A place where minors could drink alcohol freely and people of any age could be seriously hurt, the theme park commonly referred to as “Class Action Park” was doomed to fail even though it was beloved by at least as many people as it was despised by. A popular theme park in Vernon, New Jersey, Action Park was shut down because of too much action, or at least action that was far too extreme. That shutdown was to the relief of some and the dismay of many.
The park was home to three different lands: Motorworld, Waterwold and The Alpine Center. While Waterworld was one of the first-ever modern American water parks, all three of those lands are best known for the injuries and even deaths of visitors and staff that occurred there. Most thrill-seekers in the NYC area were familiar with the risks (one former guest even referred to a visit as similar to a game of Russian Roulette), but that didn’t hold back the tide of lawsuits that ended up playing a part in shutting down Action Park.
The love people still have for the New Jersey landmark would result in it being reopened to great fanfare in 2014, but the jury is still out on if that was a good idea or not. Read on to learn about the rich and often sketchy history of Action Park, the things that spelled its doom and the events that led to its renovation and reopening, all of which live up to the theme park’s action-packed name.
1. The Origin
Like many famous non-Disney, non-Universal theme parks, Action Park had quite humble beginnings. In 1978 a company called Great American Recreation, which had recently purchased a skiing area in New Jersey, was looking for ways to utilize the spot in the off season. GAR decided on making a water park that was originally known as the Vernon Valley Summer Park. Vernon Valley Summer Park kept steadily growing over a relatively short period of time. It started out with two waterslides and a race car track, but quickly added more waterslides, a swimming pool, tennis courts and a softball field over the next few years. At the beginning of the 1980s that softball field was replaced with a gigantic wave pool, one of the first in the country. That made up most of Waterworld. Motorworld was later created in the swampy areas nearby owned by Great American Recreation. Together the water park ultimately had 75 rides altogether (40 of them being water slides).
Great American Recreation started leaning into heavy promotion for their water park, mainly targeting people in the areas surrounding New York City. Check out one of the original, very hokey commercials. They were remembered for two jingles that were and are far too catchy: “There’s nothing in the world like Action Park!” and later “The action never stops… at Action Park!”
By the 1980s Action Park was a prime destination in the summer, especially on weekends, for many in the surrounding states. A large percentage of attendees weren’t even familiar with its ski area origins, just enjoying the end result of the little idea that kept growing. Action Park was loved by many (especially younger people) for the insane level of control it offered guests over their experiences at the park. That freedom would eventually come back to bite the owners AND some of the visitors in the butt, though. Starting in 1984 the controversies and legal struggles that went on to largely define Action Park would begin to hit in full force…
2. The Danger
As much as the owners probably hate the fact, the most remembered thing about Action Park is the danger it posed to its guests. There were quite a few reasons it was arguably the least safe theme park in the whole world. Here are some of the biggest causes of the immense danger at Action Park in its worst years.
I. The design of the rides
As one of the very first water parks in the United States, Action Park was a pioneer in the design of water park rides. That was one of the big excuses for why its attractions caused so many accidents. But reports like this one from Matthew Callan suggest that the designers of the rides were far from experts in engineering and physics. In a lot of ways they seemed to be experimenting with human subjects, seeing how guests would end up after they got off the rides.
According to folklore, Action Park offered the employees a hundred-dollar bill to try out the obviously-dangerous Cannonball Loop, pictured above. The rides were also created for the lowest price GAR could manage, with an allegedly minimal amount of maintenance and a hesitance to fully renovate the rides. No one person has been held responsible for this.
II. The Action Park employees
Who is best to manage crazy guests, often teenagers trying to one-up their friends by risking extreme danger. Probably not other teenagers! That’s why it was so crazy that young people were responsible for the safety of the park and the well-being of its guests. Jim DeSave claims that he got his job as a security director two years after he started working at Action Park. He was a frightening twenty-one years old. He and other employees were believed to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol, not really concerned with the welfare of Action Park’s guests and generally irresponsible in a place where irresponsibility could cost lives. Weird NJ covers the dilemma well.
III. The Action Park visitors
A little closer and a little cheaper than Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, Action Park attracted a lot of the inhabitants of the New York metropolitan area. Many of those guests, because they came from low-income neighborhoods and because there was no place to learn, did not know how to swim. That’s obviously a startling problem for a major water park, contributing to the danger of Action Park..
According to the Weird NJ article and other sources, the visitors also treated the whole experience as a wild adventure, making the whole theme park feel lawless. They controlled their destinies and, by extension, sometimes their own fates. Many guests would break clear rules by getting rid of their mats mid-slide so that they could wait for a friend next in line to arrive so they could ride down together. That was one of the major causes of accidents at Action Park. Another was the “exhibitionism” at The Tarzan Swing, where guests would try to show off and one-up each other.
IV. The “official” response to accidents
What did Action Park do when they were clearly responsible for some kind of physical injury? Reportedly, they handed out free passes to the injured parties. This was likely to entice young adults, the most likely to have accidents because of the sense of lawlessness that they so embraced.
V. The marketing
Though negligence was maybe the biggest fault on the part of Action Park, even the ways Great American Recreation marketed the theme park to potential guests could be a huge problem. They largely encouraged the idea that the “action” of Action Park didn’t necessarily have to be safe, even if they never said so directly in any ads or commercials. Another big issue was when GAR started marketing to the Spanish population in the surrounding area, since almost no staff member knew Spanish and there were no signs or guides at the park written in that language.
VI. The wide availability of alcohol and loose restrictions on it
There were a lot of kiosks that offered beer in Action Park, and many of the people managing them didn’t care how old their customers were. Underage drinkers are less developed and as such less likely to be responsible under the influence. Many of the individuals doctors would see were young people clearly intoxicated, according again to Weird NJ. The heavy drinking amongst adults was another problem. Parents and guardians weren’t very helpful if they were drunk, and Action Park all but encouraged them to be.
VII. The loose regulations of the park and the state of New Jersey
You’d think officials would be up in arms about all the problems mentioned above, but despite a ton of citations for safety violations from 1979 to 1986, Action Park was only fined on one occasion. The New Jersey Herald discovered that fact, and that unlike most cases of theme park safety violations Action Park was not fined for that first offense. There were also some other questionable situations, like when the state decided to classify the dangerous Tidal Wave Pool as a pool instead of a ride, saving Action Park from legal action. As a pool, the only requirements were that the water was clean and that lifeguards are duty. There was probably nothing specifically mentioned in the law about what if the lifeguards were young and under the influence. The New Jersey Herald actually posed the question of if there was some kind of different, possible illegal arrangement between Great American Recreation and the state of New Jersey.
3. The Attractions
The attractions at Action Park injured hundreds (if not thousands) of people over the years, and killed half a dozen. There were three big areas at Action Park: Motorworld, Waterworld and the Alpine Center. Here are a number of the most interesting attractions from each area, and an explanation of what made many of them so ridiculously dangerous.
I. Attractions by motor
Motorworld, which housed most of the attractions that were powered by technology, contained a lot of vehicles like karts, boats and more for guests to ride. It closed in 1996, and was torn apart to make room for restaurants, condominium housing development and the amusement park that replaced Action Park which will be discussed later in this article. Here are the rides that formerly stood in the area, and caused a decent portion of the accidents at Action Park.
Bumper boats
The engines of these frequently leaked gasoline. There was at least one instance when a guest needed medical attention because of too much of it on his skin. The pond was filled with snakes. The boats were very tricky to maneuver. Employees who worked at Action Park in the early 90s had to shout instruction, but even that didn’t work well because of the loud noise of the bumper boats.
LOLA cars
These were miniature race cars with an open cockpit on a long track. It cost extra money to drive the cars, but people were willing to pay, especially the people who knew that you could raise the speed to dangerous levels with the right adjustment. The park management had a microbrewery set up nearby for a time, and employees were known to break in, steal beer and then ride the cars on Route 94 after the park had officially closed.
Sling Shot
This is a bungee cord ride in which two people are shot up into the air, looping upside down. Usually these types of attractions cost a lot more because of insurance issues, but at Action Park the additional fee for the whiplash-inducing attraction was a mere $5.
Super Go Karts
Things called governor devices were meant to keep the speed at or below twenty miles per hour, but many park employees knew that by wedging tennis balls in the right place they could make the small-engine kart hit 50 mph. A lot of the injuries from the Super Go Karts were head-on collisions. Gasoline fuels were another dangerous factor.
Super Speed Boats
These were in a small pond which most of the staff knew was really infested with snakes. Riders would often illegally use the Super Speed Boats as bumper boats. One really drunk individual needed to be rescued by a lifeguard after his boat capsized after a big “bump.”
Tank Ride
This ride, featured prominently in the TV ads back in the day, let guests drive small tanks for five minutes at a time, shooting tennis balls from cannons at other tanks. When hit, a tank automatically stopped for 15 seconds, giving the other tankers and visitors with cannons outside the arena to pelter the rider with tennis balls. When workers went into the cage to take care of a damaged or stuck tank, they were almost always hit with a multitude tennis balls despite rules prohibiting that. Even if they were trying to be safe, employees were facing more danger from the Tank Ride than attendees.
II. Attractions by water
Waterworld was the water park (though it also contained attractions that weren’t water-based) that held many of the rides that were most responsible for the injury and deaths of guests. Over half of the attractions at Action Park were water-based, but even with that in mind a heavy proportion of Waterworld “enterainment” posed a higher level of danger than all of the rides at the other two lands.
Aqua Skoot
With this ride, visitors would carry a hard plastic sled up to the top of the attraction and go down a slide made up of rollers similar to what you’d find at a factory, and ultimately fall into a pool that was reportedly only a little deeper than a puddle. The idea that when the sled hit the water it would skip across it like a stone, but it didn’t always happen that way. If riders weren’t in a leaned back position, the sled would sink in the water and make the rider get hit in the head, causing many injuries. More accidents occurred when riders would crash into individuals still in the pool.
The Aerodium
This is a skydiving simulator wind tunnel that was invented in Germany in 1984. An Aerodium was ready for guests by 1987 at Action Park, one of the attractions in Waterworld with no water elements. Riders wore special skydiving suits, helmets and earplugs to join a body flight instructor on a netting like a trampoline over a fan. With their help the riders would launch high into the air. Most injuries from the Aerodium came because riders would instinctively attempt to break their falls by extending their arms. That caused all kinds of shoulder dislocation, severed nerves and even almost permanent arm paralysis.
Cannonball Loop
This ride best represents the thrill seeking aspect of Action Park as well as its obvious dangers, even though it was almost never used. In the mid-80s Great American Recreation build an enclosed water side, like a tube. That wasn’t uncommon, but what was very “unique” was a complete vertical loop added that you might come to expect from something like a roller coaster, but never from a slide. It’s not associated with water slides because it’s incredibly dangerous, so much so that the park (obviously recognizing the danger) would (according to some reports) offer a hundred dollars to employees to test it out. The Cannonball Loop was open for a single month in the summer of 1985 before the state’s Advisory Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety ordered its closure. Rumor holds that some test dummies that used to uncover the safety of the ride actually got dismembered. Apparently a rider during the month the Cannonball Loop was open got stuck at the top of the loop because of not enough water pressure.
The ride reopened a few other times over the Action Park era, before injuries forced it to shut down again. Some extra safety measures were taken than usual, like weighing down the riders, requiring them to remove jewelry and carefully explaining how to position their bodies. However, the fact that even Action Park would exercise caution shows how insanely dangerous the Cannonball Loop was. Hopefully the new version for the Action Park coming soon doesn’t get the same reputation…
Colarado River Ride
The Colarado River Ride included jagged rocks in its darkened tunnels, as well as a foot-high jump that saw its rafts slam back onto the water’s surface.
Diving cliffs
Two diving cliffs, one that was 23 feet tall and another that was 15, stood above a 16-foot deep pool. The danger from this ride was that the section of the pool where people landed wasn’t blocked off, which meant people swimming nearby might be hit by a diver on the diver’s way down. People who couldn’t swim would jump off the Diving Cliffs, which was another danger, because the water was deeper than many expected.
Kamikaze
Ironically, the water slide named Kamikaze was one of the safer ones in Action Park. It featured a few drops and rises, but the landings tended to be smooth.
The Kayak Experience
An imitation whitewater rafting experience, this used submerged electric fans to make the water simulate turbulent conditions. The kayaks would often get stuck or top over. After the second visitor death in the history of Action Park at the hands of The Kayak Experience in 1982, GAR permanently closed the ride.
Roaring Rapids
Another whitewater ride, this one used rafts and is responsible for report after report noting fractured bones and dislocated body parts.
Surf Hill
Guests would slide down a water-slicked slope on mats into small puddles on Surf Hill. Because the barriers between the lanes weren’t much to speak of, collisions between people riding at the same time were common. The seventh lane was particularly dangerous. It was known as “the back breaker” because of a special kicker that allowed big jumps and splashdowns. Park employees ate at a nearby snack bar that offered a good view of Surf Hill, excited to see serious injuries or lost bikini tops.
Super Speed Water Slides
Known as Geronimo Falls, these slides took advantage of the vertical slopes close to Action Park so that riders could attain more action than anywhere else thanks to faster speeds. One of the Super Speed Water Slides sent riders almost vertically down. Because of low barriers on both slides, the lifeguards had to inform every user to stay flat on their backs with arms at their sides. Doing anything else would fling them off the ride, so it’s good that Action Park at least exercised some caution in that regard. One of the slides is still around today, known now as H-2-Oh-No, but it’s a lot less steep. Tracks from the previous, more dangerous slides that resided there are still visible.
The Tarzan Swing
The Tarzan Swing was another attraction at Action Park that was memorable for some good and a lot of bad reasons. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a rope to swing into water with. If people held on to the rope too long they would scrape their toes badly on concrete. The biggest cause of alarm, however, was how extremely cold the water below the rope was. At times lifeguards were forced to jump in to rescue people who couldn’t swim out of the pool because they were so unprepared for the shock of the cold water. In 1984 a man had a heart attack shortly after going on The Tarzan Swing. The cold is believed to be the cause of his death.
The Tidal Wave Pool
This was easily one of the scariest attractions in the history of theme parks. The first death happened in the Tidal Wave Pool in 1982, and another guest drowned in 1987. Two deaths might not sound like a lot, but it’s only that low a tally because lifeguards were able to save so many patrons from drowning over the years. Twelve were on duty at once, and there were many days where they saved upwards of 30 different people.
Nicknamed “The Grave Pool,” it was 100 feet wide by 250 feet held and commonly held between 500 and 1,000 people. The artificial waves could reach a staggering 40 inches high, and they went for 20 straight minutes. That’s plenty of time for a poor or even a good swimmer to get in some serious trouble. The pool got deeper the further you went into it, and visitors who couldn’t swim well would quickly have water over their heads. Experienced swimmers used to ocean water, didn’t realize that fresh water wasn’t as buoyant, which forced them to do a more exhausting workout than they expected, and it wasn’t safe to be fatigued in an environment like that. Wave pools in general are pretty dangerous, but as usual Action Park was able to take the danger to a whole new level.
III. Attractions by mountain
Finally, there were alpine attractions, which were related to activities in a mountain-like setting, often allowing you to soar into the air in one way or another.
The Action Park Gladiator Challenge
This ride was inspired by American Gladiators, a TV competition series in which amateur athletes would face off against each other and the “gladiators” hired by the show. It originally aired from 1989 to 1996, and had a brief resurgence in 2008.
The Action Park Gladiator Challenge, which opened in 2002, allowed guests to compete against one another in an obstacle course and against Action Park’s own “gladiators,” scouted by the theme park at local gyms, in jousting matches. The attraction was run and designed by two bodybuilders. There were three shows a day, when the contestants with the fastest times in the obstacle course came back to compete against each other. This attraction wasn’t known for being particularly dangerous, but it sure sounded fun and gives you a sense of some of the thrills Action Park delivered, even without reckless endangerment!
The Alpine Slide
Sometimes known as the Alpine “Skin” Slide, this long chute on the side of a hill was the cause of many major perils. It was ironically referred to “the safest ride there is” by a park official according to a 1986 article in the New Jersey Herald. That person said that because a 90-year-old grandma and moms with babies on their laps would go down the slide. That is extremely scary to hear because the tracks were made of concrete and fiberglass, so anyone who even took a minor hit tended to be get hurt and scrape their skin very badly. It was even worse if the riders were only wearing bathing suits.
The sleds only had two speeds: extremely slow or insanely fast. Obviously, the demand for speed was high. Since the alpine slide was below a chairlift, passengers would yell and spit at people going down the slide, entertained and undeterred by the major and minor spills. The Alpine Slide “only” caused one death, but it was responsible for most of the lawsuits and around 40% of citations again Action Park.
Skateboard park
There was a skateboard park near the ski area’s ski school building, but the design of it was even too bad for Action Park. The bowls riders skated in were separated by pavement, and often didn’t meet the edges smoothly, causing a ton of tumbles.
4. The Accidents
The insanely worrisome accidents, some of them seemingly entirely avoidable, are a big reason Action Park lives in infamy to this day. Check out below some of those mishaps.
Fatal Accidents
- The first death at Action Park happened on July 8th, 1980. A nineteen year old employee of the park was riding the Alpine Slide, and his car jumped the track. His head hit a rock, killing him.
- A little over two years later, on July 24th, 1982, a fifteen-year-old boy ended up drowning in the dangerous Tidal Wave Pool.
- Just a week after that, on August 1st, a 27-year-old man got out of his kayak to right it after it had been flipped. As he did so he stepped on a grate that was either near or connected to a section of live wiring for the underwater fans. He had a severe electric shock and went into cardiac arrest. Action Park tried at first to persuade that the electric current wasn’t the cause of his death since there were no burns on his body, but the coroner explained that burns aren’t common in water-based electrocutions. Soon after the event the ride was drained and closed for investigation. It never reopened, even though the park was surprisingly cleared of any wrongdoing by the New Jersey Labor Department. At least Action Park knew better than to press its luck.
- At some point in 1984, a visitor had a heart attack. Many believed that it was caused by the shock of cold water in the pool under the Tarzan Swing.
- On August 27th, 1984, a 20-year-old was another victim of the Tidal Wave Pool.
- The Tidal Pool ended one more person’s life on July 19th, 1987
Non-Fatal Accidents
Above were the deadliest incidents that happened at Action Park, but far from all of them. Accidents were an extremely regular occurrence, so much so that BuzzFeed compiled an absolutely insane list of horror stories from Action Park. Examples include:
- A whole family that suffered major injuries.
- Getting stuck in the middle of a water tube that’s pitch black on the inside.
- A T-shirt melting on to skin due to friction from a ride.
- Bacterial water that gave an attendee Hepatitis A.
- A kid who needed brain surgery after attending.
Considering the level of safety of major parks you’d find in Orlando, Anaheim, etc. it’s pretty hard to believe what happened without many consequences for Action Park.
5. The Experience
At first you wonder why any sane person would ever attend such a disaster-prone amusement park. If you think it through and remember what it was like to be a kid, though, things start to make a little more sense. Almost every teenager wants to show how tough and brave they are, even if they tend to make stupid decisions to prove their toughness and courage. You can’t really train a child not to test his limits; all you can do is make sure they’re going to be safe. To parents and guardians, Action Park might have seemed like a better option than the kids hanging out at Old Mill Pond and falling off trees and cliffs or into water with jagged rocks. After all, it was a state-sanctioned theme park. Even if there were signs that Action Park was dangerous, it was easier for parents and guardians to believe that it was safe.
In reality, Action Park is akin to an industrialized version of the stupid risks kids take. Having a place devoted to taking those risks made everything more memorable and brought things to an epic scale. It’s easy to see why people who were teenagers at the time (at least the ones who didn’t have major accidents) have such fond memories of such a big safety hazard. I almost wish I could go to the original Action Park myself. I’m far too chicken to try anything dangerous myself, but seeing that kind of atmosphere full of kids being kids would energize and excite me like little else.
The viral documentary The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever found at Daily Motion best sums up the love people had and still have for Action Park. You get to watch and listen to (sometimes somewhat famous) individuals explain why it was all worth it to them even with its obvious perils. I highly encourage you to check it out to get a deep sense of what made the park so special to so many, despite or sometimes because of all its obvious danger.
Here are some statements and comments from people who remember the good things about Action Park, and badly miss it.
“And don’t forget the go-carts in MotorWorld. The best part was they all had this steel metal ring going around each car. That meant it was essentially a bumper car. The trick was to keep an eye out for the faster cars and then grab them when your turn came up. Then… as you were driving… pull up behind a slower car and then knock into the back portion of their car. They would spin out while you wizzed away! Hooray! So many destroyed cars and great memories… I don’t care what anyone says, I wish the place was still in business. I’d be willing to take my chances…”
“I still remember being able to be served action beer (light or dark) at age 17 then riding the go carts… If you new how and without burning yourself on the muffler you could reach behind you and pull the throttle past where the gov was set and just take off past the other kids! And i swear I was lucky enough to ride the loop water slide…only remember it was real dark then suddenly your face was smashed into the top part of the slide as you went through the loop and you came out with a nasty headache…. Good times!”
“I regret that, if I have children someday, I won’t be able to toughen them up by taking them to that hallowed battle ground. Nothing acquaints a person with the harshness of reality faster than zooming down a water slide, laying on your stomach on a 10-millimeter-thick foam mat, accelerating to Mach 5, and hitting two inches of slimy liquid. Action Park made adults of a generation of Tri-State Area kids who strolled through its blood-stained gates, by teaching us the truth about life: it is not safe, you will get hurt a lot, and you’ll ride all the way home burnt beyond belief.”
Some, though, would rather the park had stayed closed forever:
“I worked on the Alpine Slide way back when. It was so bad! We were stationed at different parts of the slide with radios to say hold the track if people slowed down or stopped. People often stopped and got out of their carts to take pictures! They would leave their carts on the track. Although we would radio up to hold the track, they never did. So there would be a pile up.”
“One person suffered a concussion because he was getting back in his cart as someone was coming down… He lost his footing and hit the track with his head (obviously). Another one was thrown from his cart when he slowed down waiting for the next person who he was with to catch up. They were going so fast that when they caught up they hit him so hard he flew out of his cart and broke his arm.”
“Other than that there were many, many, many skin burns from the slide! People went too fast, lost control. Many didn’t speak English so she we told them to keep going, they didn’t understand and slowed down…what a MESS! I hope they leave it closed!“
7. The Spinoffs
Action Park was so popular (and so impressively able to avoid lawsuits for quite a while) that parks began to spin out of its basic concept. In April of 1980 Great American Recreation formed Ponoco Action Park in Tannersville, Pennsylvania. It contained a Waterworld with slides and tubing, plus a Motorworld land that had a lot of the same attractions, like the go-karts and LOLA race cars, as the original Action Park. It closed near the end of 1991, and the rides were all torn down to build Crossings Premium Outlets. However, the company Pocono Action Park Inc. continues to be an active business, so maybe Great American Recreation has plans to reopen in some way.
A subsidiary of Great American Recreation named Stony Point Recreation opened a theme park called Action Mountain in Pine Hill, New Jersey in June of 1984. It had a lot of attractions, including tube slides, swimming pools, a diving platform, bumper boats, go-karts, an alpine slide and a lot more. Within two years of opening Stony Point Recreation managed to accumulate almost $400,000 in back taxes that it owed the town Action Mountain was based in, so they had to sell the park. The location was remade into the Pine Hill Gold Course in 1999.
Even though both parks closed pretty quickly, the fact that the Action Park concept spun off into two other volumes speaks volumes about how beloved the original was. They couldn’t quite recreate the magic or the interest of Action Park, but it still says a lot.
8. The Closure
Financial and legal problems plagued Action Park after two deaths in the summer of 1984. A state investigation of improprieties resulted in a grand jury indictment against the companies that were involved in Action Park. Their biggest issue stemmed for the operation of an unauthorized insurance company; head of Action Park Eugene Mulvihill pled guilty on five counts of insurance fraud-related charges. Even with all that going on, the park was still getting over a million visitors a year. The death of Action Park was much more due to the 1990s recession than the danger. Great American Recreation declared bankruptcy in 1995. By July of 1997, Action Park was completely shut down, marking an end to a very tumultuous era.
9. The Temporary Replacement
There were interesting parties looking to make use of all that Action Park left behind by its owners. In February of 1998 a company named Intrawest announced that it was going to buy the property along with the nearby ski area and some real estate GAR owned. They removed the rides that were clearly dangerous and revamped others, ultimately reopening the Waterworld section of Action Park as Mountain Creek Waterpark.
It was under much more stringent safety regulations, probably due in large part because of the legacy of its predecessor. Because of that, Mountain Creek had big bilingual signs with instructions, age guidelines, a description of how deep the water is in both metric and U.S. Units and New Jersey-mandated ID numbers. The safety measures had improved drastically from Action Park, though alcohol continued to be available to adults.
In 2010, however, Intrawest ended up in bankruptcy proceedings and had to sell the Mountain Creek water park and ski resort. After some intermediary holdings, the Mulvihill family, original owners of Action Park, got control back of everything, which would pave the way for an updated version of Action Park.
10. The Reopening
Yes, Action Park returned at last in 2014. Check out this short trailer announcing the comeback. I also encourage you to read this very thorough piece by the New York Post about the revival.
The place that formerly went by unsettling nicknames like Traction Park, Accident Park and Class Action Park has taken steps to make things safer and, perhaps more significant to the owners, less likely to attract lawsuits. However, it still retains the experience of the original by putting control into the hands of the attendees, promising to “bring back all of the thrills, but none of the spills.”
The revival of popular attractions like the free falling cliffs and the Tarzan Swing plus new rides Zero-G, a double-looping drop gate waterslide, and Drop Kick, an inflatable slide that launches patrons into the air, exemplify that Action Park isn’t going light on the action just because of its shaky track record.
Action Park is even bringing back the concept of a full 360 degrees flip on a water slide that the Cannonball Loop was created in service of. A massive slide called The Sky Caliber is in the final stages of development, expected to open sometime in 2016. It contains a 90-foot vertical drop and a 30-foot vertical loop, and definitely looks like it could be something incredible, or at least something incredibly dangerous. Time will tell on that.
11. The Legacy
Thanks to the reopening, the legacy of Action Park as a whole is still very much in the air. The original era for the New Jersey theme park, however, is far enough removed from the present that we can say with some confidence how Version 1 will continue to be seen for years to come.
Obviously, Action Park is best known for its recklessness and the danger it posed to anyone who stepped inside. How an amusement park was able to circumvent the law for so many years as it caused scraped backs, concussions, broken legs and a whole lot worse is the most exciting story.
However, as I hope you realize after reading this, the park should be remembered for a lot more than a safety hazard. The documentary The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever does the best job conveying how special the Action Park experience was to so many (primarily young) people. It was something that was imprinted in many people’s memories as not just dangerous but also as thrilling and a way to test their limits. Action Park had so many problems, clearly, but it should make sense why there was such a demand to bring it back. Here’s hoping Action Park 2.0 captures all of the good of the original and a whole lot less of the bad.
