Is Disney's Big Thunder Mountain the 'wildest ride in medicine,' too?

If you ever find yourself cursed with the unfathomable pain that is a kidney stone, forget rushing to the emergency room at your local hospital. Medical researchers now say you might find relief at Walt Disney World instead.

Seriously. In a medical journal article published today, researchers from Michigan State University detailed how riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom helped patients pass their small kidney stones. (And, trust me, as someone who has been through this — there is no such thing as a "small" kidney stone. Those ----ers are freakin' boulders when they're coming through.)

Getting serious for a moment, one of the ways that doctors treat kidney stones is by sending ultrasound shock waves into the body, aimed at the stone, in order to break it up. Perhaps it is possible that the movement of a moderate-thrill roller coaster, such as Thunder, can achieve sort-of the same effect, jostling the stone to get it moving and pass.

All I know if that the last time I went to the ER for a kidney stone, they charged me way more than the $124 Disney World charges to get into the Magic Kingdom on a Peak attendance day. And I waited longer in that ER than I usually wait to get on Thunder, too. So maybe going to Disney instead of the hospital would have been the better move, after all.

(As a resident of Southern California, I assume that "treatment" at Disneyland's Thunder Mountain is just as effective as riding its mirrored twin at Walt Disney World.)

I shudder to think of how Disney will react to this news. The combination of Disney ticketing and medical billing must lie somewhere in Dante's Inferno. I can't wait to see Magic Kingdom tickets going up to $4,500 a day for uninsured "patients," while the rest of us have to spend half an hour in City Hall filling out forms every time we visit to see if we can get away with just making that $124 daily "copay" for admission.

Do MagicBands even work with MRI machines?

* * *

Help support Theme Park Insider and its writers. Just two bucks a month does that and gets you ad-free viewing of the site, early access to our video show and an "Insider" designation on your posts. Sign up now!

Replies (9)

This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.