Bowl Slide weight restriction

I was in the waterpark at CW a few days ago and went on the Barracuda Blaster which is a bowl slide made by Proslide. they have two person rafts on there, but I was going on this one by myself. Got to the top of the stairs and the attendant discreetly told me that there's is a 250 lb weight limit for single riders on this slide. I'm about 240 so it wasn't an issue and the attendant seemed sort of embarrassed asking but I assured them that it wasn't a big deal. I asked why this applies just to single riders and they didn't know the reason other than it was a safety issue.

Any ideas why there would be a weight limit just for a single rider on this slide? I generally can figure out weird safety restrictions but don't get it for this one.

Is that one of those toilet bowl things? It's funny you should ask that, because while I've never been on one, we were watching at one of the Great Wolf parks and wondered how the boats pretty much every time would drop in to the hole at the right spot. It looks like there may be some assumptions about weight, but the water currents themselves pretty much make sure you're going down at the right time. It looked like the remaining flow around the center would do the trick, if slowly, but perhaps they're worried about a less distributed mass causing lift at the front of the boat when you hit the currents, which could lead to a capsize. I've noticed on the water coasters, both the water and LIM launched varieties, they're a lot less stable with a single rider.

Yes it's the toilet bowl with two person tube/raft things. It's possible that heavier bodies could be more likely to capsize when entering the bowl through the steep tube that you start in. When you enter the bowl you're moving pretty fast so flipping out of that boat at that time could definitely cause an injury. I think you're onto something here.

^ That's certainly the basis that I was trained on. Too much weight causes the raft to flip as it enters the bowl. Obviously injury is the key reason you don't want to happen, but if you've worked in a water park and you've had to deal with those crappy monitors that are supplied with the slides, it's very hard to see a ring disappear down the 'toilet', let alone a person.

In two seater rafts we could load 400lb.

Thanks for the info Rick. The weird thing is the weight rule just applied to single riders. I suppose the stability is even less with a single rider on a two person raft. I've actually ridden the same bowl with another guy and we probably had about 450 lbs between the two of us. Seemed fairly stable except we went around the bowl a bit longer than normal. It had a harder time flushing us.

Does that make you a "floater"?

Oversteer

They really needed to hold the handle down for us.

Time to break out the plunger?

Sorry, too many opportunities for crappy puns...

Somewhat on topic:

When a water slide has a suggested weight limit, follow it. I learned that the hard way at SFA a few years ago when I got my 265 lbs self on a water slide that had 250 listed and ended up going airborne and bonking my head. Not bad enough to go to first aid but bad enough I won't make that mistake again.

Next, I bet you're going to tell me to stay out of low areas on inverted coasters.