On June 25, 2025, a visitor to Boulder Beach died after coming off a water ride. According to Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office reports (Incident 25-30184, obtained by formal information request), and the supplemental report that reviewed the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s autopsy report they received on August 21, 2025, while redacted for personally identifiable information, indicates that the death was non-criminal, though I am waiting on a response from the Medical Examiner’s office for official cause of death. From the KCSO reports, it appears the visitor came down into the exit pool, began walking away from the inner tube, then collapsed.
What’s troubling is there was no statement put out at all by Silverwood. Even if there was some sort of investigation, even if there was some sort of lawsuit in process (no indication at this time that there is), it would be standard to issue a statement about the incident rather than (by appearance) ignoring it and pretending it didn’t happen. Take a look at an AI summary about Disney, for example:
The same inquiry about Silverwood claims zero.
What’s equally concerning is how I came to the information about this death. To explain that, we have to take two giant steps backwards to the beginning of the season. If you check my IG (I hadn’t resurrected this blog yet) in the early days of the season, we’d encountered changes in the accessibility policies or training about those policies that affected my youngest daughter. (She has spina bifida and is partially paralyzed, and a wheelchair user). First it was the new Courtesy Pass limits, which after several back and forth emails questioning the wisdom of the new policy, they changed. But then it was the ride operators insensitively (and sometimes embarrassingly) asking if she can stand to be measured…when she’d already been measured at the info center on arrival to the park, and was showing her height bracelet. And is in a wheelchair. Then holding her there as other kids passed by her into the ride, waiting for a supervisor, and never one time was measured by a supervisor. But this kept happening, so I posted to IG about it.
The response, to me, was telling, and confirmed things I’d begun noticing since our time in the Conductor program during the 2023 season. That response to the light criticism? No direct response, no apology, nothing…except blocking me from tagging them any further. So posted again about the unintended consequences. Sometime after that, one of my Conductor posts at the Silverwood Express blog disappeared (as it turns out, about Accessibility), though the post about it is still on their FB page. Maybe coincidence, but have no idea.
But that criticism did something I did not expect: I began getting private messages from former cast members about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff this season and previous seasons. There is a part of that I’m still working on independently verifying that I thought was going to be the big story coming out of all that. Until the season ended, and I received a private message that initially got filtered, from a former crew member. Among the things discussed was the revelation about this death.
I certainly was not about to publish something like this without verifying, so information requests went out the Timberlake EMS, who handles calls to Silverwood. I did a wide timeline because I’d initially misunderstood and thought it was a t the tail end of the season. But on June 25th, there was an incident with high dispatch and response determinants, so initially assumed that was it. Then information requests to Idaho State Patrol (not involved) and KCSO (extensively involved); outstanding info requests to Kootenai Health and the Spokane County Medical Examiner for further details.
Again, no PR statement from Silverwood. But it’s still worse: reports from that crew member indicate that staff involved (including teenagers who performed CPR or witnessed it and were traumatized) were told not to talk about it until they release an official statement. Which they still have yet to do, five months later. I can’t answer or even fathom why that has not happened; have my thoughts about it, but will leave it at that for the time being.
Note: this was all well before the Herschend purchase, and is the kind of behavior that I certainly hope changes with Herschend management.
