A 25-year-old woman is suing Walt Disney Parks, claiming she lost consciousness and was left “coughing up blood” from a brain injury while riding a slide at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon water park.
Laura Reyes-Merino says she went unconscious on May 11 after “banging inside the ride” on Humunga Kowabunga, a 60-degree angle, 214-foot downhill and enclosed water slide at the Orlando park, Fox 35 reported.
Her fiancé and his mother found her limp body at the bottom of the slide and “frantically” asked for help — just to be told there were no lifeguards on duty, the lawsuit alleges.
As a staffer raced off to find a lifeguard elsewhere in the park, “blood kept coming out of [Reyes-Merino’s] mouth in the water,” where she could have drowned had her fiancé not pulled her out, the lawsuit says.
Once a lifeguard did arrive, they said they could not touch Reyes-Merino and instead called for an ambulance, further delaying any treatment, the lawsuit alleges.
Had there been “lifeguards at the end of the ride to watch and help guests coming off the ride, [Reyes-Merino’s] brain injury would not have occurred as she wouldn’t have been drowning in the water coughing up blood,” the lawsuit said.
The suit did not elaborate on how severe the brain injury was, but claimed she suffered “disability, physical impairment, disfigurement, mental anguish” and the “loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life.”
She is suing Walt Disney Parks and Resorts for a minimum of $50,000 in damages.
Another lawsuit was filed last year against Disney over a “painful wedgie” suffered on the same ride.
In that instance, a woman had visited the park for her 30th birthday and rode the slide, which caused her swimsuit to “be painfully forced between her legs and for water to be violently forced inside her,” according to the suit.
When she crashed into the standing water at the bottom” she suffered a “painful wedgie” and immediately began to bleed.
She was taken via ambulance to a hospital, but was later transported to another medical center to see a specialist for her injuries — which included severe lacerations, damage to her internal organs and a hernia, according to court documents.
