New Obstacle on the Wipeout Qualifier

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Wipeout "Contestants are Dropping Like Flies" (S04E28):
The Qualifier starts with The Flyswatters (Use a zipline to ride into paddles coming at you. twice.), Driver's Ed (cross the gaps in the floor by holding onto a wall that has spinning steering wheels, airbags popping out, and pedals swinging out at you), Big Balls, Jiggalator (jump onto a platform that is violently vibrating. Then jump onto another, this one with a circle to get through as well. then jump off onto a steady platform), Double Barrel (there's an oval-shaped, vertically rotating apparatus with two circles carved out. Jump into one and ride it around so you can jump out onto a platform on the other side). [SuperStache made me laugh.]
Round 2 is Total Carnage... Elevated 10 feet over the water, everyone starts on one platform and has to jump across about a dozen of them. Along the way they'll encounter the two arms of the sweeper - one is a crankshaft and one has three spinning rings hanging down. There are a lot of wipeouts early on. [I wanted PersonalitySucks to move on, haha.]
Round 3 is the Wipeout PlaySet, where you slide down onto a spinning platform, then ride some sweeper arms across platforms to jump onto a diving board and get through a windmill and ride a small slide down at the end. There are three heats, and the first person to finish each round moves on. Surprisingly, most everyone fails at doing the first slide. SuperStache falls off and onto the next platform, amazingly. Sliding off the end of the diving board is unfortunate. WindowWhackJob is the first to get through it. BripeatOffender moves on next, though she juuuuust edged out DinghyDanielle. ManChild is just ridiculous. DinghyDanielle makes it in the third round. [yay.]
The WipeoutZone consists of Flume of Doom (70-foot plunge in 3.5 seconds), Iron Maze-In (giant vertically-spinning maze that's 30 feet high and 85 feet around. You enter in a yellow opening, make your way through, and exit through the red area), Axel of Evil (ride three spinning prongs on a revolving sweeper arm), and Great Wall of Fall (make your way across a wall pretty much made up of pegs that push out and then retract). DinghyDanielle is first. She misses the exit and falls out. She makes it on her second try. She lets go of the prongs on the Axel of Evil at a weird time and slides off the platform. She finishes at 10:23. WindowWhackJob is next and has an amazing run. He doesn't wipe out until the Great Wall of Fall, but ends up finishing at 4:57. BripeatOffender then goes, and she's a screamer! She makes it through Iron Maze-In okay, but the Axel throws her. She ends up running out of time. [my favorite round today was totally the PlaySet, haha.]