This looks like the kind of park you used to start building in Rollercoaster Tycoon but got bored with after a while and then didn't care about anything that would be placed in it at all.
I had that game! It was awesome. I usually took it semi seriously in that I tried not to actively kill the guests. My younger brother on the other hand would intentionally go for the hidden achievement "Most Dangerous Park in The Country." Some classic memories of his included: - Permanently trapping peeps underground - Intentionally designing coasters full of peeps to land on footpaths - Making said coasters go extremely slow to drop one car off the track at a time - Creating a "Jail" for peeps: Dropping them off into a closed footpath section, with free drinks but $40 bathrooms and full of security guards.
On one hand, test dummy heads aren't attached as firmly as human heads. On the other hand, enough force to knock off a test dummy head isn't gonna be pleasant for a human neck. Also, it's a pretty bad omen, people never pay attention to omens these days.
You cant take risks like that. You have to be as cautious as humanly possible. Even is the test dummies come out damaged, you cant just assume that the same wont happen with people. You need to ensure that the dummies come out in pristine condition to ensure that human riders are kept as safe as possible.
ER Physician: "Your friend's neck is fractured. What exactly was he doing?" Patient's friend: "He was on the Snapple Snap-Up Whipper Snapper at Action Park."
The first casualty, the young man who was killed on the Alpine Slide in 1980, wasn't an employee of Action Park. This was a lie told to dodge officially reporting his death which makes it even more horrific. People should check out Class Action Park for the full story.
@@your_local_questerian He was a 19 year old boy named Georgie who had no affiliations with Action Park. He had worked at the park’s sister ski resort as a lift operator the year before, and just for one season. The park also lied claiming that not only was he an employee, but they tried saying he was there after hours, which was also false. He was a paying Park guest like anyone else.
The cannonball loop actually had to have padding put in so people stopped hitting the top and getting so hurt. After that, people started coming out with cuts and gashes. They looked inside, and it turns out that teeth from previous riders had gotten lodged in the padding and was cutting people on their way down.
I'm from NYC. As I child, I used to see commercials for Action Park. I asked my parents if we could go there numerous times and they always said no. Now I know why
Same here. My dad would just say that he would when I was a little bigger. And once I was a little older and bigger it was closed down. Probably for the best.
I worked here as a teenager in the 80's and oh man, the stuff that went on there. I was one of three working the alpine slide and that track was covered in blood stains the whole way down. Countless times a day, the sleds would come off the track or customers would slip off and get some of the most horrid skids and scrapes. All of us were smoking up, drinking, screwing around in the bushes etc. It was a fun summer, but none of us understood the gravity of how messed up the entire thing was.
"Blood stains" Mind if I ask... like, how many? Was this every day or just every noe and then? Did riders notice it? How big were they? That sounds downright medieval
As an Action Park survivor, I can tell you none of this was exaggerated. Went home pretty mangled a few times,there were just so many ways to get injured there,and there wasn't much in the way of first aid there,hence all the ambulances!
Jonathan Samet try to imagine how it comes across to everyone else when you bash a teenager on the Internet for their age. the world will be a much better place when people like you learn how to be mature and respectful towards others. hope your night gets better man
Can we all stop for just a second and really think about the fact that Action Park bought the city more ambulances. That sounds like the punch line to a joke.
The 19 year old first death at the park, they said he was an employee because they did not report his death. He had been an employee for a partial season at the great gorge ski resort, but was never an employee of action park. They also reported to the press that he was riding it at night, and that it was raining. Neither were true.
@@dismyjamm7390 No they didn't, some test dummies they used when making the slide came out headless. Odds are, though, that they were just store-bought mannequins they got on the cheap, which are obviously not designed for water slides.
The blueprint for that thing was allegedly a scribble on cocktail napkin made by the former Wall Street Executive with no former park experience who created the place, so I'd say nobody thought that far ahead. The headless test dummies were a formality.
@@TheIcpfan23 i hate to break it to you but most theme parks have actual oversight and safety measures. sure most theme parks have a couple of accidents in their history, mostly due to people blatantly disregarding the rules, but usually they take safety very seriously because an injury is a PR disaster. action park seemingly just made poor safety practices their entire brand :^)
@@TheIcpfan23 there's a reason why a serious accident is noticed at six flags or Disney Land... It's rare. And there's an even bigger reason why action park's accidents were mostly ignored... They were common
Went there in the late 80's. The one thing I remember was the Tarzan rope. The water in the pool was fed by one of the mountains in and around that area. As soon as you hit the water the air was sucked right out of you, because of the frigid temperature. Causing you to panic instantly.
@@kattastic9999 There's not really a fix for it since the water is being fed naturally, but that just means you shit the attraction down, not throw you damn hands up.
as a lifeguard myself, i can’t imagine having to watch let alone SAVE that many people a day. how horrifying that just have been, having to watch SO closely because it was basically assured that someone was gonna get hurt.
The guy's son (who was one of the main life guards for a while) wrote a book on his experiences and yeah it was horrifying. They had to save tons of people a day despite being teenagers with no proper training.
Yeah, the "dangerous" pools in my area had *maybe* one save a week, and even that's probably being too dramatic. Saves aren't supposed to be routine, 99% of the job is making sure nobody gets hurt.
My mom actually almost drowned in the old action park wavepool. She was luckily saved by a lifeguard, but *man* thinking that this theme park almost made me not exist, it’s chilling.
I almost drowned in the giant wave pool at Mt. Olympus before I was even 10. Dragged from the deepest part aaaallllll the way to the shoreline, underwater. No one noticed, or if they did, didn't care.
@@NovaSaber Implying that the death rate is astronomically high is actually wrong factually. Not to make light of the deaths that DID occur, of course.
@@tiarakinnebrew1054 Preventing what you can is a lot more fruitful than trying to prevent everything. IDK how that would be possible - say you at least went as far as you can go with regards to enforcing rules and the like - which these people abslutely should have - you still have idiots who don't know how to swim coming up, people horsing around, so people will get hurt or injured.
I went there many times in the mid 80s. Always had a good time and never got hurt. However my friend almost drowned in that wave pool. I spotted him struggling and I swam to him. He was exhausted so he held on to me and I pulled him into shallow water. Thankfully I was a strong swimmer and paying attention to my friend, the lifeguards had no idea he was struggling. Thinking back 35 years ago, it's amazing how as 17-18 year olds we didn't see or care how dangerous this place actually was.
@@almac664 I'm not a fatalist so I found/ still find young people dying to be less "it was your time" and more of a tragedy, but I understand that my approach to enjoying life just does not cut it for many people. Some of these people weren't even doing particularly dangerous things, it was the park's construction and management that made it dangerous, most notably to me the fans in the kayak pond and the Tarzan swing.
@@almac664 dude what? Did you seriously just write a paragraph about how you miss when people use to get hurt and die 💀? The fact that we have progressed past that is a great thing
@@almac664 There's a difference between having fun knowing potential dangers and going to a park with activities you're not familiar with (and thus can't accurately gauge the danger level of), where you trust safety regulations to keep you safe. They say for a reason that safety regulations are written with blood. Also there's still plenty of opportunity for kids to have unrestrained (dangerous) adventures if they want, especially in the countryside. Just because people got smarter about shit doesn't mean that there isn't still ample room for kids to go off on their own and have fun, and do dumb and dangerous shit if they so please. God knows I've done plenty dumb and dangerous things when I was growing up and I grew up in the 2000's and 2010s. Things haven't changed _that_ much.
@@almac664 Unfortunately some people need an incentive to wear a seatbelt. If they are killed then what happens to their children, who pays for the benefits they receive? The public does.
This whole thing seems like a parody of a theme park you’d see in the Simpsons. I kept laughing harder and harder as you elaborated on the endless dangers. The cliff jumping attraction with ONE LIFEGUARD, I just-
@@frozenuruguayball6436There are certain types that absolutely aren’t. Elastic cable Slingshots are the most notorious. Coaster College has a video that describes the differences between safer and more dangerous models really well.
@@frozenuruguayball6436There are some models that really aren’t - specifically older models that use elastic bands. Coaster College has a very good video that explains the difference between the newer safer models and the ones that use elastic bands.
Holy crap. I'm no roller coaster engineer, but I am an engineer (electrical) and the mere picture of a loop on a water slide sent chills down my spine. Also, as an electrical engineer, WHY WAS THERE ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT UNDERWATER THAT WERE NOT PROTECTED BY GFCI????!!!!! Even if NJ had lax amusement park regulations, that's a clear violation of the NEC and that death alone should have given code officials enough to shut down the kayak ride.
I know Jack shit about electric engineering but even I know water and electricity don’t belong near each other without protection if at all (thanks Pokemon)
I don't wanna come off like I'm trying to start a debate or anything, but I'm legitimately wondering: were those regulations even a thing back when Action Park was operational? o:
@@Roonifer Good question. I officially "started" in the industry in 2000 with a summer job as an electrician helper. My dad may know done he's been working since the early '80's as an electrician. Even then, it will be based on what was enforced in Virginia and not New Jersey.
As a kid growing up in the 90s, I loved those kinds of wave pools, but my mom never liked me swimming in them. She would mention that people could die in them, but I never took her very seriously. 😢
Yeah, for most of us the older you get the more you start to realize that your parents were right about almost everything! Of course, by that time it's impossible to go back and change anything.
"The park sold alcohol in many of the convenience stands, often to minors." Ah yes, a water park filled with poorly designed, dangerous rides plus hundreds of drunk teenagers, what could possibly go wrong?
@Anne Yap "Kamikaze" means "Divine Wind" and refers to the typhoon that nailed a Mongol invasion force headed to Japan in the 12th Century. In World War II, it was adopted by the Allied Forces as a moniker for Japanese pilots who flew their planes into Allied warships in the hopes of heavily damaging or sinking them. The actual name for the suicide pilot unit was "Shinpuu", IIRC.
Anne Yap the logic behind it was “all our good pilots are dead/captured/wounded. Now we only have a bunch of relatively inexperienced pilots at our disposal. The Americans have hundreds of significantly better pilots who will annihilate most of our pilots. We should maximize the impact of each pilot who gets through. We could have them use bombs/torpedoes, but they could miss and aren’t guaranteed to sink/disable the ship it hits. But if we have the pilots fly their plane to impact the ship, they’re less likely to miss and with each hit more damage can be incurred on the American ships.” Did it work? They sunk one carrier, the USS St. Lo, damaged the carriers USS Franklin and USS Bunker Hill enough to knock them out of service, damaged a few more carriers, though they returned to service later. They also damaged these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_damaged_by_kamikaze_attack (this is Wikipedia, so treat with all due skepticism). However, we had about a hundred carriers of varying sizes and thousands of submarines, destroyers, escort destroyers, cruisers, auxiliary vessels etc. so these loses were somewhat negligible and not one thing on that list was a nuclear bomber.
it's not the safest by my knowledge. you skip across a 30 foot pool at the end and if you weigh more than 200 pounds you're likely to strike the other end of the pool
@@walterkennedy9474 Odd thing is, according to some studies, the Japanese pilots had gotten so bad by that point that they actually lost less of them in kamikaze runs than in regular attacks.
And there are people watching that and having the audacity to say crazy things like "she enjoyed it" and otherwise defend his behavior when it's one of the most unprofessional things I've ever seen.
@@The_Sharktocrab not just that, but it's also agonizingly obvious she DIDN'T enjoy it. The whole situation was incredibly awkward and no one was happy with the situation, and the fact that people say "she enjoyed it" makes me worry about these gross fuckers that can't read a room.
@@jeffreytoman5202 People seem to forget that the entire world was just wild. Just because we build a fence and a pool doesn't make the world no longer wild. Snakes are fucking everywhere.
People be saying that snakes are common in these places and that's cuz they kinda are, but I bet most parks at least try to reduce the snakes. Can't imagine Class Action Park did.
Mulvihill: So how's our crash dummy? Employee: Poor dude lost his head, sir. Mulvihill: Are the legs and arms still attached? Employee: Well yea, barely, sorta. Mulvihill: We're good to go!
If you read his son's book on Action Park, Mulvhill had a really cavalier attitude toward safety, which he seemed to genuinely believe equalled "less fun."
My dad survived Action Park! He's been multiple times and would recall how there were ambulances on standby at all times and he would witness so many injuries- he even got some himself but nothing serious. After he found out I'm interested in this he got me a tshirt with the logo on it, it's my favorite thing
"That was thirty years ago! Things have changed!" Yes, in the last 30 years human beings have become invulnerable to drowning, electrocution, and blunt force trauma.
Seriously. Based on stories my dad has told me I'm surprised he and his siblings survived to adulthood. They used to jump off bridges into the canal and all sorts of other crazy stuff.
You should read the excellent graphic memoir (it's non-fiction, so not a novel) "My Friend Dahmer," by Derf Backderf. It was recently made into a movie as well. Although it's about the author/artist's loose friendship with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in high school, it also shows the sinister side of the party-hearty 70s. Indeed, a lot of that era was not so much fun, and it extends to the decades before and after. Kevin Drum has written some fascinating articles about the decline in delinquency. It mirrors the Great Crime Decline in general. www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/05/teenagers-are-no-longer-scary-delinquents-30-years-ago/ www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/03/kids-today-are-way-less-scary-they-used-be/
He was such a creep! At least I think the on-site reporter wasn't hearing all of it (or at least wasn't sure what was going on) and the other caster tried to step in. But oh my god if he was that brazen while being filmed I can't imagine what he was like off camera.
@@jackb6663 I would actually kill if that was a thing. You will not be safer you will be in FAR more danger. The virus isn't even that dangerous you idiots! It kills old people who have never been sick! Rich billionaires die from it! And people with asthma....if you have asthma my condolences.
So, the son of Gene Mulvihill, Andy Mulvihill wrote a book on his experiences growing up around Action Park and it's a really interesting read. It's been a while since my last reread, but some notes: The Snapple ride was actually a brand deal, made when the company was just starting. The guy running the food supplies literally served spoiled chicken at one point to masses of customers, which wrecked havoc on the low amount of bathrooms at the time. Their lawyer was infamous for using manipulative tactics in court and stalling to the point of the legal fees simply becoming too much for the person who was injured. Action Park was a large employer of teens in the area, but had them do anything from digging ditches to wrangling drunk people on Lola carts despite many of them being as young as 14 or 15. Employees would commonly have parties at the end of the seasons, with those same teenagers getting heavily drunk and their sober friends making sure they didn't fall in the pool or something. It was wild. Generally the employees weren't treated very well. The guy who ran the Aerodium seized his workers/performer's passports for the season so they couldn't leave, young lifeguards being put through the wringer trying to prevent people from drowning in the powerful wave pool (which Gene refused to turn down the power of/limit entrance and exit spaces for despite the danger and threw away the manual). On a slightly funnier note, employees often took lunch breaks near the Tarzan Slide or similar rides that had reputations for women's tops coming off. They also wrote "CFS" (for "Can't Fucking Swim") on the wristband of anyone who had to be rescued yet went right back into the water. It's quite the interesting rabbithole, so I'd recommend checking your local library for a copy (or watch the documentary on HBO Max. Both have different perspectives and are interesting to put together. I'm more inclined to believe the documentary's side of certain things, personally.)
You know, I was just wondering about the food... simply because by halfway into the video the very idea of these people getting any portion of this right seemed odd.
"They also wrote "CFS" (for "Can't Fucking Swim") on the wristband of anyone who had to be rescued yet went right back into the water." One of the only practices we should keep from this place tbh lol. Some people... I s2g...
I can actually understand some of these mistakes given that Action Park was one of the first water parks in the US and there weren't as many safety concerns back then. What I can't even FATHOM is how ANYONE thought a water slide with a loop was a good idea!
I remember hearing somewhere that the real issue wasn't the idea of a vertical loop, but the fact it was circular rather than ovular, and that you couldn't gain enough speed.
It's not? Oh, I probably shouldn't have those designs based on my game's park layout to the folks working on Toy Story Land then. Well, that's gonna be an interesting opening day.
Hearing how that many people died on the premises and they continued to operate is insane. One person died at the theme park where I live and it was closed for about seven years. How did they get away with any of this?
@@deft_spex_jr9628 Well the two that come to mind are one's that do affect Great Adventure, both involving kinda ka. The first basically said that all coasters over a certain height had to have over-the-shoukder restraints rather than the lap restraints that were intended for the ride (like on Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point). The other law prevented Kingda Ka from cycling while Zumanjaro was cycling. This causes capacity issues for both attractions.
One interviewee in the HBO documentary about this summed it up perfectly IMO: "Nobody should be the SECOND person to die in the wave pool! You close the fucking wave pool!"
Um, no, because in general there are true accidents and if we went with that mentally there's a lot of things we wouldn't be allowed to have if one person had died. In regards to adults - there's only so much blame that can be placed on others if the adult knowingly enters an area that they know can't save themselves in (i.e. if they don't know how to swim) and disregards their own safety. However, that doesn't mean it's okay to allow your wave pool to keep being a giant death trap with young people who may or may not be paying attention as the only salvation for guests who have zero care about whether or not they could swim and may be intoxicated while allowing high waves and poor water level marking. There is a middle ground here.
@@WhiteWolf-lm7gj Problem is, IMO, the wording of the quoted sentence - which focuses purely on the deaths, and nothing else. A story in Andy Mulvihill's recent book talked about one of the bigger problems - that the park frequently ran ads in places full of people who had limited to no ability to learn how to swim, or had no access to places to swim (hence the story about people writing CFS, or Can't Fucking Swim, on armbands of people who were rescued and clearly couldn't swim).
My favorite part about the cannonball loop is that people started coming out with lacerations and it was found that they were being cut by teeth that were imbedded in the walls.
Man, this brings back memories. I worked there for a few years as a high school student. When your boss is 16-17 yo making the calls wild things happen.
@@sjsisjsjks Much of what occurred at Action Park has definitely made its way into the light. To include park customers ending up injured and rushed out rapidly to avoid any disruption. So all I can do is confirm that is all accurate. And employees too.
I like how this entire comment section is filled with far right leaning people simply bothered by the existence of people just trying to be reasonable lmao
Here in Jersey Action Park got called "Traction Park" and "Class Action Park" most people i know who are a little bit older than me if you mention action park there like "hey look at this scar I got on the alpine slide
My family is from New Jersey. My mom told us stories of going there. She didn’t do most of the rides, but she had a friend who went on the cannonball loop. He supposedly had a difficult time standing for a few minutes after it. He kept standing and then immediately falling.
I survived Action Park! Place was fun as shit in the 80s! That Tarzan swing pond was extremely cold tho. You literally couldn't breathe for a couple seconds after you hit the water.
U froze up & couldn't swim asap (*it was best served if you could swing as close to the ladder as possible **and GOD FORBID U SLIPPED or fell early!?!)...
I find it so difficult to accept action park as a real place and not the plot to some dorky comedy film along the lines of National Lampoon's Vacation. The slide loop? The extra ambulances? The cars accelerating at 50 miles an hour? It's all so perfect.
Their is a go cart place near my city that has 2 types of go carts slower ones that go like 10mph and anyone tall enough can drive them then their is ones that require a driver's license and go probably above 50.
somebody even said that action park had the basis of an amusement park parody you'd see on the simpsons. even the spoof name of "traction park" is grade a groening parody material.
The mention that it's a common ride probably is why; it looks like almost everything in Action Park was custom made, while the slingshot rides are probably off-the-shelf designs made by actual designers who know what they're doing.
When I was 13 I had a season pass to Action Mountain in Pine Hill. About 2 weeks in, my friend broke his collar bone when he got stuck in the cannon ball tube and someone slammed into the back of him. After that I wasn't allowed to go back. Probably a good call by my parents.
Seems like a lot of people have horror stories from the cannon ball ride. Is that the tubeslide that drops you what looks like 10 feet into a pool of water? They had a similar waterslide at Wet 'n' Wild in Virginia. It was called the Lemon Drop and you'd hit the water flat on your back which would knock the wind right out of you. Fuck that slide!
to someone whos never been to broadway or a themepark i can see why the old lady would think that plus they did have plays and shows and music going on
I remember I went on a hatch slide once at teneseee that the hatch opened from under you. I was terrified to go on it. It also had a loop in it. But the most terrifying part initially was the hatch dropping out under my feet. I’d watched too many bad stories about that hatch in water slides like if malfunctioning and hurting you. Thankfully it had no problem when I got enough courage to go down the slide. But freaked out at the loop cause I was too light to make it over the loop and for some reason though I was going to stuck in the ride for hours no way out. I yelled my head off trying to get the attention of a personel and eventually looked up calming down and scrambling out of a hole in the top of the slide they put there for those who were too light to go over the loop. A personel greeted me there and it was all good but blimey was I terrified.
@@shannonsmith924 If it's such a known problem that a hatch had to be made for light kids, why didn't anybody think to attach a weight on/under the seat
Growing up in northern NJ in the 90s, my family would go to Action Park regularly. It wasn't until watching this video that I remembered I, too, unbelievably almost drowned in that wave pool at the age of 7-8. I actually got emotional watching this because I had not remembered, and it was very traumatic at the time. This had to have been right before they closed around '96. I managed to pull myself out of an extremely strong current that was aggressively pulling me under, towards the deeper end of the pool on the left; But I remember thinking in the moment that I was drowning. This video triggered that memory for me. There will always be an overall eerie feel to Action Park; It was like that then & it is like that now when we look back at it nostalgically.
I dated the daughter of an insurance investigator for AP, just after the third death. He had a rather dark sense of humor about the situation there. But it was tons of fun! Always came home with a scrape or having bashed into someone.
So I found out recently that my sister's fiance (who is from Vernon, NJ) used to go to Action Park as a kid even worked there one summer. He said the one time he was working I believe the Tarzan swing and a guy looked up at him and said, in very broken English: "I jump, you save?"
I survived my own alpine slide injury circa 1987. It made subsequent natural childbirths feel like a walk in the park. I still have scars on my elbows and knees after the car flew out from under me.
The Cannonball-Loop slide sends me into hysterics every time because the amount of people that would have looked at it in any of its stages, which is more than two people at minimum, is astonishing. Someone drew up the idea, someone else looked at it, someone else made it, someone else installed it, and someone else looked at it again when it was done and thought, “This won’t lead to any serious issues”. Like HOLY SHIT looking at it for half a second made me laugh, _half a second_ . And no one had the guts to say or was heard when saying, “it just won’t work, because of physics and fucking REALITY” Like WOW *W O W* Yeah a fucking loop in a goddamn _water slide_ ??? what an idea!
Looping water slides do work though? Modern ones have a lot more thought put into them, but it wasn't exactly impossible. It's just that they require a bit more thought towards their mechanics than a normal one.
I’ve been to action park about 5 times. It was as dangerous as it looks. My friend flew off the alpine slide and slid down on a rocky Mountain side going about 20-25 mph. Got all cut up and bruised. Second friend stopped for him, and the third friend smashed his face on stopped friends back and broke his nose bad. You controlled your own speed and if you leaned into a turn you could/would get launched off the track. Another time I was struggling to get out of the wave pools deeper end, getting up the ladder was just as difficult because of the power of the waves. Friend above me got knocked off ladder and kneed me in the eye and almost KO’ed me. Most of the water attractions were in shaded areas and just cut onto the mountain. It was freezing cold. Place was insane....
Jesus that sounds horrifying. My dad took us to Mountain Creek in 2010 and we went on the river rapids and the wave pool, etc. I never actually knew about the history of the park just that it used to be called Action Park and that my dad used to go in the 90’s when he was a teenager. I actually went back two summers ago and they finally started implementing helmets on the rapids but my sister jumped off the cliff and when she got out of the water her first comment was about how freezing cold it was even in 100 degree weather in the middle of summer. I witnessed two people having to be saved from the wave pool in the span of 15 minutes. We also went on the slide that’s sort of like a toilet bowl but to the side so you are sliding back and forth on it after you get out of the tube. The guys in the group in front of us all fell of the tube because of how high it was going. Their tube litterally flipped. My cousins, my sister, and I were holding on for dear life so we didn’t fall but we got pretty close a couple of times. The lifeguards were kind of just brushing this all off.
Denise NO WAY!!! I fell off the tube slide thing and got cut by a rusty screw! i have a scar on my back and i was bleeding everywhere. the screw was just STICKING OUT of the slide but wasn’t big enough to cut through the tubes. lol place is a joke
In high school, my cheerleading squad had to do normal fundraisers in order to afford new things, attend camps, etc., as many do around the country. However, one summer we were asked to work at Wet N Wild in Arlington, TX. We assumed it would be dreaded concession work. Instead, they asked us to put on red one-piece swimsuits with the word "Lifeguard" on them. They gave us whistles and nametags and briefed us on the rides we'd be working on. We were 15, with absolutely NO lifeguard training, not even CPR training. We were told that if anyone fell off a raft on their rides, we should use our whistle to alert a real lifeguard (the real lifeguards rotated in and out, leaving us alone with guests for much of our shifts). These were multi-tiered rides, and our job was to grab the raft these people were on (one person to a raft), walk them to the edge of the tier and push them over the edge to the lower tier. The rafts backed up SUPER quickly, and the water flowed rapidly. At the time we thought it was AMAZING. We hated selling hot dogs at the Ballpark and other shitty concession work, so this was seen as a really fun bit of fundraising. It turned out to be incredibly difficult work, the sunburns were ridiculous, but the insanity lies in the obvious fact that we would have been useless in a real emergency. Luckily, no one had any emergencies during our tenure. Also, the nametags only had a few random names, so we were all either "Laura" or "Lauren." I was fortunate because my name actually is Laura.
I actually had something similar happen in June 2018. I was in Costa Rica with my Girl Scout group, and was the youngest (13). We were at a hot tub waterpark thing where there was a bar (where literally everyone but me was bc everyone else was of age). Someone came from the bar and fell from the stairs, which knocked him out. A few other people and I had to save him from drowning and after we found out the lifeguards in the area were 15-18 and had no prior training. It honestly disgusts me what people will do to cut costs
I personally thought it was hilarious and fitting, being at Action Park. If the same comments were made at some other random waterpark it would be much more creepy somehow. I hope that makes sense.
I went there in the late 80's. In fact my first visit was mere weeks after the last death in the Grave Pool. The tanks were never working when I went there, nor was the Cannonball Loop slide. But all the other stories are true, including the underage alcohol consumption. It was kind of like "Teenage Wasteland" - despite the ads, you'd very rarely see anyone under 15 or over 25 for the entire day. Somehow my friends and I concluded our visits with nothing worse than minor scrapes and bruises. But there was not a single trip on which at least one person didn't get hurt.
Even though it’s dangerous why does it sound so fun to me like I wish I was alive back then when it was poppin so I could of gone. I guess it’s just my teenage urges kicking in or something.
Its like the park in Pinocchio. Something ive noticed in amusement park, look at peoples faces when they are moving around the park, usually you'll see anxiety and fear.
@@ExplorerDS6789 same dude. Claustrophobia sucks. McDonald's playplaces i had to go in to get my brother? Hell no. Closed slides of any kind? I feel uncomfortable-, but I know it's safer (like, half closed water slides at the beginning. I knew they keep me safe) I'm also afraid of heights, open spaces, being under ground, boats, so basically i need to be in a medium room on the ground to be 100% comfortable. I'm also scared of the dark.... And ceiling fans. Anyways yeah, claustrophobia is horrifying... The feeling of being trapped... Not knowing if i could escape...
My parents apparently went here with their friends in college. My dad's friend nearly drowned in the wavepool but the lifeguards did nothing and some random dude saved him. My dad apparently had some gnarly injuries from the alpine slide. The 90s were truly a different time.
To make a long story short when I was 12 I almost drowned in a wave pool (not the action park one) and I had my parent right next to me the whole thing happened so fast she didn't even see me go under, I was also given swimming lessons for quite a few years when I was a kid so I was trained. If it can happen to me it can happen to anyone at any wave pool.
On my first ride on the Alpine Slide the kid ahead of me slipped the track. Two guys came out of nowhere, got his slider, put him back on it and pushed him off like it was nothing....
I can't believe people are longing for the days where parks were super unsafe lmao. Times change, most of us would rather not lose teeth or break bones while trying to have fun.
It’s that survival bias, lol. Like, yeah, *you* think it was great and fine because you were lucky and never got hurt, but I think the friends and family of those who died have a bit more say in these matters
loop slides exist and work well if it's not a vertical loop, Wet N Wild has one that's angled to the side so you stay on the slide instead of falling on your face at the top of the loop, vertical loop is a different story
Shelby427 was looking for this comment! I’ve been on the wet n wild loop slide a bunch of times and never thought anything of it lol until I seen this shit
I highly recommend the Behind the Bastards episode on Action Park, it's very good and goes a lot more in depth. My favorite story is that it was so common for guests to get scrapes and bruises that the first aid station made a game to play with injured guests. You stood in a circle on the floor, and if you managed to stay inside the circle while they sprayed you down with an alcohol-based disinfectant, you won a prize. Having alcohol sprayed directly into your open wounds FUCKING HURTS, and in the entire run of the park (which had 10) were able to stay inside the circle while their wounds were treated. The prize? A fucking pen.
Oh my gosh.... this is quite the worst horror of the whole thing. I can tell you this did not happen at every park. I had an injury at a water park, they sprayed me with something that disinfected and did not hurt and I was like 8, so I was sensitive. I did not cry, I got a band aid and I was just fine. Also I assume injuries were super common at most water parks, I lived near one with a wave pool and brush burns just happened on a daily basis to almost everyone its just the nature of the beast. The trick was not to slide up on the entrance as that was where the most rough ground was. Multiply that by the number of wave pools in the USA and you have a large number of injuries right there. I remember seeing a lady with a huge brush burn on her thigh and a huge piece of gauze on her leg covering it.
I don't remember the circle part but it's been almost 30 years since I went there. I only had to go to the med station once and a lifeguard escorted me there after I busted my lip after my friend and I bashed heads together. The collision made me bite down just below my lower lip and my teeth dug in a bit. They cleaned it out and just put a bandaid on it. It was pretty early in the day and we didn't want to waste our money so my buddy's mom left and went to the store and got some superglue and superglued it shut. Once it dried we were back on the rides. Had to keep reapplying it as the day went on since it would start to crack and I'd start bleeding again. lol Still have a really small scar to this day. But this was all my fault. My buddy and I would deflate the raft we were in a little bit so that when we hit the corners on the river ride we'd get higher on the wall and if we were lucky it would throw one of us out. Once out you just slide down the rest of the slide on your own until you hit the next pool and got back into the the raft. I was there at least 30 times over my high school and college years but I never saw anyone get hurt to the point they needed an ambulance. So the 200 injuries a day thing sound like a bit of a stretch. Scrapes were common but you'd get scraped up, and if it was a little bloody you'd just go to the bathroom clean it out and just go back on the slide. ...but I will say this is a quote from my friend's facebook post when he worked there in the early 90s- "My god, I used to work there. The whole movie will just be people being hauled off to the hospital" Maybe I was only there on good days. lol Place was a blast and best part of summer.
Big, big disagree. I tried Behind The Bastards at your recommendation and its awful. The hosts are insufferable twats who not even 5 minutes in admit to being lazy degenerates who sleep all day, hate amusement parks and think batman is fascist. Biggest nope in a long time, so kudos to you I guess.
I know that this channel hasn’t posted in almost six months and this video is six years old but I hope the creator knows I come back and watch this every few months bc I just find it so fascinating and well produced
I went there when I was 12, almost everyone in our party left injured. Ending up working as an EMT when it was Mountain Creek. Definitely an experience.
I saw a lady go down the Aqua Scoot, fall backward, hitting her head on the roller bars, which knocked her out cold. She skidded down into the water and ended up face-down in the water with a pool of blood forming. The teenage lifeguards were absolutely terrified and didn't know to do. A couple of adult guests jumped in and pulled her out. I personally know someone who went down the Alpine Slide drunk, fell off, and broke bones in her hand which had to be replaced with steel rods. I've seen people jump off the cliff and nail someone swimming below with knees to the head. I am an Action Park survivor and these are my stories.
Mike Nice Wow that’s crazy. My dad took us to Mountain Creek in 2010 and we went on the river rapids and the wave pool, etc. I never actually knew about the history of the park just that it used to be called Action Park and that my dad used to go in the 90’s when he was a teenager. I actually went back two summers ago and they finally started implementing helmets on the rapids but my sister jumped off the cliff and when she got out of the water her first comment was about how freezing cold it was even in 100 degree weather in the middle of summer. I witnessed two people having to be saved from the wave pool in the span of 15 minutes. We also went on the slide that’s sort of like a toilet bowl but to the side so you are sliding back and forth on it after you get out of the tube. The guys in the group in front of us all fell of the tube because of how high it was going. Their tube litterally flipped. My cousins, my sister, and I were holding on for dear life so we didn’t fall but we got pretty close a couple of times. The lifeguards were kind of just brushing this all off.
What I find the most incredible about the whole story is that the park wasn't closed because of the safety issues and all the injuries and deaths, but because of mostly unrelated mismanagement and economic reasons.
I suppose that it could, perhaps, be compared to a ski resort in this sense. People have accidents all the times at ski resorts, but that doesn't cause them to be closed. It has been considered a reasonable enough compromise, as long as people are aware of the potential dangers.
@asdfg hjkl should really do some basic googling before talking about this. there were safety regulations at the time, and Action Park were given lenient treatment while routinely violating those regulations.
It wasn't just the fatalities. A local emergency reported treating multiple injury cases caused by the park every day the park was open. Action Park wound up buying the hospital extra ambulances to keep up with the volume. This shows that the deaths weren't mere flukes, but the result of poorly-designed and inadequately-managed attractions.
Oh my god, I *KNEW* this park sounded familiar! My dad almost died in that wave pool! My mom was telling me about it (years later after I was in high school) about how my dad, a strong swimmer who competed throughout his school years, went to the deepest parts and struggled to stay above water. When he finally managed to get to land, where she had been watching helpless, she told me he said, "I didn't think I was gonna make it out". Even years later, the story still seriously bothered her.
Chaos Theory eh? There is a parallel universe where you wouldn't ever exist. Maybe you would cure cancer or make the Middle East friends with eachother? spoopy. For reals, wasn't it an option to go underwater and swim along the floor to shallow water?
@@DarkWarchieff I think that the wave mechanism was fairly far down. There's a pretty good chance you might not be able to get that low if it was pushing 3+ft waves in a large pool. Plus, If you're already in the waves, it's pretty hard to swim down. You could probably do it if you were in the shallower sections, but it seems like it got pretty deep. Those lifeguards were putting in work, because there definitely should've been more than 6 deaths just based on that pool.
I almost didn't make it out of that pool when I was like 13!! And its still there and running! I will say though, they have a TON more lifeguards and they have to go through pretty extensive deep-water training because of the 16 ft cliff dive pool. After that pool was completed, a law was passed that pools in water parks could be no deeper than 10 ft, but that pool got grandfathered in, so now they have to have well trained lifeguards at multiple vantage points around it.
Yeah most people don't realize that trying to swim in waves above 5 feet tall is pretty much a death sentence if you're not experienced and/or not expecting to struggle to swim in that circumstance. It's basically like swimming in a storm, one of the worst conditions to swim in obviously. By storm I mean the height and power of the waves generated by it.
This seems like a cool concept for a theme park being marketed as the cool extreme theme park with rides that feel like they're from a movie. But you kind of need to ensure there isn't any real danger.
Nothing actually 100% meets OSHA requirements anyway from my experience in construction. Especially when it comes to safety, or as we call it slowing the job down to put on a harness to get on a one story flat roof. Fuck OSHA, contractors creed. Idk anyone other than government workers that follow their guidelines because their guidelines are pains in the ass most of the time.
How did the original Action Park stay afloat for so long? My guess is as follows: "Hey, some people died in that place!" "Cool! Betcha I can survive!" "Make that two tickets then!" One dies, twelve get in as a scare dare. Rinse and repeat. There _is_ no such thing as bad publicity.
The thing that gets me the most on every single rewatch is the attitude of, "Oh yeah, I had a fantastic time! What? Compound fracture? Yeah, the shin's sticking out of the leg a bit there, but it's cool, and so maybe I can't feel my left arm and sure my vision isn't working so well any more but I CAN'T WAIT TO COME BACK TO THIS PLACE! Just a few months of physical therapy and I should be in time to go for the start of next year's season!"
Use to go every summer from the early 80's, never saw anyone get a broken bone or get seriously hurt. The video and the folk lore blow this place WIDLY out of proportion. WIth that said, it was the best waterpark I ever went to and everything after it was a disappointment.
This looks like the kind of park you used to start building in Rollercoaster Tycoon but got bored with after a while and then didn't care about anything that would be placed in it at all.
So safety is 2nd priority then?
I had that game! It was awesome. I usually took it semi seriously in that I tried not to actively kill the guests. My younger brother on the other hand would intentionally go for the hidden achievement "Most Dangerous Park in The Country." Some classic memories of his included:
- Permanently trapping peeps underground
- Intentionally designing coasters full of peeps to land on footpaths
- Making said coasters go extremely slow to drop one car off the track at a time
- Creating a "Jail" for peeps: Dropping them off into a closed footpath section, with free drinks but $40 bathrooms and full of security guards.
>Free drinks with $40 bathrooms
What sick fuck would make that. XD
DreamCanvas I have stomach issues but I thought the $40 toilets was funny
DreamCanvas I made a loop coaster go off the rails and land in a pool where all the riders drowned. Fun times.
I love how they had test dummies coming out MISSING THEIR HEADS and they still deemed the ride as safe
On one hand, test dummy heads aren't attached as firmly as human heads.
On the other hand, enough force to knock off a test dummy head isn't gonna be pleasant for a human neck. Also, it's a pretty bad omen, people never pay attention to omens these days.
after that i imagine that they just slapped a sticker on it that just said SAFE on it.
You cant take risks like that. You have to be as cautious as humanly possible. Even is the test dummies come out damaged, you cant just assume that the same wont happen with people. You need to ensure that the dummies come out in pristine condition to ensure that human riders are kept as safe as possible.
That just defeats the point of a test dummy
@@greenberrygk The point of crash test dummies is to take damage in place of human testers, until they come out okay.
ER Physician: "Your friend's neck is fractured. What exactly was he doing?"
Patient's friend: "He was on the Snapple Snap-Up Whipper Snapper at Action Park."
"It's AWESOME!"
Sn = tin
Oh he was on the break your spine don’t forget to sign ride
I thought it was called the Spine Snapper Snap Up Whiplash Survivor at Action Park. My mistake.
It's 2 am and I just spit my coffee. Thanks A lot!
The first casualty, the young man who was killed on the Alpine Slide in 1980, wasn't an employee of Action Park. This was a lie told to dodge officially reporting his death which makes it even more horrific. People should check out Class Action Park for the full story.
This! He worked at the ski resort years before
@@rubygirl214 True but he wasn't currently employed by the park at the time
wack
Who was he at the time it happened?
@@your_local_questerian He was a 19 year old boy named Georgie who had no affiliations with Action Park. He had worked at the park’s sister ski resort as a lift operator the year before, and just for one season. The park also lied claiming that not only was he an employee, but they tried saying he was there after hours, which was also false. He was a paying Park guest like anyone else.
The cannonball loop actually had to have padding put in so people stopped hitting the top and getting so hurt. After that, people started coming out with cuts and gashes. They looked inside, and it turns out that teeth from previous riders had gotten lodged in the padding and was cutting people on their way down.
ARGH
Oh GOD
CHRIST
What the absolute fuck
EW! 🤢 That's foul on so many levels
OSHA: surely they can't break EVERY rule.
Action park:
Action Park: hold my beer
Action Park: Yes, we can. He he he he he he haha haha hahaha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH BWAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA
Hold my beer... Which they sold to minors.
Im about to ruin this company's career
At least they didn’t break the hallway height regulation! Oh, wait, they probably did.
I'm from NYC. As I child, I used to see commercials for Action Park. I asked my parents if we could go there numerous times and they always said no. Now I know why
Thank ur parents 40 times
Same here. My dad would just say that he would when I was a little bigger. And once I was a little older and bigger it was closed down. Probably for the best.
Philly Girl just entered the chat. I got the same answer. Over my Dead Body. Tnx Mom!
That’s how you know they love you
Same which is why it was one of my first destinations when i got a car
I worked here as a teenager in the 80's and oh man, the stuff that went on there. I was one of three working the alpine slide and that track was covered in blood stains the whole way down. Countless times a day, the sleds would come off the track or customers would slip off and get some of the most horrid skids and scrapes. All of us were smoking up, drinking, screwing around in the bushes etc. It was a fun summer, but none of us understood the gravity of how messed up the entire thing was.
You're one of the jerks that caused all those problems. Code word: Scumbag.
😕
Sounds based
"Blood stains"
Mind if I ask... like, how many? Was this every day or just every noe and then? Did riders notice it? How big were they?
That sounds downright medieval
@@Edge_Boye based... yaa frfr no cap like rent free even with rizz.. man, its already goated with the drip. now ppl ded with no clapback
"The lake had a large population of snakes", well that sounds like good fun for the little ones.
who knows pre 1980 how many deaths they kept under the records noses
It was great.
"Snakes..why it had to be snakes."
Are there really any snakes other then harmless Garter Snakes in New Jersey?
Imagine if they were a hard-core Jungle Book fan...
As an Action Park survivor, I can tell you none of this was exaggerated. Went home pretty mangled a few times,there were just so many ways to get injured there,and there wasn't much in the way of first aid there,hence all the ambulances!
Bob Luna this is why I’m glad I was born in the early 2000s.
Bob Luna I’m not like other teens. I don’t vape and I’m not irresponsible.
Jonathan Samet bitch millennials were born between 1981-1994. I’m Gen Z!
@@0utcast calm down, you're going off on someone just because of the year they were born lol come on just let it go my dude
Jonathan Samet try to imagine how it comes across to everyone else when you bash a teenager on the Internet for their age. the world will be a much better place when people like you learn how to be mature and respectful towards others. hope your night gets better man
Can we all stop for just a second and really think about the fact that Action Park bought the city more ambulances. That sounds like the punch line to a joke.
I'm closeby Vernon and have multiple friends there and let me tell you, stuff like this is not even remotely surprising. Vernon is absolute garbage
Princessuuke Yeah, it’s really not surprising at all lol. I’m not far from Vernon either and the whole area is trash lol.
The drivers obviously know the route they'll be driving most often.
Seems like they probably should have just built a hospital on site.
Or a new slide that chutes the person straight over to the hospital.
The 19 year old first death at the park, they said he was an employee because they did not report his death. He had been an employee for a partial season at the great gorge ski resort, but was never an employee of action park. They also reported to the press that he was riding it at night, and that it was raining. Neither were true.
Source?
@@crazyfire9470 documentary - class action park
Ohhhhh that part and the "there isn't a problem with the ride it didn't kill him it was the rocks 25 feet away" pissed me off
@@veronicacarter2376nah bro it's fine. the ride didn't kill him. it just uh. launched him 25 feet into fucking rocks
@@juniperrodley9843its the rocks’ fault for being there
Hamilton: “Everything is legal in New Jersey.”
My husband, who grew up going to Action Park: *nods vigorously*
*nods in 360 degrees do to severe neck fractures*
@@shinyagumon7015 LOL well done
Everything is legal in New Jersey-except that dangerous marijuana.
Suzanne Seven man do I have some good new for you
@@shinyagumon7015 has
That cannonball loop gave me anxiety just by looking at it. The fact that dummies came out headless should have been a sign.
Actually, people who would jump in such a death-sentence slide would only be shorter without a head anywayz.
I’d say the people who lost their heads on those slides could also count as dummies
Imagine getting stuck in there
WAIT PPL LOST THERE HEADS?!
@@dismyjamm7390 No they didn't, some test dummies they used when making the slide came out headless. Odds are, though, that they were just store-bought mannequins they got on the cheap, which are obviously not designed for water slides.
The fact that they spent money on NEW AMBULANCES instead of safety measures??? I laughed out loud at how absolutely ridiculous that is.
Let me tell you from personal experience it made it that much better when I went there many times!!!! LOL 😂
There’s an ambulance squad down the road from the rebranded park
Amazon strategy
Yup, a classic (if extreme) case of treating the symptom and not the cause
New ambulances are safety measures
Bruh that cannonball loop tho. Are they expecting me to curl into a ball like Sonic?
The blueprint for that thing was allegedly a scribble on cocktail napkin made by the former Wall Street Executive with no former park experience who created the place, so I'd say nobody thought that far ahead. The headless test dummies were a formality.
@@0g0dn0 basically, they came up with ideas like this when they were drunk.
In the words of the angry video game nerd:
“What were they thinking!?”
Or go Morph Ball mode like Samus?
and, there's no rings attached
@@crystalgemgirl731 Go Magearna mode
When I went as a kid, the longest line in the park was first aid
Lmao that’s sad-
@@harryrabbitts4765 stop
Was it fun atleast?
DAMN 😂😂😂
Damn that first aid ride musta been lit
When an attraction called "The Kamikaze" can be described as "safer" in comparison to the rest, you've got a problem.
Sushi exactly
so it's not like every theme park in the world is safe but so dangerous so why just this theme park. To me every theme park out here are dangerous
@@TheIcpfan23 i hate to break it to you but most theme parks have actual oversight and safety measures. sure most theme parks have a couple of accidents in their history, mostly due to people blatantly disregarding the rules, but usually they take safety very seriously because an injury is a PR disaster.
action park seemingly just made poor safety practices their entire brand :^)
@@TheIcpfan23 there's a reason why a serious accident is noticed at six flags or Disney Land... It's rare. And there's an even bigger reason why action park's accidents were mostly ignored... They were common
Branding. It’s should have just been called the divine wind at that point.
Went there in the late 80's. The one thing I remember was the Tarzan rope. The water in the pool was fed by one of the mountains in and around that area. As soon as you hit the water the air was sucked right out of you, because of the frigid temperature. Causing you to panic instantly.
Didn’t some people on the Titanic die cause of shock from the cold water?
Judging by how hard it was for that poor news girl to breathe after she got out of the water, it's likely that hasn't changed.
@@kattastic9999 There's not really a fix for it since the water is being fed naturally, but that just means you shit the attraction down, not throw you damn hands up.
Neat...
They still have it too. I went there as a kid in the early 2010s and it always hit me like a brick
"There's nothing in the world like Action Park!"
*GOOD.*
lol i agree with you and i hope it does stay that way.
That jingle has aged like fine wine!
Thank Luna.
@crystalgemgirl731 Luna?
@@gabe_s_videos Princess Luna from MLP. Also, I like saying it.
as a lifeguard myself, i can’t imagine having to watch let alone SAVE that many people a day. how horrifying that just have been, having to watch SO closely because it was basically assured that someone was gonna get hurt.
Same. I think I’ve only ever made one save in my entire life guarding career. I can’t imagine how stressful that job must have been.
The guy's son (who was one of the main life guards for a while) wrote a book on his experiences and yeah it was horrifying. They had to save tons of people a day despite being teenagers with no proper training.
Well they don't pay those lifegaurds to sit on their chair all day and do nothing! (jk)
Guess it would keep you on your toes.
Yeah, the "dangerous" pools in my area had *maybe* one save a week, and even that's probably being too dramatic. Saves aren't supposed to be routine, 99% of the job is making sure nobody gets hurt.
"In response to the high volume of guests visiting the hospital, Action Park bought Vernon NJ new ambulances."
Good business model!
Did they get a commission for every person they sent to the hospital ?
@@sashaircha6475 yes they actually did. Out of the 800 dollar ambulance ride they received 200 of it.
@@j.j.s.jr.5136 Money over park safety! What a time to be alive
@@alphacheeno7487 you ain't kidding! Lol
My mom actually almost drowned in the old action park wavepool. She was luckily saved by a lifeguard, but *man* thinking that this theme park almost made me not exist, it’s chilling.
My dad almost drowned in some pool during the winter time in California or maybe Minnesota. I almost would not have existed
you almost never existed, that’s a chilling fact to learn.
Almost drowned as well along with my sister in a wavepool (not action park). Children shouldn't be allowed in there lmao
I almost drowned in the giant wave pool at Mt. Olympus before I was even 10. Dragged from the deepest part aaaallllll the way to the shoreline, underwater. No one noticed, or if they did, didn't care.
Imagine what the person you took the place of feels.
I spent many summers in Action Park. As a teen it was the greatest place to go, as an adult, knowing what I know now, I would NEVER let my kids go.
Would you let them go to to the modern version?
@@thevenom2731 my kids are adults now. I haven’t seen the new version but it can’t be anything like the old version. The rules today are so different.
yea you can do something but others can't. that's adults for you
@@businesswalks8301 I think that point hit Mach 3 flying over your head.
@@businesswalks8301Are you 3?
they really said: ‘well, compared to how many guests we see a year, our death toll is quite low’
WHAT
Another great marketing slogan:
"ACTION PARK - Our Death Toll is Low!"
Maybe low if they were comparing their DEATH rate to a normal water park's ACCIDENT rate.
@@NovaSaber Implying that the death rate is astronomically high is actually wrong factually. Not to make light of the deaths that DID occur, of course.
fr there shouldn't be a death toll period lol
@@tiarakinnebrew1054 Preventing what you can is a lot more fruitful than trying to prevent everything. IDK how that would be possible - say you at least went as far as you can go with regards to enforcing rules and the like - which these people abslutely should have - you still have idiots who don't know how to swim coming up, people horsing around, so people will get hurt or injured.
"Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make" - Action Park Owner
Whered i hear this lol
@@spiceguy94 I think Shrek, Lord Farquad said that ... as far as I know lol
@@spiceguy94 also Monsters vs Aliens
media: someone will die
action park: of FUN!!
@@BlackqueenSW_ You mean Michael Eisner?
I went there many times in the mid 80s. Always had a good time and never got hurt. However my friend almost drowned in that wave pool. I spotted him struggling and I swam to him. He was exhausted so he held on to me and I pulled him into shallow water. Thankfully I was a strong swimmer and paying attention to my friend, the lifeguards had no idea he was struggling. Thinking back 35 years ago, it's amazing how as 17-18 year olds we didn't see or care how dangerous this place actually was.
I wish i could have been alive back then and went to the park
@@almac664 I'm not a fatalist so I found/ still find young people dying to be less "it was your time" and more of a tragedy, but I understand that my approach to enjoying life just does not cut it for many people. Some of these people weren't even doing particularly dangerous things, it was the park's construction and management that made it dangerous, most notably to me the fans in the kayak pond and the Tarzan swing.
@@almac664 dude what? Did you seriously just write a paragraph about how you miss when people use to get hurt and die 💀? The fact that we have progressed past that is a great thing
@@almac664 There's a difference between having fun knowing potential dangers and going to a park with activities you're not familiar with (and thus can't accurately gauge the danger level of), where you trust safety regulations to keep you safe. They say for a reason that safety regulations are written with blood.
Also there's still plenty of opportunity for kids to have unrestrained (dangerous) adventures if they want, especially in the countryside. Just because people got smarter about shit doesn't mean that there isn't still ample room for kids to go off on their own and have fun, and do dumb and dangerous shit if they so please. God knows I've done plenty dumb and dangerous things when I was growing up and I grew up in the 2000's and 2010s. Things haven't changed _that_ much.
@@almac664 Unfortunately some people need an incentive to wear a seatbelt. If they are killed then what happens to their children, who pays for the benefits they receive? The public does.
This whole thing seems like a parody of a theme park you’d see in the Simpsons. I kept laughing harder and harder as you elaborated on the endless dangers. The cliff jumping attraction with ONE LIFEGUARD, I just-
Oh, you have no idea. And if you tarried for more than 30 seconds, that douch bag lifeguard would more or less push you in.
Feels like a whole Onion article.
Even the nickname "Traction Park" sounds like a location in The Simpsons.
They an episode of The Simpsons riffing on Action Park, so it went full circle
Like Pipi's in South Park
Everyone's gangsta till the water slide has a l o o p
Coaster Fusion IT LITERALLY LOOPED WTF
Engonering
many water slides have several loops now, but a VERTICAL loop is insane. wtf were they thinkinggggg
Atleast no one was decapitated at any of the rides.
But what if you are stuck in the loop .. How do they know you are still in.. Thats scared
You gotta love a place where the slingshot, one of today’s most notoriously unsafe attractions, is the safest ride at the park lol
I have to remember this.
Pretty ironic 😂
Slingshots are completely safe😂
@@frozenuruguayball6436There are certain types that absolutely aren’t. Elastic cable Slingshots are the most notorious. Coaster College has a video that describes the differences between safer and more dangerous models really well.
@@frozenuruguayball6436There are some models that really aren’t - specifically older models that use elastic bands. Coaster College has a very good video that explains the difference between the newer safer models and the ones that use elastic bands.
Holy crap. I'm no roller coaster engineer, but I am an engineer (electrical) and the mere picture of a loop on a water slide sent chills down my spine.
Also, as an electrical engineer, WHY WAS THERE ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT UNDERWATER THAT WERE NOT PROTECTED BY GFCI????!!!!! Even if NJ had lax amusement park regulations, that's a clear violation of the NEC and that death alone should have given code officials enough to shut down the kayak ride.
I know Jack shit about electric engineering but even I know water and electricity don’t belong near each other without protection if at all (thanks Pokemon)
My 6 year old sister could tell you why that’s stupid!
How did a grown man not know?!
I don't wanna come off like I'm trying to start a debate or anything, but I'm legitimately wondering: were those regulations even a thing back when Action Park was operational? o:
@@Roonifer Good question. I officially "started" in the industry in 2000 with a summer job as an electrician helper. My dad may know done he's been working since the early '80's as an electrician. Even then, it will be based on what was enforced in Virginia and not New Jersey.
@@eaglescout1984 I see!! Thanks!
As a kid growing up in the 90s, I loved those kinds of wave pools, but my mom never liked me swimming in them. She would mention that people could die in them, but I never took her very seriously. 😢
Yeah, for most of us the older you get the more you start to realize that your parents were right about almost everything! Of course, by that time it's impossible to go back and change anything.
@@JSchaffer214 not even remotely true for the majority of people alive today
@@TRAMP-oline remotely true for the people alive today I'm 17 and most of the shit my parents we're telling me came back to bite me later
@@TRAMP-oline Oh no it absolutely still is.
@@SirDankington only if you have good parents.
"The park sold alcohol in many of the convenience stands, often to minors." Ah yes, a water park filled with poorly designed, dangerous rides plus hundreds of drunk teenagers, what could possibly go wrong?
A water park selling alcohol is already a bad idea, let alone to minors
@@MadWatcher thats the point no rules just do what you want
@@revolutionhotwheels7133 which is a bad idea
@@xlopez321 ehhh
I ❤️ Danger
This place seems like something out of an old Simpsons episode
Jake Noble Ikrr
of course. simpsons is making fun of REALITY
I wanna go on the Yard Work Simulator!
Itchy and Scratchy Death Park in real life
Kamp Krusty
I love how the slide named after Japanese suicide bombers is actually one of the safer slides.
@Anne Yap "Kamikaze" means "Divine Wind" and refers to the typhoon that nailed a Mongol invasion force headed to Japan in the 12th Century. In World War II, it was adopted by the Allied Forces as a moniker for Japanese pilots who flew their planes into Allied warships in the hopes of heavily damaging or sinking them. The actual name for the suicide pilot unit was "Shinpuu", IIRC.
Anne Yap the logic behind it was “all our good pilots are dead/captured/wounded. Now we only have a bunch of relatively inexperienced pilots at our disposal. The Americans have hundreds of significantly better pilots who will annihilate most of our pilots. We should maximize the impact of each pilot who gets through. We could have them use bombs/torpedoes, but they could miss and aren’t guaranteed to sink/disable the ship it hits. But if we have the pilots fly their plane to impact the ship, they’re less likely to miss and with each hit more damage can be incurred on the American ships.”
Did it work? They sunk one carrier, the USS St. Lo, damaged the carriers USS Franklin and USS Bunker Hill enough to knock them out of service, damaged a few more carriers, though they returned to service later. They also damaged these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_damaged_by_kamikaze_attack (this is Wikipedia, so treat with all due skepticism).
However, we had about a hundred carriers of varying sizes and thousands of submarines, destroyers, escort destroyers, cruisers, auxiliary vessels etc. so these loses were somewhat negligible and not one thing on that list was a nuclear bomber.
oof
it's not the safest by my knowledge. you skip across a 30 foot pool at the end and if you weigh more than 200 pounds you're likely to strike the other end of the pool
@@walterkennedy9474 Odd thing is, according to some studies, the Japanese pilots had gotten so bad by that point that they actually lost less of them in kamikaze runs than in regular attacks.
"Greg, keep it professional." Why do I have the feeling Greg is someone who would spike someones drink.
You gotta wonder, if this is how comfortable he is doing that stuff while knowing he is live, what might happen backstage...
I mean it *is* Fox...
Yeah Greg made me physically recoil. Gross ass mf.
And there are people watching that and having the audacity to say crazy things like "she enjoyed it" and otherwise defend his behavior when it's one of the most unprofessional things I've ever seen.
@@The_Sharktocrab not just that, but it's also agonizingly obvious she DIDN'T enjoy it. The whole situation was incredibly awkward and no one was happy with the situation, and the fact that people say "she enjoyed it" makes me worry about these gross fuckers that can't read a room.
This is literally the place that invented parents saying “if your friend jumps off the bridge, would you too?”
greg the groove DRUM COVERS lmfao
I'd jump too
If Hitomi-san was below the bridge I would even do a 360 on the way down
My brother did.
@@CyberKirby he lived right?
The amount of times I go, “Wait, did you just say “large population of snakes?’” Is unparalleled
Did... Did anyone ever get bit?
It's actually pretty common for any water park that shares space w a ski resort. Good water supply + large open areas for snakes to back = snakes
@@jeffreytoman5202 People seem to forget that the entire world was just wild. Just because we build a fence and a pool doesn't make the world no longer wild. Snakes are fucking everywhere.
People be saying that snakes are common in these places and that's cuz they kinda are, but I bet most parks at least try to reduce the snakes. Can't imagine Class Action Park did.
Omg yes this!!!
Mulvihill: So how's our crash dummy?
Employee: Poor dude lost his head, sir.
Mulvihill: Are the legs and arms still attached?
Employee: Well yea, barely, sorta.
Mulvihill: We're good to go!
If you read his son's book on Action Park, Mulvhill had a really cavalier attitude toward safety, which he seemed to genuinely believe equalled "less fun."
@@warellis I may enjoy safety third,but if safety is in less consideration to fucking beer,I'm not entering it
My dad survived Action Park! He's been multiple times and would recall how there were ambulances on standby at all times and he would witness so many injuries- he even got some himself but nothing serious. After he found out I'm interested in this he got me a tshirt with the logo on it, it's my favorite thing
"That was thirty years ago! Things have changed!"
Yes, in the last 30 years human beings have become invulnerable to drowning, electrocution, and blunt force trauma.
No, just more safety rules
@@jessicanuoffer it's a joke :)
i’ve gone to mountain creek which is what action park is now called. you have to wear helmets to go down roaring rapids in an under inflated raft
@@kalikoserpent its more of a sarcastic remark, smart guy :)
Yay 100th like
Everything I've heard about being a teenager in the 70s is absolute insanity. Like everyone was really out of their minds back then, huh?
@Joey Foster Ok, boomer
Seriously. Based on stories my dad has told me I'm surprised he and his siblings survived to adulthood. They used to jump off bridges into the canal and all sorts of other crazy stuff.
You should read the excellent graphic memoir (it's non-fiction, so not a novel) "My Friend Dahmer," by Derf Backderf. It was recently made into a movie as well. Although it's about the author/artist's loose friendship with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in high school, it also shows the sinister side of the party-hearty 70s. Indeed, a lot of that era was not so much fun, and it extends to the decades before and after. Kevin Drum has written some fascinating articles about the decline in delinquency. It mirrors the Great Crime Decline in general. www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/05/teenagers-are-no-longer-scary-delinquents-30-years-ago/
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/03/kids-today-are-way-less-scary-they-used-be/
It was amazing. I feel sorry for the nerf covered world of today.
I’d honestly love to be a teenager in the 70’s :/
“There’s nothing in the world like action park!”
GOOD.
Brazil exists.
Australia doesn't, but if it did then that too.
The comment you copied is right above this one, lol.
AMEN.
I could have sworn there was another line "where you're the center of the action"
The place was freaking sweet, What a time you could have as long as you came out uninjured
I'm surprised at the lack of comments about the creepy newscaster at the end. It's a good thing the cameraman chose to act when he did.
Apparently, according to another comment I saw, he's infamous for being a creep.
Times have changed.
He was such a creep! At least I think the on-site reporter wasn't hearing all of it (or at least wasn't sure what was going on) and the other caster tried to step in. But oh my god if he was that brazen while being filmed I can't imagine what he was like off camera.
At first I thought it was outtakes from a prerecorded segment, I was shocked to learn that happened live on air
@@anthonyjonas6236 what are you talking about
According to the song, "There's nothing in the world like Action Park."... That's probably not such a bad thing...
@@jackb6663 I would actually kill if that was a thing. You will not be safer you will be in FAR more danger.
The virus isn't even that dangerous you idiots! It kills old people who have never been sick! Rich billionaires die from it! And people with asthma....if you have asthma my condolences.
Maddie Joy
And the fact that you think that is why our world has become so pussified, overregulated, and frankly pathetically bland.
Explain 10 million cases
@@raagnarz sorry did you miss the part where PEOPLE FUCKING DIED??!? one of those people being a fucking CHILD?
So, the son of Gene Mulvihill, Andy Mulvihill wrote a book on his experiences growing up around Action Park and it's a really interesting read. It's been a while since my last reread, but some notes:
The Snapple ride was actually a brand deal, made when the company was just starting.
The guy running the food supplies literally served spoiled chicken at one point to masses of customers, which wrecked havoc on the low amount of bathrooms at the time.
Their lawyer was infamous for using manipulative tactics in court and stalling to the point of the legal fees simply becoming too much for the person who was injured.
Action Park was a large employer of teens in the area, but had them do anything from digging ditches to wrangling drunk people on Lola carts despite many of them being as young as 14 or 15.
Employees would commonly have parties at the end of the seasons, with those same teenagers getting heavily drunk and their sober friends making sure they didn't fall in the pool or something. It was wild.
Generally the employees weren't treated very well. The guy who ran the Aerodium seized his workers/performer's passports for the season so they couldn't leave, young lifeguards being put through the wringer trying to prevent people from drowning in the powerful wave pool (which Gene refused to turn down the power of/limit entrance and exit spaces for despite the danger and threw away the manual).
On a slightly funnier note, employees often took lunch breaks near the Tarzan Slide or similar rides that had reputations for women's tops coming off. They also wrote "CFS" (for "Can't Fucking Swim") on the wristband of anyone who had to be rescued yet went right back into the water.
It's quite the interesting rabbithole, so I'd recommend checking your local library for a copy (or watch the documentary on HBO Max. Both have different perspectives and are interesting to put together. I'm more inclined to believe the documentary's side of certain things, personally.)
You know, I was just wondering about the food... simply because by halfway into the video the very idea of these people getting any portion of this right seemed odd.
What’s the book name
@@FilmCriticAidan "Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park"
"They also wrote "CFS" (for "Can't Fucking Swim") on the wristband of anyone who had to be rescued yet went right back into the water."
One of the only practices we should keep from this place tbh lol. Some people... I s2g...
ok the cfs thing is really funny, at least those lifeguards had some humor about it
"Die Like a Man!" is not really a great marketing slogan.
At least it’s not false advertising
@@kindofhuman8147 They weren’t wrong should have said “Get hurt like a man!” since many did.
lol
dunno what you mean. Would definitely get my attention hahaha
@@WetAdek It reduces the sale of annual passes, however.
"It's like coming to broad way it's wonderful"
I don't know what she's going for here but I want to give her a hug, she seems nice
She's got that Yiddish lilt that you don't hear a lot of people talk with any more. Reminds me of my grandmother's friends.
I can actually understand some of these mistakes given that Action Park was one of the first water parks in the US and there weren't as many safety concerns back then. What I can't even FATHOM is how ANYONE thought a water slide with a loop was a good idea!
It's been executed decently with more modern ones, but even those don't have a VERTICAL loop. That's just stupid.
A loop is fine, and many water slides have them. The vertical loop, however, is insane.
Rule of Cool is a powerful drug.
JustAnotherPest So you’re a troper
I remember hearing somewhere that the real issue wasn't the idea of a vertical loop, but the fact it was circular rather than ovular, and that you couldn't gain enough speed.
Rollercoaster Tycoon wasn't intended to be an instruction manual.
2 Guests have died on Water Slide 2.
This should be top comment
I did it for the cat girls
1 Guests drowned in Pool 3
It's not? Oh, I probably shouldn't have those designs based on my game's park layout to the folks working on Toy Story Land then. Well, that's gonna be an interesting opening day.
You think Action park would have tried to remake Mr. Bones' Wild Ride if they had stayed open?
"There's nothing in the world like action park"
**camera pans to room full of disabled and dead people**
I mean, they weren’t wrong.
Like that scene in Gone With the Wind where the camera pans over to the injured soldiers.
My leg! My leg
Must of been worth it
Ha! Great play, Mark! It's a real... _KILLER!_ (Laugh track and Seinfeld riff)
Hearing how that many people died on the premises and they continued to operate is insane. One person died at the theme park where I live and it was closed for about seven years. How did they get away with any of this?
Mostly due to the corrupt local government looking the other way, since the park generated tons of cash for the local economy.
4 words: it was the times.
as well as the reply on top of this one, that's the best reason for this too.
Two words: New Jersey
The guy who ran Action Park may or may not had Mafia ties
"There's Nothing in the World Like Action Park!"
GOOD.
George The Friend that’s exactly what I was thinking lmao
😂
I agree.
Nothing in the world wants to be like Action Park!
Christ, this blew up.
😂
I am convinced that this park is the reason that New Jersey has such strict theme park laws today.
What kind of laws and I'm assuming Six flags new Jersey is affected by them?
@@deft_spex_jr9628 Well the two that come to mind are one's that do affect Great Adventure, both involving kinda ka. The first basically said that all coasters over a certain height had to have over-the-shoukder restraints rather than the lap restraints that were intended for the ride (like on Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point). The other law prevented Kingda Ka from cycling while Zumanjaro was cycling. This causes capacity issues for both attractions.
Wow… idk man you sure? Seems like a stretch…
You're probably right.
Well yeah.
One interviewee in the HBO documentary about this summed it up perfectly IMO:
"Nobody should be the SECOND person to die in the wave pool! You close the fucking wave pool!"
Um, no, because in general there are true accidents and if we went with that mentally there's a lot of things we wouldn't be allowed to have if one person had died. In regards to adults - there's only so much blame that can be placed on others if the adult knowingly enters an area that they know can't save themselves in (i.e. if they don't know how to swim) and disregards their own safety.
However, that doesn't mean it's okay to allow your wave pool to keep being a giant death trap with young people who may or may not be paying attention as the only salvation for guests who have zero care about whether or not they could swim and may be intoxicated while allowing high waves and poor water level marking. There is a middle ground here.
@@Amoreyna tl; dr
@@Amoreyna I mean, if the person died due to your negligence, then yeah you close the pool at the first death
@@WhiteWolf-lm7gj Problem is, IMO, the wording of the quoted sentence - which focuses purely on the deaths, and nothing else.
A story in Andy Mulvihill's recent book talked about one of the bigger problems - that the park frequently ran ads in places full of people who had limited to no ability to learn how to swim, or had no access to places to swim (hence the story about people writing CFS, or Can't Fucking Swim, on armbands of people who were rescued and clearly couldn't swim).
Where can I see the documentary? Is it on HBO Max?
My favorite part about the cannonball loop is that people started coming out with lacerations and it was found that they were being cut by teeth that were imbedded in the walls.
What.
The fuck?
TEETH???? LIKE HUMAN TEETH????
@@spotlightanimation6719 Yes. Teeth that got stuck in the wall from other guests getting bashed against the walls. I know, it sounds fake as hell.
Man, this brings back memories. I worked there for a few years as a high school student. When your boss is 16-17 yo making the calls wild things happen.
You gotta post some stories man.
@@sjsisjsjks Much of what occurred at Action Park has definitely made its way into the light. To include park customers ending up injured and rushed out rapidly to avoid any disruption. So all I can do is confirm that is all accurate. And employees too.
@@myinfoismyinfo9533 working there sounds awful
@@saritaart2103 but they got to drive the carts on the highway lol
I hear the teen staffers were, back in the day, smoking heroic amounts of weed on the job daily.
In the 80's, we called it Accident Park. We used to go just to watch the accidents.
Fred Garvin We used to call it Traction Park 🤣
It looked so damn fun. It helps that people looked so chill back then.
@@nelzelpher2088 "chill" meaning not "safety-based pussies".
Fred Garvin still not as good as Class Action Park
I like how this entire comment section is filled with far right leaning people simply bothered by the existence of people just trying to be reasonable lmao
“Jackass: The Theme Park”
They made this into a film lol
I mean 2/9ths of Jackass made it into a movie, so yeah close enough
I'm surprised MTV didn't try to make that an actual thing at the height of the show's popularity
Here in Jersey Action Park got called "Traction Park" and "Class Action Park" most people i know who are a little bit older than me if you mention action park there like "hey look at this scar I got on the alpine slide
i can't bring myself to ruin your 420 likes
My family is from New Jersey. My mom told us stories of going there. She didn’t do most of the rides, but she had a friend who went on the cannonball loop. He supposedly had a difficult time standing for a few minutes after it. He kept standing and then immediately falling.
sounds like a concussion...
Action park is literally that one spongebob episode when glove world was breaking down
Johanna Jones thanks for commenting i didn’t even know I got this many likes
I thought it was the hibernation episode in theme park form
"Lifes as extreeeme as you WANNA MAKE IIIIT!"
IM LITERALLY WATCHING IT NOW ASCVBNXDSACVANSAMCND
This is such an underrated comment you deserve more likes
a throwback :,)
"Get wild!
"Get wet!"
"Possibly drown!
"You can even race the karts on the motorways!"
"You can even fracture your bones!"
*You can even get shocked!*
p-p-p-possibly drown!
*"Possibly experience an excruciating death!"*
I survived Action Park! Place was fun as shit in the 80s! That Tarzan swing pond was extremely cold tho. You literally couldn't breathe for a couple seconds after you hit the water.
Thats scary
Shieeeet 50 degrees
U froze up & couldn't swim asap (*it was best served if you could swing as close to the ladder as possible **and GOD FORBID U SLIPPED or fell early!?!)...
Why the hell is it still that cold then? I mean it's not like water heating devices didnt exist...
YOURE A LEGEND
I find it so difficult to accept action park as a real place and not the plot to some dorky comedy film along the lines of National Lampoon's Vacation.
The slide loop? The extra ambulances? The cars accelerating at 50 miles an hour? It's all so perfect.
Their is a go cart place near my city that has 2 types of go carts slower ones that go like 10mph and anyone tall enough can drive them then their is ones that require a driver's license and go probably above 50.
if someone showed me this video and said it was an art project of some sort i would believe it. seriously. this is how fucked up this place is
somebody even said that action park had the basis of an amusement park parody you'd see on the simpsons. even the spoof name of "traction park" is grade a groening parody material.
It was REAL! I was there and its all TRUE!
RollerCoaster Tycoon in real life.
reine yesssss
Action park 1 is too intense
Funnily enough, I learned about this place from Joel's RCT streams.
Yeah but RollerCoaster Tycoon is safer.
Clearly you've never been on Mister Bones' Wild Ride.
I don't know which was more disturbing, the park's complete lack of safety or that guy at the end.
Both are unsafe for children
By disturbing you mean awesome
rach riane disturbingly awesome. But yeah, creepy guys on television are nothing new. Safety first.
“Don’t be so frowning at me”
Wonder if he got fired. He would if he did that now.
“That also had a large population of snakes.”
That’s freaking mental to allow people to ride boats in there.
I'm sure they had a few don't poke the snakes signs
because all snakes are deadly?? They arent
Did you see how fast they went too?? They looked pretty fun though
@@lovepeacebliss I'd be more concerned about people killing snakes out of fear or by accident
Snakes were probably scared
The fact that the human slingshot was actually the safest ride in the park is probably the funniest part of this whole thing.
The mention that it's a common ride probably is why; it looks like almost everything in Action Park was custom made, while the slingshot rides are probably off-the-shelf designs made by actual designers who know what they're doing.
When I was 13 I had a season pass to Action Mountain in Pine Hill. About 2 weeks in, my friend broke his collar bone when he got stuck in the cannon ball tube and someone slammed into the back of him. After that I wasn't allowed to go back. Probably a good call by my parents.
I'm surprised he got away only with broken collar bone... Did you happen to try the Cannon Ball?
Wow that's crazy, the staff didn't even watch to see if the first kid came out before sending in another...
Seems like a lot of people have horror stories from the cannon ball ride. Is that the tubeslide that drops you what looks like 10 feet into a pool of water? They had a similar waterslide at Wet 'n' Wild in Virginia. It was called the Lemon Drop and you'd hit the water flat on your back which would knock the wind right out of you. Fuck that slide!
@@yummyapplestroodle hey it's my brother
"It's like coming to Broadway" I'm sorry what?
Broad-way
It’s like the comment is from someone who has never been to broadway!
If the Broadway show was Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark
@@TimmyTickle I wanted to see that so bad😭😭😭
to someone whos never been to broadway or a themepark i can see why the old lady would think that plus they did have plays and shows and music going on
having to add a hatch to the slide because of too many stuck riders somehow wasn't a red flag
I remember I went on a hatch slide once at teneseee that the hatch opened from under you. I was terrified to go on it. It also had a loop in it. But the most terrifying part initially was the hatch dropping out under my feet. I’d watched too many bad stories about that hatch in water slides like if malfunctioning and hurting you. Thankfully it had no problem when I got enough courage to go down the slide. But freaked out at the loop cause I was too light to make it over the loop and for some reason though I was going to stuck in the ride for hours no way out.
I yelled my head off trying to get the attention of a personel and eventually looked up calming down and scrambling out of a hole in the top of the slide they put there for those who were too light to go over the loop. A personel greeted me there and it was all good but blimey was I terrified.
and that's coming from florida man so you know it's really bad
Your pfp is giving me anxiety
cupofcreativitea this is my favorite comment ever
@@shannonsmith924 If it's such a known problem that a hatch had to be made for light kids, why didn't anybody think to attach a weight on/under the seat
Growing up in northern NJ in the 90s, my family would go to Action Park regularly. It wasn't until watching this video that I remembered I, too, unbelievably almost drowned in that wave pool at the age of 7-8. I actually got emotional watching this because I had not remembered, and it was very traumatic at the time.
This had to have been right before they closed around '96. I managed to pull myself out of an extremely strong current that was aggressively pulling me under, towards the deeper end of the pool on the left; But I remember thinking in the moment that I was drowning. This video triggered that memory for me. There will always be an overall eerie feel to Action Park; It was like that then & it is like that now when we look back at it nostalgically.
"They can't sue us if they're dead" - Action Park, probably
I dated the daughter of an insurance investigator for AP, just after the third death. He had a rather dark sense of humor about the situation there. But it was tons of fun! Always came home with a scrape or having bashed into someone.
The dead person’s family: *are you sure about that?*
Traction Park*
Lol... maybe he was a former cop
@@AEMoreira81 wdym by that?
So I found out recently that my sister's fiance (who is from Vernon, NJ) used to go to Action Park as a kid even worked there one summer. He said the one time he was working I believe the Tarzan swing and a guy looked up at him and said, in very broken English: "I jump, you save?"
"I jump, you save?" should be a meme.
"I sure am sir."
Takimeko and his Random Channal hahahaha right??
Diorm these replies are giving me the giggles lololol
QUEENEmma uhhh ur profile pic is from Cry Baby😱😍
I survived my own alpine slide injury circa 1987. It made subsequent natural childbirths feel like a walk in the park. I still have scars on my elbows and knees after the car flew out from under me.
holy shit that must be a terrifying experience. i'm glad you survived
Just wanted to comment that I was born in 1987, and I’m 34. Feel old yet?
@@coryjohnson2486 You may be young, but you missed all the Action!
@@21jlxi lol I hear yuh. I was just messing around. Sounds like Dina has been living life to the fullest.
That’s hilarious and terrifying.
The Cannonball-Loop slide sends me into hysterics every time because the amount of people that would have looked at it in any of its stages, which is more than two people at minimum, is astonishing. Someone drew up the idea, someone else looked at it, someone else made it, someone else installed it, and someone else looked at it again when it was done and thought, “This won’t lead to any serious issues”. Like HOLY SHIT looking at it for half a second made me laugh, _half a second_ . And no one had the guts to say or was heard when saying, “it just won’t work, because of physics and fucking REALITY” Like WOW
*W O W*
Yeah a fucking loop in a goddamn _water slide_ ??? what an idea!
Looping water slides do work though? Modern ones have a lot more thought put into them, but it wasn't exactly impossible.
It's just that they require a bit more thought towards their mechanics than a normal one.
I’ve been to action park about 5 times. It was as dangerous as it looks.
My friend flew off the alpine slide and slid down on a rocky Mountain side going about 20-25 mph. Got all cut up and bruised. Second friend stopped for him, and the third friend smashed his face on stopped friends back and broke his nose bad. You controlled your own speed and if you leaned into a turn you could/would get launched off the track.
Another time I was struggling to get out of the wave pools deeper end, getting up the ladder was just as difficult because of the power of the waves. Friend above me got knocked off ladder and kneed me in the eye and almost KO’ed me.
Most of the water attractions were in shaded areas and just cut onto the mountain. It was freezing cold.
Place was insane....
was that before it closed
Jesus that sounds horrifying. My dad took us to Mountain Creek in 2010 and we went on the river rapids and the wave pool, etc. I never actually knew about the history of the park just that it used to be called Action Park and that my dad used to go in the 90’s when he was a teenager. I actually went back two summers ago and they finally started implementing helmets on the rapids but my sister jumped off the cliff and when she got out of the water her first comment was about how freezing cold it was even in 100 degree weather in the middle of summer. I witnessed two people having to be saved from the wave pool in the span of 15 minutes. We also went on the slide that’s sort of like a toilet bowl but to the side so you are sliding back and forth on it after you get out of the tube. The guys in the group in front of us all fell of the tube because of how high it was going. Their tube litterally flipped. My cousins, my sister, and I were holding on for dear life so we didn’t fall but we got pretty close a couple of times. The lifeguards were kind of just brushing this all off.
Sounds awesome. I'm sure it was the perfect place for a rite of passage.
This guy gets it. We need a place like this in every city. Only the strong survive.
Denise NO WAY!!! I fell off the tube slide thing and got cut by a rusty screw! i have a scar on my back and i was bleeding everywhere. the screw was just STICKING OUT of the slide but wasn’t big enough to cut through the tubes. lol place is a joke
In high school, my cheerleading squad had to do normal fundraisers in order to afford new things, attend camps, etc., as many do around the country. However, one summer we were asked to work at Wet N Wild in Arlington, TX. We assumed it would be dreaded concession work. Instead, they asked us to put on red one-piece swimsuits with the word "Lifeguard" on them. They gave us whistles and nametags and briefed us on the rides we'd be working on. We were 15, with absolutely NO lifeguard training, not even CPR training. We were told that if anyone fell off a raft on their rides, we should use our whistle to alert a real lifeguard (the real lifeguards rotated in and out, leaving us alone with guests for much of our shifts). These were multi-tiered rides, and our job was to grab the raft these people were on (one person to a raft), walk them to the edge of the tier and push them over the edge to the lower tier. The rafts backed up SUPER quickly, and the water flowed rapidly. At the time we thought it was AMAZING. We hated selling hot dogs at the Ballpark and other shitty concession work, so this was seen as a really fun bit of fundraising. It turned out to be incredibly difficult work, the sunburns were ridiculous, but the insanity lies in the obvious fact that we would have been useless in a real emergency. Luckily, no one had any emergencies during our tenure. Also, the nametags only had a few random names, so we were all either "Laura" or "Lauren." I was fortunate because my name actually is Laura.
I actually had something similar happen in June 2018. I was in Costa Rica with my Girl Scout group, and was the youngest (13). We were at a hot tub waterpark thing where there was a bar (where literally everyone but me was bc everyone else was of age). Someone came from the bar and fell from the stairs, which knocked him out. A few other people and I had to save him from drowning and after we found out the lifeguards in the area were 15-18 and had no prior training. It honestly disgusts me what people will do to cut costs
I hope they don't still do that. That sounds highly illegal.
@@jasper3706 To be honest, I'm not sure it was (legal). I have NO idea how the school, our parents and/or the park okayed it.
@@lonegalaxy9158 That scares the heck out of me. What would have happened had random strangers not intervened, you know? So scary.
@@SmittenKitten. Yeah, I know! It happens a lot more often than people give credit for.
Wow I hope anna the reporter got herself into a better job.
Amazingly action park wasn't the creepiest part about this video...
I personally thought it was hilarious and fitting, being at Action Park. If the same comments were made at some other random waterpark it would be much more creepy somehow. I hope that makes sense.
Uh yeah glad to see Fox stayed classy all these years
@@HughMongusJazzhole Doesn't mean it's right to be fucking creepy.
@@DeadHandtheSurvivor what part are you all talking about I must've missed it?
The fact that no one was sent to jail for this atrocity is disgusting
Nah, you're just soft.
@@stevenschnepp576like 10 people died because of gross negligence shit happend you are all pansies
@@stevenschnepp576pretty sure it is disgusting
@@stevenschnepp57614 yo edgelord
@@stevenschnepp576
no, i think you’re just old
My dad was an operations manager in the late 80s at action park he describes it as “booze fueled anarchy”
I’d also like to add, I now work at mountain creek, it is now very safe.
lots of pot also. I saw two of the workers get into a pretty comical fight at the top of the slide with the mats.
That sounds fucking awesome, lets be honest.
Booze fueled anarchy sounds like a sick ass metal song.
@@cloudieo berdly
I went there in the late 80's. In fact my first visit was mere weeks after the last death in the Grave Pool.
The tanks were never working when I went there, nor was the Cannonball Loop slide. But all the other stories are true, including the underage alcohol consumption. It was kind of like "Teenage Wasteland" - despite the ads, you'd very rarely see anyone under 15 or over 25 for the entire day.
Somehow my friends and I concluded our visits with nothing worse than minor scrapes and bruises. But there was not a single trip on which at least one person didn't get hurt.
Even though it’s dangerous why does it sound so fun to me like I wish I was alive back then when it was poppin so I could of gone. I guess it’s just my teenage urges kicking in or something.
Looking at that slide made me feel sick. I'm somewhat claustrophobic, so the mere THOUGHT of getting stuck in a tube slide makes me gag.
Damn that sounds amazing
Its like the park in Pinocchio. Something ive noticed in amusement park, look at peoples faces when they are moving around the park, usually you'll see anxiety and fear.
@@ExplorerDS6789 same dude. Claustrophobia sucks. McDonald's playplaces i had to go in to get my brother? Hell no. Closed slides of any kind? I feel uncomfortable-, but I know it's safer (like, half closed water slides at the beginning. I knew they keep me safe) I'm also afraid of heights, open spaces, being under ground, boats, so basically i need to be in a medium room on the ground to be 100% comfortable. I'm also scared of the dark.... And ceiling fans. Anyways yeah, claustrophobia is horrifying... The feeling of being trapped... Not knowing if i could escape...
My parents apparently went here with their friends in college. My dad's friend nearly drowned in the wavepool but the lifeguards did nothing and some random dude saved him. My dad apparently had some gnarly injuries from the alpine slide. The 90s were truly a different time.
To make a long story short when I was 12 I almost drowned in a wave pool (not the action park one) and I had my parent right next to me the whole thing happened so fast she didn't even see me go under, I was also given swimming lessons for quite a few years when I was a kid so I was trained. If it can happen to me it can happen to anyone at any wave pool.
On my first ride on the Alpine Slide the kid ahead of me slipped the track. Two guys came out of nowhere, got his slider, put him back on it and pushed him off like it was nothing....
The 90s were truly a different time? 😂 The 90s weren’t THAT long ago. Let’s bring in the 70s and 80s. Makes more sense.
@@SaraAB87 also isn't the idea of a wave pool actually really stupid
I nearly drowned at an canadian water park. No one helped me.
I can't believe people are longing for the days where parks were super unsafe lmao.
Times change, most of us would rather not lose teeth or break bones while trying to have fun.
They act like amusment parks aren’t fun when we have kings island cedar point magic mountain and hersheypark
It’s that survival bias, lol. Like, yeah, *you* think it was great and fine because you were lucky and never got hurt, but I think the friends and family of those who died have a bit more say in these matters
What fun is it if you don't have a chance to get impaled or die? Why do people ride motorcycles?
@@yepwhatever1142 Bro I'm positive that's not why people ride bikes lmao
We also still lived in buildings with lead paint and asbestos. Americans were generally stupid about safety and regulations back then.
I physically cringed when I saw that 360 degree water slide from the original park. Who could ever think that was a good idea?!
YODO lets make it a good one!
loop slides exist and work well if it's not a vertical loop, Wet N Wild has one that's angled to the side so you stay on the slide instead of falling on your face at the top of the loop, vertical loop is a different story
Twilight have you seen the Action Point movie? Because they did that!
I know Noah's Ark in the Wisconsin dells has an angled loop water slide. I went down it once and the loop itself was fun
Shelby427 was looking for this comment! I’ve been on the wet n wild loop slide a bunch of times and never thought anything of it lol until I seen this shit
I highly recommend the Behind the Bastards episode on Action Park, it's very good and goes a lot more in depth. My favorite story is that it was so common for guests to get scrapes and bruises that the first aid station made a game to play with injured guests. You stood in a circle on the floor, and if you managed to stay inside the circle while they sprayed you down with an alcohol-based disinfectant, you won a prize. Having alcohol sprayed directly into your open wounds FUCKING HURTS, and in the entire run of the park (which had 10) were able to stay inside the circle while their wounds were treated. The prize?
A fucking pen.
Oh my gosh.... this is quite the worst horror of the whole thing. I can tell you this did not happen at every park. I had an injury at a water park, they sprayed me with something that disinfected and did not hurt and I was like 8, so I was sensitive. I did not cry, I got a band aid and I was just fine. Also I assume injuries were super common at most water parks, I lived near one with a wave pool and brush burns just happened on a daily basis to almost everyone its just the nature of the beast. The trick was not to slide up on the entrance as that was where the most rough ground was. Multiply that by the number of wave pools in the USA and you have a large number of injuries right there. I remember seeing a lady with a huge brush burn on her thigh and a huge piece of gauze on her leg covering it.
I don't remember the circle part but it's been almost 30 years since I went there. I only had to go to the med station once and a lifeguard escorted me there after I busted my lip after my friend and I bashed heads together. The collision made me bite down just below my lower lip and my teeth dug in a bit. They cleaned it out and just put a bandaid on it. It was pretty early in the day and we didn't want to waste our money so my buddy's mom left and went to the store and got some superglue and superglued it shut. Once it dried we were back on the rides. Had to keep reapplying it as the day went on since it would start to crack and I'd start bleeding again. lol Still have a really small scar to this day. But this was all my fault. My buddy and I would deflate the raft we were in a little bit so that when we hit the corners on the river ride we'd get higher on the wall and if we were lucky it would throw one of us out. Once out you just slide down the rest of the slide on your own until you hit the next pool and got back into the the raft.
I was there at least 30 times over my high school and college years but I never saw anyone get hurt to the point they needed an ambulance. So the 200 injuries a day thing sound like a bit of a stretch. Scrapes were common but you'd get scraped up, and if it was a little bloody you'd just go to the bathroom clean it out and just go back on the slide. ...but I will say this is a quote from my friend's facebook post when he worked there in the early 90s- "My god, I used to work there. The whole movie will just be people being hauled off to the hospital" Maybe I was only there on good days. lol
Place was a blast and best part of summer.
Big, big disagree. I tried Behind The Bastards at your recommendation and its awful. The hosts are insufferable twats who not even 5 minutes in admit to being lazy degenerates who sleep all day, hate amusement parks and think batman is fascist. Biggest nope in a long time, so kudos to you I guess.
imagine you’re bleeding to death with open-wounds and the doctor puts you in a circle and sprays you with disinfectant, that pain must be insane
"We consulted our in-house clinician, Dr. Mengele..."
"Mom, can we go to Disney World?"
"No we have Disney World at home."
At home: *"THERE'S NOTHING IN THE WORLD LIKE ACTION PARK!"*
Action Park > Disney
Chris Campana in what context because the only context i can think of is controversy
@@ashkhol you've never been there then, if you have been there you would understand
Chris Campana Ah yes dying fun! Broke bone! And bad regulation
*Snap* MY LEG!!!
I know that this channel hasn’t posted in almost six months and this video is six years old but I hope the creator knows I come back and watch this every few months bc I just find it so fascinating and well produced
It's been 4 years and the way that lady says "Broadway" at 2:39 still lives in my head rent free.
*BROAD* way
People also say WIPcream or INsurance
How about the way he says Pocono lol
😆 Look up John Mulaney and Nick Kroll in “Too Much Tuna” or “Oh Hello”…it’ll blow your mind. I never realized it was a real dialect.😆
You can tell by just by the way she pronounces 'Broadway' that she's never actually been to Broadway
I went there when I was 12, almost everyone in our party left injured. Ending up working as an EMT when it was Mountain Creek. Definitely an experience.
The Circle of Life
I saw a lady go down the Aqua Scoot, fall backward, hitting her head on the roller bars, which knocked her out cold. She skidded down into the water and ended up face-down in the water with a pool of blood forming. The teenage lifeguards were absolutely terrified and didn't know to do. A couple of adult guests jumped in and pulled her out. I personally know someone who went down the Alpine Slide drunk, fell off, and broke bones in her hand which had to be replaced with steel rods. I've seen people jump off the cliff and nail someone swimming below with knees to the head. I am an Action Park survivor and these are my stories.
Mike Nice Wow that’s crazy. My dad took us to Mountain Creek in 2010 and we went on the river rapids and the wave pool, etc. I never actually knew about the history of the park just that it used to be called Action Park and that my dad used to go in the 90’s when he was a teenager. I actually went back two summers ago and they finally started implementing helmets on the rapids but my sister jumped off the cliff and when she got out of the water her first comment was about how freezing cold it was even in 100 degree weather in the middle of summer. I witnessed two people having to be saved from the wave pool in the span of 15 minutes. We also went on the slide that’s sort of like a toilet bowl but to the side so you are sliding back and forth on it after you get out of the tube. The guys in the group in front of us all fell of the tube because of how high it was going. Their tube litterally flipped. My cousins, my sister, and I were holding on for dear life so we didn’t fall but we got pretty close a couple of times. The lifeguards were kind of just brushing this all off.
Well you know what they say...
*THerE’S nOThinG iN tHe WOrLd LIkE AcTiON ParK!*
Indian Fried Ice Cream wtf does Canada have to do with any of this
Mike Nice Wow. That’s absolutely crazy. Was that lady okay though? :(
@@Tesco_ definitely not
I can't believe they had people jumping off literal cliffs into pools and that wasn't even the most dangerous thing. This park is wild
What I find the most incredible about the whole story is that the park wasn't closed because of the safety issues and all the injuries and deaths, but because of mostly unrelated mismanagement and economic reasons.
There's a "Welcome to America!" joke in there somewhere.
I suppose that it could, perhaps, be compared to a ski resort in this sense. People have accidents all the times at ski resorts, but that doesn't cause them to be closed. It has been considered a reasonable enough compromise, as long as people are aware of the potential dangers.
@asdfg hjkl should really do some basic googling before talking about this. there were safety regulations at the time, and Action Park were given lenient treatment while routinely violating those regulations.
It wasn't just the fatalities. A local emergency reported treating multiple injury cases caused by the park every day the park was open. Action Park wound up buying the hospital extra ambulances to keep up with the volume. This shows that the deaths weren't mere flukes, but the result of poorly-designed and inadequately-managed attractions.
Ikr. Its like no one paid attention or cared!
They need to make a American horror story season out of this place
Facts
Ask around the area, everybody here hated it when it got toned down.
That would be good lmao
You know what, I would totally watch that season if it happened.
Or channle zero
Oh my god, I *KNEW* this park sounded familiar! My dad almost died in that wave pool! My mom was telling me about it (years later after I was in high school) about how my dad, a strong swimmer who competed throughout his school years, went to the deepest parts and struggled to stay above water. When he finally managed to get to land, where she had been watching helpless, she told me he said, "I didn't think I was gonna make it out".
Even years later, the story still seriously bothered her.
That just sounds insane.
Chaos Theory eh? There is a parallel universe where you wouldn't ever exist. Maybe you would cure cancer or make the Middle East friends with eachother? spoopy.
For reals, wasn't it an option to go underwater and swim along the floor to shallow water?
@@DarkWarchieff I think that the wave mechanism was fairly far down. There's a pretty good chance you might not be able to get that low if it was pushing 3+ft waves in a large pool.
Plus, If you're already in the waves, it's pretty hard to swim down. You could probably do it if you were in the shallower sections, but it seems like it got pretty deep.
Those lifeguards were putting in work, because there definitely should've been more than 6 deaths just based on that pool.
I almost didn't make it out of that pool when I was like 13!! And its still there and running! I will say though, they have a TON more lifeguards and they have to go through pretty extensive deep-water training because of the 16 ft cliff dive pool. After that pool was completed, a law was passed that pools in water parks could be no deeper than 10 ft, but that pool got grandfathered in, so now they have to have well trained lifeguards at multiple vantage points around it.
Yeah most people don't realize that trying to swim in waves above 5 feet tall is pretty much a death sentence if you're not experienced and/or not expecting to struggle to swim in that circumstance. It's basically like swimming in a storm, one of the worst conditions to swim in obviously. By storm I mean the height and power of the waves generated by it.
This seems like a cool concept for a theme park being marketed as the cool extreme theme park with rides that feel like they're from a movie. But you kind of need to ensure there isn't any real danger.
"The 7th lane had an additional hump that would send people flying, resulting in injury."
Why.
People loved being able to push their limits - and they wanted to take advantage of that, I guess. TBH that lane of Surf Hill looked kinda fun.
They keep adding humps that big until somebody dies
@@Silly_Goose-i2j ?
Sounds like it would be fun on paper.
Some people will do anything for another hump.
OSHA employees coming to check the park: ok they can’t be THAT bad.
Action park: *O B S E R V E*
Lol
Nothing actually 100% meets OSHA requirements anyway from my experience in construction. Especially when it comes to safety, or as we call it slowing the job down to put on a harness to get on a one story flat roof. Fuck OSHA, contractors creed. Idk anyone other than government workers that follow their guidelines because their guidelines are pains in the ass most of the time.
@Justin Johnson *Dear god*
The Transmobile. LOL!
Justin Johnson Welp, that really speaks for itself doesn’t it.
How did the original Action Park stay afloat for so long?
My guess is as follows:
"Hey, some people died in that place!"
"Cool! Betcha I can survive!"
"Make that two tickets then!"
One dies, twelve get in as a scare dare. Rinse and repeat.
There _is_ no such thing as bad publicity.
Yep, people really are that stupid.
did u read my mind or something? cause I just sent this video to my boys and said we have to go to the reopened one
pappa lars
Make sure you have a damn good life insurance.
Martin Amarilla
Figured out as much.
Alessandro Bozzi
Stay.... afloat?! Get it?
The thing that gets me the most on every single rewatch is the attitude of, "Oh yeah, I had a fantastic time! What? Compound fracture? Yeah, the shin's sticking out of the leg a bit there, but it's cool, and so maybe I can't feel my left arm and sure my vision isn't working so well any more but I CAN'T WAIT TO COME BACK TO THIS PLACE! Just a few months of physical therapy and I should be in time to go for the start of next year's season!"
Use to go every summer from the early 80's, never saw anyone get a broken bone or get seriously hurt. The video and the folk lore blow this place WIDLY out of proportion. WIth that said, it was the best waterpark I ever went to and everything after it was a disappointment.