from 1978 to 1996 action park was the
world's most dangerous amusement park
we did an episode on action park well
over a year ago and people
seemed to like it we had a lot of
testimonials and it seemed to resonate
with a lot of people
and one of the directors and producers
seth porge has reached out and says hey
i loved your episode i'm working on a
documentary
which is class action park which is out
now and hbo max
it's great i'm going to talk about that
too we did another episode of ghost town
kind of based on the new information we
got and or
you know privy to from the documentary
so i was talking to seth
and he sent me a trailer oven i couldn't
wait to see it and
now it's out and i wanted to do
something about the documentary so we've
done two episodes on ghost
town and now i'm doing a video and about
you're thinking
wow you're really milking this and i am
i am milking this but later in this
video
i have some stories from seth
from the documentary that didn't make
into the documentary that is exclusive
to this video or whoever else he told
but pretend for a second it's exclusive
to ghost town and it's not in the
documentary so i'm
adding value to something that normally
has zero value
i have zero value
and before we get going if you could
subscribe and hit that like button i
would really appreciate it
i don't ask for much action park was in
vernon new jersey i'm from new jersey so
this resonated with me because i saw
the commercials there's nothing in the
world like action park
kind of infectious the way homemade
commercials were back then
when i watched those commercials it made
me want to be there i was like this
looks like
a lot of fun i would like to be there i
don't see anything dangerous
but what was going on not really behind
the scenes definitely right in front of
the scenes and that was part of the
problem
is that it was a wildly dangerous
amusement park
my focus when it comes to action park is
what it was in my world
kind of its heyday so we're pretty much
talking the 1980s early 1980s to
late 1980s because by the early 90s i
was already focused on dropping out of
college so
uh that took up a lot of my time a lot
of the documentary
focuses on gene mulvihill he was like a
jordan belfort character
from the wolf of wall street shorting
penny stocks and all that and just a
real
i don't say get rich quick scheme but he
was definitely somebody that was
i guess what you'd say now is hustling
only
in that time in the 1980s vernon new
jersey
really could someone like this
get away with what he got away with i
don't think it was a
thing where gene mobile hill was like i
want people to get hurt
i want people to die it seemed like a
nuisance to him but i don't think he
wanted people to challenge him he didn't
want people to complain
because when he would get sued or any
kind of legal action was taken to him
he's like i'm not doing it i'm not
paying i'm not going and i think
probably to some that kind of maverick
renegade attitude towards business and
people
was like yeah stick it to the man but
the man
was the people going to the park and
paying to be there he was somebody that
if you were either
a 14 year old or the 14 year old and you
thought this guy was great he wanted
everyone to have
a good time a very limited amount of
rules
a very limited amount of safety the kids
were running the park essentially and
that's great that's all you want to hear
especially as a kid but what is the
price
to pay well you find out or you maybe
already know
you pay the price with your safety with
your health
or with your life and the lack of safety
starts with the rides themselves
it's rides that were created not
necessarily by people who had
engineering degrees
it was just like i know how to put pvc
pipe together
probably the most iconic is the
cannonball loop and you can see this
scientifically does not look safe the
lore is and it probably is pretty legit
they would send
like test dummies down and they
came out the other end decapitated and
then
g molehill would pay his employees
that were like i'm 15. this is a great
job
i love cigarettes you would pay them 100
to test these rides there would be rides
where people are getting
scratched and they're like what is
happening that people are coming out
scratched on the other side like what is
in here and it would be people who broke
their
teeth down the rides through the tube
and the teeth would get
stuck in whatever the material is the
alpine slide which is
a another notorious one you went down
and like there's like a brake thing
and sometimes the brake would work but
or if it did work it just launched you
off of it you'd go on these rides and
get into this water and in the water
would be fecal matter urine
suntan lotion open wounds that's
inadvertently is going into your mouth
and eyes also you have to keep in mind
that
a lot of people just didn't know how to
swim they didn't have pools
they didn't take swimming lessons like
how would you know how to swim or how
would you know how to deal with the
various
pretty intense water-related rides
sometimes the water wouldn't be the
right kind of water
to swim in so your body would go into
shock or you would jump off a cliff dive
and when you hit that water it is a huge
shock
and you don't know what to do and then
you start to panic and if you do know
how to swim you're in such a panic you
almost drown
even something like the tidewave pool
which is more affectionately known as
the grave pool you can have up to a
thousand people in there and
it would be so exhausting because if you
didn't spend a lot of time in the ocean
you weren't acclimated to what was going
on they'd have to paint the bottom
of the where the water is white so they
could see if there were any bodies down
there because if it was
too dark that they wouldn't be able to
see if there was just bodies laying down
there
that's how dangerous it was also jean
milva hill was at odds with the city of
vernon which is a pretty
sleepy chill town during the summer when
you
have there's people pouring in whether
locally or
from the city there's essentially hell
being raised and the people of vernon
weren't crazy about it
however g-mobile hill and the
people in charge of the city everyone
was in cahoots with each other the
happiness of
the inhabitants of vernon compared to
how much money is being brought in and i
don't know how much of it is going
back into vernon but essentially the
money came first
it was basically like a lawless land
what is safety back then
in general especially for kids compared
to now this amusement park
really represented all of those things
and
gene mullihill was there he wasn't like
in the control room with a bunch of
television sets like seeing everything
was going on he was there
i think he knew that what made this
place
so exciting was this
you know you're just rolling the dice
with your safety
or your health or your life at a pretty
low cost because great adventure is
expensive
going to orlando is expensive going to
disneyland is expensive what's really
great about this documentary is that
it discusses the kind of casualties of
what happened and it's it
it's really sad i wasn't prepared for
that part i think was good it was really
important you know because it's easy
to sensationalize everything and it is a
sensational
place it's a sensational topic that's
why you're watching the documentary and
as promised i have some anecdotes from
seth porges that i will read to you
right now in the movie we briefly show a
former security guard mentioned that the
park owner kept a mach 10 machine gun in
his desk
the full story was the guard actually
broke into gene's office to look for it
with the intention of firing some cans
or whatever for fun
but when he got there the gun was gone
just a few weeks ago i found out why the
gun was gone
i spoke to a different employee who had
the exact same idea and just a few weeks
prior had actually broken into gene's
office
and found the machine gun and taken it
and played around with it
seems gene realized after that his desk
probably wasn't the best place to keep a
machine gun
and here's a little something about the
infamous alpine slide
the alpine slide was extremely dangerous
when it rained how'd they try to get it
to dry off faster
they sent a bunch of employees down on
alpine slide carts with towels
dragging behind them to sup up the water
the issue was
you absolutely could not break while
doing this or you would fly off so it
became a test of
something for employees to fly down the
wet track with the towel and resist the
innate human urge
to pull the break many young teenage
employees
couldn't handle this and would fly off
in one instance two employees
were drying the slide in quick
succession one flew off and the other
was right behind him and ran right over
him
and this was the worst idea even in
context how dangerous the park was won't
go into too much detail on it but the
park
at one point had paintballing as an
attraction and thought it would be a
good idea to host uh
queens versus brooklyn or maybe bronx i
think it was brooklyn
paintball match it quickly turned into a
massive no-holds-barred fight
as the two sides began pistol-whipping
each other and brawling i went
paintballing once
and it hurts when paintballs hit you and
then you have
two boroughs of new york city hit
against each other under the very very
very loose rules of action park with all
of that said
there's still so much more check out
class action park
i'll put a link to it below i want to
thank
seth porges for reaching out when i did
the first
episode on ghost town on action park and
i'm so exciting the documentary
came out and people are talking about it
you can hear those episodes just click
the link in the description below
i have a book about abandoned and
historic los angeles you can find that
in the description as well
if you have any action park stories or
if you've heard any
or you have any testimonials let me know
in the comment section below
and maybe i'll put it in the 11th
episode of action park action park is
really
dangerous but you know what's really
safe subscribing hitting that like
button
thank you so much for watching and until
next time