Ahhhhhhsome Extreme Waterslides for Summer

Bonzai Pipelines

Usually when the rug gets pulled out from under you, it's in a metaphorical sense. Not so here. At Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in Valencia, you get to face your fears as you go plummeting down six stories of straight slide action after a trap door springs open from underneath you. Before you even realize what's happening, it's all over. And you're thrilled.

Why Pipelines is Plural: There are two slides. One goes straight vertical... the blue and green one. The other is orange and yellow and takes you around 200 feet of looping speed slide in a tube. Either way, you're prying suit out of tush.

The Scorpion's Tail

They don't call it "America's First Near-Vertical Looping Waterslide" for nothin'. 10 stories high, 400 feet long, and a drop that sends you screaming down at a 50-feet-per-second clip. Introducing the Scorpion Tail, the best way to power rinse your epidermis without stepping anywhere near a shower. 

Bottom Line: It's vicious. Exactly what you'd expect from a scorpion's tail.

Another Noah's Ark Extreme Slide:  The Black Anaconda

Fact: If you want to get up close and personal with a black anaconda, a sojourn to South America isn't the only way. Feel the wrath of this sizable snake on the 1/4-mile "watercoaster" at Noah's Ark Family Park, where rafters get a diabolical thrill from an amusement park lovechild. As you race through the anaconda's six dark coils at 30 mph, you can't help but feel helpless. 

Unexpected Perk:  It's fast enough to have uphill sections, so it must be good.

Bomb Bay

If you ever wanted to know what it feels like to get eaten up and spit out by a waterslide, here you go. Bomb Bay encapsulates the slider inside a makeshift bomb encasement, as they look helplessly out across the park and stormy gray Orlando skies below. Then the trap door disappears and said victim plunges 76 feet down a nearly vertical slide into an unforgiving wall of water. Awesome.

Wedgie Factor: Excruciatingly high.

Tidal Wave

For purists who like their vertical slides without a lot of gimmicky bells and whistles, there's Tidal Wave at Wet 'n' Wild in Palm Springs. Two seven-story speed slides hug the perimeter of the park where the ballsy go on display for all passersby to marvel at. If they blink, they'll miss you. But the sliders themselves? They never forget.

Big Perk: Tidal Wave often has the shortest line in the park, so if you like gravity-defying thrills -- without a wait -- this one'll help you get on with it. Just don't uncross those arms and legs. Big no no.

The Constrictor

Again with the snakes. The Constrictor, care of Wet 'n' Wild in Phoenix, Ariz., has tighter turns than most if not all slides on this rather watery, H20-filled planet. Think corkscrew turns, snaking back and forth in a series of spirals. And people on multi-person rafts slithering down the insides of a McDonald's-colored snake before reaching a rather drenching conclusion. 

Spoiler Alert: This is what it's like to be swallowed up by a snake. In theory.

The Cliffhanger

Few waterslides have as impressive a profile as the Cliffhanger at Schlitterbahn Galveston Island. In part, that's because it has two twisty arteries jetting out from it and a curly fry-like walkway leading up to its pinnacle. Primarily, though, it's because of the impressive perch atop the tower at Blastenhoff, which sets you adrift from an 81-foot vertical cliff into a narrow puddle of hopes and dreams. 

Plunging Posture: Riders must cross their arms and legs. Fingers optional.

Wild Vortex at Lake Wilderness Outdoor Waterpark

It's rare to find a loop in a waterslide. Also speeds up to 40 mph. But Wild Vortex at Wilderness at the Smokies has both -- as it manages to send sliders screaming through a tube after plummeting through a trap-door drop and 39-foot free-fall drop. 

Startling Stat: This one apparently generates maximum g-force, "2.5 G's in less than two seconds" truly putting the "Ahhhhh!" in ahhhhhsome.