Doomed to Fail - Ep 210: Do Whatever You Want!! - Action Park, New Jersey

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Oh, the sweet simplicity of an unregulated water park in the 1980s! You 100% would get injured, you might die, but you'd have an awesome time. Let's discuss Gene Mulvihill and his obsession with creating bigger, better, more dangerous water park attractions! We'll dig into the details and the danger. Strap in (actually, there are no straps, so just hang on) for a wild ride!Sources:Calss Action Park - https://www.classactionpark.com/Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement ParkBy Andy Mulvihill and Jake Rossen - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/action-park-fast-times-wild-rides-and-the-untold-story-of-americas-most-dangerous-amusement-park_jake-rossen_andy-mulvihill/23943413/?#edition=25571824&idiq=43605203 Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California Versus Hortonthal James Simpson Case number B-A-019 And so my fellow Americans Ask not What your country can do for you Ask what you can do for you Taylor, it's been a while, how are you?

Oh my God, I'm good. How are you? Stop yelling. This is my radio voice. It's very loud. I'm going to turn my volume down. I'm good. Have you been following the news

in Texas. It's awful. It's all I think about. I cannot stop thinking about those girls. I just want to die. They're up to 80 people. I've never been so sad of my fucking life. I just, you know, I just took my daughter to Girl Scout camp for a week. And, I mean,

the world is such a mess, everyone, that Florence's Girl Scout camp here in California, she went for a week and it was beautiful and fine, but two weeks later, it was evacuated for a, because there was a fire. Nuts. And then, like, this just is everyone okay

yeah everyone was fine they evacuated of like an abundance of caution and all those things but like um I just kept I can't

I literally slept with Florence last night just holding her because I can't stop thinking about those girls just swept away that's the absolute worst thing it's two hours west

of where we are where I am right now even here it was it was kind of unbelievable so I got home on Friday from Dallas and I've said this to several people, not even joking.

I'm pretty sure I drove through a tornado. Like that was the most terrifying highway drive I've ever had. There was one point, because everybody was going like maybe like 20, 30 miles per hour because you couldn't see. Everybody had their blinkers on or their, um, was it raining or was it just like dusty? Raining, dusty, windy. The car is getting whipped around and there was one part of the drive where I was next to a semi. There's a car like right there in front of me to my left.

And it must have hit a huge puddle of water. because this sheet of water slammed into the windshield so hard. Like I audibly yelped. And like, I lost rear traction for a second. I was like, dude, like that could have been it. Like, I could have gone to that semi right then and there. And then when I got here, legit, two solid days of rain, solid days of rain. The lake where I used to live in that town, Lago Vista, it's up 18 feet over just those two days.

Is that nuts? That's what happened to those girls. That river went up 20 feet in the middle of the night. It's the worst. It's so sad. It's just the saddest thing I can think of is sending your child to camp to have a good time and having heard them die like that together. Just, I can't.

It's so awful. Yeah. Yeah. Basically the worst thing I've ever heard. I'm glad you're okay. Shout out to HGB. HGB, like people who aren't in Texas now get why we love them so much. Like they literally have like all these like emergency response vehicles taking food and

supplies and all that is our grocery store but it's like they're so invested in like the community it's really awesome and i just unplugged my monitor so give me a second okay um well while you're doing that hello everyone welcome to doomed to fail we bring new history's notorious disasters and epic failures and we just have so much content because it's constantly adding to our repertoire the terrible terrible world that we live in i actually have really fun 10 for us today that is terrible great and I think I go first today so you do but then here's what I was wondering should we because we're doing every other week should we just go every other every other or doesn't doesn't matter I'm doing I feel like that maybe it makes sense because it's not as often

yeah that way you don't have to we don't have to be like or it's not the same voice over and over again why don't you go first okay cool um wait let me first can I first tell you what happened on the 4th of July. Yes. Sorry, I'm still trying to plug things in. So we, my cousin Lindsay and her husband,

Brad, were here. They're awesome. They listen to the show. They're the best. And they were coming in at like 8 o'clock on Friday, which was the 4th of July. And we were like,

okay, we're going to be at the high school in town. They have a great fireworks show in town every year. It didn't happen. They turned off all the lights at 9 o'clock. And then they were like, sorry, we have some technical difficulties. And it didn't go off until 11.

Everybody had already left. That sucks. that's okay um we had no fireworks because everything was rained right that's true so at least all had fireworks you just couldn't see them because you were asleep yeah and then the next day our confirmation caught on fire and then we went to the pool and there was a fire alarm at the pool and it was just like loud and annoying it was just like a whole bunch of stuff i'm gonna tell you something and you got to promise me not to judge me and i'm realizing that i'm asking that of our entire audience here so you can't judge me audience okay

to promise. My house is pretty tidy. It's pretty tidy. It's pretty clean. Like, it's not a dumb. I actually keep it pretty tidy. I have one of those curig coffee things, and I don't know what it was, like a week ago. I opened it to put a curate again. I had one in the morning, and I opened it again, like an hour or two later to have another

one because I'm one of those two coffee a day guys. And there was like a baby roach inside. Oh, no. And from that day forward, I have not, I literally picked. it up went to the dumpster threw it in and from that day forward i started buying um the pre-made uh cold press prude things and that's all i've drank i have not had hot coffee since that experience oh gosh that's awful yeah i'm sorry what happened to you yeah i'm sorry for myself because um i thought about it a lot that kind of ruined my day yeah i know that's day ruining yeah no we we had insurance on ours

because i was buy that like six dollar insurance and i was i want to buy something so we get a new one good there you go good plan um anyway we also saw the new Jurassic Park have you seen it yet is it stupid it's got to be no no it's good i mean like it's stupid because Jurassic Park is stupid and like the science is not stupid drastic pork is not stupid it could happen it's not but um no i mean like it's like the science isn't sciencing but other than that it's great I once Chris Pratt got involved I kind of lost interest it just turned into like a traditional Hollywood like it it felt like a Marvel movie and I was like this is not fun anymore I liked those those I think those were fine my kids really like them but this is different he's not in it anymore oh well then it might be worth seeing I really want to go see F1 I hear really good things about F1 I have like not heard anything about it oh Brad I don't know I just feel like I don't know if I don't know if I want to need to see a another Brad Pitt movie. I might be all set.

What's wrong with you? Brad Pitt's the best. You know? He's amazing. I don't know. I think I'm all set. I think I'm good. He was the best list of it.

Right. So I think I'd see that again. Have you watched it recently? That's like, a movie's like an hour long. It's just like astounding that it's not a three hour long movie. Interview with a vampire? Yeah, it's just not that long.

Like you just like assume that three hours, right? It's not. I'm going to look at that. I am going to start talking about my topic. It's not. It's two hours. Just like feel, but feel so much longer. Yeah.

Yeah, I definitely thought it was longer than that. Yeah, it just feels like six hours. So much happens. Anyway, okay, now that I've told you all of those things, Queen of the Damned with Aaliyah was the sequel to interview with a vampire? No way. Huh. What?

Is this our new segment called Let's Just Listen to Taylor Googling things in real time? We've done this before. It's not new. I had no idea. It says it follows a legendary vampire Lestat, who's not played by Tom Cruise, who has reinvented himself as a rock star in the contemporary music scene. It's not wild. That's very stupid.

Anyway. Wow. Anyway, I had no idea. So let's go. This is loosely considered to be a sequel. Anyway, it's my turn. I'm going to talk about something that is a request from our friend Morgan, which is fun. And I got to read a book and watch a movie.

And I'm just going to tell you, let's talk about Action Park in New Jersey. Ooh, this would be good. Mm-hmm. So you've probably seen the movie Class Action Park. No, I've not seen. I've watched a lot of YouTube videos about Action Park because it's like very famous. That's fair. That's fair.

I also read a book by the owner, Gene Mulvahill, by his son, Andy, about like building it. But essentially Action Park was a water park, which was a sister to a ski resort in Vernon Township, New Jersey. It was open from like the 70s all the way through the 90s. And it was close enough to New York City. You could get there. It was cheaper than like six flags, definitely cheaper. than bringing a family down to Disney, and it was like a water park and different rides. And like the joke is like the class action part is funny because, you know,

eventually people did sue them into the ground. But for a long time, you really couldn't sue them. They wouldn't settle and they were just like threatened you and you wouldn't be able to actually get anything after you were inevitably injured at the park. Oh yeah. That's a way to do it, the American way. Yeah. They gave them to death.

Uh-huh. So we'll talk about the beginnings, the owner. And then some of the rides and then the downfall and what happened. But essentially in the 1970s, there's this dude named Gene Mulvill. And he's like an idea guy. Like he's like, oh, let's do this thing. Let's do this thing. And he has six kids and those kids are always working for him.

You know, I feel like he's like in the backyard, building a tree house one day and then like doing something else the next day and just like a very like has a lot of energy. Yeah. If you can picture that guy. He sounds to me like the guy who created that one park. in Cedar Rapids where that ride was that I told you about where the kid was decapitated going on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like that guy. He's like, yeah, just, let's just do it. If we make it extreme and fun and interesting and cool, then like, doesn't matter how many kids are killed. Yeah, exactly. He's like, it doesn't, like, you can, it's supposed to be exciting.

Yeah, like the idea is at action park, you can control the action yourself. So it's up to, and he was like, that is enough that people are like accepting the risk, you know, And it's like, they're not really. Because, like, theme parks are assumed risk. They're not, like, no, no, they're not assumed. There's an assumed risk at a theme park, but you're also, like, you assume that you're safe, too, right? Yeah, like, the entire point is to simulate danger, not to be in danger. Exactly.

But this is, this is actually very, very dangerous. So, Gene does some stuff in the city. He's like a money guy, works with, like, mutual funds and venture capital and wants to invest in all these things. and he sees that people are making money from resorts. And so he buys this ski resort in New Jersey. It's the Vernon Valley Great Gorge ski area. And it's great. And it makes money.

But the problem with that is it only makes money in the winter because of skiing. Right. That makes sense. So he decides there has to be more we can do with this property, with this area. And again, like, keep in mind that I think I say this later, but like, Disneyland is flat. You know, like there is, it is. not a mountainous area, but this is like a mountainous area. So some of the rides that you go to, you're climbing a mountain to get on it, and the side

is the mountain, you know? You clearly have never been on the Matahorn. Well, besides the Matterhorn, there are any real mountains that Disney? Right. Yeah. Are there other mountains in Florida at all in Disney World? I was waiting for you to tell me the Mata horn is made out of styrofoam, but like, we'll go with this.

It might be. Um, so this is like also just the beginning of water parks being a thing. There are some, and there's like Disney World and there's like some six flags around. Um, but then like we just said, like the difference is like everything is controlled. Like you're in a very controlled environment when you're even like when you're on the Matterhorn, when you're on like, what's called, um, the one where it's dark at Disneyland? Space Mountain. Space Mountain. And then so what Jean wanted was someplace where.

where you felt more in control of the out-of-controlness like skiing. Because in skiing, you are actually responsible for yourself when you're skiing. You're not like on a roller coaster. You should be able, you should learn how to ski before you do it. So you want like that kind of risk and that kind of like self-control, but in the summer. Sure. Makes sense. So it reminds me of two all the sunny episodes that I really want to plug.

We just, we just have been re-watching season 16 because season 17 is going to start relatively soon and um there's one from last season where they go to risky rats pizza which is like chucky cheese obviously yeah um and so season 16 episode six and the song this thing is like risky rats pizza do whatever you want and like they like are like reminiscing about how in the 80s they could literally do whatever they wanted there and there was like a bar for the parents and you never saw your parents because they were just drunk and like all these things and then when they get there like now it's not like that anymore and they're disappointed you know but um that remind me a lot of it is like everyone's also drunk in this story too.

I mean, to be fair, since we were children of the late 80s and 90s, like, I don't know, maybe that was the right way to, like, entertain people and raise people. It was just like, let them do their own thing and fuck it. Like, if you're sworn enough to get through it and not die, then good for you. If you weren't, then we're hardy. We're hardy people, Taylor. You and I are very hardy. We are.

And we didn't die, but people did die. So that's the problem. Right, fair. Whatever. Yeah. There's also, do you ever see that always the episode where they go to a water park? I've actually never watched Always Sunny. Oh my God, it's so good.

So there's episode, season 12, episode two is the gang goes to a water park. And it is so good. And the whole like running joke throughout it is that the people that work there don't give a shit. You know, they're just like, whatever go. Like, who cares? Like, I'm not paying any attention. Like, I literally don't care of a teenager. And that's also very similar to this.

It's just like everyone who worked there was a teenager. Yeah. Terrible idea. So that's happening too. So, Gene's like, let's take this land around our ski resort and build something people can come in in the summer. So it called the Vernon Valley Family Fund Center. And it took a few years to be fully grown. But eventually, there's going to be three sections.

There's Motor World, Waterworld, and the Alpine Center. To get to Motor World, you just cross the freeway, like on foot, like run across the freeway in your bathing suit. And eventually they'll build a little monorail between the two. And then it'll eventually also become action. Park. It'll be called that. And then they have really great 80s commercials where it's pretty much like Action Park, do whatever you want. You're in control of the action at Action Park is like the slogan. So before we get into how insane the rides were in some specific stories, the staff is like 99% children. They're all teens or they're the Mova Hill children

themselves. So they can only do so much. There's stories of like, it's reminded me of remember when we all watch that show about the crocodile guy? Oh my God, I can't remember during COVID. Are you about Tiger King? Yes. He's not like crocodile guy.

He's a tiger guy. I remember all those crocodiles burned in that thing. But, yes, you're right. Sorry, the Tiger guy. But how he had all about like expired meat and stuff that he was so people. They were doing that too at Action Park. So like besides the fact that you're like doing the things,

you're eating expired food. And besides... So insane. It's like this guy's lawyers. Like I would have been this guy's lawyer. Like just like, I'd do whatever you want. Like that's shit. Yeah.

So he, besides the rides, also attractions, like the very first day at ever opened, there's like a dolly part and lookalight contest. There's poca festivals and October fests and there's a huge beer garden. And then also, like a lot of this is the 80s. And so you, like, driver's licenses are just printed pieces. a paper you know like they weren't like it didn't have your picture on it like there was something else so like it was really easy to be like yeah i can drink you know whatever so people were drunk all the time and then like there was no like expectation that you couldn't then like drive a go

car if you were drunk like you definitely still do that so people would like drive the go cars and they'd escape and like get on the freeway with their little go car going 50 miles per hour just like drunk off their minds i mean you're kind of selling me on this i know but it's very very still very dangerous um if you got hurt at Action Park, which a lot of people did, so people would be like, oh, I have these like scrapes and bruises and bumps and scars from being there. They would just

like take you to a cabin and pour iodine on you and, like, be like, you're going to be fine. So you'd be, like, be, like, smeared with, like, the pinkness of, like, the iodine mixture. But also something that they would do is they would have someone talk to you right when it happened to be, like, a witness. So, like, I am like a

cute lifeguard. I'm 16 years old. You fall off a ride and you hurt yourself. And I go, like, hey, what happened? You're going to say, like, oh, I was just being silly or, oh, I was just goofing around and I fell. And that way, like, if you did try to sue, I could be like, well, he told me he was given around. And most people did, you know? Remember that Camp Krusty episode of The Simpsons? Mm-mm.

Well, Krusty, their clown creates a camp and it's just, like, run by a bunch of, like, bullies and, like, 16-year-olds just, like, run the students under the ground. This feels like a venture park or a theme park built. Yeah. Yes, definitely. that's actually, that might be very similar. And then also like, you know, just, I can totally picture like a 17-year-old kid from New Jersey in the 80s being like, I was goofing around, you know?

Yeah, of course. And then like, well, then they're going to say that, you know, that it wasn't their fault that they were doing to me that weren't supposed to be doing. So talk about some of the rides. The most famous ride that like, I feel like it was the beginning of the movie that you probably seen a lot is the cannonball loop, which was a water slide

that had a full loop, like a roller coaster. So it was like down really, really fast, big loop, and it would spit you out. And that is like almost impossible to do. And it actually wasn't very open very often for the public because it was so dangerous. And they did do a couple iterations of it. But essentially, Gene would just like have these ideas or he would like go to a amusement park trade show in Europe and like meet someone from East Germany who was like, I have this really good idea. And he'd be like perfect, you know, like without thinking about like safety or regulations or whatever. so he had this idea for this water slide where you went upside down and he just like built it but it didn't necessarily work because the way that gravity works because it wasn't like an architect he was just like writing it down so what it would what it would do is it would then do you go down the side it would flip you over like in the enclosed tunnel and spit you out but you would go like flying out of it so the first couple times they sent like you know bannikins down it and they'd come out just like totally ripped apart they'd send down like teenagers they give them 100 bucks to go down and they send them like

wrapped in padding at one point they were sending sent people down they'd come out like their nose is broken and like their mouths bleeding and the people after them they were testing it again they would come out all scratched and they found out it was because there were teeth lodged in the tube from the people before them yeah it's kind of incredible i kind of like this guy and his like american ingenuity of like we're just going to make it work it doesn't matter exactly he's like whatever let's just do it let's just do it so So, it's like, this is also, I think, I think we've talked about us before. We're talking about, like, how easy it is to build things if you don't care about regulations.

Oh, yeah, of course. You know, and, like, that's what he was doing. Like, so if you are like, oh, everything's fine, I don't need a regulation or, like, don't worry about it, you know? Then, like, things are just going to keep getting built, which also, I thought about you because we were watching the Star Wars movies. I know I said that last week, but, like, when the first Death Star blows up, they start building the second one right, away and I'm like it's really easy to do that when you don't have to get any permits. You're just like, I'm Bradfader. I'm going to do whatever I want. It's so interesting how like it's literally Newton's law of like every action, unless it's

like an opposite or inverse reaction. It's exactly, it's like we had this like 80s and 90s where nobody gave a shit about anything and you just do what. Sure, kids' teeth are just like shoved into the side of this thing. And like and so we make regulations and you go over on that side and then it comes back anyways it's just like a never ending back and forth yeah no totally totally so another ride is the alpine slide which you took the ski lift up to get it but you're like in your bathing suit so do your ski lift up the mountain and it is a like long trail of concrete down a mountain and you're on this like sled that has like wheels and like little brakes so you have to be good at it and you have to know when to turn to be able to go through it so it's kind of like you know how sometimes

the curve is like a soft curb you know like it's not like a rectangle that reminds me of like it's just like a soft concrete what do you mean the curve curb like you know sometimes the curb is like a thing so kind of like that like in the curb if it's up so you'd go down it really fast and of course you're like not wearing a helmet and you are wearing a bathing suit so like if your skin touches the concrete that you're like zooming down you're going to get a huge like open wound like people were heard on it all the time and um this is one of those things like really factored in the natural landscape because it went down the mountain and jean just like built it and so at one point they were like some regulators did go in and they're like hey there's too many rocks around this alpine slide

and he was like yeah yeah we'll get rid of them and they never did and then that brings us to our first death. So in 1980, a 19-year-old boy named George Larson, he had worked there in the winter as a ski lift operator, and he was there in the summer, and his slide got thrown off of the alpine slide. He went flying and he hit his head on a rock. He ended up in a coma, and he died a couple of days later in the hospital. So in the movie, Class Action Park, the documentary, his parents, his mother is there and she's very much like this is jean mulva hill's fault he's a piece of shit when he died my husband and i opened up a bottle of champagne we hate him you know like very much like this is this is his solely his fault this place was horrible um and the way they make it sound

in the film is that it was just like you know during the day and george was just on the slide but then in the book andy mullville who's the son of jean the son of the owner he says that it was the night time and george was not supposed to be on it and he had kind of snuck in pretending that he still worked there. And I don't know which is true, but I believe the family. I believe Georgia's family. Yeah, seems right. You know?

And, super sad. Like, they were just, his parents were just obviously devastated. Everyone was super sad. I will have a list of deaths in a second. But Andy Mulville, the son of Gene, the owner of Action Park, wrote this book. He was the head lifeguard for a while. And he did take it obviously, like, very seriously because, like, they were saving

people almost constantly like one of my we had a wet and wild in Las Vegas with a wave pool and I had friends that worked there that saved people all the time yeah like have you ever been in a wave pool uh I don't think I have it's like extraordinarily dangerous you know once the waves start going you just have to kind of like jump with them you know you know what I have actually yeah I did it in Orlando Disney has a or Universal has like a water park there and I went to that yeah yeah yeah so the wave pool at action park was also like really

dirty because people would just like rush in as soon as the first thing they would do would jump in there and then they would also come from other parts of the park like in the motor world there was like a speedboat section and you'd fall out of your speedboat and you'd be like covered in motor oil

because the speedboat would leak everywhere so then you take your motor oil your greased up New Jersey summer body and put it in the wave pool and they couldn't even see the bottom of it sometimes you know because it's just like full of grime and like disgustingness um they hired a consultant one time and he was like usually in your career as a lifeguard you'll see you have a couple people like throughout the whole career and they were like we saved like 30 people a day like they

were just like saving people constantly um the and also a lot of people came from new york city and like you know they would be like these fucking people from new york city can't swim you know like they're not like they don't like they don't like swim but they jump in the wave pool and they would start giving people like wristbands and they would write CFS on them which means can't fucking swim so they would like look out for them because people would just like jump in and be like

I'm probably fine but they like literally don't know how to swim especially in a wave pool you know Is that real people from New York can't swim? I mean that's what that's what they would say like you're busing in people from the Bronx like they can't swim but like yeah that's what they would say when they got there but like probably

there's not a lot of opportunity to swim you know I guess I guess like Yeah. So the water, again, was really murky. At least three people died in the wave pool, if not more. So there's six confirmed deaths. There is George Larson, who talked about in 1980.

He was 19. He died in the alpine side. 1982, a 15-year-old named George Lopez, who was the first one to die in the wave pool. And then 1982, a man named Jeffrey Nathan, who was 27, died in the kayak experience. so I'll talk about in a second. In 1984, someone had a heart attack on the Tarzan swing, which was like a rope swing. In 1984, a man named Donald DePass, who was 20, died in the wave pool. In 1987, a guy named Gregory Grandchamps, who's also just 18, died in the wave pool.

So, like, young kind of. Yeah, there was the Tarzan swing they just mentioned, that someone had a heart attack on. But it was like, the reason that person had a heart attack is because you would be on like a cliff, and you would hold on to a rope, jump off, and then drop into, like, a pool. But it wasn't like a pool. It was literally a mountain, like, mountain water runoff, like, area. So the water was freezing. So it would be, like, you know, 90 degrees.

You'd wait in this line for an hour. You finally get the tires and it's swimming and you fall into, like, 50 degree water. And it would just, like, shock your body. People would, like, almost drown there all the time. Eventually, they had to, like, like, color, like paint the bottom of it because it was like so that you could see bodies in it because they couldn't get everybody fast enough you know um they had in motor world they had like go carts like that could go up to 50 miles per hour they were all unregulated and people would just like sling them into each other you know yeah of course what you do as much as possible get off the thing exactly um there was also a couple places like it's called surf hill where you could like ride down the hill like it's called awesome Aquascoot, where you do something similar, where you would, like, sit on something like the alpine side and, like, slide down, but you had to be really good on it not to fall off. And then, of course, in all of these, also, you would lose your bathing suit.

So people would just, like, sit on the bridge and watch people, like, get their bathing suits fly off. We'd love that, too. Yeah, it would be fun. It's kind of fun. Yeah. There was a thing called the kayak experience, which really wasn't even open for that long. This is when Jeffrey Nathan was electrocuted. So it was like a fake river with like electric fans underneath it to make it a little bit have like a little bit of rapids.

It wasn't like crazy rapids, but it made the river move. And something happened and he got out of his kayak and he accidentally touched one of the electrical lines under the water and it was electrocuted and died. A couple of other people were injured as well. Yeah. And so they just filled it with dirt and pretended it was ever there. How much you want to bet that like the contractors for all this was like, mafia people. I absolutely bet they were.

Yeah. Absolutely. There was a lot of bribes, I'm sure, like a lot of that kind of stuff. Also, like probably a lot of like different people who were like, no one was getting the full picture, you know? Yeah, of course.

So go carts, those things, the kayaking, super dangerous. They also tried a thing where there was like, in the 90s, obviously they had bungee jumping because everybody loved that. There's a story how Andy pushed a reporter off of the bungee thing during a broadcast as part of the publicity not very nice um then turned they made a monorail over the freeway oh they tried this thing which actually reminded me of drowsick park

remember in drastic park they have the gyrospheres which is like no yeah you didn't see the chrispratt ones but you know what i mean i did see that yeah yeah so the idea is like it's two balls but if you're in the ball you're sitting in the ball in the inside and that one always stays like the same way up and then the outer ball moves and that's how you move right so basically some guy um named Bailey was like bringing this ball to the theme park conferences and jean was like i love it let's bring it so he they made these huge tracks out of pvc pipe so like two pvc pipes and you put the ball on it like like a pinball right um and they made them like going down the mountain and the first guy to try it like was literally someone they gave 100 bucks too and like put a bunch of padding on them and they're like

they'd never built it before so like the guy's building it he's like this is my invention and they're like how was it worked in the past? And he's like, oh, I've never done it before. It's just like my concepts. So it was literally like the, like there was a ball, the guy sat in the middle ball. It was like that.

Wow, okay. Almost exactly like the dress park one. That would be kind of fun actually. If it was safe, I would ride that. Yeah. But it's not, it wasn't safe. They only did it one time with that one guy because they found out that the PVC tracks that they had made

had all expanded because of like the weather changes. And so the track broke almost immediately. he went down the track he went he bumped over the freeway luckily it was not hit by a car and landed in a swamp and they had to go get him out because you can't get out by yourself this reminds me of the titan disaster it feels like it was also built by that guy exactly i was watching something about the titan disaster and someone was saying that they were on it before and just have that like big bolt you in you can't get out yeah oh god that's terrifying yeah that's so awful i don't even know to do but yeah so that didn't happen they let that go um

they had um oh they also had a skate park that there were so many injuries in it that they just filled in with dirt also they were like nope we can't regulate the skate park um they had icebergs and the pools at one point to try to climb on which is very unsafe a lot people were heard during that um in motor world they had battle tanks which were like tanks with like a cage over them and you could shoot tennis balls at each other which i think sounds super fun but then the poor teenage workers they would have to go in when like one of them broke down and or going to collect the tennis balls, and they would just get like pummeled by tennis balls. It's like, but you've been like, fuck you. So anyway, so it's just, it's just wildly dangerous. It's like a little bit as a product of the 80s, I think, and a little bit as like Gene being like, I can do whatever I want, you know?

Like, it doesn't matter. Like, your feet are burning because you're walking in the bare concrete, which happens in water parks now, you know? Right. You have, but everybody's also bleeding because you have, like, road rash when going down a slide. like you were like bumping into someone on something you've been like carrying it in a tube up a mountain and like going back down and just like it's very physical and everybody like everyone got hurt and also because everyone was drunk um there were also people like if you got injured you mostly didn't report it you know you're just like you go back to school the next day and be like oh i got this at action park and like that was cool yeah you remember when you were a kid we don't report anything like yeah when you got hurt everybody assumed it was your fault because you were the kid yeah exactly so I know the question that you have right now is, who would insure a place like that?

And the answer is, Geico? Nope. He made up an insurance company and pretended to have insurance because no one would insure that. He had supplemental insurance and that insurance was supposed to do anything like over and beyond what his like main insurance have, but he didn't have any mean insurance. When they finally asked him for like proof they've been paying his insurance, he had one check and it was essentially to himself. it was to like his company through the Cayman Islands through another company like he did not have insurance it was like never part of the plans because is it is it bad that I kind of admire this guy

I mean you kind of do because you're like he did he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do you know but like people died so and people got hurt but he his vibe was like they should have known that like that was the risk and they probably did but didn't believe it You know, like you don't, when you're a 19-year-old guy, when 19-year-old anyone, you don't feel like you're going to be the guy that dies on the roller coaster. Yeah, also, I think you listed, like, seven people or something. Six people die, yeah. Okay, so six people in its existence.

I bet you Universal Studios had at least six people die there. Absolutely. So if you're, like, looking at just pure percentages, it's probably, you're probably more likely to get injured consistently. but in terms of dying you're probably no worse off than going on any other theme part I think that's totally I think that that's exactly right I think that's true because some weekends they'd have 12,000 people there you know yeah there and so like I'm sure like 2,000 people had injured you know and like that's a lot like that's probably more the

injured Universal Studios but the yeah yeah but also people liked it that's what they wanted to do you know yeah yeah yeah yeah so so eventually he starts to lose money because he does get sued by like the state because he's supposed to be like you know paying taxes and stuff that he's not doing of course you know and he's supposed to have insurance and he doesn't he's supposed to have all these like regulations things set up and he doesn't so um they finally he's like totally in debt and the lawsuits really start coming in the town is pissed because they're like you're ruining the town and the traffic is insane like all these people are coming in he's like I'm bringing

you business why are you mad at me you know It was just like a whole, like, he's like, why are people trying to stop my innovation? You know? Like, that's like his thing. And eventually he has to sell and he sells it to another company and they end up kind of like, you know, watering it down a little bit. It goes through a couple other hands. And then eventually the Mulville family buys it back. And they renamed it Action Park, but then they changed it again.

And now it is called Mountain Creek. it is open right now. No way. And it is not very different. Like, I'm looking at the website. Let me just send you this link for rides. I'm going to put it in this Zoom chat. But, like, they have a lazy river, which I love, some more things that seem like

more kid stuff, but they still have, like, these big river down the mountain, water tube slides. There's still a cliff dive. There's still a wave pool. there's a bunch of water slides there's like even more there's still another cliff jump there's one called zero g where you stand 100 feet above the ground in a tube and then the trap door beneath you opens up and you just like slide down and then another one where it's like almost a vertical slide all the way down it's called h2 oh no dumb but like also i would never do that oh my god that is terrifying i would never do that there's one just called vertigo because when people go on some of the rides in the 80s. After you were done, they'd have you, like, just lay there for a little bit so that your, like, bell could get unwrung, you know.

This kind of looks fun. Yeah. There's still surf hill still there. The alpine slide is now the alpine mountain coaster, so you're, like, more strapped in, you have to wear a helmet, and it's, like, you can't fall off of it anymore, but it still exists. And then this year, they reopened, they're opening Cannonball Falls, which is, like, a big, like, enclosed water slide, and they're reopening the top.

Tarzan swing where that one guy had a heart attack. But that is opening again. And so it seems like a little bit of regulation, but still you're probably going to get hurt. I mean, there's a lot to be said for things that are run through legal and insurance rigor. That if this is being run by like an actual legit company, like it would be almost impossible for it to be as stupid and crazy and dangerous. Yeah, exactly. Like it's going to be like it's not the same. But it still does stuff like this, like a picture of this dude on this alpine mountain coaster.

I mean, he's strapped in like a seatbelt. He's like, it's safe. Like you're just like, you know, you're by yourself, but you're not like controlling your own little pad in a, you know, in the concrete ditch. So yeah, you can still go there. Jean died in 2012 and his obituary page on the funeral home page has some really. Not nice comments on it. Calvin says, quote, literal bottom of the scum pool excuse of human being who used his power to legally threaten the family of those who died at his park from speaking out loud and taking further action. Someone named E just says money laundering, people getting killed because

of him, suing people if they're worried about people's safety, bribery, etc., etc., unbelievably bad human being. Someone else said, I'll be dancing on his green to ever see it. I enjoy the thought of him burning in hell, which he will continue to do for all eternity. Get pounded, Gene. I mean, hey, at least, I'm making too many apologies for this guy. It's better that you go out one way or the other, either a ton of love or a ton of hate. At least it's not like, eh, he was here. Who gives a shit? Totally.

People had very, very strong opinions. And he would be like, yeah, I did what I wanted to do, you know? It's such an American story. It's such an American, like, 1980s and 1990s. Like, yeah, fuck my cross. worse. Exactly. There's like a story like when they were filling like the pool for the Tarzan swings, like filled with like mountain water. And when they were filling it, his daughter was like 17 and he bought a fire truck for her to just like drive to the lake and siphon water out of the

lake and then drive back and like fill it up with that. And she did that for like a week until it was full. And he was just like, and she was like expected to do that, you know, that's what you do for your family. You're not like, you can't like get another job. Like that's your job. You have to do this. It's kind of incredible. Yeah. So kind of fun. kind of dangerous, but also a very, a very serious 80s story.

Jane, you'll be missed. Not by the families of the people you killed, but. Yeah. Actually, by nobody, no other thing about it. All his kids miss him. Fun.

It was a fun little story. I do, I do recall, I mean, I've heard so much about this place. It feels like a uniquely American story, but also feels like a uniquely New Jersey story because I just kept picturing the Jersey Shore kids being out there

there's a part of this like I don't know like maybe it's like a boys will be boys kind of a thing when we were younger I feel like the fact that something was dangerous would draw you more to it because as a boy you're like I need to like build my streak fred whatever that means when you're like growing up in suburbia and like if you do something that's like dangerous or your other friends are scared of then you your socio status within the group goes up And so I kind of think that, like, a part of this was like, yeah, they probably knew they were going to get hurt. And it was like, for them, it was like part of the thrill of going and showing their friends that I'm braver than you are. Exactly. Exactly. And then, and coming back with those injuries, you'd be like, hell yeah, you know.

Yeah, like, I have a cool scar now. You don't. Exactly. Exactly. And then, like, yeah, they said, Andy in the book said that one time, like, they were like, why don't you just have a daycare center? so like people can really really drop off their kids and just like go and get drunk and play and like do stuff you know like all sorts of different like ideas but water parks are fun I've been to one with my kids I was on with Miles it's like two years ago and he's so small and I was like we were like a two person intertube and he was holding onto my legs and I was like holding onto him with my legs as hard as I was just like please don't die please don't die is we're going through this like tunnel together like you're so small I've had I've had one of those moments where like I was on my legs and I was on one of those tunnel rides where you're on an inflatable thing on inflatable raft and you're going like kind of like down the tube and it was very high up and there was parts of it that were like exposed to the outside and I remember at one point we went like on we started on the the inside tract and then by the time we got to the outside track where it was going to turn that's where it opened up to the outside world and I swear to God I felt nothing behind me like I

Like, we go up the side of like the curve. Yeah. And I was like, I remember the thing I was like, dude, if I was like maybe 10, 15 pounds heavier, I could have been heavy enough to have swung this thing, just the lateral g forces of it, enough to where it would have just dropped like 100 feet. No, it scares me like the one that we didn't go on at the water park we went to two years ago was like when it was just like a giant you and your energy would just go like up and down and up and down. People would just be like airborne half the time, you know. I'm like, that scares me. I don't love that. Yeah, overall, I think roller coasters are probably a safer, but there's less

variables to a roller coaster because you're strapped in. It's like on a finite track. When they just throw you on these things and you get launched by a 16 year old, you still get launched by a 16 year old. There's no like adults there. No, of course. It's just someone in there. There's like, whatever, I don't care.

Just go. And like, I keep doing the math in my mind. I've been on those ones where there's a trap door underneath it. And you do the math on that. And you're like, okay, when this thing goes, your head has to clear with it. like what if like you lean a little like if you lean back a little bit in your head like you shave off the back of your skull like on those things no absolutely there's one actually there's one one of the rides I can't remember which one but like that would happen like you could

you could put your head back and get like that like you could like scalp you when you got out of the the tube there were like bees everywhere you had to like run also so you were like injured from through this tube and then you get out in the bottom and there's a teenager being like you should run there's bees yeah good times good memories um well yeah thank you for sharing that's very fun um brought back some fun memories uh if you've ever been to action park um let us know and write to us and tell us about your experience there yeah if you have the fun any amusement park story let us know yeah yeah the near does ones are especially interesting.

Sweet. Do we have any listener mail? Nope. I'm going to give a shout out real quick. If it's okay. No. Let me find it. So,

okay. So one of our mutual friends, a guy named Richie Allisay, passed away tragically at 40 years old from colorectal cancer. This was probably a couple of days ago at this point. He was a great guy and he had a son that was born three years ago named Teddy

and his wife started a GoFundMe to fundraise for a trust fund for Teddy so that he can be secure in the dreams and hopes that Richie had for him to be able to pursue his education and to live a life that Richie would have wanted him to have. If you go on GoFundMe and look up Richie's legacy or you can do Teddy's future. Both of those would work. You can find the GoFundMe and if you feel so inclined, you can go ahead and contribute. Taylor, I'll go ahead and drop the link for this here in the chat so that if you want to post it along with this video, we would really, really very much appreciate if folks would support that.

Thank you for bringing that up. Man, I'm so freaking sad. yeah what a what a good man that was who we worked with him for a while um a while ago and yeah yeah yeah so anywho um cool that's all i had cool thank you for bring that up yeah um yeah if anyone um have any ideas for us or things to to share please um send us an email I'll doofelpod at gmail.com or a find us on social media at doomed to fail. Sweet. Thanks, Taylor. We'll go ahead and cut off there.