Gadgetory

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 gonna 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 gonna go through a feeling of freefall from 170 feet you're also gonna 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