Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Hoverboards, Flyboards, and the world’s tallest water slide”.
We’Ve always enjoyed the water waterskis offer a fine means of frolic for the expert, with real speed, essential to keep those skimmers on top of the water. We’Ve come pretty far from plain old waterskiing and traditional water parks, and today we are going even further. So, a little while ago I came across these YouTube videos of people riding these insane water things I had never seen before turns out. They’Re called fly boards. Let me tell you they are sick. After watching maybe two seconds of this footage, I knew I had to try this for myself.
This is Jimmy Bisset. He owns a fly boarding company out on Long Island. This is Trey shallow horn, the Verge’s video producer, oh and I’m Sam Scheffer.
He gave Jimmy a call, he brought out some jet skis and fly boards, and I could not contain myself, oh and by the way, he’s really good at this. What is a fly board fly board. Is a water jet propelled board and little you can fly in the air above the water with. So how do these work? I know there’s a jet ski involved. The board is involved, but there’s pipes and there’s engines and what what happens yeah. So you got the jet ski the hood, the hose folks right to the back of the jet pump and then there’s a you pipe that gets connected right to that. So all that water – that’s getting pushed through just like your regular jet ski and just getting redirected through the hose and out and out to the boots, so high limit.
Is there a speed limit? How does that stuff work? The the hose will be flying today was 50 foot long. They do make ones either. You know about 65 or 70 foot hose.
You know when I’m flying, I can get up. You know 35 40 feet. You know at max now.
Are you? Are you stationary, for the most part, is the idea that you want to keep movement you’re pretty much moving. All the time like the fly, boarder is pulling the jet ski around. So wherever the fly board goes, the jet ski is just following, as in that has enough power to pull the jet ski correct yeah.
Usually when you’re on the fly board, you don’t even realize that’s it’s, the jet ski is getting pulled. You know because it’s the design of the ski it’s just very light. It just floats on top, so like more most board devices emits it’s about balance right, it’s a little bit about balance, but it’s it’s a very it’s. The board itself is very balanced.
I say just relax, you know, I mean, keep your body pretty loose and just look straight ahead. Will I die today not at all. I got strapped into the flyboard and I was ready to go. I swam out tethered to the jet ski and Jimmy gave me some throttle.
I managed to hover for a few seconds, but it did not. Last long turns out. I needed some practice so to balance the fly board, you need to relax your body and pay very close attention to your feet. Point them too far forward and I’d fall down, pick my feet up and I’d fall backwards, but I didn’t have nearly as tough of a time as traded.
Honestly, I was focusing too much of my legs and not enough of my feet by the time actually realized. What I need to do, I just simply kept falling over, but hey at least I was putting on a show for the crew, even though I was struggling a bit at first, it wasn’t very long until I got the hang of it. I felt confident enough to hover move around a bit and I even tried some backflips that was so sick. I definitely was feeling it and next I tried the hoverboard, which is basically a surfboard that uses the same technology as fly board.
So it’s water, powered, oh and Trey – was actually good at this one I killed on the hoverboard. I slept as a teenager, so you know it came a little bit more naturally to me. Do you think these are gon na keep evolving, and do you think that the sport is growing yeah, 100 % just in a couple years? I’Ve been in it now we have competitions, I mean its worldwide right now. The different style boards are coming out.
Different movements with the board, you know, so you can so the ability to do different tricks is evolving to you know: cuz, it’s so new, a new tricks coming out every day. You know someone’s just throwing something and oh, what’s that looks cool you know today was awesome. It was amazing, one of the best days of my life. Absolutely absolutely I felt like I didn’t have enough time and I just wanted to spend like that’s entire summer, doing it yeah and what’s cool up these things are not out of the world.
You can go, buy one the granted they’re very expensive like, but it’s just. I think it’s fascinating that you know a year or two ago we were just watching these videos on YouTube. Today we tried them and then you can you just own them. You can buy them.
It’S a real thing, yeah! No not at all now trying it back to it now. If you’re landlocked, I feel too uncomfortable standing on the board, then your other option is an old school water park. When I was a kid I’d love to go into water parks, lazy rivers, large wave pools, two slides couldn’t get enough of it and since then, with the rise in technology, we’ve seen some pretty cool things like wave simulators which allows you to surf the perfect wave Without ever having to get into the ocean, and here at Schlitterbahn in Kansas City, they constructed the world’s tallest waterslide four-roomed. And let me tell you being there: it’s pretty big, so bucht is kind of an extreme example of some shorter bond technology as the blaster water coaster type technology that we’ve implemented through our park system over the years you’re.
Looking at a 170 foot, roughly tall, almost 700 linear feet ride that only takes about 18 seconds to complete. It may only take 18 seconds to go down the slide, but the climb up was pretty rough. The farooq stands at roughly 17 stories tall, which translates into about 264 stairs and when you reach the top know, you’re the tallest thing for miles around you’re, even higher than a Statue of Liberty being on the top was breathtaking. I really appreciated the views.
I could see Kansas City way out in the distance, but it was super windy which scared me more than the slide itself. Oh and then there’s verrucas growl, it’s a little bit of a revolutionary ride in the fact that not only is it the world’s tallest, but we’ve also gone through with some of the technology and combined air and water to power the boat up over the hill. In order to get over that hill Farouk uses a combination of compressed air and water to shoot the raft over the hump they had to get this perfect. It even delayed the opening of the ride itself, not enough for us, and the raft doesn’t make it over the hill too much force whoa.
Let’S just say it’s not very pretty so you can understand when I was at the top strapped in pieces of velcro. I was pretty scared, sorry for the screams you’re about to hear when you come over. Like nothing drops you in and then you get to a point where it doesn’t look like their slide. You just sort of you just drop, and then you see a slide and there’s like a little bit of anti-gravity.
I feel like you’re floating a little bit on that it’s really fast it’s over so quickly, so I notice on the the very beginning of the drop it almost felt. You were going very or you’re going vertical yeah, so you’ve got that sense of weightlessness, similar to what you experienced on a roller coaster. That’S another unique feature that verruckt offers. So not only are you gon na go through a feeling of freefall from 170 feet. You’Re. Also gon na get to experience it on the second, smaller drop at roughly 65 feet and other plants and continue breaking your own record. Well, I always tell people that said part of the unique thing of on parks, wells that were ever-evolving and ever-changing, adding and expanding our attractions and our amenities. The next attraction probably won’t be anything quite as tall, but I would never put anything past Jeff Henry.
He is a wizard of water and he continues to surprise the world of water parks every day. Riding the fly board and hover board are easily some of the coolest things. I’Ve ever done and sliding down the tallest waterslide in the world wasn’t too bad either. So now that summer is officially here, I cannot recommend it enough. Go, find a fly board, get on and become your own wizard of water. You .