The record
The tallest waterslide in the world is Vertigo & The Fractionator, in Qatar — 76.31 m (250.4 ft), slide height.
Source: Guinness World Records. Verified .
Photo: Illustrative image
Verrückt in Kansas City held the world waterslide record at 51.4 m, and nobody will ride it again — it no longer stands, taken away after a fatal accident in 2016. That is the first rule this countdown follows: every slide here is open and running today, not merely the tallest ever built.
The second rule is what actually gets measured. Slide height means the vertical distance from the start platform down to the flume exit, not the architectural height of the tower carrying it — which is why the 52 m quoted for Antalya's Dragonfly Tower belongs to the structure rather than to the slides on it, and why the 80 m High Tower rising in Hangzhou has to wait until it opens.
What survives both rules runs from 76.31 m in Qatar down to 40 m in Brazil: ten slides, six countries, four continents.
The Icon Tower at Meryal holds a second Guinness record on top of the height one — twelve separate slides threaded down a single structure, headed by Vertigo & The Fractionator.
The runner-up has no tower at all.Kilimanjaro reaches 49.9 m by running straight down a forested Brazilian hillside, and the ride registers still credit it with the tallest drop of any waterslide anywhere.
Two slides tie to the centimetre.Hurricane and Hurricane Tower are both 45 m, both built by Tailong Amusement, and both opened in 2016 — nothing in the record books separates them.
Zero to 100 km/h in five seconds.Insano pitches its flume at a 70-degree angle and lands riders in a pool just 1.7 m deep.
You can ride a 43 m plunge indoors in January.Thrillagascar & Jungle Jammer have been the tallest indoor waterslides in the world since they opened in October 2020.
The record everyone remembers is gone. Verrückt in Kansas City opened in 2014 at 51.4 m as the world’s tallest waterslide; it no longer stands, which is why it is not on this list.
At 76.31 m, Vertigo and The Fractionator are the joint tallest waterslides on Earth, and the margin is not close — they stand more than 26 m clear of the next slide on this list.
Both start from the same platform near the top of the Icon Tower at Meryal Waterpark, on Qetaifan Island in Lusail, and Guinness World Records certified that height in October 2024. The same tower holds a second world record for threading twelve separate slides down one structure.
They are co-ranked because nothing separates their start height. Vertigo is the trapdoor of the pair: riders stand in a capsule, the floor opens, and the slide runs them through an enclosed Flatline Loop. The Fractionator is an AquaTube body slide that spirals the full height in the open air instead. Both opened with the park in November 2023.
22. Kilimanjaro
Aldeia das Águas Park Resort, Barra do Piraí, Brazil
At 49.9 m, Kilimanjaro is the tallest waterslide in the Americas, and it gets there without a tower at all — the flume runs straight down a forested hillside at Aldeia das Águas Park Resort, about two hours west of Rio de Janeiro. It first took the world record in 1999, and the ride registers still credit it with the tallest drop of any waterslide anywhere.
Brazilian manufacturer Blue Wave built it as a speed slide: a partially enclosed body slide with no mat and no raft, just a launch position and a near-vertical descent into the runout. It is one of three Brazilian entries on this countdown, more than any other country manages — the result of a 1990s building boom that put South America decades ahead on steep water rides.
At 45 m, Hurricane shares its height exactly with Hurricane Tower at number four, and the two are co-ranked here because no published figure separates them by so much as a centimetre. This one stands at Merry Pi Beach Park in Luzhou, a Yangtze river city in southern Sichuan, and like its twin it came from the Chinese manufacturer Tailong Amusement.
It is the tall slide on a multi-slide tower — a shorter 25 m flume runs from a lower platform on the same structure. Both Chinese entries opened in 2016, the point at which the country's water-park boom started turning out rides at genuinely world-competitive heights. Luzhou is far better known for baijiu distilling than for thrill rides, which makes a top-three waterslide here one of the more unexpected stops on this list.
Also 45 m, and the exact twin of the entry above it: Hurricane Tower opened with 88°C Spring Water World in Xianyang on 27 May 2016, the same year and the same manufacturer as its Sichuan namesake. The two share a rank because their published heights are identical, and nothing in the record books breaks the tie.
This is a speed slide in the strict sense — a straight, steep body-slide descent rather than a tube or raft ride, with nothing between the rider and the flume. Xianyang sits just north-west of Xi'an in Shaanxi, near enough to pair a day here with the Terracotta Army, and it is the more accessible of the two Chinese slides for anyone routing through central China.
55. The Fall
Mt. Olympus Water & Theme Park, Wisconsin Dells, United States
At 44.2 m, The Fall is the tallest waterslide in the United States, and it lands less than a metre behind the two Chinese slides above it — the tightest cluster on this countdown. It is the headline ride on the Rise of Icarus tower at Mt. Olympus Water & Theme Park in Wisconsin Dells, which opened over Memorial Day weekend in 2024.
The tower carries five body slides launching from different platform heights, and The Fall is the one that starts at the very top: a WhiteWater West AquaTube that runs enclosed for most of its length. Wisconsin Dells has billed itself as the Waterpark Capital of the World for decades, and this is the ride that finally gave the claim a world-ranking number to point at.
66. Thrillagascar & Jungle Jammer
DreamWorks Water Park, East Rutherford, United States
At 43.3 m, Thrillagascar and Jungle Jammer are the tallest indoor waterslides in the world — a record they set when they opened on 1 October 2020 and have held ever since. They are twins, co-ranked, launching from the same platform inside DreamWorks Water Park at the American Dream complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The entire park sits under a roof and is kept warm all year, which is rather the point: this is a 43 m plunge you can take in a New Jersey January. ProSlide built both, and the pair sit a little under a metre behind The Fall above them, close enough that the two American entries are effectively the same height to anyone standing at the bottom.
At 42.1 m, Junoon Drop is the newest entry on this list and the tallest family water coaster in the world — it opened with Aquarabia at Qiddiya City, outside Riyadh, on 23 April 2026. It clears Captain Spacemaker below it by exactly a tenth of a metre, the narrowest margin anywhere in this countdown.
It is also the longest water coaster anywhere at 515 m, and it carries a custom seven-person raft rather than the lone riders most of these giants demand — which is how a ride this tall ends up classified as a family attraction. WhiteWater West fused three of its own systems, a Master Blaster, a Constrictor and a Boomerango, to fit that much height and length into one circuit.
At 42 m — a tenth of a metre behind Junoon Drop, the closest pair on this countdown — Captain Spacemaker is the only European entry to make the cut. It stands at Caribe Bay, the Caribbean-themed water park on the Venetian coast at Jesolo, about an hour's drive east of Venice itself.
New Dieresin built it as a Free Fall speed slide, and unlike most of the giants here it is a tube slide rather than a pure body slide. It has been a fixture of world-tallest lists since long before the current Gulf and Chinese towers arrived, and it is still holding its ground in the low forties — the last survivor of the era when Europe set this record.
At 41 m, Insano is the one that turns its height straight into speed: Beach Park's own figures put riders at 0 to 100 km/h in five seconds, down a flume pitched at a 70-degree angle into a pool 1.7 m deep. It sits at Beach Park in Aquiraz, on the coast just east of Fortaleza in Ceará.
It took the world height record when it opened in December 1997 and held it until Kilimanjaro — also Brazilian — took the title two years later. Nearly three decades on it is still a genuine top-ten slide, which says a great deal about how far ahead Brazil was building while the rest of the world was still measuring waterslides in single-digit metres.
At 40 m, Meteor closes the countdown, and it is the third Brazilian slide to make it — no other country places more than two. It opened in October 2018 at Wet'n Wild São Paulo in Itupeva, about an hour north-west of the city along the Bandeirantes highway.
ProSlide built it around a trapdoor launch capsule: riders stand upright on a hatch that drops away beneath them, which turns the first instant of a 40 m descent into something close to genuine freefall. Anything shorter than this missed the cut — the next tier down sits in the high thirties, led by Ko'okiri Body Plunge in Orlando at 38.1 m.
FAQ: The World’s Tallest Waterslides
What is the tallest waterslide in the world?
Vertigo and The Fractionator, the two slides that launch from the top of the Icon Tower at Meryal Waterpark in Lusail, Qatar. Both start 76.31 m above the ground, a height Guinness World Records certified in October 2024, and they are co-ranked because nothing separates their start platform.
How is a waterslide’s height actually measured?
By slide height: the vertical distance from the start platform down to the point where the flume ends. That is not the same as the architectural height of the tower carrying the slide, which is usually several metres taller, and it is not the length of the flume. Every ranking on this page uses the first measure.
Can you still ride Verrückt, the famous Kansas City slide?
No. Verrückt opened at Schlitterbahn Kansas City in 2014 at 51.4 m and was certified as the world’s tallest waterslide, but it no longer stands. That is why this countdown lists only slides that are open and running today rather than the tallest ever built.
Which country has the most of the world’s tallest waterslides?
Brazil, with three of the ten: Kilimanjaro, Insano and Meteor. China and the United States place two each, and Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Italy one apiece. Brazil’s run comes from a building boom in the late 1990s that put it decades ahead on steep, tall water rides.
Where is the tallest waterslide in the United States?
The Fall, at Mt. Olympus Water & Theme Park in Wisconsin Dells, which reaches 44.2 m and opened in 2024. The tallest indoor waterslides in the world are also American: Thrillagascar and Jungle Jammer sit under the roof of American Dream in East Rutherford, a short hop from Jersey City. For more superlatives on this scale, browse our other record breakers.
