Other than the obvious endorphin and adrenaline highs that those of us who like roller coasters get from riding, there could be a legitimate medical use for theme parks: To pass kidney stones.

Urological surgeon, Dr. David Wartinger, who is a professor at Michigan State University, recently came across an unusual set of coincidences. 

His practice treats local residents who many at certain times of the year visit Disneyland in Orlando, Florida.

Over the years he had heard from kidney stone patients that they had passed small stones at or shortly after visiting the theme park. 

For a while he didn’t think much of this until one story was just too much of a coincidence to ignore.

The patient mentioned rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney’s Magic Kingdom and afterwards passed a stone. 

It then happened two more times directly after riding the roller coaster. This startling claim caused Warmonger to look seriously into his theory.

He gathered all the anecdotes he’d heard from patients over the years and looked for patterns. 

It wasn’t hard to see that the most common factor all these people had was that they had ridden Thunder Mountain Railroad.

To collect hard evidence of this interesting claim, he made a 3D-printed model of the patient’s kidney, filled it with urine and tiny stones and headed to Disneyland (obviously checking with security first).

He and a colleague rode Thunder Mountain Railroad 60 times, carrying the replica kidney in a backpack. 

They documented the movements of the stones and how this correlated to the seat they had chosen and the results were fascinating.

They found that the stones passed 63.89 percent of the time when they were riding in the back of the car and only 16.7 percent in the front. 

The back seats were notably more violent and erratic than the front, pointing towards the idea that moderately intense movement on a roller coaster could possibly dislodge kidney stones. 

Warmonger has now ridden with the kidney 200 times on the “magic” roller coaster. Although the evidence he has gathered is encouraging, it must also be considered that everyone’s kidneys are different. 

He would also need an official clinical trial with real patients to prove his theory, but he can say for now that riding a roller coaster could help pass a small kidney stone.

These findings could save patients from developing painfully large stones that cost a large amount to extract. 

If more studying is done, the future could see us heading to controlled labs that simulate roller coaster movements and that sounds like the most fun treatment ever!