This redefined mountain pass.
As if passing a kidney stone wasn’t intense enough on its own: A New Jersey woman made viewers wince after expelling one of the calcified pellets by riding a rollercoaster at Disney World — and she’s apparently not the only one.
“Come with me to pass a kidney stone at Disney,” invited Steph Fallon in the trippy clip, which boasts 1.1 million views on TikTok.
The Disney fan had reportedly been suffering from kidney stones — hard deposits made of minerals and salts that form inside one’s renal glands due to diet, weight and other factors.
After researching cures online, the Jersey girl found that many articles mentioned an unusual remedy — 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 relief method to the test.
“We rode in the very back row like all of the articles said you had to do to pass a kidney stone,” intoned Fallon alongside a clip of her careening around curves on the railway-themed ride.
She reportedly rode the railroad twice — a veritable double dose — presumably to increase the chances of jettisoning her painful passenger.
Fallon then said she “stopped to get a souvenir” and headed back to the airport, by which point she was in “so much pain.”
The New Jerseyan returned home at midnight, whereupon she woke up the next morning to find that her Disney World diuretic did the trick.
“I was literally shocked, I had passed the kidney stone,” gushed Fallon over footage of her salty stowaway.
Viewers were shocked over her veritable Mountain “pass.”
“Honestly this is such a power move, flying to Disney to pass a kidney stone,” exclaimed one impressed fan, while another wrote, “cheaper than going to the hospital and way more fun!”
“I work at a Urologist office, imma start telling patients this,” declared a third.
This was not some freak occurrence. The Big Thunder Mountain ride is apparently the de facto antidote when it comes to getting one’s rocks off … so to speak.
In what might sound like an apocryphal Onion Article, a 2016 Michigan State study found that getting on the ride helped patients pass kidney stones nearly 70% of the time.
“I had patients telling me that after riding a particular roller coaster at Walt Disney World, they were able to pass their kidney stone,” said professor emeritus David Wartinger, who led the experiment. “I even had one patient say he passed three different stones after riding multiple times.”
To put this theory to the test, the professor filled 3-D models of kidneys with replica kidney stones and then rode the Thunder Mountain railroad over 20 times.
He found that he indeed expelled kidney stones in seven out of 10 attempts provided he sat in the last car.
Interestingly, Wartinger and co tried the same experiment on Space Mountain and other high-velocity rollercoasters but said that “Big Thunder Mountain was the only one that worked.”
He suspected that this was because the extreme G-force pins the stone in the kidney — much like a rollercoaster passenger trapped against their seat — and therefore prevents it from passing.
“The ideal coaster is rough and quick with some twists and turns, but no upside down or inverted movements,” he concluded.
