This redefined mountain pass.
As if passing a kidney stone wasn’t intense enough on its own: A New Jersey woman made viewers shiver after she expelled one of the calcified pellets by riding a roller coaster at Disney World — and she’s apparently not alone.
“Come with me to pass a kidney stone at Disney,” Steph Fallon invited in the trippy clip, which has garnered 1.1 million views on TikTok.
The Disney fan reportedly suffered from kidney stones – hard deposits made of minerals and salts that form in the kidney glands due to diet, weight and other factors.
After researching cures online, the Jersey girl mentioned in many articles discovered an unusual cure: riding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
So she booked a day trip to the House of Mouse to put this unorthodox rescue method to the test.
“We rode all the way in the back row, like all the articles said you had to do to pass a kidney stone,” Fallon said alongside a clip of her driving through the curves on the railroad-themed ride.
She reportedly rode the railway twice – a real double dose – presumably to increase the chances of throwing her aching passenger overboard.
Fallon then said she “stopped to get a souvenir” and headed back to the airport, at which point she was “in so much pain”.
The New Jerseyan returned home at midnight, whereupon she awoke the next morning to find that her Disney World diuretic was doing the trick.
“I was literally shocked, I had passed the kidney stone,” Fallon gushed over footage of her salty stowaway.
Viewers were shocked by her real mountain pass.
“Honestly this is such a powerful move, flying to Disney to pass a kidney stone,” one impressed fan exclaimed, while another wrote, “cheaper than going to the hospital and way more fun!”
“I work in a urologist’s office, I’m going to tell patients this,” a third stated.
This was not a bizarre event. The Big Thunder Mountain ride is apparently the de facto antidote when it comes to getting your rocks off…so to speak.
In what may sound like an apocryphal Onion article, a 2016 Michigan State study found that boarding helped patients pass kidney stones nearly 70 percent of the time.
“Patients told me that after riding a certain roller coaster at Walt Disney World, they were able to pass their kidney stone,” said emeritus professor David Wartinger, who led the experiment. “I even had a patient say he passed three different rocks after driving multiple times.”
To put this theory to the test, the professor filled 3D models of kidneys with replica kidney stones and then rode the Thunder Mountain Railroad more than 20 times.
He found that he did indeed expel kidney stones in 7 out of 10 attempts, provided he was in the last car.
Interestingly, Wartinger and co tried the same experiment on Space Mountain and other high-speed coasters, but said “Big Thunder Mountain was the only one that worked.”
He suspected this was because the extreme G-force jammed the rock in the kidney – much like a roller coaster passenger wedged against his seat – preventing it from passing.
“The ideal roller coaster is rough and fast with some twists and turns, but no inverted or inverted movements,” he concluded.
