with a shoulder injury.
Berry fits that same mold of a hitter as Thomas and Collins, though the former LSU product has less of a Major League track record compared to the two.
Blog Roundup:
- Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History–1976 Edition: August 6 –
Once the Royals’ offense starts hitting, it barely stops in a doubleheader sweep of Chicago - Caleb Moody at KOK: Royals’ trade for former Marlins sixth overall pick offers exact upside system desperately needs
- Also, Caleb Moody at KOK: Early results show Royals may’ve found lasting bullpen solution in trade with Astros
- Brian Sparks at Kansas City Royals on SI: Why Royals Pitcher Noah Cameron’s Recent Dominance Is More Than a Coincidence
We’ve done roller coasters a number of times on Friday Rumblings. Back in 2023, I did my Top 20 Roller Coasters (of the ones I’ve been on). Also in 2023, I ranked my top rides at Disney World. The next year, I added the rides at Disneyland in California to make a complete ranking of Disney rides in the US.
Today, we’re talking water rides. But we’re not really ranking them – we’re getting into a different set of weeds.
I visited the original Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels earlier this week. For those unfamiliar, it’s the best water park in the world. I guess you can quibble with this claim as Volcano Bay at Universal Orlando won the 2025 Golden Ticket for Best Water Park. It was the first time since the inception of the award that any park but Schlitterbahn had won the award. I’m going to give them the nod for winning the previous 26 years.
There are two parts of the park, East and West, separated by a mile of New Braunfels. It’s hard to pick a favorite between East and West as they are two completely different parks. The original Schlitterbahn West is older, but integrates the hillside and Comal River into the park, adding uniqueness and character. However, without the newer rides from East, it would seem dated. By combining the two, it really is an unbeatable park and it only takes about 5 minutes of tram to get between them.
Most people in Kansas City know the name “Schiltterbahn” from the now-defunct park in Kansas City and the Verruckt accident. The Verruckt accident takes up 2/3rds of the Schlitterbahn Kansas City Wikipedia page. Schlitterbahn New Braunfels doesn’t even get its own page – it only gets 2 paragraphs on the overall Schillterbahn Wikipedia page. That’s what we’re going to explore today.
Sidebar: The child who died was Caleb Schwab, the son of then Kansas State Rep and now Kansas Secretary of State, Scott Schwab. In his time in the House, Schwab voted with fellow Republicans to cap wrongful death damages. When his son died, he took his case to Texas, which does not have wrongful death damages capped, and he got a settlement for $20M. Of course, Texas is the state where Greg Abbott had an accident in 1984 that left him in a wheelchair, but also made him millions. He championed tort reform while he was attorney general and helped limit the exact settlements that made him a lot of money. Both were tragedies, particularly the death of Caleb, but, man, that’s some nasty hypocrisy about how it’s ok for the rich and powerful to get legal justice but not anyone else.
I have a spreadsheet where I track every roller coaster ride I’ve been on… because, of course, I do. I have columns for obvious entries like name, manufacturer, type, etc. But I also like to get the stats for manufacture date, length, height, and speed. Sites like Roller Coaster Database and Coasterpedia let me know that Millennium Force has a length of 6595 feet, a drop of 300 feet, and a max speed of 93 mph and that it’s an Intamin-built giga coaster. Wikipedia can help me figure out that it’s won 10 Golden Tickets for the “Top Steel Roller Coaster” and set a boatload of records when it debuted in 2000. Even Six Flags’s website (ew… I threw up a little in my mouth) can help with the 120-second ride duration and a note that it was the “World’s First Giga-Coaster”.
But the information for Schlitterbahn is sorely lacking. It doesn’t have an entry in the RCDB as it doesn’t have any official coasters. Its Coasterpedia page is… not great. Compare that to the Cedar Point one above. Not only do the current coasters have full information, but so do the defunct coasters and all of the flats. There are only a handful of blanks even in the defunct flats section.
So today, we’re going to see if I can figure out the manufacturer, ride type, manufacture date, length, height, and speed of all the rides I rode at Schlitterbahn – both in 2014 and earlier this week.
Here’s a list of the rides we’re tracking down:
- Black Knight
- Wolfpack Raft Slide
- Master Blaster Uphill Water Coaster
- The Deluge
- AquaVeyer
- The Falls
- Dragon’s Revenge
- Boogie Bahn Surfing Ride
- Back Splash
- Raging River Tube Chute
- Congo River Expedition
- Der Bahn Speed Slides
- Downhill Racer
- Double Loop Body Slides
- Whitewater Tube Chute
- Cliffhanger Tube Chute
- Hillside Tube Chute
- Han’s Hideout
First, there’s some easy columns. Speed is going to be “NA” for all of these, considering you can’t measure speed for a human going down a slide the same way you can for a roller coaster car.
Typically, I just take Manufacturer and Type off of the Coasterpedia page. For Type, about 2/3rds have a listed type and the rest are N/A, so that’s what they’re getting on my spreadsheet.
For Manufacturer, there are 3 options: WGBS International, WhiteWater West, and Unknown. WhiteWater West is just for a couple of smaller kid rides from 2024. The Coasterpedia page for WGBS links to “NBGS International”:
New Braunfels General Store International is a defunct water slide manufacturer formerly located in New Braunfels, Texas, USA. NBGS was founded in 1984 by Jeff Henry, son of Schlitterbahn founder Bob Henry.[1][2]
In 2003 NBGS licensed its Master Blaster to WhiteWater West.[3]
The remaining products were sold to WaterPark Experts in 2006[4][5] and the company ceased trading due to Jeff Henry becoming “bored” of mass-producing rides, instead switching focus to produce bespoke rides for Schlitterbahn.
This is lazy, but I’m going to leave any listed as “WGBS International” as just that on my spreadsheet (even if it should probably be NGBS) and any listed as “Unknown”, I’ll mark as “WGBS International?” I mean, if the same guy is making “bespoke rides for Schlitterbahn” rather than doing it under a company, might as well just roll with it. Beyond that, it’s really hard to track down manufacturers for rides unless the park site advertises it.
That gets us down to just 3 fields: Manufacture Date, Length, and Height. Speaking of park site, let’s try that next. I mentioned not being real fond of Six Flags ownership. Between Cedar Fair, Schlitterbahn, and Six Flags – they always seemed the most profit-driven and least interested in the, you know, rides. However, over the course of the last decade – they’ve mostly consolidated into one entity.
After the Verruckt incident, Schlitterbahn Kansas City never reopened for the 2019 season. That year, Cedar Fair bought Schlitterbahn New Braunfels and Galveston. But they declined to buy Kansas City, and it was demolished. They also didn’t buy Schlitterbahn Corpus Christi, and it failed during COVID. It’s also demolished. Schlitterbahn South Padre Island (down by Brownsville) still exists as Beach Waterpark. They have since sold off Schlitterbahn Galveston to Enchanted Parks. Enchanted Parks? More on them in a second.
In 2019, Six Flags tried to buy Cedar Fair but was rebuffed. However, in 2023, the two longtime competitors merged: “The announcement came at a time when amusement parks struggled to raise attendance after the COVID-19 pandemic, citing the need for financial stability, cost efficiency, and to compete with destination theme parks”. This past year, the new combined Six Flags divested of seven parks, including the aforementioned Schlitterbahn Galveston and Worlds of Fun in Kansas City. They will now be run under the Enchanted Parks name, which is owned by EPR Properties. Who are they?
EPR Properties, formerly Entertainment Properties Trust, is a real estate investment trust based in Kansas City, Missouri, that invests in amusement parks, movie theaters, ski resorts, and other entertainment properties. It owns 353 properties as of 2022.
Entertainment Properties Trust was created by AMC Entertainment executive Peter Brown and financial analyst David Brain. They decided to establish a REIT focused on megaplex movie theaters after failing to find an existing REIT to help finance AMC’s development of theaters.
Along with movie theaters and amusement parks, they also own hotels, ski resorts, wineries, a couple of museums, and… a bunch of charter schools? That’s an odd portfolio. Anyway, let’s take an off ramp from this history lesson and get back to the spreadsheet.
Let’s start with the Six Flags Schlitterbahn website. As above, some of the Six Flags websites are helpful. Others are less so. This one fits into the latter. After going through all of the rides, all I got was that Black Knight is more than 550 feet in length and The Falls is a “3600-foot-long whitewater river”. That’s not a lot for all that clicking. Also, those numbers don’t feel very precise, but we’ll add them to the list.
Only one ride gets its own Wikipedia page, the groundbreaking Master Blaster. It has all 3 stats for Master Blaster: “65 feet tall and 1,100 feet long” along with “opened in 1996”. But we also get a few more bits of information on that page. The Boogie Bahn is from 1991.
It also mentions Dragon Blaster is from 1994. Is that the same as Dragon’s Revenge? The official site says “enjoy the first-generation uphill water coaster”, which jives with the history told on Master Blaster’s wiki page. However, a quick Google is inconclusive with some conflicts. On a message board, I found an announcement for Dragon’s Revenge, new in 2008. The link is dead, but with the help of archive.org, I found the press release. Between the board and some fansites, it appears the ride was built in 1994 as Dragon Blaster but underwent a massive overhaul and rename in 2008.
But all of this got me thinking. Let’s go check out the old Schlitterbahn site with the help of archive.org. Look at the information available on the Schlitterbahn website in 2011 vs the information available now. Part of my disdain for Six Flags comes back to bits like this. There’s a want for Cedar Fair or Schlitterbahn to boast about their rides. But Six Flags wants things more flashy, less informational.
This is a treasure trove of information. Suddenly I have lengths and heights for Wolfpack (676/63), Downhill Racer (131/33), Der Bahn Speed Slides (200/35), and Double Loop Body Slides (300/30). It also has lengths for a number of the “Tube Chutes” – basically, there are a half dozen lazy rivers with elements across both East and West. They won’t have a height (“NA”), but now I have lengths for Raging River Tube Chute (1414), Whitewater Tube Chute (620), Cliffhanger Tube Chute (746), Hillside Tube Chute (1060), and Congo River Expedition (454). The Falls is also like this, so we’re not getting a height for it (“NA”). We also got more clarity for the Black Knight (Tunnel A 557 feet; Tunnel B 565 feet; Height 49 feet). Han’s Hideout lists slides with lengths between 117 and 156 feet. It’s like a giant play structure – if your giant neighborhood has one of those in their pool – blow it up into a giant 5-story monstrosity and you have Han’s Hideout. I don’t think we’re going to get a height for it (“NA”).
That leaves us with just five rides. The Boogie Bahn isn’t going to have a length or height – it’s a surfing simulator. We already know its manufacture date from above, so it’s done. Both the AquaVeyer and the Back Splash are singular elements that connect a couple of other elements in the park. I think those are both safely “NA”, too.
The Deluge and The Falls are not yet on the map from 2011, so I think I need to pick another snapshot from archive.org. Let’s move forward to 2013. The site design is different, maybe a little more modern, but the information is still the same. The Falls confirms the 3600-foot ride length while the Deluge does not have one as, again, it’s more of a connector element. I could see it having a length like the other Tube Chutes, but it’s not there.
The only thing I dont have a length or height for is Dragon’s Revenge. The 2013 date doesn’t have it. Most of the newer pages redirect as I think the site was redesigned. And the earliest captures are from 2008, after it changed from Dragon Blaster to Dragon’s Revenge. The only thing I could find, with the help of Gemini, was this YouTube fan video which lists the stats as 942/80. That seems suspect – I would buy the 942 as there’s a lot of “side of hill tube chute” to it, but I don’t see the 80-foot height. I’m just going to leave it as ???/???. But, hey, that finishes off our lengths and heights.
In a way, I think manufacture date is going to be the easier thing to tackle. That’s a lot more concrete than length and height, which can be more industry “secret”. Plus, I’m not just limited to manufacturer sites – I can find some of it in regular newspapers, magazines, and other archives. We’ve already got Master Blaster (1996), Boogie Bahn (1991), and Dragon’s Revenge (1994/2008).
The Falls opened to much fanfare in 2011 and it’s mentioned all over the web. That’s when the Tubenbach section of the park opened. The Deluge and AquaVeyer also opened then. I think I’m going off my logic from before about Back Splash being a connector to Boogie Bahn to Kristal River and being built when Surfenburg was built. It’s not definite, but I think 1991 is highly likely.
Ooh! Another treasure trove. The citation for The Falls in Wiki lead to this gem: the History Highlights page of the Schlitterbahn press archive (on archive.org). Hillside Tube Chute is from 1980, followed by The Cliffhanger (1983) and Raging River (1988) Tube Chutes. No word on the Whitewater Tube Chute. The Congo River and the now defunct Der Bahn Speed Slides were added in 1989 for the park’s 10th anniversary.
I was pretty sure that Black Knight and Wolfpack opened the same year as Mater Blaster, being as they’re part of the same tower. I got some confirmation from Encyclopedia.com’s page for NBGS International. I’m just going to go ahead and change all those manufacturer entries from “WGBS” to “NBGS (New Braunfels General Store International, Inc). So that gives us 2 more dates of 1996.
Now we’re down to Han’s Hideout, Downhill Racer, Double Loop Body Slides, and the elusive Whitewater Tube Chute.
At this point, I had to turn to Gemini, with explicit instructions that any result it gives me must have a citation with information directly on the website. This used to be the type of thing I’d toss some well-formed binary queries into a search engine, but they’ve been turned to such garbage that it’s not really possible anymore.
I completely missed this bit of text on the current ride page for the Double Loop Body Slides: “One of Schlitterbahn’s original rides”. 1979 it is. Similarly, I had looked at this article earlier, but I skimmed through the slideshow that told me Han’s Hideout was part of Schlitterbahn’s 20th anniversary celebration (so, 1999). I don’t entirely trust this wiki as some of their numbers are off of other things we’ve found, but it lists the White Water Tube Chute at 1979. It’s right behind the original entrance, so that makes sense. I think I’m going to have to go with it.
That leaves us with the Downhill Racer. After an hour of looking, I had to give up. It’s part of the original park so it is before 1991. It was almost certainly built in the expansion years of the early-mid 80s, but I can’t say which. I had Gemini build cases for different years, and the most plausible were 1982, 1985, and 1987. I’m just going to have to leave it as “???”.
Not perfect, but not bad. I think I’ll try to email Six Flags and see how I did (if they respond).
For SotD, how about a POV video for Master Blaster? It really is a marvel of engineering and a fun ride. There’s a reason it racked up a pile of Golden Tickets.
And if that doesn’t do it for you. How about a commercial that is so very early 90s?
