I begin this podcast episode by talking about my own trips to Action Park. I was so excited to go as a kid when I visited and got to go because it was close to where my uncle lived in Northern New Jersey. My mother was not a big fan of amusement parks unless they were connected to Disney, and she had started reading enough about Action Park to be worried. My uncle did not have the same concerns, so he took me there and I had a great time. I rode what I could, brought home brochures, talked about it all summer, and assumed I would keep going back. That didn’t happen.
Then I talk about how Action Park came to be. The story starts with Gene Mulvihill, Great Gorge, Vernon Valley, and the problem of what a ski resort is supposed to do when the weather gets warm. The Alpine Slide came first, and from there the place kept growing into something much larger. Action Park was built around participation, which meant you were not simply strapped into a ride and moved along. You had some control, or at least the feeling of control, and that was a big part of what made the park so exciting.
Of course, that same idea also made the place dangerous. In the episode, I get into the rides people still talk about, including the Alpine Slide and the Cannonball Loop. I also spend time on the wave pool, Motor World, and some of the other attractions that helped make Action Park feel less like a normal amusement park and more like its own strange world. Looking back now, it is much easier to see how quickly excitement could turn into something else.
The darker part of the Action Park story is impossible to avoid. I talk about the deaths and injuries connected to the park, along with the lawsuits and insurance problems that followed it for years. Some of what happened there is shocking even if you already know the general reputation. The park has become famous as a place that probably should not have been allowed to operate the way it did, and there is plenty of truth in that version of the story.
But I did not want this episode to be only about the worst things that happened there. For a lot of kids from New Jersey and the surrounding area, Action Park was a summer trip people talked about afterward. It was a place that felt enormous, especially if you were young enough to believe you could eventually get to everything. The danger is part of the story, but so is the memory of wanting to go back.
That is what makes Action Park such a strange subject for me. The stories about the park are real, and some are worse than I understood when I was young. At the same time, my own connection to the place is still tied to being a kid who thought he had found the most exciting park in New Jersey. My last trip there had already happened before I knew it, which may be part of why the place stayed so large in my mind. Action Park does not fit neatly into one version of itself, and that is why it still feels worth talking about.
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Production Notes
This is the 366th episode of the Retroist Podcast and episode 17 of Season 18.
All my trips to Action Park came through my uncle who lived nearby. My mother had read enough to be worried, but I only knew it as this huge park in New Jersey that sounded more exciting than anything I was used to.
Action Park was one of those places that was too big to finish in a day. That was part of the appeal. You went home thinking about what you had done, but also about everything you still wanted to try next time.
I brought home brochures from Action Park because I wanted my friends to understand what I had been talking about all summer. That feels very much like being a kid before the internet, when a pamphlet from a place was proof that your story was real.
My mother never sat me down and explained why she did not want me going back to Action Park. She had seen the headlines, and I think she knew more than she wanted to tell me. At the time, I just thought a return trip had been postponed.
Gene Mulvihill is such a strange central figure for this story because Action Park really does feel like an extension of his personality. It was ambitious, stubborn, reckless, and somehow persuasive enough to keep going long after most places would have been stopped.
I like that the whole thing started as a practical ski resort problem. You have lifts, hills, trails, and a lot of months with no snow. The answer most people would have found was probably modest. Action Park was not modest.
The Alpine Slide is the perfect beginning for Action Park because it explains the whole idea in one ride. You were going downhill on a little cart with a brake, and the difference between fun and trouble depended partly on you.
Action Park sold the feeling of control or that was the marketing. That was the hook. The park made you feel like you were not just a passenger, even when the amount of control you actually had was questionable.
There is a version of Action Park that sounds almost impossible now, because so many of the rides depended on trust. Trust the equipment, trust the teenager running the ride, trust the person behind you not to crash into you, and trust yourself to know when you had gone far enough.
The Cannonball Loop is the attraction that almost feels like a joke someone made after hearing about Action Park. Then you find out it was real, people tested it, and for years it sat there like a monument to the park’s entire way of thinking.
The wave pool may be the scariest thing in the episode because it does not sound ridiculous at first. A wave pool feels normal until you understand how crowded it could get, how strong the waves were, and how often lifeguards were pulling people out. Luckily I survived it.
Motor World is the part of Action Park that I wish I had experienced more fully. As a kid, the idea of driving tanks, cars, and other little vehicles around a separate section of the park sounded almost too good to be true.
One of the strangest parts of the Action Park story is that the bad headlines did not immediately stop people from going. The park kept drawing huge crowds, which says a lot about the time, the area, and how differently people processed risk.
The insurance story changes the way I look at Action Park. Ride accidents are terrible enough, but the idea of creating a fake safety net around the park makes the whole thing feel much darker.
I do not think Action Park can be explained only through the documentaries and horror stories. Those stories are true, but they leave out the ordinary summer memory of going there and spending the ride home thinking about when you could return.
For people from New Jersey and the surrounding area, Action Park became a shared reference. Even if you only went once, you understood why people kept talking about it. The place had a reputation even before it became a legend.
The closing of Action Park feels strange because as a kid I assumed it was permanent. Places like that seemed too large to go away. Then one day you realize the version you knew, or thought you would get back to, is already gone.
What makes Action Park interesting to me is that both versions of the story are true. It was dangerous in ways that should not be brushed aside, but it was also a place that gave a lot of kids memories they still talk about decades later.
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Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.
Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.
