Topic: And Here I Was Thinking There Was Absolutely Nothing Worthwhile In New Jersey

[trapeze]

Okay, so I was wrong. There is at least one thing in New Jersey that doesn't suck.

“At Action Park, it felt like you were in some crazy guy’s backyard,” says Dave Schlussman, a 30-year-old from Greenpoint, who in elementary school belly-flopped so hard out of a failed backflip off the park’s Tarzan Swing — just a swing over a freezing cold pool — that his eyeballs felt bruised. “The rides defied any kind of procedure.”

The place was as packed with urban legends as it was with lawsuits: Some — snakes in the rapids ride — were most likely fiction; others — tales of the owner bribing employees with cash to test drive some of the rides for safety or starting his own insurance company — were real.

Action Park 80's Live Action and Cannonball loop

This would most definitely qualify as one of my life's regrets, that I never experienced this place and probably never will.

Action Park 1983 TV Commercial

So, just remember, the next time that someone says that everything about New Jersey sucks you will be able to say, "Well, there's this one thing..."

The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever (Full Length)

“The overall conclusion that the people who went to Action Park have is that it was a phenomenal place,” says Andy Mulvihill, who now owns the resort and is the son of the park’s founder Gene Mulvihill, who died in 2012. “I don’t get approached by people telling me what a terrible place it was. The strength of that passion far outweighed the negative things.”

“Negative things” is putting it lightly. One report claimed that in 1987 five to ten people per day were being brought into the emergency room from the park. The New Jersey Herald reported the park actually bought the town of Vernon additional ambulances to keep up with demand.

Deaths were caused by, among other things, electrocution in a kayak ride, drowning in the wave pool and a heart attack in ice-cold water.

[Glock32]

I am glad I was able to grow up in the 80s. Stuff was still fun back then. The safety nazis hadn't quite ruined everything yet. One thing that always strikes me is the difference in toys between then and now. The toy section at Kmart was a cornucopia of awesome. Badass real looking toy guns were in every toy store, totally nonchalant. I remember buying a toy AK-47 in Big Lots that looked absolutely real, no safety orange crap all over it.

This amusement park must have been awesome back then.

[trapeze]

One of the ski areas in my part of the state has an alpine coaster. It's not made of concrete. It's made of fiberglass sections that are all bolted together. But other than that it is essentially identical to that described in the story above. There are two tracks side by side so that you can race another rider. The cars have a handbrake to slow them down. No helmets. No seat belts (not that it would matter if the car left the track at speed). The ride operators do allow a fairly good amount of time between riders taking off downhill. There is absolutely nothing to stop you from wiping out at high speed other than your own sense of caution. I have gone down that thing quite a few times and I have always endeavored to go as fast as I can without killing myself. There are several hairpin turns that, if taken at sufficient speed, will guarantee trip-to-the-hospital injury or perhaps even death. How do the operators get away with this? I am guessing that they are able to shelter under the same laws that prevent lawsuits over skiing injuries and deaths. But, hey, it's fun. It's fun because it's fast, mildly dangerous and there is some small sense of "anything can happen" that is ever present.

I sure wish we had a water park with a similar attitude. Like the one above. I'd be there several times a summer. I really appreciate a place with the attitude to do this:

They’re adding a $1 million new Zero G water slide, which they say will be the world’s tallest of its kind when it opens later this summer pending inspection. Riders stand in a capsule, where a trapdoor drops them into the 100-foot-tall slide.

I am glad I was able to grow up in the 80s. Stuff was still fun back then.

I grew up in the sixties and seventies. We grew up in a virtual cornucopia of danger. We lived for the two times a year that fireworks were sold. We shot Roman candles and rockets at each other. We would light firecrackers in our hands and when we couldn't throw them away quickly enough the feeling would usually come back to our fingers in about five or ten minutes. I remember playing with my friends in the sewer system of New Orleans. I remember pedaling my bicycle (a Schwinn Sting Ray, of course) from my house to the ferry that went across the Mississippi River, going across and spending the afternoon in the French Quarter...just me and a friend or two...grade school age kids...and the only "danger" we worried about was the remote possibility of being shaken down for pocket change by the downtown black kids. When I was a kid growing up in Ventura, CA a friend who lived down the street used to swipe ammo from his father and we would cook the stuff off one at a time with a fire that we built in the woods. I remember playing on a train trestle that crossed a bayou/creek in the Houston area...at least thirty feet up...and climbing the steel high power electric towers next to it. When I lived in Canada I could (and did) purchase extremely dangerous animal traps at a local hardware store, no questions asked. I remember experimenting with homemade explosives. Lawn darts. Chemistry sets as toys. Model rocketry, unsupervised. I used power tools at a very early age and, remarkably, never lost an appendage. I was given a brand new Wham-O Boomerang as a child...one of the few things that genuinely scared the sh*t out of me...I think of it whenever I see "The Road Warrior" and the guy's fingers get chopped off. We built truly dangerous stuff in junior high shop...like real working crossbows that fired real steel bolts. And, of course, I remember never wearing a seat belt, never wearing a bike helmet, building tree houses incredibly high off the ground, sleeping in the back window of the car on long trips, posing for pictures on the edge of cliffs while on vacations in national parks, being given a BB gun with absolutely zero instruction or training...all kinds of stuff that would land any parent today in jail for negligence.

All of these things, and the realization in retrospect of how ridiculous most of them were, prepared me to be a much more attentive parent. I didn't/don't pad or helmet my kids and I don't freak out if they aren't wearing a seatbelt for every moment they are in the car but I most definitely keep a closer watch on what they did/do.

[Libertas]

That was pretty good...had I had access top place like that I would have had a blast, like Trap I grew up in the 60's and 70's...no helmets, no belts...it was balls-to-the-wall danger and fun...so while we didn't have a park like that, we made our own fun...we turned anyting we could get our hands on into a dangerous toy...a go (death) cart to hurtle down a road or a steep hill, going off jumps with our bikes and with the winner being he who could ride longest, fastest or jump highest...if we went home clean and unbloodied we obviously didn't have fun that day.  And it didn't matter the time of year...winter just meant discovering new modes of going faster, farther and higher...we probably all have had as many concussions as any cry-baby athlete of today...we used to jump off train tressels and road bridges into creeks and rivers...we used to play in construction sites a lot, man, can a kid with a lot of energy and creativity get into a buttload of dangerous fun at construction sites!  We used to walk and run on partially erected walls, nothing to step on but the top edge of a 2x4 frame and rocks, nails, cement, wood scraps and dirt awaiting below...we used to get real firecrackers back in the day...M-80's...the good ones that really went bang, man did we blow up a lot of stuff, old models, small trees, crap we found...whatever, and we never lost a limb or digit...we used to make Polish Cannons and shoot flaming tennis balls at each others heads and crotch, we made tree forts and ground forts and had all-out wars with dirt clods, rocks, sticks...used old innertubes and whatever we could find for sling shots...we made rafts and floated them on ponds and resivoirs, we speared carp in creeks, we fished normal like a lot too, and shot many a small critter...we had it pretty dang good, a lot of blood, bumps and bruises and lost skin along the way (some broke bones, not me, not counting cartilage) and we wouldn't have had it any other way!

[ToddF]

My community pool lost it's high dive around 1980...the low diving board about 10 years later.

At least you can still wade in the kiddy pool.   

[trapeze]

And when I think of the terror that we embarked upon in the high school years...

I never will forget driving around in a Chevy van with the side door rigged to open quickly to reveal a door frame mounted water balloon sling shot. Some victims were literally knocked off their feet with well placed shots.

We were very bad, we were. Today that would be an instant lawsuit. And jail time, too, if caught. Knockout game, indeed.

[AlanS]

Between the nanny state and lawyers, I'm surprised a place where you can have actual fun even exists.