The Aqua Tube was a large tube ride that was located on the Beach Tower, about 3/4 of the way way. In order to ride guests need to have queued in the queue house at the exit to the slide. (On a busy day the queue was always well over an hour) They were then handed a small rubber boat by the unloader and were forced to carry their boat up the 12 flights of stairs to the entrance of the ride. On windy days this always created the hilarious circumstances of children struggling to carry their boat up the stairs (especially if they were by themself) and sometimes if the wind was really strong, kids would get pinned up against the fence that envelopes the stairs on the way up.
The ride would last about 45 seconds, and the tube was quite dark inside (not completely pitch black) If a small child was travelling by themself, the operator at the top would fill their boat up with a bit of water to give the child enough weight and momentum to get to the bottom. Occasionally small children would get stuck inside and a staff member would need to be called to take a boat down to fish them out.
One day (after work) staff members tied three of the boats together filled them all up with water and 15 people piled into the 3 boats. As you can imagine with all of the weight, the boats overturned on the fast right hand corner near the bottom, and with the speed there ended up being a pile of bodies in the drain at the end of the run out. Luckily there were no injuries.
