Mountain Creek Waterpark is a sizable water park in New Jersey, but it’s more well-known for its
former name. For many years, this property was the infamous Action Park. This amusement park
was known for pushing the boundaries. While this resulted in some exciting and unique attractions,
the park developed a reputation for being unsafe. Mountain Creek Waterpark carries on the legacy of
Action Park in a safe way. Many rides have been adapted or removed, but this is undoubtedly one
of the best water parks in the world for thrill rides and I’ll explain why in this review.
Action Park opened back in 1978. The then Vernon Valley Ski Resort wanted a source of revenue in
the summer months. This spawned Action Park, an amusement park featuring three distinct areas-
Alpine Center, Motorworld, and Waterworld. The latter was one of the nation’s first water parks.
The park featured innovative water slides utilizing the park’s hilly terrain.
You couldn’t find slides like this elsewhere! But it quickly developed a
reputation for being sketchy or unsafe. In the park’s first decade of operation, there were 6
fatalities. And there were countless other injuries. Locals knew of the park’s risks, but
they considered the park a rite of passage. There have been countless documentaries
covering Action Park including an episode on Defunctland and HBO’s Class Action Park.
In short, the park’s homemade attractions weren’t the best engineered. Combined with
the lax safety regulations and undertrained employees, it was a recipe for disaster.
Action Park in its original form closed after the 1996 season.
In 1998, Intrawest purchased the ski resort and leased the water park to Palace Entertainment.
Waterworld was renamed Mountain Creek, as the owners wanted to distance themselves from Action
Park’s reputation. The name change signaled a new era and this began the park’s transformation
into the safer but still exciting park we see today. The park still features edgy attractions,
but safety standards have been ramped way up. In 2011, the Mulville family, who originally
owned Action Park, purchased the property. From 2014 to 2016, the park shortly went by the Action
Park name again, but it has been known as the Mountain Creek Waterpark ever since.
The past 2.5 decades have seen multiple rides decommissioned or modified to improve guest
comfort and safety. And work is still underway. For example, the Tarzan Swing was closed in 2018.
And the Cannonball Falls speed slides that shot you airborne into the creek
were closed sometime before that. Both attractions frequently caused injuries, but
the park is working to refurbish and reintroduce these rides in the future with enhanced safety.
The Canyon Cliff Jump had both an 18 foot or 5.5 meter tall and a 23 foot or 7 meter tall platform.
The larger one has been closed off presumably for rider comfort and to help the lifeguards.
But the slide that has undergone the most modifications is Colorado River.
Halfway down the slide, the attraction used to diverge into two separate paths and reconnect
at the end. To better control the ride, only one side is now used.
More notably, the ride required the use of helmets with facemasks for several years
since so many guests would smack heads. The ride no longer uses helmets, but it’s operated at a
reduced capacity with just 2 riders per raft to prevent guests from colliding into each other.
Now let’s talk about the arrival experience. You will have to park quite a ways from the
water park’s entrance. The water park is on the same side of the street as the hotel,
but you park on the opposite side of the street. One section of this lot is paved,
but it’s mostly just a gravelly hill. Parking is supposed to cost $10 per car,
but I didn’t have to pay. I arrived roughly an hour before opening and the parking
attendant hadn’t arrived for the day. Others I spoke with have had similar experiences,
so I guess it pays to arrive early! It's then a 10 minute walk to reach the park.
You first walk through this village area. Then you take a footbridge that crosses over Route 94.
You then pass the ski lodge and walk through this big field towards the water park.
This place has shorter hours than many water parks. For the 2022 season, it was open from
just 11 am to 5 pm. While I was worried 6 hours wouldn’t be enough time to do everything, lines
were minimal. I’ve heard that’s what you’ll find most weekdays. Most rides were no more than a 5-10
minute wait. The worst wait I saw and encountered was roughly 20 minutes for Colorado River.
From what I hear weekends are far busier, so I’d try to visit on a weekday if possible.
You’ll have a more relaxing day and plenty of time to try everything multiple times as we did.
Tickets cost $40 per day as of 2022, which is a fantastic deal if you’re a thrill-seeker
considering what this park offers. Lockers are available for $15-$25 plus a $5 refundable deposit
depending on the size. One downside with the lockers is that they aren’t the least bit shaded,
so your belongings will be baking in direct sunlight. Many people just throw their
stuff on chairs instead. This is a very spacious park so there’s plenty of room.
I just don’t trust my valuables out in the open. Now let’s talk about the set-up of the park.
Mountain Creek is nestled in the mountains. You get some stunning vistas from the higher
sections of the park. And the park uses this terrain to its advantage.
Many water slides are built on the hillside. The downside with this is that it’s an
extremely hilly park. It’s unquestionably the hilliest water park I have visited.
Once you enter the park, you immediately need to climb a steep 30ish foot or 10 meter tall hill
just to reach the bathrooms and lockers. But you aren’t done. The older slides go
back down the hill. Then if you want to reach the slide tower in the very back of the park,
you need to hike through the woods and up a hill. This tower is a whopping 200 feet or 60
meters above the main entrance! This park’s elevation is so extreme that it can support
an alpine coaster that spans much of the park. And make sure to bring flip flops or water shoes
to wear throughout the park. I almost never do this, but my friends smartly advised me to wear
them. They can’t go on many slides, but get them as close to the entrance as possible. The terrain
is treacherous! It’s jagged in many places. Expect to be walking on gravel or uneven stones
in many areas of the park. The worst part was the walk up to Surf Hill where you were walking on
these small rocks and little pieces of acorn. On the bright side, this is one of the shadier
water parks out there. The lower section of the park is almost completely covered by trees.
It gives the park a really cool aesthetic and it feels more organic than other water parks.
The park layout can be a bit tricky for a first-timer. The entrances and exits of many
attractions are long walks from each other. For the tube slides specifically, you need to climb
down the hills to get your tube. Then you need to climb back up the hill to the slide entrance.
This honestly took longer than the queue line itself. Fortunately most of the park’s best
and most unique attractions are clustered together in the lower half of the park,
which helps for rerides later in the day. Now let’s talk about those attractions. I was
blown away just how many thrill rides this park offered. Models that are usually not too extreme
such as tube slides or mat racers have way more thrills here between their scale and crudeness.
The scariest attractions in the park by far are located on the canyon.
You have the Canyon Cliff Jump and the Bombs Away water slide.
These are for strong swimmers only. No matter how many times I rode these, I still felt uneasy.
The Cliff Jump is exactly how it sounds. You walk over to a platform 18 foot or 5.5 meters above the
water and jump into the pool below. It’s super unnerving walking to the edge of the platform
and realizing how high you are above the water. And you have to be the one to initiate the
plunge. But it’s an absolute rush jumping from those heights and the impact wasn’t
nearly as brutal as I expected. And this ride is as fun to watch as it is to ride.
It’s a spectacle. I love how it’s not just a plain platform. It’s on a rocky cliff with waterfalls.
Bombs Away is one of those water slides that ends in the air before shooting you into the pool.
While most parks have just a 4-5 foot drop, the plunge on Bombs Away is 4 times taller!
It’s absolutely surreal being launched off a slide and falling that far into a pool.
I think Cliff Jump is more intimidating because of the visual, but this attraction is crazier.
You are shot into the water with far more speed. The impact is pretty forceful, so be prepared.
This gave me one heck of an adrenaline rush. Just nearby are the park’s oldest tube slides-
Thunder Run and Gauley. Both carve down the hillside and feel like the hybrid of a
traditional tube slide crossed with a river rapids ride. These attractions are turbulent in the best
way possible. You bounce over rapids getting little pops of airtime and slide high up walls.
Thunder Run can be experienced either alone or in pairs. Gauley is for single tubes only and it’s
the far better and wilder ride. The smaller tubes can and will spin throughout the ride.
Plus, this one features larger drops. There are some pretty steep drop-offs giving considerable
zip. Heck the ride ends with a 3 foot drop from the slide into the pool that is basically a
mini drop track. Then you have a crazy sequence where you navigate this sharp downwards helix
and head down this large drop into a tunnel. Then there’s Colorado River. This is the
park’s raft slide and it’s downright insane. It feels like out-of-control white water rafting.
There are rapids that send cascades of water into the raft. There are sudden dips that pop
you into the air. And the turns are violent. You slide high up the side of some walls.
On others, you comically pinball back-and-forth. There’s no better example of this than during the
tunnel sequence. This is a super narrow zigzag that keeps slamming the raft side-to-side.
No two rides will ever be the same on Colorado River. It feels completely out-of-control.
And it also happens to be one of the longest slides in the world. It’s nearly 2.5 minutes in
duration! This is the star attraction at Mountain Creek and better than most coasters out there!
Speaking of coasters, Mountain Creek actually has one called the Alpine Mountain Coaster.
This is one of those Wiegand mountain coasters. It’s included with admission. The ride doesn’t
open until the second half of the day, but it’s typically open an hour after the water park.
I planned to take advantage of this, but it was closed for thunderstorms
before I could experience it. From my friends who rode it,
they said it’s a decent mountain coaster. The layout is pretty standard, but you have the
cool visual going through the water park. The one thing we noticed was that there were a ton
of cars on the track with minimal spacing. I saw 2 cars on the lift hill just an arm’s length apart!
This led to cars bunching up on the descent since there always seemed to be someone going
slow. Now I believe this coaster used to be offered to non-water park guests,
but you currently can only experience it if you purchase admission to the water park.
Another attraction I unfortunately missed was Rogue River. This is a deceptively intense body
slide per my friends. It starts slow, but it has some violent transitions towards the end.
Hopefully I can try both these rides in a future visit.
Surf Hill is one of the craziest mat racers out there. One, it’s considerably taller. Per Google
Earth, it’s roughly 75 feet or 23 meters tall. Two, you are allowed to get a running and jumping
start that many parks have outlawed. Three, you seem to hydroplane the whole way down.
You skim over the surface and sort of twist side-to-side as you navigate the quintuple dips.
You won’t get airtime on this one, but the speed more than compensates.
It was possible to build up enough speed to completely overshoot the runoff.
If you make your way atop the hill, you’ll find two extreme speed slides in H2OH-No
and Zero-G. H2OH-No is a 10 story tall speed slide where you drop straight down.
The views atop the tower are stunning and the drop is thrilling. You build up considerable speed and
it’s thankfully smooth. You won’t feel yourself lift off the slide though. I suspect you would
have on the slides this replaced since they were clearly steeper as the supports are still there.
Zero-G is a fun trapdoor slide. The initial plunge is steep and gives a fun freefall.
Then you have two helixes. The first was a tad uncomfortable due to the slide not being as well
lubricated as others, but the second spiral built up a ton of speed. The helixes weren’t
too forceful on this one, but the overall experience was a bit longer than others.
Also on this hill are two tube slides in Vortex and Vertigo. Both are enclosed and finish with
large drops. While they aren’t quite steep enough to give airtime, they are very zippy because of
how much speed you have going into them. The other adult tube slide is Alpine
Rush. This tube slide features multi-sensory effects such as music, lighting, and screens,
although the latter were not working for me. The slide itself was pretty tame, especially compared
to the rest of the park’s offerings. There weren’t any notable dips or turns along the way.
There aren’t as many slides as some other water parks, but quality of
the top attractions definitely kept me busy all day. I just wanted to keep reriding things! And
more attractions should be on the way with the Tarzan Swing and Cannonball Falls being teased.
Plus I imagine the park wants to replace the High Anxiety funnel slide that recently burned down.
Along with the slides, there’s a massive wave pool. It’s one of the largest I’ve seen!
Kids have a few options, but as I mentioned earlier, this park really does cater more to
adults and thrill-seekers. There’s a dedicated tube slide just for them, a smaller lazy river,
and two water play areas. The better of the two appeared to be the fishing village which had a
themed little play structure and some slides. The park has some food stands,
but because of the park’s hours, I didn’t try anything while I was there.
I spent all my time enjoying the attractions. So do I recommend Mountain Creek Waterpark?
If you love thrilling water slides, absolutely! This is one of my favorite water parks without
a doubt. You won’t find a slide lineup like this anywhere else. Most attractions seemed
to have an edge to them and I really liked that. Colorado River is pure chaos and one
of the most unique experiences you can get on any amusement ride. Gauley is another tube slide
that feels out-of-control. Then you have several other extreme attractions like the Cliff Jump,
Bombs Away, and the speed slides. While the park’s hilly and forested terrain was annoying
to navigate, it resulted in a unique atmosphere. I do think this park could improve in the kiddie
and family department. What they have is fine. This park just specializes in extreme attractions,
which makes sense considering this was Action Park back in the day.
Now if you’re a coaster enthusiast who only wants to visit for the mountain coaster,
I think you’re doing it wrong. The top slides here are better than most coasters
and offer truly unique experiences. Even if you aren’t a big water park fan, I think you need to
check this one out. It’s just so special. So those are my thoughts on Mountain Creek
Waterpark, aka Action Park reborn. What are your thoughts on this one-of-a-kind water park?
Let me know down in the comments, especially if you visited back when it was still Action Park.
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