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5. The Experience

Image - Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr

At first you wonder why any sane person would ever attend such a disaster-prone amusement park. If you think it through and remember what it was like to be a kid, though, things start to make a little more sense. Almost every teenager wants to show how tough and brave they are, even if they tend to make stupid decisions to prove their toughness and courage. You can’t really train a child not to test his limits; all you can do is make sure they’re going to be safe. To parents and guardians, Action Park might have seemed like a better option than the kids hanging out at Old Mill Pond and falling off trees and cliffs or into water with jagged rocks. After all, it was a state-sanctioned theme park. Even if there were signs that Action Park was dangerous, it was easier for parents and guardians to believe that it was safe. 

In reality, Action Park is akin to an industrialized version of the stupid risks kids take. Having a place devoted to taking those risks made everything more memorable and brought things to an epic scale. It’s easy to see why people who were teenagers at the time (at least the ones who didn’t have major accidents) have such fond memories of such a big safety hazard. I almost wish I could go to the original Action Park myself. I’m far too chicken to try anything dangerous myself, but seeing that kind of atmosphere full of kids being kids would energize and excite me like little else.

The viral documentary The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever found at Daily Motion best sums up the love people had and still have for Action Park. You get to watch and listen to (sometimes somewhat famous) individuals explain why it was all worth it to them even with its obvious perils. I highly encourage you to check it out to get a deep sense of what made the park so special to so many, despite or sometimes because of all its obvious danger.

Here are some statements and comments from people who remember the good things about Action Park, and badly miss it.

Rich Mapes

"And don't forget the go-carts in MotorWorld. The best part was they all had this steel metal ring going around each car. That meant it was essentially a bumper car. The trick was to keep an eye out for the faster cars and then grab them when your turn came up. Then… as you were driving… pull up behind a slower car and then knock into the back portion of their car. They would spin out while you wizzed away! Hooray! So many destroyed cars and great memories... I don't care what anyone says, I wish the place was still in business. I'd be willing to take my chances..."

Thomas Donadio

"I still remember being able to be served action beer (light or dark) at age 17 then riding the go carts... If you new how and without burning yourself on the muffler you could reach behind you and pull the throttle past where the gov was set and just take off past the other kids! And i swear I was lucky enough to ride the loop water slide...only remember it was real dark then suddenly your face was smashed into the top part of the slide as you went through the loop and you came out with a nasty headache.... Good times!"

Matthew Callan

"I regret that, if I have children someday, I won't be able to toughen them up by taking them to that hallowed battle ground. Nothing acquaints a person with the harshness of reality faster than zooming down a water slide, laying on your stomach on a 10-millimeter-thick foam mat, accelerating to Mach 5, and hitting two inches of slimy liquid. 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."

Some, though, would rather the park had stayed closed forever:

Michelle:

"I worked on the Alpine Slide way back when. It was so bad! We were stationed at different parts of the slide with radios to say hold the track if people slowed down or stopped. People often stopped and got out of their carts to take pictures! They would leave their carts on the track. Although we would radio up to hold the track, they never did. So there would be a pile up."

"One person suffered a concussion because he was getting back in his cart as someone was coming down... He lost his footing and hit the track with his head (obviously). Another one was thrown from his cart when he slowed down waiting for the next person who he was with to catch up. They were going so fast that when they caught up they hit him so hard he flew out of his cart and broke his arm."

"Other than that there were many, many, many skin burns from the slide! People went too fast, lost control. Many didn't speak English so she we told them to keep going, they didn't understand and slowed down...what a MESS! I hope they leave it closed!"

7. The Spinoffs

Image - Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr

Action Park was so popular (and so impressively able to avoid lawsuits for quite a while) that parks began to spin out of its basic concept. In April of 1980 Great American Recreation formed Ponoco Action Park in Tannersville, Pennsylvania. It contained a Waterworld with slides and tubing, plus a Motorworld land that had a lot of the same attractions, like the go-karts and LOLA race cars, as the original Action Park. It closed near the end of 1991, and the rides were all torn down to build Crossings Premium Outlets. However, the company Pocono Action Park Inc. continues to be an active business, so maybe Great American Recreation has plans to reopen in some way. 

A subsidiary of Great American Recreation named Stony Point Recreation opened a theme park called Action Mountain in Pine Hill, New Jersey in June of 1984. It had a lot of attractions, including tube slides, swimming pools, a diving platform, bumper boats, go-karts, an alpine slide and a lot more. Within two years of opening Stony Point Recreation managed to accumulate almost $400,000 in back taxes that it owed the town Action Mountain was based in, so they had to sell the park. The location was remade into the Pine Hill Gold Course in 1999. 

Even though both parks closed pretty quickly, the fact that the Action Park concept spun off into two other volumes speaks volumes about how beloved the original was. They couldn’t quite recreate the magic or the interest of Action Park, but it still says a lot.

 
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