On the 26th of May 1978 a new attraction
opened in the township of Vernon, New Jersey.
For the next 20 years this unassuming US
town would be the home to Action Park, a theme park and water park that would
soon become notorious for its terrible safety record.
Before the sale of the park to new owners in 1998,
six guests would have died while riding its
insanely unsafe attractions, and many hundreds more
would have sustained serious injuries.
Action Park was the brainchild of Eugene Mulvihill,
owner of Great American Recreation. The company already operated a ski area,
but Mulvihill wanted to expand the business so that they could generate
revenue during the summer as well. To do this
he added an alpine slide down one of the ski slopes,
as well as two water slides and a go-kart track.
Action Park was born... although during its first year of operation it
traded under the less exciting name of Vernon Valley Summer Park.
The adoption of the name Action Park and the addition of more rides
took place over the next two or three years.
The park hit its peak in the early- and mid-1980s.
At this time over a million people per year
were flocking in to ride around 75 different rides and waterslides.
At the time the park had not yet garnered a reputation as
unsafe, but injuries were frequent. The alpine slide, the first ride ever to
be installed, was one of the worst culprits when it
came to injuring guests. This 820 meter (or 2,700 foot) slide
consisted of a channel made from concrete, fiberglass, and asbestos
down which tiny wheeled carts would be dispatched.
The carts were operated by the riders, who were required to pull a lever
to apply the brakes when approaching sharp turns or
getting too close to other carts.
These brakes, however, didn't always work and weren't always applied correctly by
guests. Carts frequently jumped the track.
Riders, most of whom were only wearing bathing suits,
suffered severe abrasions all over their bodies from the surface of the slide,
and many were concussed or broke limbs. In 1984 and 1985 the Alpine Slide alone
was responsible for 14 fractures and 26 head injuries.
Another infamous ride was the Super Go-Karts.
Again, guests were in control of their own ride vehicles as they piloted
single-seater buggies around a concrete track.
The go-karts came with a speed limiter, but this could easily be circumvented by
wedging a tennis ball in the right spot - something many employees would happily
do for guests that requested it... or even for those who didn't.
With the limiter disabled the carts could travel at up to 80 kilometers per
hour (50 miles per hour). Crashes,
when they happened, frequently resulted in very serious injuries.
Worse yet, even riders who escaped injury were often made sick by the petrol fumes
from the poorly-maintained engines of the carts.
The park's water rides were also responsible for some grave injuries.
The Cannonball Loop, for example, resulted in so many
injuries that it was actually shut down after just one season.
The ride consisted of an enclosed water slide similar to those elsewhere in the
park, but with one crucial difference: there
was a vertical loop at the bottom. There's a reason
that loops are not commonly seen on water slides:
they are incredibly dangerous. If a rider didn't have sufficient speed
to complete the full loop they would usually stall out at the top
and then fall straight down, smashing into the inside
wall of the flume. Broken noses and back
injuries were the predictable result.
The main danger to patrons enjoying the Wave Pool,
on the other hand, wasn't blunt trauma but instead
drowning. This attraction, common at other water parks,
consisted of a large pool and a machine that generated
sizable waves. This type of attraction is often
mildly dangerous, but at Action Park it was deadly. Lifeguards there sometimes
had to rescue as many as 30 people in a single weekend.
This frightening statistic was down to the design of the pool.
The waves were extremely large and powerful and tended to wash patrons
towards the deep end of the pool. Many would be surprised when they
suddenly found themselves out of their depth.
Added to this was the fact that Action Park would cram as many as 1,000 people
into the pool. When the waves began getting rough there would often be such
a scramble to exit the pool that people would be injured clambering
over one another on the ladders to escape.
Those are just some of Action Park's poorly-designed attractions.
Others included the Tarzan Swing - a gigantic swing which patrons were
required to let go of at just the right time or risk smashing
into concrete on the far side of the splash pool.
That splash pool, by the way, was so cold that riders often couldn't swim out
and had to be rescued.
There were also diving cliffs with no warning or barriers to prevent swimmers
from passing by underneath, multiple slides with very low
barriers on either side and a deadly drop
should you skip those barriers, and a Super Speed Boats ride
which inebriated patrons would often turn into a
bumper boats experience, with predictably injurious results.
As an aside, it's no surprise that many of these rides were dangerous.
They were built, for the most part, by people with very little
engineering knowledge or experience, and safety tested mainly
by trial and error. Employees were offered cash
incentives to be the first to try out new rides,
and once a few employees had survived an experience
it was usually declared safe and opened to the public.
In this climate of almost negligible regulation
injuries were inevitable. Action Park justified its high injury
count with a simple philosophy: that the guest was in charge.
Many attractions required riders to follow instructions,
steer vehicles, keep themselves afloat, or make split-second decisions about
whether to jump, dive, or get out of the way. When guests were
injured in the course of riding an attraction
the park would inevitably claim that the guest was at fault
for failing to follow the rules, riding in the wrong position,
or overestimating their ability to swim in rough waters.
This laissez faire attitude ultimately had deadly consequences.
Over the course of 10 years three guests drowned in the Wave Pool,
earning it the macabre nickname of "The Grave Pool".
Another guest suffered a cardiac arrest and died
after plunging into the cold water beneath the Tarzan Swing,
and a 19-year-old slipped into a coma and died
after being thrown from the Alpine Slide and hitting his head on a rock.
Death number six occurred on a ride called the Kayak Experience
in 1982.
This ride consisted of an imitation white water course,
which guests would ride in single-seater kayaks.
These kayaks would often get stuck or tip over,
requiring guests to climb out and stand in the water to right them again.
A27-year-old man was doing just this when he stepped on a metal grating that,
due to exposed wiring, had become electrified.
He went into cardiac arrest and later died.
You might wonder why a park like this was allowed to go on existing.
In today's regulatory climate Action Park would,
thankfully, be shut down within a season. Back in the 1980s, however, regulations
were far more lax and information about
ride safety was not readily available to the public.
Although the park had a reputation as being a somewhat risky day trip,
most visitors probably never knew the true extent of the danger.
Many lawsuits were brought against the park, but few were successful.
Nonetheless, the mounting cost of defending itself from claims
was what ultimately began the park's decline.
This, combined with a recession in the early 1990s, left
Action Park severely short on funds. In an effort to save money during the
1995 season the park operated without insurance. This
desperate cost-cutting bid just wasn't sufficient.
In 1996 Great American Recreation, the owners of Action Park, were forced
into bankruptcy. The park closed as usual at the end of
the 1996 season, and did not reopen the next year.
That was the end of Action Park. After substantial investment a Canadian
resort developer did reopen the park, but under a different name and with all of
the dangerous attractions removed or altered to be made safe.
It's now known as Mountain Creek Water Park,
and has operated without major incident for many years.
The strangest thing about Action Park is that, despite irresponsible owners,
dangerous rides, multiple fatalities, and thousands of injuries
it is still remembered by many who visited it with great fondness.
Journalist Chris Gethard summed up the general feeling about Action Park
in an article for Weird NJ:
"Action Park was a true rite of passage for any New Jerseyan
"of my generation. When i get to talking about it with other Jerseyans
"we share stories as if we are veterans who served in combat together
"I suspect that many of us may have come closest to death
"on some of those rides up in Vernon Valley
"I consider it a true shame that future generations will never know the terror
"of proving their grit at New Jersey's most
"dangerous amusement park." Action Park has become a myth,
an urban legend. Yes, it was the cause of a great deal of pain and grief,
but as bizarre as it might seem many happy memories were also made
at Action Park.