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- late comm /r ll the global amusement
park industry is big business and in the
United States alone amusement park
revenues will likely top out over twenty
two billion dollars for the year 2019
every year around the world more than
270 million people will visit an
amusement park but visiting an amusement
park always carries a tiny amount of
Grist last year out of those 270 million
people who visited a park about 7,000 of
them experienced some kind of injury
that required an emergency room visit or
a really tiny 0.0025 nine percent of
everybody who went the safety standard
of modern amusement parks is very high
between 1990 and 2004 only three to four
people died on average per year across
every part in America combined however
one amusement park in particular stands
out from every other part in American
history and its name was action Park
located here in Vernon New Jersey the
park experienced an insanely high six
separate fatalities experienced by
people riding their rides over its
existence besides those six deaths
though an untold number of people
experienced traumatic injuries a local
emergency room reported that they would
receive anywhere between five and ten
people who experienced injuries at the
park every day over the weekends and had
got so bad that the park pays to have
some ambulances on call at the park
ready to take people there on a moment's
notice
so what was it that made the park so
dangerous and possibly life-threatening
to visit a lot of things but let's start
off with some of the more ridiculous
rides that you could experience the
first ride ever opened at the park was
the Alpine Slide a ridiculous winding
chute made of the world's three safest
materials to fall on while at fast
speeds concrete fiberglass and asbestos
you would ride down this thing in a sled
with no harness tying you down and only
a lever to control the two difference
snails slow or suicide speed nobody wore
helmets and a lot of people would ride
in their bathing suits a perfect recipe
for a great time between just 1984 and
1985 this bride alone experienced 26
separate cases of head injuries and 14
cases of broken bones the first fatality
in the park happened on this ride as
well
when an employee riding down a sled flew
off the track at a sharp turn and hit
his head on a rock which killed him
apparently this would happen a lot so
the park just placed hay bales around
these sharp turns to try and push in
people's falls in the future but if you
were looking to get hurt
action park offered up a much more
varied experience to select from than
just this perhaps the most insane ride
that the park ever created was this
slide with a friggin loop inside of it
it looks pretty cool but physics doesn't
always agree with what looks cool here
is an animation of how this ride would
work you go in at the top feet first
slide all the way down like normal until
you reach the base of the loop you'd
then go up leg first at an awkward angle
and get flipped upside down where
gravity would do one of a few things
you'd either hit and grind your face
across the slides bottom which would
give you at best a bloody nose then when
you fall back down the other side you
might smash your back against the slide
wall and cause you some gnarly back pain
and then you'd slide out at the end a
bruised and bloodied idiot for writing
something this ridiculous looking in the
first place
the other thing that might happen to you
is getting stuck at the top of the loop
if the water pressure wasn't strong
enough which would it be great for those
of you who might feel a little
claustrophobic this apparently happened
to so many people that the park
installed a hatch at the top of the loop
to rescue people who experienced it
evidently the slide was only open for a
month in 1985 before an official
advisory board ruled the ride to be
unsafe and forced the park to close it
down which is a shame because who
doesn't want to experience taking their
enemies to a park claiming that it's all
just for fun when you really just plan
on sending them down a death slide that
you didn't tell them about beforehand
surprisingly nobody ever died on the
loop but there were plenty of other
rides that I guess didn't seem as deadly
at first the deadliest of all of them
was the wave pool which eventually got
the nickname of the grave pool it was
pretty deep and blasted high waves
across it for 20 minutes at a time up to
a thousand people at a time were allowed
inside of the pool a good percentage of
whom came from urban New York City and
didn't really know how to swim very well
over the parks existence three people
drowned inside of the pool despite there
being twelve lifeguards on duty at all
times for reference a typical lifeguard
will save around one or two people over
an entire regular season at a lake or a
pool at the grave pool though the
lifeguards were rescuing up to 30 people
over just a weekend sometimes it was
insane but the madness didn't end there
oh no we're still just getting started
another water ride at the part that
claimed the life was the kayak
experience an imitation whitewater
course that submerged electric fans
below to agitate the water above in
experienced kayakers who were many would
frequently tip their canoes over and
once such guy that this happened to
stepped on a metal grate beneath the
water that was connected to an exposed
live wire which electrocuted and killed
him another incident happened at the so
called Tarzan swing where guests would
swing out over a rope and jump into a
pool below the problem was the water in
the pool was generally kept glacier cold
and would often shock people who landed
an older man who fell in was so shocked
by the cold that had induced a heart
attack and killed him it didn't help
that most of the employees who worked at
the park and were responsible for
ensuring bright safety where teenagers
are worse under age as young as 15 or 14
in some cases these children were
operating the rides in several instances
and access to alcohol for minors was
very rarely enforced leading to
situations where both underage employees
and guests were simultaneously
intoxicated most of the rides were
poorly designed by people who didn't
exactly have a very great grasp on
physics or engineering like the bumper
boats ride where the boats frequently
gasoline onto their occupants and where
the cockpits were too small for tall
people to fit inside of so they would be
forced to rest their legs outside on the
sides of the boats which was a less than
ideal situation when a rival boat would
bump into them and smash their leg often
causing fractures or broken bones the
part frequently violated New Jersey
state law by failing to report accidents
and they even operated an entire year
without insurance their insurance
premiums became so high because of the
huge number of incidents that the park
decided that it would be more economical
to just operate without it and settle
their accidents that happened in courts
but the lawsuits and accidents that gave
the park it's memorable nicknames like
traction park and class-action Park were
beginning to mount an expense between
1983 and 1985 there were around 200
lawsuits filed against the park more
shocking than that though is the number
of fines that the part received during
this same period between the parks
entire existence up until 1986 the park
had been fined by the state government
of New Jersey exactly once for $300 for
operating a ride without a permit the
last New Jersey state regulations at the
time certainly contributed to a lot of
the danger at the park but the lawsuits
continue to the park anyway
more and more rides were forced to be
dismantled and closed in the 1990s as
more and more of the lawsuits were
settled to the point where eventually in
1996 action park filed for bankruptcy
and finally closed its doors so if you
ever go to a park in the future and you
see a water slide like this
maybe take some Advil or just don't get
on it in the first place
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watching stay safe and I'll see you next
week