Woman sues Great Wolf Lodge after alleged neck injury on Perryville waterslide

A woman sued Great Wolf Lodge last month after she says she sustained a severe neck injury on a waterslide at its indoor water park and resort in Perryville.

Natasha Collova, a high school teacher in New Jersey, sued the Chicago-based resort chain in Cecil County Circuit Court on July 23, alleging it knew about prior injuries and failed to maintain safe rides.

Collova says she was injured in March 2024 on the Mountain Edge Raceway, which the company’s website describes as a “toboggan-style, mat-racing extravaganza.” Holding a mat, riders travel head-first down a series of twists and turns, descending four stories.

Collova alleges that even though she followed instructions, “her head struck the upper interior portion of the slide, causing her neck to violently hyperextend and resulted in serious physical injuries.”

She says she experienced head and neck pain and dizziness, and went to the emergency room later that day.

“She was hurt badly,” said one of Collova’s lawyers, Nathaniel Foote, of Andreozzi & Foote. “If you’re operating a business that involves waterslides … you have to make sure your waterslides aren’t going to hurt people.”

A spokesperson for Great Wolf Lodge did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company is not yet listed as having a lawyer in Maryland Judiciary Case Search.

The complaint, which brings one count of negligence, states that the resort owed its visitors “a duty to exercise reasonable and ordinary care” and to keep the slide in “reasonably safe condition for its intended use.”

In a news release Friday, the law firm said that “this was not an isolated incident.”

Foote said that since filing the lawsuit, his firm has heard from another person who was injured on the same slide.

The alleged failure to address a known problem, Foote said, “goes beyond just simple negligence, in our mind, and is reckless or even willful.”