"Wait how cold is the water?" ...You have to keep in mind that in the winter time, this place is used to go skiing or snowboarding with a ton of snow. In the spring and summer time, all that snow melts and is used for the large lakes in the tarzan swing... So that water is a lot colder than it should be.
I had my SCUBA qualification exam in a limestone quarry…that was ground water at 8°C…there’s no better incentive to buy your own wetsuit, than that water, in a rented Hole filled suit! Went with the under-ice diving kit (2 layers 7mm each) and never looked back!
Its always fun seeing people learn about Action Park for the first time. Mari's "That doesn't look safe." is pretty much the spirit of Action Park in a nutshell lol.
So an extra note about action park, action park itself was the ones reporting injuries. They also had the freedom to describe “serious injury” at their own discretion. Since they also had a scam insurance company, there is a high chance there were even more injuries or deaths than were actually reported
@starfrost850 there are many undisclosed injuries because Action Park would also pressure guests or even give them some money just to keep everything in the quiet.
5:08 If I remember correctly most of the regulations we have involving water parks today were made specifically because of Action Park and only came into effect just before its closure.
Yeah it was funny how baffled Mari was about the lack of safety enforcement and accountability, not instantly realize the reason we have regulations on so much stuff today is because of places like Action Park that got to out of hand.
21:27 Believe it or not, you're not wrong. The park took a very slack attitude towards its customers' safety because their attitude was that people entering the park knew the risks and voluntarily went on the rides, so the park can't be held responsible if someone gets hurt. So, literally, "oh, you broke your leg? Guess you should have been more careful. You knew how dangerous this place was." They say safety regulations are written in blood, and they didn't exist yet at the time, so there was literally no reason to stop what they were doing.
I kind of disagree. While it has been many years since I visited I remember quite well all the lifeguards and workers making sure people are safe. Each pool was staffed, each cliff side, and both ends of the luge. I don't think it was the employees that were the issue, it was the dangerous rides. The one I remember most is the play area for kids. It was stone and wood bridges playground with waterfalls everywhere. On the side of the area were water cannons that you can hit people with as they are running on the bridges.
@YukoValis did you miss the part about the drunken underage employees doing things like defeating the governors on the go-karts so they would go faster?
@WeedCat42013 Did you miss the part where he said they did that when the employees were using it themselves? Some employees got caught using the carts on the highway after hours. There is no record of it happening more than once. This is unrelated to them doing anything with guests.
Fun fact: Johnny Knoxville crashed on a recreation of the alpine slide they made for the movie Action Point (the one they mentioned in the video). And while he was okay at first (despite taking a hard hit in the fall), his eye popped out when he blew his nose later that night. So yeah, that ride is very dangerous, even today.
WE'RE FINALLY GETTING DEFUNCTLAND REACTIONS FROM MARI!!! Seriously, Kevin Perjurer, the creator of Defunctland, is a goddamn artist of a documentarian. Bro literally released a 4-HOUR masterpiece on Living Characters in Disney parks, itself a follow up to a nearly 2-hour long history of animatronics. This on top of a few other 2-hour videos on Disney's Fastpass and Who Created the Disney Channel Theme.
Personally? I was a fan of his documentaries on the older amusement parks that helped shape theme parks going forward like the World's Faire, Coney Island, Electric Park. Oh and also the Wiggles Ride. That one was actually funny.. though now I can't get Big Red Car out of my head. (Edit: Oh and the Fast Pass one just hurts my brain with how he goes into the statistics of waiting in lines.)
6:34 a lot of the collisions were caused by the unsupervised and drunk staff tampering with the karts and then forgetting to fix them before handing them over to paying guests. They don't have seatbelts because those karts were never supposed to be going that fast.
Mari, I live up in the Northeast. Action Park is a cautionary tale of what not to do when you build a waterpark/amusement park. That facility has been opened and closed for numerous years and it holds the title of the most dangerous park in the US so far. As of 2010 it has opened under the name of Mountain Creek run by the son of the original owner. The article I pulled this from was an old History Channel article. It looks like the video was made after that, but Mountain Creek in Vernon, NJ is currently operational today and I personally know one of the employees. He use to work at the resort where I work a few hours drive from Vernon.
“Is this a Disney theme park?” No, Disney has actual engineers, most of the attractions at Action Park where literally drew on a napkin and built by guys that they picked up in front of Home Depot. Bright side, kinda invented the water park, some good came out of all the bodies.
Ah, Action Park. The place where our Boy Scout troop went EVERY summer. I have a lot of fond memories of that place, probably because it was much more free form (aka unregulated) than other parks. No one I knew ever got injured there, but there were several close calls.
14:42 It sounds appalling to us now, but you have to remember that this was a theme park from the 1980s. I'm no historian, but I'm guessing alcohol and smoking laws were a little more slack back then.
Regarding the cannonball loop. After rider began coming out of it with scratches deep enough to bleed, they opened the loop to see what was wrong. They had added foam padding into the loop to reduce injuries. And stuck in the padding were dislodged and broken teeth.
I've seen this video many times at this point, and thanks to Defunctland's good sense of documentary making, this moment still makes my stomach drop: "It is no wonder what happened next..." >Part 5: DEATH
Y'know, Its kinda crazy to me that the Battle action tanks seem to be the one of the more safe attractions at this park, also kinda insane that action park kept going for so long despite, well, everything.
Most of the attractions on the motorway were actually pretty standard, mass produced, theme park and carnival attractions, that I've operated at other parks back in my carnie days. The main difference here is that any other theme park would have a real liability insurance company reviewing their company policies, and thus any employee that even whispered about *disabling the governor on a go-kart engine* or *taking it on a public road* would need a new job. 18:50 5-10 ER trips a day is insane. 5-10 ER trips a season is a more normal number for a theme park to produce, even in 1980s New Jersey.
I worked four summers at Canada's Wonderland, back when it was a Paramount Park (so owned by VIACOM). They were paranoid about safety, and the park had an excellent record. The only injuries I knew of were when a taller guy got an earring ripped out on Top Gun, and when someone came in the front gate and shot someone (after which metal detectors were installed, including at the staff entrance, and guards hired). But that doesn't mean there was never the possibility of injury. I worked at the go-karts, the average speed of which was 29kph. Some were slightly faster, and some slower. The mechanics could tune the speed up or down, and we always knew which ones were faster or slower. The operator could hit a button to slow the speed on the track to half or less than walking pace when someone crashed and needed help because the carts didn't have a reverse gear. The spot under the overpass on the track was always more slippery than the rest, but the most likely injuries were from people spinning out and then going the wrong way on the track. A head-on collision at full speed, even with helmets on, would cause significant injuries. On top of the operator, we had three attendants on the track (and 1-3 in the pit helping guests in and out of the carts). The first year I was there we only had whistles to communicate by, but following that we got headsets so we could talk fully with each other, which made it much easier to communicate which numbered cart to kick off for excessive bumping. Over the time I was working there, we basically had only one major incident, and that was when a woman who had been injured elsewhere stopped on the track and got out of her kart. She was walking around the track, disoriented, so we called for management and first aid, and I kept the track on its slowest speed. We really couldn't do anything else until she left with first aid. Seems she'd gotten a concussion on another ride, and it caught up with her on ours, but she was taken care of. The other incident was that a fight nearly broke out when we had to split up a large group who wanted to all ride together, but we were running half a pit at the time, without enough staff to run full-pit. The guy at the front of the line was the one arguing, but since it was the end of my shift, I walked off and explained the situation to my coworkers coming in and let them handle it. Having the guy he wanted to fight with just walk away took all the wind out of the guy's sails, and someone fresh was able to explain again why we couldn't ride everyone at once. Helping out at other rides, especially roller coasters with a set track, there was a lot less opportunity for incidents as long as all riders met height restrictions and the restraints were on properly. The first year Italian Job was installed, they had stones on the path to the ride with a low heat retention, so people often got dehydrated while waiting to ride. First aid deployed from near the go-karts, so we watched the first aid golf cart go out into the park many times before that issue was resolved. Italian Job also originally had three trains, but the third was removed because dispatching all three came too close. There must've been some incidents, though, because there's a large sign at the top of the first hill at Wildebeast that says 'DO NOT STAND'. Fortunately the worst thing that most often happened was that guests would take something on the rides in their pockets, and it would fall out during the ride. If it was important, we would have to go into the area to retrieve it, but if not it was considered lost. I would find loose change, credit cards, even a purse left behind in the go-karts. Guests came back for the important stuff. If we had enough loose change collected, we could get Tim Bits or something for the whole crew. There was also the time power failed for the entire eastern seaboard. I wasn't there, but apparently at the go-karts, my colleagues pulled everyone over, turned on the break overrides, and escorted them from the track right away. Drop Zone, a smaller drop tower, wouldn't drop once the power was off. The worst was the swinging ship type of ride, which became a pendulum without power to drive the wheel that made it go faster or slower. The guests had to wait for the ship to get slow enough to stop before they could get off.
@Isaac-m1q2g I've never really asked since it happened while I was an infant (it was on Christmas day of '90 & '91). My assumption is they were related to complications associated with hydrocephalus & meningitis
“Action park seems like a pretty safe place to me.” “I don’t know why there were some many lawsuits at action park?” “It definitely was one of the largest and safest places to be at.”
I grew up in upstate new york in the late 80s, about 400-500 miles from action park. as a family we made the trip there 2 times, once in the early 80s, probably around 82 or 83... i don't remember exactly when, but i do remember the car trip. and once in the late 80s. Everyone knew about the deaths and danger, that just made it more exciting. and yes. that's what we thought about it back then. I look back on it now and i realize how nuts it was, but at the time breaking an arm at action park just meant you were a badass, and not going meant you were a pussy. genx grew up tough. I'll tell you.
There was one particular incident involving a water slide ride somewhere else I heard of before that involved high speed ups and down slopes, and if the weight of the 3 person tubes was unbalanced or not weighed down enough, the people inside would become airborne at high speeds, with only a shoddy net overhead "preventing" people from going airborne. That did not help to save a poor 10 year old boy from getting ejected from the three person tube along with the 2 other passengers behind him, the boy not only died, but was BEHEADED as a result with the two other passengers being put into critical conditions and put into intensive care. The ride was quickly shut down and dismantled afterwards.
As to why Action Park would run a brewery within their park: At the time, the most successful theme parks on the East Coast not run by Disney were run by Anheuser-Busch, which ran Busch Gardens parks in Tampa and Williamsburg, VA that still operate to this day, and a big part of their profit model as theme parks was specifically the sale of Anheuser-Busch products. In fact, alcohol remains a staple of their business model today.
i believe with little safety and regulation Action Park could have done well, not like Disney or theme park safe but more like not allowing too many people down the rapid slide. more like a Resort or normal Whitewater Rafting it felt like it was between a theme park, amusement park and what you can do outside of parks (Outdoor Recreation & Leisure) or (Adventure Sports) Ziplines, Bungee Jumping, river rafting those type of attractions there is super safe, safe, moderate then Dangerous
7:03 It’s worth mentioning that our ATVs are 500cc utility models and even they can reach 44mph running flat out. (I have personally tested this on our driveway which has a nearly 1/4 mile straightaway with another long straight I used to get up to 25 before the final push on the best part of the driveway.) So those very lightweight go-karts being capable of 50mph with the governor bypassed isn’t unreasonable. I did not bypass any speed governor when I was checking the top speed of our ATVs.
6:27 not really. A place that I used to go to in my hometown had carts like that that maxed at 20. The track was fairly small, but the guardrails were padded. Plus, the way the course was designed, you didn't even need to hit the brakes; even for the tighter corners.
Ah, you know it's gonna be good when the streamer is OSHA certified and is already crashing out at the safe bits of Action Park. I do believe that if you opened this park today, OSHA would hire a hitman to wear a safety harness while waiting in a nearby tree to assassinate you before you engage in any other shenanigans.
water from the snow can be vary vary cold even to the point even a exp swimmer can have a hard time swimming ive been to alot of places where the water was so cold that even at 100+ degree weather it will still give you a shock to where you could not breath after taking a dip in do to how cold it was not suprizing people would die
18:50 this is before the internet to unless you closely paid attention to the news & news paper you wouldn’t have been able to access that information as easily if it was even reported
Shit like this was all over america in the 80s and even into the early 90s in more rural areas, I remember, in fact I know places where a couple of attractions effectively identical to some of the ones in action park were still in operation into the 2000s.
Funny seeing someone who didn't know how dangerous Action Park was, now knowing what a horrible place it was. I was born after it shut down years back, but I know my mother almost drowned when she was a child in the violent wave pool. I might not have seen it but I can tell it was bad just from being told about it. R.I.H (Rest In Hell) Action Park.
I think there was a park kinda like that in the netherlands. I live in north western Germany and when i was a kid we went to a park where they had those round bumper boats and i rode one with my big brother. They also had petrol powered vehicles, i think big trucks and stuff. That was maybe 35 or so years ago.
"How cold is the water?" 55 Degrees. Because the idea was that "It's going to be super hot, so let's make it as cold as possible so that way guests can stay cool." Gene was a bit of a psycho that believed that regulation stifled innovation, hence why his park frequently broke the law, did things that no other water park would do _for good reason_, and who actually encouraged some of the dangerous and stupid things happening at his park
Well off topic geauga lake had a wave pool and I can remember being in the shallow end and when you have multiple people some on rafts and others just tumbling toward you there is always a chance to be ran into. But that being in the 1980's injuries were part of it I was born in 1976
We don't want to be safe. We want to have fun. 😂 Fun and safe do not always go hand in hand. There are reasons my parents have photos of me in diapers standing on my uncle's combine, somehow me and my brother climbed to the very top before we were even potty trained. It's why people jump out of perfectly good airplanes. 👍
13:10 “The first path took guests under a waterfall and a series of tunnels. _The second path took them straight to God.”_
"Wait how cold is the water?" ...You have to keep in mind that in the winter time, this place is used to go skiing or snowboarding with a ton of snow. In the spring and summer time, all that snow melts and is used for the large lakes in the tarzan swing... So that water is a lot colder than it should be.
It's also groundwater and not pool water, so it's always 55°F/10°C
I had my SCUBA qualification exam in a limestone quarry…that was ground water at 8°C…there’s no better incentive to buy your own wetsuit, than that water, in a rented Hole filled suit!
Went with the under-ice diving kit (2 layers 7mm each) and never looked back!
For anyone with heart medical conditions, be swing then fall into cold water immediatly is death😕
Also its not really about how cold the water is, but about the sudden shock from going into it.
It’s refreshing to watch a reaction that’s properly horrified and not “fuck yeah, why don’t we have parks like this anymore?”
I mean, Action Park succeeded for as long as it did for a reason, and those types of people are exactly why.
AKA, Mari lists how deep OSHA would have made the park owners dig the hole, had they stayed in business.
Its always fun seeing people learn about Action Park for the first time.
Mari's "That doesn't look safe." is pretty much the spirit of Action Park in a nutshell lol.
So an extra note about action park, action park itself was the ones reporting injuries. They also had the freedom to describe “serious injury” at their own discretion. Since they also had a scam insurance company, there is a high chance there were even more injuries or deaths than were actually reported
@starfrost850 there are many undisclosed injuries because Action Park would also pressure guests or even give them some money just to keep everything in the quiet.
@homiga1 it actually not shutdown but it changed its name.
When you got to the wave pool and insisted that couldn't possibly be dangerous, I burst out laughing. Oh you poor thing, you have no idea.
Especially you know people called that thing the "Grave Pool", and it was not a hyperbole.
10:12 Little does she know, that all the pools at this amusement park had fresh water in it, and the wave pool had claimed the most lives.
this park is just someones Roller Coaster Tycoon hellscape
5:08 If I remember correctly most of the regulations we have involving water parks today were made specifically because of Action Park and only came into effect just before its closure.
Yeah it was funny how baffled Mari was about the lack of safety enforcement and accountability, not instantly realize the reason we have regulations on so much stuff today is because of places like Action Park that got to out of hand.
@TheRougeSky all those regulations are written in blood
Time for Accident Park, Class Action Park, Traction Park, etc
@tommcglone2867 contraction park
💀
"Nothing in the world like Action Park"
Yeah, they sure got that right
21:27 Believe it or not, you're not wrong. The park took a very slack attitude towards its customers' safety because their attitude was that people entering the park knew the risks and voluntarily went on the rides, so the park can't be held responsible if someone gets hurt. So, literally, "oh, you broke your leg? Guess you should have been more careful. You knew how dangerous this place was." They say safety regulations are written in blood, and they didn't exist yet at the time, so there was literally no reason to stop what they were doing.
I kind of disagree. While it has been many years since I visited I remember quite well all the lifeguards and workers making sure people are safe. Each pool was staffed, each cliff side, and both ends of the luge. I don't think it was the employees that were the issue, it was the dangerous rides. The one I remember most is the play area for kids. It was stone and wood bridges playground with waterfalls everywhere. On the side of the area were water cannons that you can hit people with as they are running on the bridges.
@YukoValis did you miss the part about the drunken underage employees doing things like defeating the governors on the go-karts so they would go faster?
@WeedCat42013 Did you miss the part where he said they did that when the employees were using it themselves? Some employees got caught using the carts on the highway after hours. There is no record of it happening more than once. This is unrelated to them doing anything with guests.
@YukoValis Why don't you cope a little harder.
@WeedCat42013 what are you 10 years old or something? Your non-response means you don't have anything legitimate to respond with. Grow up.
Action Park took their name to the extreme
This is like celebrating a person surviving a Jigsaw trap
...so you're telling me THIS is why Grunkle Stan was chased out of New Jersey?....
@13:56 the owner of the park designed the slide on a napkin. Note: he was not a certified designer.
The funniest thing, the deadliest attraction wasn't even the ludicrous thrill rides held together with gum and duct tape. It was the wave pool.
How is it that the advertising that can cause seizures is the least dangerous sounding part about this place?
Fun fact: Johnny Knoxville crashed on a recreation of the alpine slide they made for the movie Action Point (the one they mentioned in the video). And while he was okay at first (despite taking a hard hit in the fall), his eye popped out when he blew his nose later that night. So yeah, that ride is very dangerous, even today.
As one host of Game Grumps once said "in New Jersey, going to Action Park was a right of passage."
WE'RE FINALLY GETTING DEFUNCTLAND REACTIONS FROM MARI!!!
Seriously, Kevin Perjurer, the creator of Defunctland, is a goddamn artist of a documentarian.
Bro literally released a 4-HOUR masterpiece on Living Characters in Disney parks, itself a follow up to a nearly 2-hour long history of animatronics.
This on top of a few other 2-hour videos on Disney's Fastpass and Who Created the Disney Channel Theme.
Personally? I was a fan of his documentaries on the older amusement parks that helped shape theme parks going forward like the World's Faire, Coney Island, Electric Park.
Oh and also the Wiggles Ride. That one was actually funny.. though now I can't get Big Red Car out of my head. (Edit: Oh and the Fast Pass one just hurts my brain with how he goes into the statistics of waiting in lines.)
@primrosevale1995 my favorite one was the huge documentary on Jim Henson
@SilverLink07
Setting my Muppet Bias aside, it really is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen.
@PersonOfRandomnesss *nods* agreed
Can we talk about the irony of a guy named "Kevin Perjurer" making documentaries
"Near these was the safer Kamikaze" is certainly a sentence.
Defunctland is one of the best documentary channels on RUclips.
I love the camera guy at the end being like "ok moving the camera away from the obviously uncomfortable woman."
There's a guy who grew up in Jersey that said breaking an arm at Action Park was a hallmark of growing up there when he was a teenager
there back with a NEW looping slide...yea
Class action park is such a good title
"How did they get away with that? How did they not get sued?"
It was the 80s lmao
12:30 "The safer Kamikaze" is a wild sentence.
Everything is relative.
@trli7117 that's not a sentence
@celator2757 not a full one no. So what?
6:34 a lot of the collisions were caused by the unsupervised and drunk staff tampering with the karts and then forgetting to fix them before handing them over to paying guests. They don't have seatbelts because those karts were never supposed to be going that fast.
Everyone please use me as a petition for Her to react to: Disney Channel Theme, a history mystery.
3:52 "...Date Night?"
"Eh, Must have been the wind."
Mari, I live up in the Northeast. Action Park is a cautionary tale of what not to do when you build a waterpark/amusement park. That facility has been opened and closed for numerous years and it holds the title of the most dangerous park in the US so far. As of 2010 it has opened under the name of Mountain Creek run by the son of the original owner. The article I pulled this from was an old History Channel article. It looks like the video was made after that, but Mountain Creek in Vernon, NJ is currently operational today and I personally know one of the employees. He use to work at the resort where I work a few hours drive from Vernon.
The water was so cold because to save costs, almost all the water rides were directly fed from mountain runoff
I was about to eat, I was scrolling through RUclips searching forna video! ❤
Anyone want a taco? ❤
Worth checking out the Johnny Knoxville film about this wild park called "Action Point"
You have no idea how crazy we were in the 80’s and 90’s. It was a wilder time for sure.
Mari: "You think I go outside?"
Chelzor the Destroyer: "I don't go outside! That's how you get got!"
“Is this a Disney theme park?” No, Disney has actual engineers, most of the attractions at Action Park where literally drew on a napkin and built by guys that they picked up in front of Home Depot. Bright side, kinda invented the water park, some good came out of all the bodies.
Ah, Action Park. The place where our Boy Scout troop went EVERY summer. I have a lot of fond memories of that place, probably because it was much more free form (aka unregulated) than other parks. No one I knew ever got injured there, but there were several close calls.
14:42 It sounds appalling to us now, but you have to remember that this was a theme park from the 1980s. I'm no historian, but I'm guessing alcohol and smoking laws were a little more slack back then.
HBO did a near Two Hour Documentary on Action Park called Class Action Park. They also interviewed some of the Customers an Old/New Park Workers.
Regarding the cannonball loop.
After rider began coming out of it with scratches deep enough to bleed, they opened the loop to see what was wrong.
They had added foam padding into the loop to reduce injuries.
And stuck in the padding were dislodged and broken teeth.
I've seen this video many times at this point,
and thanks to Defunctland's good sense of documentary making,
this moment still makes my stomach drop:
"It is no wonder what happened next..."
>Part 5: DEATH
19:55 Gene was the original owner. The family just bought back their park, and then the guy handed it down to his son when he passed.
1:36 HEY!!
Y'know, Its kinda crazy to me that the Battle action tanks seem to be the one of the more safe attractions at this park, also kinda insane that action park kept going for so long despite, well, everything.
3:09 alpain😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 lol
Most of the attractions on the motorway were actually pretty standard, mass produced, theme park and carnival attractions, that I've operated at other parks back in my carnie days. The main difference here is that any other theme park would have a real liability insurance company reviewing their company policies, and thus any employee that even whispered about *disabling the governor on a go-kart engine* or *taking it on a public road* would need a new job.
18:50 5-10 ER trips a day is insane. 5-10 ER trips a season is a more normal number for a theme park to produce, even in 1980s New Jersey.
I worked four summers at Canada's Wonderland, back when it was a Paramount Park (so owned by VIACOM). They were paranoid about safety, and the park had an excellent record. The only injuries I knew of were when a taller guy got an earring ripped out on Top Gun, and when someone came in the front gate and shot someone (after which metal detectors were installed, including at the staff entrance, and guards hired). But that doesn't mean there was never the possibility of injury.
I worked at the go-karts, the average speed of which was 29kph. Some were slightly faster, and some slower. The mechanics could tune the speed up or down, and we always knew which ones were faster or slower. The operator could hit a button to slow the speed on the track to half or less than walking pace when someone crashed and needed help because the carts didn't have a reverse gear. The spot under the overpass on the track was always more slippery than the rest, but the most likely injuries were from people spinning out and then going the wrong way on the track. A head-on collision at full speed, even with helmets on, would cause significant injuries. On top of the operator, we had three attendants on the track (and 1-3 in the pit helping guests in and out of the carts). The first year I was there we only had whistles to communicate by, but following that we got headsets so we could talk fully with each other, which made it much easier to communicate which numbered cart to kick off for excessive bumping.
Over the time I was working there, we basically had only one major incident, and that was when a woman who had been injured elsewhere stopped on the track and got out of her kart. She was walking around the track, disoriented, so we called for management and first aid, and I kept the track on its slowest speed. We really couldn't do anything else until she left with first aid. Seems she'd gotten a concussion on another ride, and it caught up with her on ours, but she was taken care of.
The other incident was that a fight nearly broke out when we had to split up a large group who wanted to all ride together, but we were running half a pit at the time, without enough staff to run full-pit. The guy at the front of the line was the one arguing, but since it was the end of my shift, I walked off and explained the situation to my coworkers coming in and let them handle it. Having the guy he wanted to fight with just walk away took all the wind out of the guy's sails, and someone fresh was able to explain again why we couldn't ride everyone at once.
Helping out at other rides, especially roller coasters with a set track, there was a lot less opportunity for incidents as long as all riders met height restrictions and the restraints were on properly. The first year Italian Job was installed, they had stones on the path to the ride with a low heat retention, so people often got dehydrated while waiting to ride. First aid deployed from near the go-karts, so we watched the first aid golf cart go out into the park many times before that issue was resolved. Italian Job also originally had three trains, but the third was removed because dispatching all three came too close.
There must've been some incidents, though, because there's a large sign at the top of the first hill at Wildebeast that says 'DO NOT STAND'. Fortunately the worst thing that most often happened was that guests would take something on the rides in their pockets, and it would fall out during the ride. If it was important, we would have to go into the area to retrieve it, but if not it was considered lost. I would find loose change, credit cards, even a purse left behind in the go-karts. Guests came back for the important stuff. If we had enough loose change collected, we could get Tim Bits or something for the whole crew.
There was also the time power failed for the entire eastern seaboard. I wasn't there, but apparently at the go-karts, my colleagues pulled everyone over, turned on the break overrides, and escorted them from the track right away. Drop Zone, a smaller drop tower, wouldn't drop once the power was off. The worst was the swinging ship type of ride, which became a pendulum without power to drive the wheel that made it go faster or slower. The guests had to wait for the ship to get slow enough to stop before they could get off.
23:18 Hell no! I've already had to be revived twice. That's more than enough, thanks!
what happened
@Isaac-m1q2g I've never really asked since it happened while I was an infant (it was on Christmas day of '90 & '91). My assumption is they were related to complications associated with hydrocephalus & meningitis
@IT_Otakuhope you are doing well.
@nuhvok01 Yeah. Thankfully haven't had to have revision surgery (aka a shunt replacement) in almost 30 years.
“Action park seems like a pretty safe place to me.” “I don’t know why there were some many lawsuits at action park?” “It definitely was one of the largest and safest places to be at.”
I grew up in upstate new york in the late 80s, about 400-500 miles from action park. as a family we made the trip there 2 times, once in the early 80s, probably around 82 or 83... i don't remember exactly when, but i do remember the car trip. and once in the late 80s. Everyone knew about the deaths and danger, that just made it more exciting. and yes. that's what we thought about it back then. I look back on it now and i realize how nuts it was, but at the time breaking an arm at action park just meant you were a badass, and not going meant you were a pussy.
genx grew up tough. I'll tell you.
There was one particular incident involving a water slide ride somewhere else I heard of before that involved high speed ups and down slopes, and if the weight of the 3 person tubes was unbalanced or not weighed down enough, the people inside would become airborne at high speeds, with only a shoddy net overhead "preventing" people from going airborne.
That did not help to save a poor 10 year old boy from getting ejected from the three person tube along with the 2 other passengers behind him, the boy not only died, but was BEHEADED as a result with the two other passengers being put into critical conditions and put into intensive care.
The ride was quickly shut down and dismantled afterwards.
Unless such a thing has happened twice, that was in Kansas City. I would drive by that slide all the time when I lived there.
10:05
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Mari thank you so much for the brilliant vid you've made my day even better thank you so much.😁❤😁
Those waterslights are Insane
As to why Action Park would run a brewery within their park:
At the time, the most successful theme parks on the East Coast not run by Disney were run by Anheuser-Busch, which ran Busch Gardens parks in Tampa and Williamsburg, VA that still operate to this day, and a big part of their profit model as theme parks was specifically the sale of Anheuser-Busch products. In fact, alcohol remains a staple of their business model today.
10:17 Actual skill issue, most of my classmates go to sleep in the water surface just to pretend being dead.
i believe with little safety and regulation Action Park could have done well, not like Disney or theme park safe but more like not allowing too many people down the rapid slide. more like a Resort or normal Whitewater Rafting
it felt like it was between a theme park, amusement park and what you can do outside of parks (Outdoor Recreation & Leisure) or (Adventure Sports) Ziplines, Bungee Jumping, river rafting those type of attractions
there is super safe, safe, moderate then Dangerous
Geronimo? When the sun is blazing and the summer gets hot, Water Country's a very cool spot!
7:03 It’s worth mentioning that our ATVs are 500cc utility models and even they can reach 44mph running flat out. (I have personally tested this on our driveway which has a nearly 1/4 mile straightaway with another long straight I used to get up to 25 before the final push on the best part of the driveway.) So those very lightweight go-karts being capable of 50mph with the governor bypassed isn’t unreasonable. I did not bypass any speed governor when I was checking the top speed of our ATVs.
bizarrely, everyone i ever met who went to Action Park said they had the time of their lives
6:27 not really. A place that I used to go to in my hometown had carts like that that maxed at 20. The track was fairly small, but the guardrails were padded. Plus, the way the course was designed, you didn't even need to hit the brakes; even for the tighter corners.
5:40 Nice to know Mari is Oshi-certified
Ah, you know it's gonna be good when the streamer is OSHA certified and is already crashing out at the safe bits of Action Park.
I do believe that if you opened this park today, OSHA would hire a hitman to wear a safety harness while waiting in a nearby tree to assassinate you before you engage in any other shenanigans.
hi! I'm Action Park survivor! from 1988-1992! went there with my sisters and cousins, every summer! we had fun! and we had bruises! 😅
Those 1980s commercials are wild though.
Class Action Park, the best part about the Cannonball slide was the people being gashed by teeth lodged in the tunnel
This reminds me the Fairly Oddparents episode in which Timmy jumps from space to a pool and then f*cking di- I mean loses his trunks in the process.
Happy St. Patrick's Day, Mari and co.
I hate to say this but wave pools can be unbelievably dangerous. People drown in them often enough.
I bet you anything this "man" watched a lot of "accident" videos and built this park around it
water from the snow can be vary vary cold even to the point even a exp swimmer can have a hard time swimming ive been to alot of places where the water was so cold that even at 100+ degree weather it will still give you a shock to where you could not breath after taking a dip in do to how cold it was not suprizing people would die
Mari: I went to the waterpark
Earlier Mari said: You think I went outside
......which one is the truth!? 😂
18:50 this is before the internet to unless you closely paid attention to the news & news paper you wouldn’t have been able to access that information as easily if it was even reported
Shit like this was all over america in the 80s and even into the early 90s in more rural areas, I remember, in fact I know places where a couple of attractions effectively identical to some of the ones in action park were still in operation into the 2000s.
Funny seeing someone who didn't know how dangerous Action Park was, now knowing what a horrible place it was. I was born after it shut down years back, but I know my mother almost drowned when she was a child in the violent wave pool. I might not have seen it but I can tell it was bad just from being told about it. R.I.H (Rest In Hell) Action Park.
3:01 NEVER NEVER NEVER leave safety up to a rider unless you
1: Require a release form
Or
2:Want to be sued. SMH
I think there was a park kinda like that in the netherlands. I live in north western Germany and when i was a kid we went to a park where they had those round bumper boats and i rode one with my big brother. They also had petrol powered vehicles, i think big trucks and stuff. That was maybe 35 or so years ago.
Hell yeah. More people reacting to Defunctland.
10:16
Pretty sure I almost drowned in a wave pool once
Pretty good reaction, Mari.
15:32 those numbers kept appearing, even on videos I've watched years ago 😭
I highly recommend reacting to more Defunctland stuff, it's great.
All waterparks back then. I nearly die in one of them.
Oh my goodness! I loved these videos when I first saw them
Ooh, you should watch our friend Josh's "I Made a Water Park with a 0% Survival Rate - Planet Coaster 2"
"How cold is the water?"
55 Degrees. Because the idea was that "It's going to be super hot, so let's make it as cold as possible so that way guests can stay cool."
Gene was a bit of a psycho that believed that regulation stifled innovation, hence why his park frequently broke the law, did things that no other water park would do _for good reason_, and who actually encouraged some of the dangerous and stupid things happening at his park
Ahhhh it's really nice to see your reactions to action park 😂
This was early Rollercoaster sim...but real😋🍹
9:20
The what 🤨
In hindsight it’s weird when you realize that action park wasn’t the park with the underwater water slide (yes really)
I knew you'd get a kick out of this.
Well off topic geauga lake had a wave pool and I can remember being in the shallow end and when you have multiple people some on rafts and others just tumbling toward you there is always a chance to be ran into. But that being in the 1980's injuries were part of it I was born in 1976
RUclipsr Phantom Strider mentioned Action Park in his video of dangerous attraction parks.
Action park where you in control of the action and where not responsible
We don't want to be safe. We want to have fun. 😂 Fun and safe do not always go hand in hand. There are reasons my parents have photos of me in diapers standing on my uncle's combine, somehow me and my brother climbed to the very top before we were even potty trained.
It's why people jump out of perfectly good airplanes. 👍
OSHA certified? Good to know so I can ask all my OSHA related questions. XD