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St. Louis Museum Offers Thrills, Chills, and Lawsuits

Posted by samzenpus on from the everything-fun-is-dangerous dept.

theodp writes "Despite the whiff of danger, or perhaps because of it, the WSJ reports that the City Museum is one of St. Louis's most popular attractions. Housed in a 10-story brick building, the City Museum shows none of the restraint or quiet typical of most museums. It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel. Sure, there are the occasional severed fingers and skull fractures, but museum founder Bob Cassilly contends that it is as safe as it can be without being a bore. 'They [lawyers] are taking the fun out of life,' says Cassilly, adding that 'when you have millions of people do something, something's going to happen no matter what you do.'"

12 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kids? by gman003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're kids on the inside

  2. AWESOME by v1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    SOOO tired of "oh noes Little Timmy is gonna bump his knee on that, need more padding!" parents.

    Quit taking the fun out of being a kid. Having fun as a kid is inherently a little risky. All these nuts trying to apply "five 9's" to public safety on playgrounds need to go live in a bubble somewhere and stay out of everyone else's lives.

    The day they try to take trees out of the park because a kid may climb them and fall and get hurt, I'm gonna flip out.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    1. Re:AWESOME by multipartmixed · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > The day they try to take trees out of the park because a kid may climb them and fall and get hurt, I'm gonna flip out.

      Have you noticed that playground equipment is virtually nowhere to be found anymore?

      --

      Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
    2. Re:AWESOME by cgenman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I remember people falling out of jungle gyms and breaking their arms as a kid. It's not great, but it happens. There was a woman at my college who fell backwards walking around the campus, hit her head just wrong on the cement, and died. I broken an arm riding a bike, and nearly shattered my hip rollerblading. My sister broke a finger running through the house. A friend destroyed most of the cartilidge in his back playing football. By comparison, hopping a fence, sticking your fingers into a giant rotating drum, and having them severed is just dumb.

      Really, the question isn't "are there injuries?" Put a drinking fountain in a park, and given enough time and people someone is going to trip and break their teeth on it. The question is "how frequently are the injuries?" Are the injuries more frequent than other activities in life? They've had 3.5 million in attendance since 2005, and 24 known incidents that spawned a lawsuit. That's 150k people through for every known injury. Or, looked at another way, assuming each trip is 8 hours long, that's 1 injury for every 50,000 days of living. That's 1 lawsuit-worthy injury per 136 years of life.

      I'd want to investigate this park specifically to see what steps they are and aren't taking to keep the play areas safe. But the numbers above just don't look bad to me.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
  3. Two dozen out of how many? by iamhassi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Two dozen injuries out of 3.5 million people since 2005. That means over 99.999% are fine. I'll take those odds. Besides I've been there, nothings wrong, isn't anymore dangerous than any children's playground.

    --
    my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    1. Re:Two dozen out of how many? by tniermann · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I've been there numerous times with my kids. It seems safer than most places because it appears much more dangerous than it actuality and the kid's natural fear instinct works just fine. It is a much better than the inverse of actually dangerous but appearing safe (driving in the car to get there)

  4. This is how it really should be by cwills · · Score: 5, Insightful
    More power to the Museum and it's director.

    I just wish that the US population would get over the general reaction to anything is to sue someone.

    If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid. Q - "Q Who" Star Trek the Next Generation

    One of my favorite quotes.

    1. Re:This is how it really should be by Nautical+Insanity · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed.

      I would, but according to this that might not be a good idea since 300 people strangle themselves in bed every year in the US.

  5. Danger by TheTick21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have spent way too much time in this wonderland and I must say that with proper adult supervision the danger is minimal compared to the kinds of stuff we did as kids. We used to leave in the morning and come back when the streetlights came on, build treehouses with exposed nails and rotting wood, jump down from said treehouses with nothing but a pile of leaves to catch us.

    This place has its share of dangers, but wow. Worth it and then some. If ever there was a place that took all my favorite childhood memories and tried to stuff them into one building it would be this one.

  6. Re:Scary indeed! by Thelasko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You definitely feel right on the edge of safe. Yet it stands out like no other "museum" I've been to.

    Feels right on the edge of being called a "museum" too. Sounds more like an amusement park.

    I guess the question is, is it an awesome museum or crappy amusement park?

    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  7. 110 Percent Awesome by gcanyon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've been to the City Museum several times, and it is an incredible place. They have an aquarium, a pipe organ, caves, a circus school, a ten-story slide, a bank vault door, and a hall of insects, and that's just scratching the surface. Here is a collection of pictures I took: http://gcanyon.posterous.com/st-louis-is-amazing and a few more: http://gcanyon.posterous.com/more-pictures-from-the-city-museum-in-st-loui

    It's definitely true that this place leans more towards fun than safe: if you don't have bruises, you haven't seen the museum. But common sense will keep you from most harm, a

  8. Re:"We have a huge liability policy." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    So how about the woman in the article who slid down the slide too fast, and broke bones after crashing into a wall across from the slide? What did she do wrong?

    When I was a kid, we used to stick out our feet and use our sneakers to slow down on a slide. That's also how you could stop half-way and have your friends pile into you trying to dislodge you. Was this slide that the woman was on six or seven feet wide so that she couldn't do the same thing to slow down?