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Video: Thrills and spills at record-breaking water slide in Fort Worth

If you like to watch people wipe out, you'd love Slide the City.

The 1,700-foot slip 'n slide popped up on Main Street in Fort Worth as a one-day water park with just one feature: a slide nearly half a mile long. Saturday afternoon, it was crammed with people of all ages, most ungracefully sliding on their tummies and occasionally crashing into a neighbor who didn't get as much speed.

Slide the City participants ride down (or sometimes walked) until the slide ended in a big...
Slide the City participants ride down (or sometimes walked) until the slide ended in a big pool.(David Guzman / Staff Photographer)

This was not a thrill-seeker's ride. Many sliders ended up walking a significant portion of the 1,700 feet after losing momentum. Our three Dallas Morning News slip 'n sliders found it fun and frustrating. Funny, too: We all got knocked down at least a time or two.

Slide the City was supposed to open at 10 a.m. Saturday but remained closed until 4 p.m. because of equipment issues. Ticketholders in that time frame were not allowed to slide later in the day and will receive a refund. Outdoor concerts continued as planned at PantherFest, the free festival at the bottom of the slide.

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Saturday afternoon, Slide the City-ers in Fort Worth beat a Guinness World Record for "longest distance slid on a slip and slide in one hour." Guinness World Record adjudicator Philip Robertson confirmed that the Fort Worth attraction saw a cumulative slide distance of more than 2.5 million feet -- that's nearly 1,500 people who slid down the 1,700-foot slide in an hour.

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That easily beats a previous record from Memphis, when about 4,000 people sent themselves down a dinky 33-foot slide in July 2014.

The slip 'n slide made for some fantastic photos. Take a look:

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David Guzman, Britton Peele and Tiney Ricciardi contributed to this story.