Defunctland: The History of Action Park 

I love how they had test dummies coming out MISSING THEIR HEADS and they still deemed the ride as safe

"The lake had a large population of snakes", well that sounds like good fun for the little ones.

"There's nothing in the world like Action Park!" *GOOD.*

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.

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."

“Jackass: The Theme Park”

The fact that they spent money on NEW AMBULANCES instead of safety measures??? I laughed out loud at how absolutely ridiculous that is.

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.

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.

When I went as a kid, the longest line in the park was first aid

Bruh that cannonball loop tho. Are they expecting me to curl into a ball like Sonic?

You gotta love a place where the slingshot, one of today’s most notoriously unsafe attractions, is the safest ride at the park lol

"Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make" - Action Park Owner

Everyone's gangsta till the water slide has a l o o p

I am convinced that this park is the reason that New Jersey has such strict theme park laws today.

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.

OSHA: surely they can't break EVERY rule. Action park:

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, 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.)

"Greg, keep it professional." Why do I have the feeling Greg is someone who would spike someones drink.

When an attraction called "The Kamikaze" can be described as "safer" in comparison to the rest, you've got a problem.

Hamilton: “Everything is legal in New Jersey.” My husband, who grew up going to Action Park: *nods vigorously*

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.

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.

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.

"In response to the high volume of guests visiting the hospital, Action Park bought Vernon NJ new ambulances."

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-

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.

Rollercoaster Tycoon wasn't intended to be an instruction manual.

That cannonball loop gave me anxiety just by looking at it. The fact that dummies came out headless should have been a sign.

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.

Can we take a second to appreciate the absolute back breaking work these 80's attendants were doing carrying 80s camcorders around a damn water park?

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!

This place seems like something out of an old Simpsons episode

my grandma was looking through a photo album and found pictures of her and her sisters at action park. can't believe i never knew my grandma actually experienced this place.

I feel like this is the best showcase of why rides in theme parks these days are engineered and calculated so rigorously

"I have a picture of a mother going down the Alpine Slide with an infant in her arms" THAT'S TERRIFYING

"Die Like a Man!" is not really a great marketing slogan.

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. 😢

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.

"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?

I love that I was watching this on the TV in the living room and my dad walked in and was like "oh yeah I used to go there as a kid" and my mom just look at him and asked "how are you alive?"

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.

Get wwwwild Get wwwwet Get kkkkilled

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?

"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

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.

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

“There’s nothing in the world like action park!” GOOD.

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!

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?

"There's Nothing in the World Like Action Park!" GOOD.

I love how the slide named after Japanese suicide bombers is actually one of the safer slides.

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.

The fact that no one was sent to jail for this atrocity is disgusting

they really said: ‘well, compared to how many guests we see a year, our death toll is quite low’ WHAT

"Get wild! "Get wet!" "Possibly drown!

I just want to say, my father and his friends used to spend their childhoods here, and they actually have a crazy story about Geronimo Falls. One of them rode the slide backwards, and had his pants flown right off of him…..and this lead to probably the only time in the park’s history where people were actually kicked out.

The fact that the human slingshot was actually the safest ride in the park is probably the funniest part of this whole thing.

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.

"There's nothing in the world like action park" **camera pans to room full of disabled and dead people**

Never heard of Action Park before so I was unprepared for what felt like an investigational video with the ominous music and the various injuries and death that the attractions caused. Felt like I was watching some kind of lore video for a horror game with how poorly handled the park was.

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.

This is literally the place that invented parents saying “if your friend jumps off the bridge, would you too?”

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!

The exposed live wire is the one danger that strikes me as legitimately damning on a design level, maybe the loop-de-loop slide as well but while prone to causing injuries it isn't quite putting people stupidly close to death from one slip-up all the time. Most of the other problems were damaged or shoddy equipment that should have been safe, and a few attractions are risky but risks I feel people should be allowed to take. The Wave pool, dangerous to poor swimmers but not something that inherently shouldn't operate. Water cold enough to send people into shock, usually doesn't and that's a danger people risk when they just go swimming in nature as people often do, it's not really a man-made death trap. But you really shouldn't be able to get electrocuted by falling off a kayak.

Man I wish they’d have let you do the “official” documentary on Action Park. You do things a lot classier and with better use of primary sources. Ironically by being “PG” you make you’re investigation and presentation much more adult and professional. Longtime fan @Defunctland keep up the good work and stay true to your style.

Action park is literally that one spongebob episode when glove world was breaking down

In the 80's, we called it Accident Park. We used to go just to watch the accidents.

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 can't get over that news anchor in the very last clip. Did HR not exist back then? I just know he was a handsy dude.

Wow I hope anna the reporter got herself into a better job.

The amount of times I go, “Wait, did you just say “large population of snakes?’” Is unparalleled

"There's nothing in the world like Action Park!" You got that right.

I think the most absurd thing about the action park story is that instead of doing anything about injuries, they bought more ambulances for the city.

Get _WILD_ Get _WET_ Get *_D E D_*

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 survived action park and he said it so casually when I was talking about dangerous water parks. I honestly think it’s so cool

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.

RollerCoaster Tycoon in real life.

“That also had a large population of snakes.” That’s freaking mental to allow people to ride boats in there.

You guys left out the part where the original owner tried to create his own insurance company to manage Action Park specifically.

My dad grew up in New Jersey when this was operating. Fortunately for him he never went, but he knew enough about it that he still to this day refers to it as "Traction Park"

According to the song, "There's nothing in the world like Action Park."... That's probably not such a bad thing...

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!"

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

According to the documentary on this the kid who died on the alpine ride was not an employee but a guest. Gene lied to the media saying he was. He had worked for the ski resort one winter but no longer was one.

They need to make a American horror story season out of this place

"It's like coming to Broadway" I'm sorry what?

I would love to see a documentary on the kids who worked at the park. That would be amazing!!

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 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.

Final Destination:The Park

Man. I remember the day this game out. Was my second week at my new job. First one that paid above $10 a hour.

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!"

I don't know which was more disturbing, the park's complete lack of safety or that guy at the end.

having to add a hatch to the slide because of too many stuck riders somehow wasn't a red flag

6:48 and that is why most wave pools use salt water instead of fresh water

Imagine working as a lifeguard here, that'd be an absolute nightmare