# Water slides that just dump you into deep water--good idea? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 5, 2013, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464 "2013-10-05T21:29:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Gullible\_s\_Travels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de0a6/32.png) [@Gullible\_s\_Travels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gullible_s_Travels)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/61 "2013-10-10T02:52:24Z")
> [@Mdcastle](#): > > I can’t think of a single situation where knowing how to swim would "save my life’. Since **I don’t go in the deep end** , always wear a life jacket on small boats and larger boats like ferry’s almost never sink in the US. Sure you could think of a rare scenario, but the risk would be so low you could make statements like “you could save your life if you knew how to use a manual transmission”. I’m curious - does that mean you do go in the shallow end? Can you not swim at all or could you save yourself in a pool if you really had to? What happens if one day you fall into the deep end? Or you’re in the shallow end but somehow you find yourself out of your depth? Bunch of teens yahooing around and you get herded towards deeper water, helping someone and finding you’ve gone too deep, simple inattention and you suddenly realise you can’t touch bottom, whatever? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/62 "2013-10-10T11:24:21Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I wasn’t pooh-poohing the risk of drowning. I was just being funny. :o Isn’t it “poo-pooing”? I read “pooh-poohing” as Winnie related. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/63 "2013-10-10T14:28:08Z")
[Negative](http://grammarist.com/usage/poo-pooh/). I might add that in British English, “pooh” is the direct equivalent of “poo” in American usage, which really makes you wonder what the fuck A. A. Milne was on. ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/64 "2013-10-10T14:40:16Z")
> [@JLRogers](#): > > :rolleyes: Mythbusters is entertainment and rarely if ever scientifically rigorous. [Zombie Feynman disagrees with your rolleyes.](http://xkcd.com/397/) ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/65 "2013-10-10T15:12:03Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > [Negative](http://grammarist.com/usage/poo-pooh/). I might add that in British English, “pooh” is the direct equivalent of “poo” in American usage, which really makes you wonder what the fuck A. A. Milne was on. Huh. Interesting. Your pooh made my day. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/66 "2013-10-10T21:10:16Z")
Wait, I’m still confused about the bubble lifting thing. When I was little, I often went to a pool that had a several high-dive platforms and spring boards and the water below the boards was filled with air bubbles. I always thought it was to make the pool less dense to protect someone who might land awkwardly from the high dives. Now you guys are saying that the bubbles actually lift you up? I never felt that. ---
**Author:** ![Mdcastle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/958977/32.png) [@Mdcastle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mdcastle)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/67 "2013-10-10T21:27:28Z")
> [@Gullible\_s\_Travels](#): > > I’m curious - does that mean you do go in the shallow end? Can you not swim at all or could you save yourself in a pool if you really had to? > > What happens if one day you fall into the deep end? Or you’re in the shallow end but somehow you find yourself out of your depth? Bunch of teens yahooing around and you get herded towards deeper water, helping someone and finding you’ve gone too deep, simple inattention and you suddenly realise you can’t touch bottom, whatever? To answer the question I can swim maybe 15 feet or so. I expend so much energy doing so I don’t have any energy to keep it up longer. (can’t float or tread water at all). Enough for the "rowdy teenagers herd you into the deep end, which has happened). I’m not sure if I jumped or fell in or went down a slide directly into the deep end I’d be oriented enough to surface and get my bearings and swim out. Not enough if a boat tips over so I’ll wear a life jacket on a small boat, take my chances with a large commercial boat, I can’t recall the last time a ferry sunk in the US. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/68 "2013-10-10T21:32:59Z")
> [@nate](#): > > Wait, I’m still confused about the bubble lifting thing. When I was little, I often went to a pool that had a several high-dive platforms and spring boards and the water below the boards was filled with air bubbles. I always thought it was to make the pool less dense to protect someone who might land awkwardly from the high dives. Now you guys are saying that the bubbles actually lift you up? I never felt that. The idea there is to break the surface tension, so the diver isn’t hitting a wall of water, I think. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/69 "2013-10-10T22:09:20Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > [Negative](http://grammarist.com/usage/poo-pooh/). I might add that in British English, “pooh” is the direct equivalent of “poo” in American usage, which really makes you wonder what the fuck A. A. Milne was on. Wasn’t A.A… it was his kid Christopher Robin. (His real kid. The character in the books was just his child put into the stories because they were written for him originally.) As to “what were they on”… they were “on” walks around the countryside, or at the London Zoo: > [@Wikipedia article](#): > > Christopher Milne had named his toy bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear which he often saw at London Zoo, and “Pooh”, a swan they had met while on holiday. > **[Winnie-the-Pooh | Origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh#Origin)** > > A. A. Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin Milne, on whom the character Christopher Robin was based. Shepard in turn based his illustrations of Pooh on his own son's teddy bear named Growler, instead of Christopher Robin's bear. The rest of Christopher Milne's toys – Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and Tigger – were incorporated into Milne's stories. Two more characters, Owl and Rabbit, were created by Milne's imagination, while Gop Of course, that just changes the question to “What kind of sicko names a swan ‘Pooh’?”, but I think the answer to that is lost in the mists of time now. ---
**Author:** ![Yarster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/7c8e57/32.png) [@Yarster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yarster)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464/70 "2013-10-10T22:20:19Z")
For those of you who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1980s, we had a similar lawsuit worthy drown and become disfigured waterpark called Lake Dolores: They had stand up waterslides, as well as trapezes into very deep water and near zero safety as shown the the commercial above. When you drive out to Las Vegas, you can still see this abandoned waterpark off to the side of the I-15 freeway as you drive by. They tried to revive it in the 1990s and it failed a second time. Everyone I know who ever convinced their parents to take them there (along with the abomination that is the Calico Ghost Town owned by Knotts Berry Farm, which is still operational) had a bad time of it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-slides-that-just-dump-you-into-deep-water-good-idea/670464.md?page=3)