Few places from late-20th-century American leisure culture inspire the same mix of nostalgia and disbelief as Action Park.

For anyone who lived within reach of northern New Jersey, the name alone still brings back a rush of adrenaline, a hint of dread, and memories that feel too wild to be real.

The park’s mythology grew from experiences that blended genuine excitement with chaos, creating an environment that shaped an entire generation’s stories—and their scars.

During its peak in the 1980s and 1990s, Action Park became famous for pushing entertainment far beyond conventional limits.

In an era when regulations were looser and experimentation was encouraged, the park earned a reputation as the boldest—and often the most hazardous—playground in America.
It offered attractions that defied logic, operated in an atmosphere where even basic safety often felt optional, and existed under a culture described as “lawless,” run by “drunk teenage employees” and visited by “even drunker teenage guests.”

Rides were sometimes built with limited engineering oversight, producing designs that ignored physics as much as they did common sense.

One of the most infamous examples was the enclosed waterslide that completed a full vertical loop—an attraction both terrifying and emblematic of Action Park’s fearless ambition.

Over time, the park’s legend grew into something larger than the place itself. Its blend of danger and excitement led many visitors to recall it as a surreal mix of childhood freedom and genuine peril.

As one description famously put it, Action Park sat “somewhere between Lord of the Flies and a Saw movie,” a setting so extreme that former guests often questioned whether their memories could possibly be accurate. Word of mouth transformed the park into fertile ground for myths, exaggerations, and unforgettable stories.

The most sobering reality, however, was that “at least six people are known to have died” on its attractions, fueling nicknames such as “Traction Park,” “Accident Park,” “Class Action Park,” and “Friction Park.”

The Park’s History

Action Park’s story began in the mid-1970s, when entrepreneur Eugene Mulvihill, looking to keep the Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski area profitable during the off-season, experimented with new summer attractions.

The first major addition was a 2,700-foot alpine slide introduced in 1976, a ride that quickly became one of the park’s most notorious features.

By 1978, two water slides and a go-kart track joined the lineup under the name “Vernon Valley Summer Park,” and Action Park officially opened on July 4 of that year—complete with a Dolly Parton look-alike contest and a tobacco-juice-spitting competition.

Expansion came quickly. New slides, pools, and recreation areas appeared in 1979, forming the growing Waterworld section.

Soon after, land across Route 94 was transformed into Motorworld, a sprawling zone of gas-powered attractions.

Together, these areas created one of North America’s first large-scale, modern water parks, spanning 250 acres and filled with high-speed rides, unpredictable designs, and a level of freedom unmatched elsewhere.

On one of Action Park’s rides, the Aqua Skoot, riders would plunge down a steep slide on a toboggan.Courtesy of Andy Mulvihill/Penguin Random House.

The park reached its height in the early to mid-1980s, drawing crowds that topped a million visitors each year. On peak weekends, as many as 12,000 guests packed into the grounds.

Even as injuries mounted—emergency room staff recalled treating “five to ten victims” on busy days—park officials maintained that accidents were statistically insignificant due to the massive attendance.

An Action Park tube ride in a photo courtesy of Andy Mulvihill, the author of “Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park.”Courtesy Andy Mulvihill/Penguin Random House.

That confidence began to fade after multiple fatalities, lawsuits, and rising insurance pressures marked the summers of 1982 and 1984, ushering in a period of mounting legal and financial strain.

The Most Dangerous Rides of Action Park

Cannonball Loop

In 1983, Great American Recreation (GAR) constructed an unprecedented enclosed water slide that concluded with a complete vertical loop, emulating the design of a roller coaster.

This resulting attraction, dubbed the “Cannonball Loop,” was reportedly so daunting that employees were offered a premium—$100 (equivalent to approximately $292 in 2024)—to serve as test riders.

In 1985, the infamous Action Park in New Jersey built this waterslide with this kind of loop at the end. It was only open for one month before shutting down due to many injuries.

The slide operated for barely one month in 1985 before the state’s Advisory Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety mandated its closure, a highly unusual action at the time.

A park worker confided in a local newspaper that the ride was responsible for “too many bloody noses and back injuries.” Furthermore, early patrons emerged with severe lacerations.

The surprising cause of these injuries was later identified as riders’ own teeth, which had been knocked out and subsequently lodged into the interior walls of the fiberglass chute.

A former Navy physician’s analysis revealed that riders experienced up to nine Gs of acceleration while traversing the loop.

The infamous loop water slide at Action Park.

Alarmingly, an incident was reported where a rider became stranded at the peak of the loop due to inadequate water pressure.

This necessitated the installation of a ground-level access hatch for future extractions. Those who did brave the Cannonball Loop recount that it was subject to far more stringent safety protocols than other park attractions.

Before riding, patrons were weighed, thoroughly hosed down with cold water, required to remove all jewelry, and meticulously instructed on the precise body positioning needed to successfully complete the trajectory.

A view of the old Cannonball Loop ride at Action Park in the 1980s.

The attraction did see sporadic re-openings over the ensuing years. However, in both the summers of 1995 and 1996, it was quickly shut down after only a few days of operation due to a recurrence of severe injuries, leading to its final and permanent closure.

The Tidal Wave

Opened in 1981, the Tidal Wave Pool quickly became one of Action Park’s most popular—and most dangerous—attractions.

It earned the nickname “The Grave Pool” after multiple drownings, including the first in 1982 and another five years later. What truly set it apart, however, was the staggering number of near-misses and rescues that occurred daily.

Action Park’s deadly wave pool.

The pool stretched 100 feet wide and 250 feet long, holding between 500 and 1,000 people at a time. Every cycle produced 20 minutes of waves, followed by 10 minutes of calm.

At their height, the waves reached roughly 40 inches, overwhelming many guests who had overestimated their swimming ability or failed to notice that the pool gradually deepened toward the back.

On busy weekends, twelve lifeguards stood watch, often pulling as many as 30 people from the water—an extraordinary number considering that most lifeguards elsewhere might perform one or two rescues in an entire season. As one lifeguard later put it, “It was legitimately scary.”

Less buoyant chlorinated water made the wave pool harder to swim in than salt water in the ocean.

Alpine Slide

The Alpine Slide was one of Action Park’s earliest attractions and quickly became synonymous with the park’s chaotic reputation.

Stretching 2,700 feet down the mountain, the ride began beneath the ski-lift line, meaning guests heading uphill often heckled riders—or spat at them—while passing overhead.

Mischief from the lift also caused delays, as some passengers knocked empty sleds off their hooks, requiring staff to retrieve them before riders could start their descent.

Alpine slide.

Each guest rode a small sled equipped with a single control stick that theoretically allowed for braking or acceleration.

In reality, poorly maintained sleds often had only two settings: crawling slow or dangerously fast, with some employees joking that one mode felt like “death awaits.”

The chute itself was built from concrete, fiberglass, and asbestos, which caused serious abrasions whenever riders lost control.

Despite public concerns, park officials frequently defended the slide’s safety record. State data told a different story.

In 1984 and 1985 alone, the Alpine Slide accounted for 14 fractures and 26 head injuries, making it one of the park’s most hazardous attractions.

It also claimed Action Park’s first fatality in 1980, when 19-year-old George Larsson Jr., a former ski-lift operator, was thrown from his sled after it derailed. He struck his head on a rock and died several days later.

Roaring Rapids

Roaring Rapids offered a whitewater rafting experience that, like many Action Park rides, delivered more danger than expected.

While the concept was standard for amusement parks, accident reports filed with the state in 1984 paint a far harsher picture.

Slide built into the side of a mountain.

Riders suffered fractured femurs, broken collarbones, nose injuries, and dislocated joints as rafts slammed unpredictably against the concrete channel and one another.

Tarzan Swing

The Tarzan Swing was deceptively simple: guests grabbed a metal bar suspended from a 20-foot cable, swung out over a spring-fed pool, and released at the highest point.

Long lines formed each day, but the ride’s design came with unexpected risks. In its early years, the takeoff point wasn’t even positioned over water.

Those who let go too soon landed on a cushioned platform before sliding—sometimes painfully—into the pool. The platform was later repositioned so riders began directly above the water.

Taking the Tarzan swing into a cold pool.

Even after the adjustment, issues persisted. Some guests held on too long and scraped their feet against the concrete edge on the far side.

Others entered the water correctly but were stunned by the shockingly cold temperature of the spring-fed pool. The sudden chill immobilized some swimmers, forcing lifeguards to rescue people who couldn’t make it back to the edge. In 1984, one man suffered a fatal heart attack immediately after dropping from the swing.

Factors Behind Its Dangerous Reputation

Supporters of Action Park often defended the park by emphasizing its pioneering nature. It operated at a time when water parks were new and untested, and many designs emerged through trial and error.

As one visitor memorably said, “They seemed to build rides, not knowing how they would work, and [then let] people on them.”

Who remembers racing down Surf Hill? One of the less dangerous rides of the park.

Engineering expertise was inconsistent, maintenance varied by attraction, and debates later emerged over whether corners had been cut to keep costs low.

Staffing also played a major role in the park’s culture. Most employees were teenagers, and oversight was loose. One former worker recalled that even safety-critical training sessions were frequently overshadowed by hazing.

Guests, for their part, often came from areas with limited access to swimming instruction, a factor that contributed to accidents in deeper pools.

Combined with an environment where rules were lightly enforced, visitors embraced the sense of personal control—echoed most famously by the phrase, “In a world filled with no, Action Park became the land of yes.”

Many who left injured were even satisfied with complimentary return passes, reinforcing the park’s cycle of risk and reward.

Closure and Legacy

By the early 1990s, Action Park’s financial foundation had begun to crack. Great American Recreation became entangled in illegal financial schemes, and founder Gene Mulvihill faced criminal charges.

As lawsuits multiplied and attractions closed, the park struggled to survive.  In 1996, Action Park shut its gates for good.

Two years later, the property was sold to Intrawest, which overhauled the entire facility, removing unsafe rides and redesigning the grounds before reopening it as Mountain Creek Waterpark.

Despite its closure, Action Park’s cultural legacy endured. For many who grew up in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, it became a defining part of childhood.

A long-circulated local saying declared, “You’ve been seriously injured at Action Park,” a badge of honor among those who navigated its infamously rough attractions. Some credit the park with shaping their childhood. In 2000,

An undated photo of the former Cannonball Falls ride at Mountain Creek Waterpark in Vernon, New Jersey.

Matthew Callan wrote: “Action Park made adults of a generation of Tri-State area kids who strolled through its blood-stained gates, by teaching us the truth about life: It is not safe, you will get hurt a lot, and you’ll ride all the way home burnt beyond belief.”

Action Park’s Alpine Slide and accompanying sign.

Writer Chris Gethard echoed the same sentiment, reflecting on the park’s impact: “Action Park was a true rite of passage for any New Jerseyan of my generation.

When I get to talking about it with other Jerseyans, we share stories as if we are veterans who served in combat together…

I consider it a true shame that future generations will never know the terror of proving their grit at New Jersey’s most dangerous amusement park.”

A prototype of the Bailey Ball. Insert one human. Roll down mountain.

Chairlift to alpine slide.

The Sky Lift and the Alpine Slide at Action Park in Vernon in the 1980s. Photo courtesy of Andy Mulvihill / Penguin Random House.

Getting hang time on Surf Hill. Courtesy Of Andy Mulvihill.

Cannonball Loop, the infamous looping water slide, was only opened for brief periods in Action Park’s existence.

(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / Flickr / Pinterest / Courtesy Andy Mulvihill, the author of “Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park”.)