Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 469 - Action Park: America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

If you were lucky enough to have gone to New Jersey's Action Park before it closed in the '90s, you probably have the scars to prove it. This place was WILD. And while I understand why there are no longer parks around like it today, I also really, really wish I could've been there. This is a fun one! Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

Where do you like to go for a fun summer's day or weekend with some family or friends? Are you the type that likes to go to the beach, relaxed with the book or some music by the water, maybe feel the cool ocean breeze on your skin? Or are you the type that likes to go camping? A little hanging out in the woods, making some s'mores, maybe telling some scary stories. Or are you maybe one of the millions of people who would rather visit theme or amusement parks every year? In 2023, global theme park attendance reached a whopping four. 410.6 million, a 19% increase from 2022.

Asia Pacific led with 164.9 million visitors, followed closely by North America with 161 million. Within the U.S., Florida attracted 76.9 million visitors, and California saw 51.3 million, both, of course, primarily due to their massive Disney properties. But there are many more parks than just the ones owned and operated by Disney. There's Universal Studios, Disney's most direct competitor, and New York's Coney Island, famous for its roller coasters. There's Ohio's Cedar Point, often called the roller coaster capital of the world. Lindsay Monroe actually took a trip there several years ago together and loved it.

Lindsay used to go a bunch as a kid. Not me. Roller coasters are not my friends. Thank you motion sickness and a weak stomach. But I do love a water slide in a wave pool. There are the many, many six flags across the U.S. to say nothing of the dozen if not hundreds of smaller localized parks like Silverwood, just north of Cordillane, offering both fun in the sun and maybe a taste of danger. After all, a theme park would not be a

theme park without a little bit of danger, or at least a perception of danger, would it? For a particular kind of thrill seeker, you want to go on a roller coaster that makes you believe maybe just for a few seconds that you're doing something really dangerous, even if you know deep down that the coaster is designed with maximum safety in mind. It's a little like true crime in that way. Experienced something dangerous, almost vicariously, while remaining completely safe. But for some, especially those who went to New Jersey's infamous action park in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, part of the appeal was a very real risk of danger. Those rides didn't just feel unsafe. They were unsafe. They were legitimately, often poorly

constructed, and absolutely dangerous. Owned and operated by a successful financier named Gene Mulvahill, a man who had never had any formal experience in events management or engineering or anything that would make you qualified to run an amusement park. Action Park brought terror to many. Both perceived and real in Vernon, New Jersey. And a lot of fun. Once a small ski resort,

Gene had become frustrated that he could no longer capitalize on slopes in the summer months, and so he decided to add some rides. But not really rides in the conventional safe. It's a small world sense. Gene was a firm believer that the action and action park shouldn't just be a fun title. It should be a philosophy, a way to live your life.

He wanted his park to truly be about action and adventure and danger. He didn't think there was anything exciting about being a passive witness to a piece of machinery doing exactly what it was supposed to do. No, he wanted to ratchet up the excitement. The fun thing was being able to control the action to decide how fast you went, how fast you took the twists and turns, maybe even fast enough to literally go flying through the, air and getting your clothes ripped off when you land on what is basically a glorified slip and

slide. Does that sound a little too dangerous? Probably was. Countless people were injured at Action Park over the years that it was operational and at least six people died. And those deaths did nothing to deter Gene Mulva Hill from continuing to add rides, a guy who truly believed that his park was meant to be interacted with, at your own risk. And this philosophy made many, including the state of New Jersey, come to regard Gene as a madman. A merchant of death who eagerly flouted rules and regulations if it meant he could operate the kind of park he wanted. But was that really the case? With Gene and Action Park, were they really negligent? Or should we give people the opportunity to have fun as they see fit? Should we really

live in a world full of disclaimers on fucking everything from hair dryers to cups of coffee? Are we just a little bit too sheltered now? So much so that many of us can't have what we consider any real fun anymore? Should we maybe return a bit to some sort of natural selection for the human experience? Or is it a very good thing that we can't do exactly what our lizard brains tell us to do when faced with the opportunity to dance with danger? The super strange and super entertaining story of Action Park, so much crazy 80s nostalgia coming your way right now on this death-define, slip it and sliding, hold on tight and hope for the best, topsy-turvy edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening.

listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck. Happy Monday! I don't know, just felt like spicing it up. Welcome and welcome back to the cult of the curious, Dan Cummins, Suckmeister, debauchery glutton, outrage porn addict, and you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod Hail Lucifina

Praise be to Good Boy Bojangles And glory be to triple M A couple fun things Finally got around To get my last Stand-up special

Trying to get better Added to Spotify Pandora Other streaming apps Also my 2018 stand-up album Maybe I'm the Problem Is available to watch

on YouTube In its fully animated form So check out the Abomination The Thomas Royal At Salty Monkey Media On Socials Created

Give him a follow If you love dark, absurd animation And that again is at Salty Monkey Media And again, it's on the Bad Magic Productions YouTube channel Some different stand-up things Yeah, I'm very glad I kind of glossed over But very glad that trying to get better Is able to be listened to by a lot of different people now

Also, if you just love crazy YouTube comments When you're done checking out the animated stand-up album Maybe on the problem There are almost a thousand comments now Under Time Suck 252 Alien, Sexual Abuse, Disco, Racism and Egyptians The Noobia Nation of Moors cult Suck

you know our YouTube channel especially since we took away video it's uh and even before we did never like a huge huge base of fans there watching one guy talk for three hours so a thousand comments is very unusual

the moderators for the cult of the curious Facebook page brought it to Lindsay and I's attention and apparently the cult found out about my suck and they're not happy about it getting death threats and everything I'll have to keep my eyes peeled next time according to a lot of the threats

that I'm in Atlanta where I guess a lot of those pito worshippers still live what a fucking crazy thing to defend but people defend a lot of crazy shit don't they? Yeah, these guys are a lot better at angry than they are at spelling

very entertaining comments if you want to check them out and speaking of entertaining let's get to it let's get to a topic that kind of spans several genres we've covered here on time suck there's true crime

albeit financial crimes there's death There's people getting the shit beat out of them, beating the shit out of the people. There's a kind of wacky behavior that we like to cover that makes you think, who the fuck is this guy? But also in some ways, this suck will most resemble the episodes we do on inspirational figures.

You know, following people from their childhood dreams all the way to their biggest, you know, creations and successes. Gene Mulvahill reminds me of a slightly more insane Colonel Sanders. If his passion was flying down a mountain on a rickety slide as fast as humanly possible, with very little regard for safety instead of fried chicken. For Gene, his passion was Action Park, a place that would come to be known as Traction Park,

accident park, and Class Action Park. It was a mind behind it, dreaming up and purchasing its rides, supervising their installation, visiting conventions, even hiring engineers to make special new never-before-seen rides for Action Park. Rides at other parks would be too chicken shit or sane to actually try and implement. But today's big question is, is Gene's story actually inspiring? Or was Gene just reckless and insane and more of a cautionary tale than anything? I guess you can be all that, inspiring to some, reckless and insane to others.

For many years, as safety standards became more commonplace throughout the 80s and 90s, he would be thought of as kind of a daredevil, adrenaline junkie fucking psychopath, a man who would put abusement above human life, a man who time and time again, when faced with the sensible option, turned around and installed a ride that was even more reckless. And then he ultimately faced the consequences in the form of dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of lawsuits

and the eventual bankruptcy of his park. But does he deserve a bad reputation? Could the accident's action park have been chalked up to nothing more than a few freak occurrences, you know, common everywhere from six flags to Disney, as well as cases of people deliberately going against guidance for how to experience the rides? I mean, as of 2023,

there have been 27 deaths at Disneyland and another 64 at Disney World since he opened. They're still around. On January 3rd, 9, 74, when Action Park was going, a 48-year-old woman was decapitated at Disneyland. On the Matterhorn, bobsleds ride. No one got decapitated at Action Park. You know, Disneyland's still around.

Was Gene actually someone that we could use more of in this world? A man who wanted people to have fucking fun, so much fun, outside the constraints of what society tells us we probably should do. a man who believed above all else in people's ability to choose. A man who wanted to bring everything from the ocean to swimming holes to Formula One-type motorcourses to the public who insisted that almost no thrilling adventurous experience was beyond being able to be replicated for the masses. Did he traumatize some people?

Oh yeah, for sure. But he also gave many some of the best experiences and memories of their fucking lives. Let's start with just a bit of background and context before diving into a timeline that left me belly laughing, feeling sentimental so many times. In many ways, we meet sacks have been geared towards kicking back and experiencing some thrills for centuries at the very least. About 500 years ago, we had the technology, and finally some more time on our hands, thanks to not have for to do manual labor all the time in order to just barely survive, at least for some of us, to do something about it. As early as the 1550s, so-called pleasure gardens began to appear. in Europe. These were the first permanent areas set aside specifically for

outdoor entertainment. Their attractions included fountains, flower gardens, bowling, you know, other random games, music, dancing, stage spectacles, some primitive amusement rides that would probably bore the fuck out of us today. In 1650 rides would get more interesting around this time.

Large ice slides supported by heavy timbers became popular as a wintertime diversion in places like Russia, the most elaborate being in St. Petersburg. Small wooden sled. leds used iron runners to glide down the slides, a precursor for today's water slides and roller coasters. And I wonder how many people got fucking mangled back then on these rides before we had anything close to a modern hospital. I mean, the risk of just not recovering

from a stupid needless injury so much greater back then. In 1767, before us Americans, it even got around to declaring independence. We got around to amusing ourselves in the form of a pleasure garden that year a place called Vauxhall Gardens open in New York City. By the early 1800s, it would be home to one of the first carousels in our new country. In 1846, Lake Compounds in Bristol, Connecticut would open making it the first proper amusement park to open in the U.S. It began when Samuel Botsford first organized a public demonstration of electricity experiments on a man named Gad Norton's property, because electricity was a relatively new phenomenon, it drew thousands of spectators that Norton was inspired to install picnic tables

and set up a path around the lake. These enhancements, including swimming and rowboats, allowed people to more fully enjoy the property to hang out in a park, like, you know, park like setting, and feel amused, giving birth to the amusement park name. During the 1920s, amusement parks popped up all over the U.S., fulfilling the demand for leisure, entertainment, and thrilling rides, while America's economy boomed and a lot more people had, you know, disposable come than in years past. This led to the establishment of amusement parks like Cedar Point in Ohio, Kenny Wood outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And of course, we can't not mention the biggest name in the

parks industry, Disney. However, Disneyland and Disney World are not technically amusement parks. They're death camps. And that's all they've ever truly been. Because that's all Roy Disney has ever wanted. Over a thousand children disappear from Disneyland alone each and every year. Most, sadly, are thought to end up in a place known as Mickey's

fuckhouse. A place where Mickey and Goofy and Pat Sejack and of course Roy Disney, who never died in 1971, don't be so stupid. Feed on the fear of children. Drink their breakfast. blood, feast on their adrenachrome in order to stay alive, in order to stay young.

Every 66th group of visitors who go for a ride on Pirates of the Caribbean, never come back. And they're diverted into a secret underground river beneath the park, a river that takes them down, down, down to Mickey's fuckhouse, to Goofy's Pound Town, a place where anyone over the age of 12 is immediately killed upon arrival. And anyone under 12? They're in hell. A hell where Roy's the devil. His fuck-hungry demons are Mickey,

Minnie, Goofy, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Snow White, Buzz Lightier, Cinderella. And again, Pat Sejack. Wait, sorry. Hopefully I remember to edit that out. That's the kind of information that could get me killed. Isn't it, Roy?

you mother killing plague upon humanity? Just joking around. Disney is perfect in every single way as any member of their army of lawyers will tell you. But for real. Disneyland and Disney World are not technically amusement parks. They are theme parks. An amusement park primarily offers a variety of rides, entertainment, while a theme park is a specialized type

of amusement park built around a central theme or concept, integrating that theme into all aspects of the park's design, attractions, and atmosphere. Abusement parks focus on thrilling rides, games, and entertainment, but a theme park tends to focus more on unified architecture, landscaping, attractions that go along with unified architecture and landscaping, food and merchandise, you know, which is why you get rides that are terrible for a lot of us, unless we're high, like it's a small world.

Lame for many, but on theme. The U.S.'s first theme park would actually be Knottesbury Farm. It was first opened as an actual farm back in 1889, about the 1920s, Walter and Cordelia Nott. They were selling various berry products from a roadside stand, including delicious preserves. Then decades later, 1968, the farm officially transitioned into an amusement park when the Knot family fenced the property, or excuse me, theme park, began charging a general admission fee to access themed areas like Fiesta Village and the Roaring 20s. So that makes it the U.S.'s first theme park on a technicality, really,

because Disneyland had opened its doors as a theme park over a decade before July 17, 1955. From there, a little theme slash amusement parks spread as investors look for opportunities across the country. Investors flock to conventions where inventors would show off their latest rides, rides that would hopefully allow the parks to advertise how they had the fastest, most thrilling, most intense experiences ever. And one of those people was Gene Mulvahill, and Gene was not your typical amusement park operator. He didn't come from the world of entertainment. He had no experience running parks with the intricacies of staffing them, adhering to safety guidelines, making sure there was enough food, water, and toilet paper to sustain thousands of people at a time.

What Gene did know was how to have a good fucking time. And how to help others have a good time, too. And based pretty much solely on that, Gene would create the infamous and maybe also so fucking awesome action park. Let's meet him in his park now in today's Time Suck Timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline. Eugene Walter Mulvahill, Jr., was born September 2nd, 1934, in Orange County, New Jersey. He will go by Gene.

His father, of course, Eugene W. Mulva Hill, Sr., born on June 17, 1903 in Essex, New Jersey. His mom and Jean's wife was Catherine Cornelia Mulvahill. My maiden name was Dusha, and she was born somewhere in 1907, according to her two. tombstone. We don't know a lot about his parents, but it seems he was an only child. What we do know is that when Gene was a child, his father, who was called Docky, for some reason, transformed he and his wife's basement from an uninteresting storage area into a secret wonderland. And not a child's play area, but a wonderland for Docky and his friends. Docky included a lot that most people would not include in their run-of-the-mill, wreck rooms. Yeah, you had a poker table with a green felt top and a pool table, but so much more. Dude had a shooting range with guns. guns and paper targets, a shuffleboard area, and a proper bar. Sounds fucking incredible. I hope Kathy got to enjoy it as well. As a kid, Gene would often fall asleep, listening to all the laughter and joking around and just pure fun coming up from the basement.

It was intoxicating. He wished he was down there with him. And perhaps this instilled in him an idea that entertaining people being their source of fun and leisure was a damn good thing to do with your life. Gene would also get some early experiences with amusement parks. sometime in the late 1940s as a young teen Gene made his way to Palisades Amusement Park a cliffside destination in Bergen County across from the Hudson River

across the Hudson River from New York City Palisades loom large for people all around the nation especially kids. In the post-war years it advertised its attractions and countless comic books. The park even left a small gap in the fence open for a time for kids who couldn't afford the admission and were brave enough to sneak in. Oh man, the days before liability

waivers, I love that. That's so cool. Its signature attraction was a ride called the Skyrocket, a dizzying wooden roller coaster that had its origins in Coney Island Cyclone and was popular enough to duplicate in several other territories. Though it seems quaint now, the cyclone was controversial in his day. A cynical and distasteful journalist described it as, quote, a cure for unwanted pregnancies. In the early days, nurses were on hand to administer smelling salts to disoriented passengers. Thrill seekers like Gene. loved it and man-made attractions weren't the only thing he loved he also loved nature as a boy scout he took frequent day trips with his troop to a spot just south of the delaware water gap it was an expanse

of land sitting on the new jersey side of the delaware river known as the van campens glen or simply as the glen it was a beautiful place full of natural waterfalls with rock formations where rainbows glimmered from the spray jean graduated from west orange high school around nineteen fifty two and attended lay University. Around this time, he met a young woman, Gail Cross. Gail was born on February 15, 1935, to Cochran Bart Cross and Edith Farrell and grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. And she was on a date with someone else when they met. Scandalous! That only made it more determined to win her over, and they married while he enlisted in the Marine Corps, serving in the Marine Corps, second battalion, first Marine Division and earning a rank a captain, which is pretty badass.

Then it was on to the next project, starting and supporting a family. When Gail was pregnant with their first child, Gene began selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door, barging into homes, espousing nonstop patter while he showed how easy it was to assemble the cleaner, which it definitely was not, unless you had a lot of practice. And while some people might hate a job like that, I sure would. My one-only sales job was in telemarketing many years ago, and I think my supervisor truly felt sorry for me because I was so bad at it.

But Gene loved it. He loved competition. he and other salesmen working for the same Kirby office had the results of their sales tracked in chalk on a leaderboard, and Gene was usually in first place. Because we're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize?

Second prize a set of steak knives. Third prize is you fired. That's part of a monologue from Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever. Such a crazy look at the world of high-pressure sales. That movie helped me learn that high-pressure sales were not for me. After selling for a couple of years, Gene decided that he had a real talent as a salesman,

and he started selling mutual funds on Wall Street, where he could, where he did make a whole hell of a lot more money than anyone was making selling vacuum's door-to-door. And good on him for betting on himself, not being afraid to switch shit up, take a chance on a new job. after doing very well for himself on Wall Street for a few years selling other people's funds Gene then decided to go into business for himself founding Mayflower securities again he bets on

himself takes a big risk and he gets a big reward he quickly filled a multiple opposite excuse me he quickly filled multiple offices in New York and New Jersey with staff and he and his staff did very well jean would say he had one key principle that he operated by a confident staff was a good staff. And to that end, he would challenge his sales associates to fist fights. And after smacking them in the mouth a few times, getting them good and worked up, and he'd let them kick the ever-loving shit out of him. Because what is better for your confidence than beating the fuck out of your boss in front of your coworkers? Big confidence boost. That's insane. No, he didn't do that. But he went through lavish parties with shit like 900-pound ice sculptures, car giveaways, fancy trip

giveaways, top shelf booze, fun competitions with big trophies and cash prizes. Once he gave a six-foot-tall award to a man less than five feet tall, and the room erupted into good-natured laughter as the man tried to carry it back to his seat. When he brought associates home to meet his family, like one man, his son, Andy, would later remember as Joe Stone, he would instruct his kids to call the visitor the great Joe Stone. And apparently Joe fucking beamed the entire night being so cherished by not just his boss, but by his boss's family. That's super cool.

based on the success he was having with his own firm in venture capitalism, Gene moved his family from a modest home in New Providence to a 10-acre lot next to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Harding Township, New Jersey. His wife helped design the sprawling house they built there that ended up being a large enough to accommodate his desire for a large family. They would have six kids, and all of them would end up working in Action Park. Love it, right? Fun family business. the huge home would also accommodate his mammoth ambitions for well building shit

he erected a gymnasium with an indoor basketball court that's awesome he had an outdoor pool tennis court put in uh there was enough land for a baseball diamond football and soccer field combo uh and he had some kind of course made for he and his kids to be able to zip around on go carts and dirt bikes this dude epitomized the work hard play hard lifestyle he was a fun dad also a dad who didn't put up with bullshit he was a disciplinarian And the Marine Corps veteran expected his kids do their chores with nothing more than a yes, sir. He kept the boy's hair buzz short for many years and domestic order intact. Also had a mischievous streak.

He would do shit like come home, pull his young kids out of bed, go to see a carnival. He had just passed by in the road. He wanted to show him. Once when he was at a tennis club in New York, when it closed while he was still playing his game, he convinced a friend of his and his opponent in that game to fly to Puerto Rico on a private jet to finish the game. He was a man, his family would later say, boundless energy and very little impulse control and just a big kid when he saw when he saw what he and his family would come to call the mountain he knew he had to have it he had to have

the mountain the mountain was in vernon township a lake and farming community in sussex county new jersey about an hour away from jean's house and 50 miles almost exactly from manhattan uh we were just in manhattan and last week suck a little town covered 68 relaxed and unhurried square miles. It only had one high school, one bank, no fast food places at the time. This is back in the late 60s or early 70s, back when the town was growing fast, but still had only about 3,000 or 4,000 people, not the 25,000-ish people who live there now. Back then, it was such a boring place to some that, as a local legend went, when George Washington's troops passed through the hills about 30 miles to the south of town, they began constructing a barricade

just because they were bored and wanted something to do. And they posted a sign outside the barricade that read Fort Nonsense. Probably not true, but a fun little local story. An entrepreneur named Jack Curlander had decided that Vernon was good for something other than farming at one point, namely skiing. In 1965, he opened a resort called Great Gorge. And another small ski resort, Vernon Valley entered the market a few years later, funded by a small group of investors who wanted to copy the idea of a ski mountain very easily accessible from New York City. Great Gorge was for more experienced skiers with intermediate and difficult, little slopes, little trails, while Vernon Valley was more for the casual

crowd, where girls from local high school loaded skiers into chairlifts while wearing impossibly tied ski pants and boys showed up trying to catch their attention and impress them, a place where people went down the mountain and jeans and leather jackets. That's fucking awesome. Since the pool of experienced skiers was smaller than the pool of people just dicking around, Great George was worried, though, about losing business, and they opened up a petting zoo to try to compete. That was a mistake because the staff had no business working with animals. A worker once fended off in attacking ostrich by stuff in a paintbrush in its mouth, and according to legend, that bird died then of lead poisoning.

Someone brought in a kangaroo that would box the maintenance workers. The kangaroo apparently went undefeated. It was just madness. There was also enough to make the owners of Vernon Valley nervous, and they lowered their prices in an attempt to undercut Great George, and that put them in the red. Then through a mutual friend, the Vernon, Valley people approached Gene for a big old loan. He had a long history of investing in a variety of businesses, some wildly successful, some not. He attempted to or invested in an attempt to

raise giant shrimp in Florida. That resulted in mass casualties of shrimp, with survivors barely reaching two inches in length. Most of his investments, though, they did pay off and he was sitting on a big pile of venture capital. He agreed to lend the resort $25,000, a lot for the time, for some improvements, and in return, in addition to getting some interest on his loan, of course, he and his family would get free admission. Gene was apparently thrilled about this. He sent his kids careening down the mountain at every possible opportunity, even had them go to school with their pocket stuff full of lift tickets for them to pass out. He didn't seem to care that much about loan repayments.

When the owners defaulted, he didn't even bother to follow up because their bankruptcy was now his opportunity. In 1972, when Vernon Valley plummeted into foreclosure, Gene bought the resort for pennies on the dollar. Well, he bought most of it. A large chunk of land running through the top of the mountain was leased from the state's Department of Environmental Protection, and that was something that would come back later to haunt him. Gene had never exhibited any prior interest in owning a ski resort

or in raising giant shrimp or doing any of the many other things that he had committed himself to doing over the years. He just believed he could make a profit. Wall Street had taught him to be bold to act quickly while others deliberated, and now as the owner of Vernon Valley, he got to work on another one of his many different ventures he offered night skiing with trails illuminated by floodlights even kept the slopes open 24 hours for some private all-night ski parties that's awesome never heard of that but that'll be a fucking blast to grab some beers and zip down the hill the middle of the night he hired susy chaffy an olympic alpine ski racer later known for her chapstick commercials and made for tv movies like ski lift to death she was a famous athlete and sex symbol hired a her to perform paid demonstrations. During a fuel crisis and the resulting gas shortages, he partnered with the local

pump station, bought tanks of fuel, so no one would be stranded at a ski resort if the local stations decided to close on the weekends. He marketed the fact that his snowmaking operation was the biggest in the country, that its air and water guns worked overtime in the middle of the night to keep the slopes going long after others in the area had melted away or before they didn't have enough snow to keep going down. He set up a telephone hotline so people could call for. the latest weather conditions on the slopes told the press that he was taking the risk out of skiing

the weather risk not the personal injury risk and all this worked yet a lot of innovations people came lots of people that came back uh like at his corporate parties jean kept the booze flowing now in his hexagon lounge a six-sided bar that allowed locals to mingle with vacationing families from the upper west side when people didn't pay for lift tickets and tried to sneak on to his resort jean instructed the employees to literally cut off their skis the wooden kind with a fucking axe. Awesome. All this worked. People paid.

The resort did well enough that Gene eventually was able to buy out the competition. He acquired Great George, Great Gorge, excuse me, from Jack Curlander, cementing his conquest of the region's ski business. Gene now moved on from his first business, Mayflower Securities, eager to get out from under the thumb of regulatory hassles and put all his energy in his park. By the mid-70s, when Gene was turning 40, Vernon Valley became the go-to spot for Northeasterners to teach their families to ski. Not too far from home, not too expensive, always a good time. And for Gene, it was so much damn fun.

When the skiers left after the winter, though, he started to wonder like, okay, what do we do with all this space? Initially, he started hosting bluegrass festivals with hippies and hillbillies, a mountainside bash filled by beer, weed skinny dipping in the ponds of snowmelt. People who owned homes nearby started waking up to partygoers sleeping in their yards or if their doors were unlocked, maybe passed out on their couches. It's pretty ballsy. Gene thought all this was hilarious.

Rather than getting worried about pissing off locals, he decided to take things further. He really wanted to monetize the ski resort for more than a couple months a year. The bluegrass festals, after all, were more of a money sink than a moneymaker. The best he could hope for was a hundred or so days of winter business and a warm year could ruin some of that. So he had an idea. According to his family, he had read an article in Time magazine that read in part, Americans will spend $960 million going to theme parks this year, more than they spend to attend all the major sporting events combined.

And that was his next big aha moment. And before we hear more about Gene's big aha moments, time for today's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a space user on Patreon. Help us make monthly charitable contributions. Get the catalog ad free. Get episodes three days early and more. Woo-hoo!

Thanks for listening those ads, and now let's hear more about the moment that convinced Gene to get into the amusement park game. Gene had already taken his kids to the Disney Parks and the Ferris Wheels on the Jersey Shore, and from that, he had this idea. People were used to going to theme parks and paying for a pretty passive experience, right?

chilling out essentially while the operators managed the tame rides made sure that nobody got hurt well jean wanted to offer something different something exciting he wanted customers to be in charge of the action he started his new mission by gathering intel visited the beachside park to the jersey shore the seaside heights or excuse me like seaside heights went to coney island which had fallen into disrepair and looked almost dystoping at this time these places he saw exactly what he had anticipated, collection after collection of spinning mechanical rides that read to him as supremely boring. He took fleeting, disinterested glances at Great Adventure, a park that had recently opened just two hours south in New York City and the Pine Barrens of Jackson, New Jersey.

It had a safari, a mining ride, hot air balloons, long flume, which sent guests down a water-filled shoot and a passenger sled. But he thought great adventures had gone wrong by spending millions of dollars on rides that Gene thought he could create for a fraction of the price. To him, it was a simple calculation. Undercut the opposition by making more thrilling rides on a much smaller budget. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Cutting corners with dangerous rights. Maybe not the best combination. Gene now decided to expand his search. A ski trade publication made mention of a daring new contraption that sounded intriguing to him. Curious, he traveled all the way to West Germany to see a majestic fiberglass slide that undulated and curved down an incline. Riders sat

in a small sled-like plastic cart mounted on two wheels. and plastic runners with brakes they could control with a joystick, position flush against your crotch. Once seated, they plummeted down a half-mile-long shoot. Damn, made a durable, all-purpose asbestos. Guess they didn't care as much in Germany at the time about how asbestos was a dangerous carcinogen. It took skill to know how to slow down around curves

and when to plow forward, meaning you could get better at this ride, kind of like with an arcade game, you know, which incentivized, you know, you ride it more often. all told it was a dry ride meaning no water that could monetize the property in the summer months similar to a bobsled run without the snow the manufacturer demag called this monument the alpine slide demag referred jean to their north american dealer a resort owner named stig albertson albertson operated the bromley resort in vermont and swore to jean that the alpine which he was in the process of installing his own property would transform their business and turn it in to an all-season moneymaker. Gene was fucking in, and he had tons of vague ideas to compliment it.

Maybe also installed a wet ride, maybe a track for racing, maybe some live shows. And he was in an ideal place for all this. You know, because Vernon was sleepy, local regulations had not caught up to prohibit anything he would need to make this a reality. He decided to call his new amusement park,

face death, or fuck you. I mean, the Vernon Valley Fun Farm. That summer, he had a son's digger trench for the alpine slide digging with shelves alongside other kids he had hired from the local middle middle school in high school the gene would pile into his station wagon every morning and what awesome memories he was making with his kids then they switched to raking laying down rolls a sod layer with bright green grass uh the construction form was a man named charlie o'brien a grizzled fellow with one eye who uh worked as the head snowmaker for great gorge for many many years

brought his own crew of construction workers men with names like big owl indian bunk wacky joe the lift mechanic if only every construction crew had a dude named wacky joe these men often piled into old army trucks the resort kept on hand faces dirty tools stacked up in the back dispatch from one operational emergency to the next in years to come they would be the hands that helped shape the park no task was beyond their reach from welding to painting to plumbing jean patrolled his rag-tag crew of children as young as twelve all the way to older men near retirement age who lived to in shacks on the outskirts of the resort on his dirt bike, occasionally pausing to give motivational speeches. Right, again, dude is just a big kid. Despite his motivational speeches, the work stretched well past the planned opening on the 4th July and into August, which drove Gene from continual cheery motivation to regular outbursts of screaming.

Charlie protested that there was no precedent for what Gene wanted, comparing it to paving a roadway down a mountain. The two would regularly get into screaming matches in front of the work crew of middle and high schoolers. I love the passion. I love the drama. In the days leading into the opening of the park's first big ride, the alpine slide just before Labor Day weekend of 1976, the crew started keeping their distance from Gene. Tensions were high. They'd heard that the ride cost half a million dollars, equivalent to about three million today, cobbled together from investors and resort capital, and they worried if it didn't work right, their boss would be inconsolable and also financially ruined and they'd be out of jobs.

Gene had tried to combat the odd notion of going to a ski resort in the summer by taking out newspaper ads that claimed there would be live music, beer drinking, tobacco spitting competitions, that kind of shit. But the real attraction, of course, was a slide. His agreement with the vendors stated that there would only be his slide and no other slide like it in a 200-mile radius, which included New York City. Not that there'd be room to build something like this in New York City. The morning of the opening, the crew, among them Gene's Sons,

watched as a stream of cars headed off a Route 94. and towards the resort entrance. There were hundreds of them. This was good. This was really good. The advertising had worked. And if the ride worked as well, the word of mouth would explode ticket sales.

There were also reporters on hand, eagerly waiting to see what all the hubbub was about. Why was there so much fuss about another amusement park ride? Well, Gene would tell them, I have investigated this sport thoroughly. He addressed how many of them had come expecting some cheap carnival ride, like the kind temporarily erected by transient carnies at county fairs, but this was not that. Far from it. The permanent tracks, winding up the foot of the mountain

promised something else entirely. Reporters watched his guests stood in line for two hours to fork over two bucks and 50 cents or just $1.50 for kids, and as they jumped on the ski lift to be transported, some 2,700 feet up the mountain to the launch station. At the top, attendance, many of them high school friends of jeans nudged them into motion, and how cool he was able to give some old buddy's jobs. Seated on the carts, the riders rolled along the surface and banked into the curves, gaining confidence and speed with each subsequent trip down. Their rear ends cradled by the carts molded plastic.

Pushing the joystick forward, raised the brakes, lowered the wheels, making them go faster, pulling it back, activated the brakes, retracted the wheels, slowing them down. There were two lanes. One designated the slow lane for overly cautious beginners

with an iron grip on the brake. All the second was for adventures with a need for speed, and you could get some speed. You could haul ass down this track at up to 40 miles an hour. with no seatbelt, no helmet, no safety pads of any kind. Quite a bit faster than you go with the typical go-kart track,

and you're going down a fucking hill. This was a hit. By the end of the day, people were snatching up discount ticket books for repeat trips, comparing their run times on their watches. At least most of them were. Some of them were pretty badly hurt. They had immediately been injured. For instance, if you stuck your arm or leg out to try and balance yourself,

it was like holding your body against a sander as the surface of the track scraped off your flesh or just fucking launched you off at the ride entirely. For superficial injuries, attendance sprayed a pink iodine liquid that bubbled up like acid, made tender skin, flare with pain. I'm not sure what that was.

Gene's employees would eventually put up photos of ghastly wounds next to the loaded area to encourage people to use their brakes instead of their bodies. But that wasn't the only danger. If you went down too slowly, someone could be behind you could and would smash into your cart,

creating a collision of bone, plastic, and fiberglass, Dad's not realizing the consequences of their greater mass, playfully rammed into their kids, sometimes launching their kids into the air like rag dolls, just straight up fucking tossing those fuckers off their sleds, right? Kew broken arms and legs. Workers tried to space riders at least 50 yards apart,

but attendants at the top had blind spots where the track would dip out of sight. So if you break too much and the person behind you did not, well, you were getting rammed at up to 40 miles an hour. And some people wanted that. Teenage dipshitsits, who remind me of me when I was a teen would do stuff like

get out of the side of the attendant at the top then break and just sit there and wait hoping their buddy would blindly ram into them wanting to see how far they could be launched up into the air frequently they would regret that the car which weighed about 20 pounds sometimes came crashing back down on them

like an Acme Anvil in a fucking looney tune cartoon in other cases because of the slides proximity to the woods people would fly off the track right they'd smash into a tree find themselves hurling into a pile of rocks like one ridiculous bastard who decided to ride the sled in a speedo. I guess he ended up getting about

200 stitches. According to local legend, one of his ass cheeks was practically ripped off his body. Park staff quickly put hay bales in areas where there were frequent accidents to cushion falls, only to realize they created even more of a hazard because now people flicked their used cigarette butts into

these hay bales, tried to set them on fire, which they sometimes did. So now some people were zipping down the mountain getting dumped out into actual flames. Today, I imagine most people would be worried, rightfully worried, about being sued into oblivion for all this. Gene wasn't. His customers wanted to be in charge, and they were getting what they paid for.

If they wanted to be reckless and risked their life and limb for an adrenaline rush, well, so be it. He would keep his new ride open all the way until November. His new slide made thousands and thousands of dollars every day. And soon, Gene was reinvesting these profits into the park and building out more thrilling, fucking insane rides. The next summer, the summer of 1977, was a big proof of concept season. Gene wanted to make sure that the alpine slide was not some kind of passing fad.

How would it fare over an entire summer? He offered just one new attraction in 77, grass skiing, a warm weather activity where people would wear these special boots fitted with what looked like tank treads, and then skate down the slope on dirt, sometimes or oftentimes tumbling from an errant rock or pebble. Grasking did not prove popular. Way too many people ate way too much shit. But the Alpine continued to draw large, enthusiastic crowds. And he decided it was time to move forward and pull the trigger

on some other amusements he had been dreaming about. His next big idea was a lot of people at time loved, but few got to experience consequence-free. Drunk driving. The official name for it was Motor World. It was built on a lower plot of land across from the main roadway

where his son Pete have been experimenting with driving some dune buggies. At first, the idea was for guests to traverse a wooded area, dodging trees, other obstacles. But in the fall of 77, as the cold came, Gene plotted something more ambitious. By the late spring in 1978, excuse me, he had assembled a prefabricated aluminum garage

that housed a small fleet of three-quarter-scale Formula One racers the first of their kind on the East Coast. Also called Lola Cars, after the British car company that made them, these were slightly shrunken versions of the arrow-shaped vehicles that tore through Monaco every year and these things could go up to 90 miles an hour

and they cost eight grand each in other words they weren't toys but that's how Gene saw them that spring and early summer Big Al and Charlie supervised the paving of a huge track that wound through the field like a miniature Lamon in the middle were ride attendants in a digital clock that displayed lap times

it was accurate to 100th of a second there would be only two restrictions but they wouldn't turn out to be very restrictive at all you had to be 17 years old and had to have a valid driver's license. But parents would also allow kids with learners permit to get on. For no parental permission, there was also a workaround. Or for those with no parental permission, at the time New Jersey printed licenses on paper with no picture,

which is fucking crazy. That meant kids successfully forged them all the time easily by punching out the birthday numbers with a hole puncher, switching them to buy alcohol. And that would work for Motor World 2 and by design. Gene literally told his attendants to never say the word no to guests inspired by what he had heard about

some costume characters at Disney World doing had they never refused to request. Well, that mandate made attendance in Motor World largely powerless to stop both juvenile drivers and also people who were blatantly fucking hammered or high as fuck from getting into these fast cars and getting blitzed and then hopping into

Motor World to race like a madman became the primary way the ride would now be enjoyed. And I'm not going to lie, I would love to do this right now. Maybe find out how well I could drive real fast with a head full of acid. While it was relatively easy to kick someone off the track, excuse me, once they had crashed to Lola, the dune buggies were a different story. They were off-road vehicles made by Honda.

The guests could take on this rougher wooded area adjacent to the track. Riders would follow a guy deep into the woods where they could then careen around freely. Sounds like even more fun to drive those things fucked up. To offset inevitable wipeouts, the buggies had a roll bar built behind the open driver's seat, like you see in auto racing, another set of bars in the front. While these were intended for safety, riders took them just as a license to drive like complete lunatics. Without fear of being trapped under the crumpled body of the vehicle,

they just whipped around the lot, taken it off small hills, you know, in order to catch some air, maybe smash into or land on another buggy, and there was a lot of crashing. It was basically like a demolition derby. The first weekend, they were available. Literally all 10 dune buggies met unfortunate ends. their riders pulling themselves from the wreckage

a handful sobbing and bleeding as they crawled away. Fortunately, Gene had mandated helmets one of the very few times he decided safety equipment would be necessary. But there was still the matter of the cars themselves which were being damaged at an alarmingly fast rate, alarmingly fast rate.

So rather than change the game, Gene recruited a guy named Mike Kramer because of Kramer's reputation as a first-class engine jockey for a track in North Carolina. Kramer was short, bearded, raced Volvo station wagons as a hobby. He was meticulous and maintaining the vehicles, treating them like collector's classics. At the side of a newly

damaged car, Kramer would often shout, Son of a bitch! Bang his mechanics' wrench on the nearest surface. He would then yell at the attendants, these teenagers, and then Gene would yell at him. Kramer would then get his babies back up and run as fast he could. Kramer was also responsible for maintaining the motor world

super go-karts. They bought 20 vehicles. Each had an open chassis seat, position low to the ground, humming along on a high decibel engine that made the area sound like an actual speedway. Because of their size, people underestimated their ability to take off in a matter of seconds, and the driver's neck snap back upon acceleration and then forward upon braking. And on some of the carts, a design flaw caused the gas cap to come off as people drove along the track.

And now fuel is splashing out behind him, hitting drivers in their eyes, a few feet behind him, and it was all incredibly dangerous and so much reckless fun. Fuck yeah, bro. in the minds of most Americans who had just seen Vietnam play out on their TVs and were now looking after shell-shocked wounded or permanently disabled family members if their family members returned at all

nothing that happened for the sake of good fun on American soil felt like it could truly be classified as dangerous. Indeed, the year prior in nearby New York City, previous suck subject, David Berkowitz, the son of Sam had been on a murder spree, later claiming he was under the control of a talking dog that same summer of blackout

sent the entire city into chaos, stressed-out residents came to Vernon in large groups looking for something to distract them from the real danger, the horror of the rest of the world. Getting fucked up on a go-cart? That was nothing. Who gives a shit? Gene was not worried about legal liability of any kind, even though nationally the tide was changing on that,

beginning with ski resorts. Historically, if you had skied into a tree, it was your fault. However, when a novice skier named James Sunday lost control after one of his ski tips hooked on a bit of snow-covered underbrush and Sunday fell and hit a boulder next to a slope in Vermont in 1974 and became a quadriplegic

a sued and won $1.5 million from the resort. And everything changed. And I kind of hate it. I've long hated this kind of litigation. I mean, it sucks that James ran into a big old boulder, broke his neck. Yeah, it's a fucking tragedy for sure. But shouldn't you assume some inherent

amount of risk when you go skiing? I've hit brush poking up from the snow. It sucks. It's also nature. I'm not in some, uh, you know, know, perfectly controlled laboratory. I'm literally on the side of a goddamn mountain. You know, it's been adapted and groomed, sure, but still, it's dangerous. And if you don't want to risk running over a rock or a stick or somebody else's ski glove or ski pole, well, maybe stay home. The resort should do their best. Yeah, of course, to remove as many hazards as possible,

but also skiing is inherently hazardous. You know, I caught air a couple years ago, landed on my back when I hit an ice patch and some shade, you know, a little shady patch. Freak me out if I've been paralyzed, should I have been able to sue the resort for not making sure the snow was somehow all magically evenly powdery and not too sticky or slick in some spots for not putting up signs everywhere saying, warning, sometimes snow is more slick or less slick in some places than other places. It's fucking crazy to me. Anyway, ever since, insurance rates have been rising, which meant that cost got passed along to the consumers and the ski industry was lobbying to go back to the previous status quo. But New Jersey wasn't having to deal with this

quite yet. The Garden State would prove to be Gene's biggest ally, having recent endorsed a law that said that that kind of liability fell on the individual, not on the operator. Individuals had to assess their own ability, choose the right difficulty for them, something that fit perfectly with Gene's philosophy. So, Gene decides to take things even further. He wanted to grow Motor World. He collected things. It went faster and faster, scruping up anything that could accelerate and filling up virtually every corner of the dedicated property with vehicles that guests could race and wreck, including speedboats now, on a murky-looking lake with a small island in the middle. The boats would often capsize dumping their drivers into the gasoline

lake. Sometimes gas and lake caught on fire, burned customers, sometimes snakes and snapping turtles able to coexist with the gas bit flailing guests. And you knew that might happen when you went for a ride. And that risk for many was what made it fun. Because now when you didn't get hurt, well, you felt a real sense of accomplishment. Right? I get it. I did stupid daring shit as a you know, things where I was very worried that I was going to get super fucked up when I didn't. Oh man, it was exhilarating. Adjacent to the speedboat lake

was a giant pile of hay bales that stretched more than 10 feet in the air. They formed a winding labyrinth that resembled an obstacle course constructed for a rat in a laboratory. A sign next to it read human maze. Snakes occasionally made their way into the hay bales popping out, causing people to run blindly away, getting more lost. In the middle of the summer,

the bales trapped heat, making the area into an inferno that some got lost in for up to nine hours apparently before they found the exit or started to say fuck it and crawled up and over one of the walls soon new attractions were popping up weekly on jean and family's property other areas found new purposes jean put in batting cages basketball courts the ski lift became the sky ride in the summer a scenic 40-minute tour to the mountain side or through the mountain landscape as it was advertised trails a pot smoke surrounded the lifts yeah buddy and then soon there was the first water slide. Water slides were a relatively new phenomenon in the country.

In 1971, a California campground owner named Dick Crowell. Gotta get some dick in the suck. Laid out the first one. A concrete trow covered in resin. People liked it. Or maybe it's trough. I'm probably messing that word up. People liked it. Soon similar sides were popping up along the West Coast where the weather generally allowed full-time use. But no one thought much of doing anything similar on the East Coast except for Gene, who again saw an opportunity to cede control to the guests and given them out, the landscape was right for it.

Instead of towers to prop it up, the mountain offered its own pre-made slope. The first, which was later known as the green water slide, was made from fiberglass, had two lanes that curved down to a big pool at the bottom. Jean's daughter, Julie, spent days filling the pool with water. She's siphoned from one of the lakes, carted over to the job site using an old fire truck,

her dad had bought from the Vernon Township Fire Department. The water slide was technically the least dangerous of all the park's attractions. You couldn't fly off as the foam mat stayed suction to the slide by the water, but Charlie's team had not done the best or most complete job of connecting the joints of the sections, causing some to jut out.

So if you went down the 400 feet track without riding one of the required foam mats, you'd probably scrape your exposed skin over the joints and end up with something from a big bruise to a deep gash. Mechanic Kramer, meanwhile, he was working on a new secret project. Battle action tanks.

Fuck yes. This one sounds like so much fun. These were small engine-powered four-wheelers with protective chassis built over the driver's seat A cage crafted out of chicken wire Allowed people to sit out of the camouflage colored body Inside a joystick triggered a series of tennis balls Which could shoot out of a custom-made cannon

At an absolutely ridiculous 100 miles an hour Allowing drivers to blast the ever-loving shit out of each other Along the perimeter of the area Mounted tennis ball guns allowed spectators and people waited in line to also attack the tanks at 100 miles an hour, and Kramer rigged them to go into a tailspin, the tanks, when somebody scored a direct hit. This amusement was awesome.

The only real problem was collecting the fire tennis balls. Well, employees would wait for lulls in combat, then sprint out onto the battlefield to retrieve them, and then the drivers, of course, would immediately turn and fire at the unprotected employees, you know, shooting those 100-mile-per-hour balls into their heads and torsos as they pled for the attackers to stop, as spectators cheered and begged

the shooters to keep drilling them it was so bad for the teen employees getting blasted that supervisor started to assign employees to this job as a punishment these tanks undoubtedly became the most popular attraction of motor world I mean dear God if this existed near me I would have a season pass right now

that sounds like so much fucking fun we have a little go-kart track North Coral lane the closest thing I can think of and it sucks looks like they go about 10 miles an hour And you see toddlers on them and sitting with their parents Like what is the fucking point of that?

Damn you lawsuits As Kramer's tanks began to draw long lines Gene grew convinced that the best rides The rides would be talked about Not only had to be unique But packed with thrills and a sense of danger People wanted debauchery Speed

Risk, competition People wanted action And Gene wanted to give more of it to them So now it was time for a rebrand And the fun farm became called Action Park Hi-ha-ha-ha! Genefield Action Park needed a new smash attraction,

something that rivaled or exceeded the thrill of motor world and the alpine slide. He wanted to be proprietary to Action Park, meaning nobody could find such a crazy ride anywhere else. And that was what led to his most insane concept, uh, yet, if not ever, in the summer of 1979.

At first, simply called the ball. This is insane. It was a big ball, like the kind you might put a hamster in, but obviously human-sized. and some type of fiberglass, it doesn't have a hard, durable plastic that you could see through.

It was covered in razor-sharp spikes. Some of the spikes had built in flame throwers. And the goal was to roll your ball into your opponent's territory in this kind of battle by any means necessary and, you know, get them to submit. No, that's too much even for Action Park.

There was no spikes in flame throws, but this idea is still bad shit crazy. It reminds you of something you would see in a jackass movie. Inside the big see-through ball was another ball, one equipped with a seat and a shoulder harness. Ball bearings separated the inner ball from the large

exterior ball, which allowed the inner ball to swivel independently and orient itself so that the seat always remained upright. And now, thanks to the hard work of the crew, there was a long track down the mountain made from PVC piping. Who thought that would work? The idea was to get in the ball, then roll

down the track like a fucking amateur crash chest dummy. Gene planned on paying the first few testers a hundred bucks each to take the ride, find out how well they fared because he was on a tight schedule from when the snow melted to Memorial Day when the park would open the installation and test team would only span a couple of weeks to him the ball was a perfect idea

the slide in motor park allowed for a lot of turnover at a high rate meaning if a ride did not allow for a lot of turnover if it was cumbersome or only allowed one person at a time like the ball it had to have a lot of wow factor and this thing had so much wow factor he first heard about it from a man named Ken Bailey who'd peddle the ride at some amusement park conventions that Gene frequented. He claimed to have gotten the idea

while he was working as a custodian at a Kmart. He accidentally spilled a bunch of wiffle balls on the ground. So that's cool. A Kmart janitor is making this death trap. Other people at the conventions dismiss the idea, but the ball was exactly what Gene was looking for. Ken had never built a full prototype before Gene flew him out to New Jersey,

but once he was there, fucking go time. And you might be asking yourself, how is this legal? though the New Jersey Department of Labor was responsible for granting permits for amusement rights Gene didn't bother applying for those permits he'd come up with a kind of workaround

that was probably not legal he claimed he was not installing rides but instead sporting attractions over which the state has zero jurisdiction he said he had coverage from London and World Assurance Limited and the state pretty much left him alone and more on this later

they will not leave him alone forever when the occasional inspector managed to show up they rarely had any idea what they were looking at they would just sign off on whatever Gene's hairbrain explanation was and to bolster's reputation he enlisted an orthopedist literally named Dr. Sugar.

Bring over Dr. Sugar who would just stand by while the inspectors poked around. Dr. Sugar would reassure the government employees that there was nothing too dangerous about the ride. And that was how the ball came to be operational in just a couple weeks. And the ball was not the only new attraction being

launched. Around the time of the ball, early summer, 1979, Charlie began to assemble it an enclosed slide with a loop at the bottom, one of Gene's ideas called the Cannonball Loop, and this thing just straight up looks dangerous. I saw some picks online, and I was like, nope, hard no. Maybe when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I would have done it, like maybe after being pressured by my friends, but only if they went first, and I definitely wouldn't do this one now. There was no water to crean into at the end of the Cannonball Loop, not at first. Now, the first testers landed on a straw mats.

one tester slammed so hard into a hay bell he broke his nose the ride would not open that summer that ride not the Hannibal loop it was too dangerous even for Gene and that meant there was more pressure on the Bailey ball which it was now being called to work

and at the very first test an inspector for the Department of Labor came to deserve I don't even know what I said there came to observe what was that the inspector came to preserve sir

came to I want you to hear what happened next from the perspective of Andy Mulvahill, Gene's son, who co-wrote a book about his dad's insane park called Action Park, Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Theme Park. It was published in 2020. But first, before we hear from Andy, time for today's second and two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Now let's listen to Gene's son, Andy, talk about the test run of the ball. this is insane.

Andy wrote, We all stared at the ball. The ball was a giant plastic sphere at least 10 feet in diameter. It resembled the kind of thing you stuck in a hamster in, except this ball was scaled for a human. A human who would,

by virtue of being willing to climb inside, presumably, possessing an intellect comparable to the very same hamster. I don't know how the ball had been transported here. I don't know how the ball was transported here. It had been absent one day

and here the next. No one thought it was unusual. Workers walked by without comment. In my father, Gene's orbit, the sudden appearance of a medieval-looking contraption in the notorious amusement property he owned and operated for 20 years known as Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey was simply not remarkable. We all stared at the ball. As it loomed in front of us, I consider myself fortunate. I was still employed as a water slide attendant, not a 16-year-old inspector of giant ball safety. Go on and get in the ball, Frank, my father said.

Frank was apparently an employee of the resort's wintertime operations. I'd never seen him before. depending on what my father had planned, I might not ever see him again. Frank touched the surface as though it were an alien spacecraft, made out of a strange alloy. He nudged it as though physical contact might reveal its mysteries. The ball wobbled a bit before going still. He slid a hand behind the railing surrounding the exterior. It got stuck, prompting a brief panic. With a sheepish grin, Frank plucked it out.

That would soon be the least of Frank's problems. Inside this ball was another ball, one equipped with his. seat and shoulder harness like the kind found in race cars, just not action parks race cars, which were engineered for bone-smashing mayhem. Ball bearings separated the inner ball from the larger exterior ball, which allowed the inner ball to swivel independently and orient itself, so the seat always remained upright. Behind Frank stretching in a zigzag pattern down the front of the mountain was a long track made from PVC piping like the kind used in plumbing, five or six inches in diameter. On the outer surface of the ball were casters and wheels like the ones found

on office chairs. With these context clues, I began to understand Frank's apprehension. Once you're in the ball, Frank, Jean said, you're going to roll along that track. I don't think. Don't worry, my father said, acting as though climbing into a giant ball was routine. You'll roll along the track, you'll come to a gentle stop. You get in there, try it out. We'll take it for a spin when the ride inspectors come.

Before Frank could protest further, my father handed him a $100 bill. Frank stared at the cash temporarily placated. He opened a hatch on the ball, peered inside. Charlie O'Brien and Big Al Azir, my father's dependable, but not strictly sober, maintenance men, helped him in. Once Frank was strapped to the seat, the two began rolling him around the grass like they were bored children playing with a toy. You're not going to find this at Disney, my father said, beaming.

Rarely did he stop to consider there might be a very good reason for that. Ken Bailey was the man who came up with his idea for the ball. He called it the man in the ball in the ball. When everyone got tired of saying that, which happened immediately, we just called it the Bailey ball. Bailey was a very excitable man who had a childlike enthusiasm for rides. He peddled the ball his most sensational idea at the amusement park conventions. My father frequented. Ken said he got the idea while working as a custodian and a Kmart, accidentally spilling a bunch of wiffle balls on the floor.

As they rolled around, Bailey imagined a person inside of each one. My father enlisted him to build out his track. He was finished. He gathered at the foot of the mountain. me, my father, Charlie O'Brien, a physician who inexplicably advised on the safety of rides named Dr. Sugar and Ken. Also present was an inspector from the Department of Labor, who seemed to recoil at the side of the mountain track. That he was there at all was something of a formality. Normally, the state had little idea how to evaluate my father's participatory rides and had no clue how to

verify their safety profiles. The Bailey Ball would nonetheless need to demonstrate some basic regard for human life in order to be rubber-stamped. My father wanted to see the ball in action first thing in the morning, hoping to get it open to the public the following day. Well, the inspector was running late. Because of the delay, Frank had been in the ball and cooking for more than a half hour during the first day of hot weather we'd seen. He was already at the mouth the track 600 feet up the mountain.

When everyone was in place, Ken gave a thumbs up. Big Al pushed the ball from its starting position down the graded slope. Things went well for the first fifth. 15 seconds or so, with Frank remaining upright in the center of the ball. But on the first turn to go back across the mountain, the ball did not remain in the groove. It broke free, and it began rolling straight downhill. Ken's face fell. He'd been working up until the last minute, gluing the PVC together, not realizing it was warping under the heat, I could already see gaps in the tubing. Damaged by the hot sun, the plastic was expanding, severing the rail that

was supposed to give the ball direction. Now it was free, unburdened by the track. The ball had achieved autonomy. It gained momentum, tumbling uncontrollably down the face of the slope and picking up tremendous speed. Inside, Frank spun helplessly, unable to stop. He could not abandon the craft, as the door opened only from the outside. When the contraption made it to the bottom without any visible damage and Frank still appeared conscious, I exhaled.

But it didn't stop. It began rolling at high speed towards us now like the boulder and Raiders of the Lost Ark. We scattered, my dad and I scurrying to the left, Ken and Charlie to the right. right, Dr. Sugar and the inspector were frozen, each of their faces a rictus of terror. The ball cleared a small hill, briefly going airborne, then zipped right across Route 94, the two-lane road splitting the park. Cars honked and slammed on their brakes. If there had been opposing traffic, Frank would have become part of a real-life game of Pong, volleying from one bumper to another. Still in pursuit, we followed the ball towards a small lake

and motor world that had been embarked, or that had been earmarked for a fleet of tiny bumper boats for children. The area wasn't open yet, but the empty boats were being tested and floated on the surface. The ball soared over the grass and smashed into several of them, scattering the others with rippling waves from the impact, which launched some of the boats several feet into the air. Charlie and Ken waded into the water, looking for the hatch. After some difficulty, they got it open. Charlie pulled Frank out by grabbing him under his armpits like a baby. Frank crawled up the bank coughing and sputtering. He spayed across the grass as we all stared at the ball, which bobbed in the water like it was attached to a fishing lure.

We did not ask for the inspector's report, nor did we ever hear of one being filed. Ken Bailey returned to Canada. The snowmakers cleared away the PVC, told to dispose of the Bailey Ball, they rolled it into the woods where it remained for many years. My father was unbought. He kept drawing and doodling attractions,

telling us about things that were not in the park, but would soon be. Just wait, he said. Just wait. Un-fucking real. I'm fucking kidding. I said, I'm fucking Cammy.

Right, Miles? I feel like Ken should have definitely died during that test run. Or wait, not Ken. God, who was inside of it? The guy, Frank. Yeah, Frank. Frank should have definitely died during that test run. I mean, either by getting, like, blasted by a car,

as he crossed out of highway, slamming into a big tree or something else, you know, virtually immovable, or I thought he was probably going to, like, drown in that leg at the bottom. When I first heard about the big ball rolling down the mountain, I thought, oh, this is going to go off its tracks very quickly. I thought what was going to happen was they were going to have it, you know, when people are at the park, it was going to bust off the tracks and then just start fucking mowing people down. Just smashing people.

It just raced down the mountain. Oh, my gosh. I didn't think it would be that bad on literally its very first run. That's hilarious. So Gene, yeah, he shakes this off. You know, oh, well, he's got more bad ideas in store. He had a special affection for Disney's monorail, which debuted in 1971. Another transit method, the people mover, transported people above Tomorrowland, what amounted to do a glorified sightseeing tour.

As Action Park began to grow and expand, the problem of what to do with walking guests became more pressing. And to get from Motorworld to the aquatic area, dubbed water world, home in the speedboats, you had to hike up and over a big hill, cross Route 94 on foot, you know, wait for traffic, far less than ideal. Gene's solution to this problem was the transmobile, a 3,000-foot-long electric runway running from motorwheel to cross. the motor world, across the road to the ski lodge and on to the entrance to Waterworld. While Disney's monorail resembled an elevated subway train, the transmobile featured small open-air carts that held four passengers over a raised track, moved at four to seven miles an hour. Given its considerable height of 10 to 20 feet, it was one of the few rides that came with a safety belt. Gene bought it from DMAC, same West German outfit that sold him the Alpine Slide.

It was expensive, so he relied on connections from his Wall Street day. to help finance it. It was also challenging. He had to construct it over Route 94, which was New Jersey's jurisdiction through and through, and Vernon residents, the number of which had ballooned in the 70s as bedroom communities outside of New York City grew. Well, they were starting to get a lot less excited about an ever-expanding theme park in their midst. Gene argued that Action Park gave teens in the area good jobs, kept him out of trouble away from drugs, that it made money, you know, that it paid in taxes that went back to their educations, also had his rag-tag crew listen for anything the town might need parking lot repaved pothole filled about the town some ambulances

uh you know had his uh you know people do things around for free for the town and so thanks to that calculated goodwill his proposal for transmobile passed in the spring of 1980 workers both teenage and adults swarmed the property racing to get the transmobile and new attractions ready in time for the beginning of another season because the price of gas had gone up people were looking to vacation closer to home and action park was getting ready for a mammoth season. Gene added two lanes for the alpine for a total of four now. They would eventually have six. Three of which were serviced by a second chairlift. His miniature speedboats were up and

running. Gene told a reporter he was also preparing a hot air balloon landing port, though that never materialized. The cannibal loop, however, would be up and running. There would also be something called the kamikaze, a massive slide from which visitors would emerge, skipping across the surface of the water literally. Like a rock Going across a puddle They would come down the slide

screaming before the surface turn level Slowing their momentum allowing them to skim across a long narrow pool This ride became extremely popular It had nothing to do with people actually enjoying it as a ride though No people love to watch others go down this ride Because the force of the water was so great

It would blast women's bathing suit tops clean off Men's swim trunks Would get ripped from their bodies And teenagers would battle over who got to work this ride saying it was better than a strip club. I fucking love this place. I would have for sure wanted to work here if I was 16 or 17. The mood that summer would not be completely joyful, however.

George Larson was a 19-year-old from the neighboring town of Sparta. He'd worked at the resort as a ski lift operator for part of the one winter, come back just to play and socialize. During the school year, Larson was an excellent wrestler, had gone undefeated the previous season. In the summer, the athlete worked for his dad's roofing firm. And when he was not working, he loved to go to action parks. and when he was at Action Park, he loved the Alpine slide.

The official park record would say that he spent an entire day riding down the Alpine's fast lane. His mom, Esther, would later say he wanted to go to Action Park, so I loaned him the money in the afternoon, and a friend of his went over there to meet him. He'd become adept at careening down at a near record clip, decided to ramp up the difficulty level by using one of the carts that have been customized by some of the mechanics to go even faster. He kept using it even as the sky opened up and it started to rain. At roughly six in the evening, the ride was allegedly shuttered to the public, but Larson somehow was still riding. He turned to look at a friend on a parallel track while banking a 90-degree turn, and he lost control,

flew off the track, violently rolled down the embankment, and he came to his stop only after he struck his head on a large rock. Esther was at home when she got to call that her son had been badly injured. Her husband and other son, Brian, were working together when they got the call. George was in the hospital. Esther at first thought he was going to be fine. Her son was an athlete, a daredevil. He got injuries all the time. But she and her husband and other son arrived at the hospital.

Doctors were checking for brainwaves and not finding any. It was quickly starting to look like George might not ever wake back up, and then he didn't. He died of his injuries on July 16th, 1980, after being in a coma for a week. He was 19. The entire family was, of course, distraught, with Esther confessing later that between the rectory and the hospital, when she was walking across the street, she deliberately stepped in front of a truck. But her husband pulled her back. also devastating for George's brother Brian

who was due to get married just days later and George was supposed to have been his best man the response from the park too was traumatic according to George's family Gene Mulvahill never contacted the family or the hospital to check on what happened to George after emergency services transported him out of the park not sure what was going on there

also according to Larson family park management alleged that George was an employee to the park using equipment after hours so as not to report his death to the state in reality. George had only worked to the ski lift on the slope just for one winner. The park's response

definitely far less than ideal. The park's general manager, a man named Wesley Smith, immediately denied any responsibility for what had happened. He said to the press, the ride did not injure Larson. It was a rock 25 feet away that hurt him. The Larson family would sue, eventually settle for $100,000.

The family traumatized by what the experience actually also moved from New Jersey to Florida as they attempted to heal. And when this went excuse me, they were not the only ones who had serious concerns about Action Park. Some of the employees were troubled. By the event, by the guilt, it followed. Some believe Larson had pushed things too far. Others said it was the attendance fault for letting him use the ride in the first place during dangerous weather conditions.

Gene shut the ride down for two days before declaring that Larson had gone down, quote, at excessive speed and put himself at risk. He also had a pave road put in so EMTs could pick up injured riders more easily going forward. Meanwhile, after Larson's death, the Department of Labor got a stack of overdue accident report from the park. According to the report, 95 people had been treated for injuries ranging from bruises to fractures, scrapes, to burns, bumps, to concussions. Over 40% of the injuries came from the Alpine. Most other injuries came from Motorworld. That same summer, Lawrence Franzel sued after being thrown from a dune buggy and suffered a compound fracture of his left arm. He argued that the employees were not properly trained to safeguard the public.

still the show went on and most who came to action park did not mind getting beat to shit they had the time of their lives that August the transmobile became fully operational it opened with the dedication ceremony where Gene declared it the transportation system

of the future was it really all that uh probably not despite the pageantry the system seemed kind of rickety cart's trembling as they carried people from one area to the next but it worked when a state inspector named Harry Crane gave it a cursory once over the cart he was

ride in, slid backward, careened down a slope in the track, and smashed into another cart, sent him to the hospital with bruises. But Harry did not enter that into the record. There's a rumor he was bribed. With his new transportation system up and running, Gene now focused on a new ride for next summer. By 1981, the amusement industry was changing fast. There was an increasing consumer desire for more of everything, an appetite for thrills that bordered on gluttony. It was not enough to have six or seven attractions. There needed to be dozens. And all the of them needed to be unique to the park. Kenywood, one of the northeast largest parks,

now offered six roller coasters. Disney World was put in the finishing touches on Epcot, a massive new world that would offer a glimpse of the future in a giant orb-shaped building that sounds like a golf ball. Great adventure. It introduced a roaring rapids ride modeled after the Congo River and Africa to the tune of $6 million.

To Gene, it was clear they needed a flagship attraction in the wet side of things. Something water-based that would be more exciting than a ride where you barely got wet and also compete with his new nemesis to the Atlantic Ocean. He wanted it to be something that hundreds of guests

could use at a time. Enter the wave pool. The wave pool will be part of Action Park's new advertising push, complete with the new tagline. There's nothing in the world like Action Park,

where you're the center of the action. A new televised commercial which feature the park's teenage staff in swimsuits. Let's hear it. Love 80s commercials. You are the superstar at the spectacular

new and different Action Park, Vernon Valley Great Gorge. You're racing Throw tearing up the mini indie track. You're at the throttle of a powerhouse speedboat. You're a gold medalist bobsledder zipping down an alpine mountain. You're swishing down a cooling water slide, 10 stories high. Get in the action.

You're in control at the country's most fantastic action park. Only 49 miles, a few gallons from Times Square in Vernon Valley, Great Gorge, New Jersey. We've got your action. We've got your action. Gene's son, Andy. Now 17 was put in charge of the pool, would recruit other 17-year-olds to act as lifeguards. The boys wore red swim trunks. The girls wore red swimsuits, all made out of a cheap fabric that turned translucent when it got wet. Huh. Was that part of what drew more teens at the park?

Seen through the lifeguards flimsy swimsuits? I bet it was. On Memorial Day, 1981, the wave pool opened. Hundreds of people poured in. No staff had bothered to look at the area's capacities of people were just elbow to elbow. There was no line. People just dove in from anywhere. It was fucking chaos. The waves were on a timer 20 minutes on, 10 minutes off, to give swimmers a little break from their pummeling aggression. There was a digital countdown display similar to a scoreboard that let people know when the waves were coming. If they got in during a lull, they happily paddled about with a false sense of security,

some sitting on tiny rafts, mats, inner tubes that were rented from a nearby stand. But when the waves hit, the force caught the guests unprepared. Powered by very powerful fans, the over three foot tall waves struck with the same violent menace, originally meant to create a series of mini shipwrecks in the German Navy simulation the technology had actually been created for. By noon, the congestion began spilling out

into the margins at the pool. Some visitors dove in without even bothering to remove their sweatpants or jeans. Kids are running laps on wet concrete. Teenagers with gold chains around their necks scanning the pool looking for friends. When they find them, they'll purposefully dive on top of them, splashing onto flesh and water

that is now tainted with body oil, suntan lotion, blood, knows what else the waves are pummeling visitors people on flotation rentals are capsizing canvas rafts would then trap people underwater one lifeguard tossed a waterlogged buoy to a guest in trouble on this insane opening day and it hit him in the face hard enough to shatter his nose now we got more blood in the water but the party doesn't stop soon more people are in trouble than not and there are stories of lifeguards literally punching people in their faces to keep them from dragging the life guards down under water.

There was no lifeguard B squad. Everyone worked from 10 a.m. till sunset, rarely getting out of the water long enough to be dry. 11,000 people came to the park that day, and most it seemed were in the wave pool. At the same time, spilling drinks. Again, bleeding. Probably a fair number of them pissing in the pool. Gene's son, Andy Mulva Hill, grew worried.

The water grew discolored to the point that it was impossible to tell if anybody was underneath it might be drowning. Gene didn't worry. He said it was no different than the ocean. you couldn't see the bottom there but that didn't stop people from swimming, did it? I mean, fair point, actually. The next day, the lifeguards up the chlorination of the wave pool to cut through the oily sheen on the surface.

The teenagers were becoming amateur chemist now mixing calcium chloride with baking soda without any real idea of how to fucking do that. On days they got it wrong, people would emerge with red eyes, wincing from corrosive chemicals. Even on days they got it right, other concerns emerged

like a drunk man who got a head laceration and just stay in the water bleeding profusely instead of getting out by the end of the week teenage lifeguards were ready to mutiny but they settled

for increased wages and Letterman's jackets with wave patrol written on the backs the wave pool's chaos was working for the attendees by the end of the summer action parks crowds

were averaging 15,000 people a day causing food shortages in the park the park would also get sued again by a man who had had his front teeth shattered by a buoy

a teenage lifeguard had thrown to save him in the wave pool. The park ended up paying for the man's dental work. Another man named Alfred Sorhe also sued after fracturing his ribs on the alpine slide. Said it was defectively designed. He's probably right. Not sure if he won or not. And now let's jump into the next season.

New summer, new commercial. It's incredible. It's unbelievable. It's action park. Hell yeah. You're in total control of over 50 sensational rides and family attractions at the world's largest participation fun spot. There's unforgettable. Time-stopping heart-pumping action faster than chain lightning. With rides that stretch your imagination to the breaking point, enjoy hours of action minutes away in the clean, fresh air of the New Jersey

Mountainside at Action Park, Vernon Valley, Great Gorge, New Jersey. There's nothing in the world like Action Park. So many people look so happy in that commercial, and also so many people look so scared. By Memorial Day of 1982, the park is busier than ever. Julie, Jean's daughter, It's come on as the park's full-time marketing person. She set up promotion with brands like Subway, Burger King, McDonald's, and Pepsi.

The restaurant brands would feature Action Park displays on the counter, offers for discounted admission. If you bought Pepsi, there were similar offers on the side of the can. At this time, this kind of tie-in was generally reserved for bigger parks. But Julie convinced their marketing teams that a swelling audience and growing reputation would make for a mutually beneficial relationship. Coupled with TV spots, Awareness to Action Park was at an all-time. time high. Traffic to the entrance was now sometimes literally backed up for miles and the park is more chaotic than ever

despite employees' efforts to mitigate new crowds and keep the park looking halfway decent. For example, at the wave pool in an attempt to stop using so much chlorine, the park had mandated the guests take showers before jumping in. The idea was that that would slow them down. But the water freezing cold just prompted them to

sprint into the wave pool even faster than before, only to be knocked down by one of its powerful swells, find themselves and what the lifeguards were now calling the death zone in area of the pool that was constantly overflowing with guests. More people meant the need for more staff. Hordes of teenagers were hired that summer.

Some were hired to operate the newest ride something Gene had cooked up after watching our neighbor's slip and slide. The slip-inslide, as you might know, is a popular outdoor toy composed of a 30-foot-long plastic sheet, which people went down with the garden hose and slide across. Or if you were a poor kid like me, you made your own slip-and-slide, or really more of like a

slip-and-cry. You went out and bought a a roll of large black garbage bags, big old trash bags. You would use duct tape on one side to kind of hold, you know, the perforated portion separating the bags, that together. You would make your little sister keep the slide wet with the garden hose. And then you would slide down over and over until somebody started to cry because one of the rocks you didn't do shit about that was lying underneath the slide would tear through the plastic and cut them. Or they would slide off the end of the plastic and get their skin all torn up by your shitty, patchy, hard gravel-filled yard. Unbeknownst to me, throughout the 1970s, a slip and slide caused several broken necks and paralysis. It was actually temporarily taken off the market at one point.

It was also not recommended for anyone over the age of 12. Added weight and speed of teens and adults made it dangerous as fuck. Well, Gene thought it was a fantastic idea, and he thought, let's put it on a hill. So he went on to build a giant one called Surf Hill, a massive slip and slide. 30 yards wide, 150 yards long, installed on the side of a steep hill, had 10 lanes, At the bottom, it leveled, slowing the writer's momentum before they ended up in a shallow pool at the bottom. Like almost all of other genes, other ideas,

it was possible to achieve uncontrolled speeds. Shooting down so fast, you literally skip like a stone over the water and then crashed into a padded wall at the opposite side. There were eight standard lanes and then two expert lanes with a jump in the middle. Serf Hill also encouraged racing and competition over personal safety. It encouraged people to take things into their own hands at Action Park, you control the action,

even more so than Gene's former attractions. Riders could lift up the two expert lanes, stuff a garbage can under the wooden ramp at the end to make it even steeper, and when the rider would hit the elevated jump, they would go up to 30 feet in the air. Fucking wild. Before landing in his shallow pool.

The attraction became popular for another classic action park reason. Because people were flying down at such high speeds, their swimsuits were getting ripped off at the bottom. And sometimes they were so disoriented after this happening, they would start to get back in line without realizing they were naked. Gene fully aware of this, and he capitalized on it. He built spectator platforms, and the area became nicknamed Titty Hill.

Classic 80s move, Titty Hill. I feel like Gene was a big fan of movies like Porky's. Right? Also, Gene, maybe a bit of a perv. How many those swimsuits coming off belong to like 15-year-olds? Under its official name of Surf Hill, not Titty Hill, the attraction became a key part of the park's promotion with commercials, newspaper ads, in three states,

radio spots in English and Spanish, constantly running, and completing the feedback loop, more people than ever come to check it out. But this posed a problem. The park was still basically on the footprint of an old ski resort, which was never meant to house tens of thousands of people

milling about at the same time. The bathrooms, for example, were located in the lodge far from Waterworld, where Surf Hill and the Wave Pool were, or from Motor World. You know so many people. we're pissed into that pool. In addition, garbage spilled out of overflowing receptacles, attracting bees. They made people scream and run away in panic. By the time employees came

to collect trash bags, they dripped with what staff referred to as garbage juice. Lines for food stretched for hours, fed up service workers who were also teens, would sometimes tear open things with their teeth, leave garbage, strewn on the counters. Grease trays are overflowing, catching fire. There's rarely enough napkins, straws, and cups for everybody. The man in charge of concessions was a farmer named Bud Kelly. He had no business running this shit. He'd come to be in charge because he owned the neighboring land

and Gene wanted to expand but couldn't pay his high asking price. Instead, as part of a package, Gene offered Bud the miserable food and beverage operation. And for his part, Bud would do stuff like buy a whole bunch of cheap chicken

that was expired. So that's cool. There was also the horror of the restrooms. Stalled doors would go missing, sanitary napkins were sticking to the walls. When the toilets were clogged from overuse, people started to literally just shit on the floor. of finally

finally jean agreed to take the roller rink a quaint and outdated attraction and transform it into a big rest-stop area where guests could just attend to all their bodily needs but even through all this chaos with filth and overcrowding and titties seemed to the park staff

jean in the outside world that you know things could be gross that you might get an accident or shit your brains out and that was about the worst thing that could happen to you when you were there but they were wrong action park had already been the site of one death

it was about to be the sight of another. In the summer of 1982, a happy sun-kissed 15-year-old named George Lopez headed to the wave pool. The pool was not in good condition at the time. Following a rainstorm, some of the overflowing muck from the adjacent hill had clouded the water more than normal,

seriously affecting visibility. Given that, in the sheer volume of humanity in the pool, nobody noticed when George went down and didn't come back up. He drowned. It's not clear how long he was under the water before anyone even noticed. In response, the Lopez family sued the park, several of the guards on duty charging negligence.

Not sure what the result of that litigation was, but I think they got a pretty big settlement. Gene didn't seem phased by it. The hymn action park was a natural structure, like the ski slopes or the ocean, where accidents sometimes happen, and lives are sometimes cut short. Following George's death, he does not give the life cards any new direction about changes they could make. So, on their own, they start moving guests to the shallow end of the pool when the water grows murky and stationed guards in the water with buoys. And then there will be another death that summer.

Gina just opened another attraction that season based on what you might experience, you know, in nature, called it the kayak experience. He entered a kayak, propelled yourself up a pool while the current blasted at you from the opposite end. It was actually a fairly tame experience compared to most of the other attractions. The water was choppy, but not overly so. And you can stand up in the water if you fell out of your boat. The problem was not with the water. It was with whatever moved it. That summer, a young man named Jeff Nathan came to the park for the first or second.

time with his cousin, Steve Langrothal, and Steve's wife, Janet. All three were on the kayak ride, waiting in the water after getting knocked over and out of their boats. And then the next thing Janet and Steve knew, they were waking up in the hospital. Jeff was there too, but he had not woken up. Back at the pool, they'd all been electrocuted and knocked unconscious. It seemed at first to the staff like the result of a freak lightning strike. At the hospital, Jeff was pronounced dead by the emergency room staff back at the park staff soon realized that a lightning strike was impossible something had happened with the ride. What? The coroner declared that Jeff Nathan's death was due to electric shock. In response, Gene produced records from the company that built

the motors for the fans, the same company that built the wave pool fan motors, saying there was no possibility that could occur. The coroner then hired an inspector of her own who found a damage underground cable. Gene counted that her inspector was not a licensed electrician and that the cable was 50 feet away from where the accident had occurred. The state inspectors who examine the ride, it also found an intermittent short in one of the motors, but it was impossible to discern whether that had directly led to the accident. Nobody could say definitively what had happened, but it was obvious that this was no cause of horseplay, no fooling around.

Jeff Nathan had done everything correctly and still died. The Department of Labor, however, eventually announced that the park was not guilty of wrongdoing. A short circuit was a no-fault situation. But Gene closed down the ride regardless rather than risk another electrocution. He did not need all the litigation that would entail, he already had other lawsuits to deal with. That same summer, Wilfred Juan, sued action park after driving a speedboat.

Claddy was another vessel. He argued that the teens on staff did not properly supervise the ride. That same year, Israel Schwartz said he suffered permanent disfigurement after being allowed to use the alpine slide without supervision. Gene soon realized that annual lawsuits would be part of his overhead now

for as long as he insisted that everything in his park was try at your own risk. He enlisted a man named Eric Karg, who was supposedly the claims adjuster for the insurance company covering the park London and World Assurance Limited. A day or two after any given accident, Karg would phone the individual

offer a nominal sum to cover medical costs, smooth over any lingering resentment. Somebody who wiped out extra hard on the Alpine might agree to a $750 payout to let the matter drop. If the park was negligent, he might increase the amount a little. But if he suspected the person was just out for a big payday, he'd turn him down.

This worked overall, saved Gene a lot of money, but Carr could dissuade everyone. In those cases, Gene dispatched a lawyer named David Chaffin. David was an old hippie who wore his long gray hair tied in a ponytail, used a cane to help with a limp. His services were needed often enough by Action Park that he started keeping an office across the street from the property. He'd open a dialogue with the plaintiff's attorney by informing them he was going to challenge their claim every single step of the way. The opposing lawyer would scoff incredulous that a major business would want a prolonged legal

battle. That's when David would begin to read the accident report, which usually began with the victim's testimony. I was just goofing around. I don't know how to swim. David never settled cases, which meant defense attorneys would be tied up for months or for years with potentially no payout. Soon word of this spread and attorneys started to refuse to deal with them point blank. When someone did ultimately drag him into court, David would dispose the depose the opposing side for hours pretending that he was just an old man getting his fact straight. Often opposing attorneys would become openly hostile and belligerent and the judge would sympathize with David

and his warm, gentle persona and ultimately ruled in his favor. In one case in which a man had flipped off his mat after hitting the landing pool at Surf Hill, aka Titty Hill, had to wear a halo brace for months to heal what was known as a hangman's fracture on his neck, another half inch and he would have been quadriplegic. David Chaffin accused him of engaging in horseplay.

The whole park was nothing about horseplay. A judge agreed that the man was behaving irresponsibly and ruled in favor of the park. Park. Well, that would not happen with Jeff Nathan's family, though, in the case of his electrocution. There would be an undisclosed settlement in that case despite the state, ruling the park was not at fault. Based on tons of injuries and now several deaths, Action Park was becoming known as Traction Park, Accident Park, Class Action Park. The wave pool had been nicknamed the Grave Pool. But was this bad for business? Hell no. Had the exact

opposite effect. The press was trashy in the park now, news of many accidents and loss were spreading like wildfire, but in the popular consciousness, infamy was a fantastic form of advertising. Now kids who had gotten scars from falls off the alpine slide or broken their hands while driving lowless had something to be proud of. They were survivors. Going to action park and going hard wasn't just reckless fun now, it was a local ride of passage. Among the suburban kids in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and further, you know, coming away with bruises or scars meant you would live to tell the tale of what had happened to you. At the end, end of the 1982 summer, Gene looked at the numbers.

500,000 people had come to Action Park during the summer of 81. In 1982, 800,000. The accidents were certainly not deterrents, at least not to the public. The government, on the other hand, was a different story. In March of 1983, as the park prepared to open for that season, the world would make a discovery that Gene had known for years. For years, many had wondered how the park stayed insured throughout its incidents. Well, London and World Assurance Company was surprisingly affordable because the cost of their premiums was zero.

How? They didn't exist. It was a completely fake, made-up company. News of insurance fraud quickly hit the papers. No one knew who urged the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation to conduct the inquiry, but a prime suspect was Tom Keene, the governor of New Jersey. Keene, a Republican, was apparently irritated after Gene threw his support behind an opposing candidate during the 1981 gubernatorial election and may have decided to retaliate by sending the SCI after him.

But also, could have just been that the SCI became concerned about the park's insurance status following two deaths the previous summer. Whatever the reason, what they found was that the insurance company's office traced back to a peel box in the Cayman Islands and that the insurance slips Jean had were signed by Joe Dotsie, a former Mayflower employee who was not in the insurance business. The shadowy company, of course, was not authorized to do business in the state of New Jersey, which also violated Gene's lease terms with the Department of Environmental Protection. Despite the results of this investigation, Gene insisted to the press that it was all above board. He was the target of witch hunt. That bullshit story did not work for the SEI. They now wanted

to find out everything they could about Action Park. In response, a battalion of lawyers with lawsuits against the park modified their complaints to note that their rides, or excuse me, that the rides their clients had been injured on should have never been in operation in the first place. The family of George Larson, who had long fought the courts as they made the difficult claim that their son did nothing wrong, finally got a sort of break, though the lawsuit would still drag on even longer. Despite all this, Gene is undeterred. He knows he needs to find some real insurance, but he's not worried about it. He's mostly worried about reintroducing the cannonball loop, and he has another commercial to produce for the 1983 summer season.

We come an action family with over 50 exciting rides. Hell yeah. And attractions. It's bigger and better than ever. Hardly anyone is dying. Get ready for the action. At the world's largest participation park where you and the rides become one this week. Come and share the experience together.

You're just minutes away. There's nothing in the world like action. Ah, there really isn't. It really increased the production value on that one. It's sounded crisp. Brought in some more experienced musicians to sing that tight, jingle uh now back to cannonball loop through the looping uh excuse me though the looping tube had been in the park for many years it had never been open to the public but jean had always refused

to tear it down now he had his staff shorten the loop uh reducing its height which at least reduced the chances of guests smashing their faces into the opposing wall and he installed a hatch to rescue people who got stuck soon memorial day was here the loop was operational that day also marked the opening of something called the aqua loop scoot Made by Gene's old friend, the janitor Ken Bailey. They brought him back. Same insane sadist who had designed that ball of death. On the scoot, guests sat on a cart that was propelled down a 32-foot high tower made

of metal rollers. Kind of the kind of rollers that scan your luggage at airport TSA security entrances. The rider would pick up a pick-up speed at a steep downward angle, which then flattened out, shot them across the water like a skipping stone. The problem with the ride was that it was dependent on the patron holding the their torso upright. If they messed around, if they lean back too far, their head would slam into the metal lip near the last roller, which could effectively fucking scalp them, rip some of their hair out. The overhang at the bottom also attracted wasps, a bunch of them for some

reason. They build nests at the end of the attraction. It was therefore possible to tear off part of your head, then attract stinging insects with your panic flailing. The scoot was soon scuttled, and Gene was finally done going to his Canadian mad scientist for new ride designs. Also, Action Park, now having some workforce problems. As a result of the increased bad press, a lot of parents no longer wanted their teens working at class Action Park, and I get it. And while it wasn't a lot of kids who ended up quitting, they had more visitors than ever, and added to the fact that many kids are departing their jobs in August instead of seen out the rest of the summer, and the park is in danger of being dangerously understaffed now.

So Gene comes up with a fix. He begins offering workers an additional 25 to 50 cents an hour. if they stay through Labor Day, equivalent to a bump of about 80 cents to $1.60 today. Not a lot, but enough, I guess. The raise was retroactive. You had to make it all the way to September to be eligible for a bonus. It's for sticking around, right? You got that automatic bump in pay. He also wanted to make Action Park a more fun workplace.

After all, these kids spent most of their day getting screamed at, not riding the rides. So he now starts opening the park two hours early just for staff. And closing two hours late, also just for staff. So smart. and he hosts special staff sports tournaments and races at motor world and water world and at the end of the summer he hosts a huge party with as much liquor as you can drink and a fair amount of pot and shrooms as well and all that all that makes kids willing to deal with the shall we say suboptimal conditions of action park like the violence

visitors would often erupt into fistfights sometimes employees get sucked into the fray there were also pseudo gang wars where groups of kids from different backgrounds would step in to defend each other, a la West Side Story, brawling over something as inconsequential as a place in line. They did have security, but not much. They had one 70-year-old former police officer named Arnold, and Arnold carried two guns. One on his waist, second on his ankle, don't know how good he was with either one. If anyone got detained, random staff would keep them in a small holding area in the hexagon lounge or at least try to until Arnold or the police showed up. Less than ideal. Also in 1983, more lawsuits. That summer, Philip and Dolores Shaw

they sue after fall and hurting themselves near the wave pool entrance. William Sussie sues, alleging that three hammered drunk dudes crashed into him on the alpine. Ruth Richards sued after a Lola car, driven by a high school student with a fake driver's license, hit her hard enough to break her nose and tear cartilage up in her knee. Jeez. This additional litigation convinced Gene to start to emphasize more family-friendly attractions that cater to kids and their parents. At first, he hired students to walk around the park playing instruments as the

Action Park Marching Band. Then he decided why not a live show? He contacted a veteran stage choreographer named Alan Albert, built a stage over Motor World to host Allen's Broadway Review. Alan would produce popular shows of the day like Greece. Later, Gene would add a country show, a rock and roll show in a different location so performances could be spread out around the park, started bringing in senior citizens too, selling them a package deal for a low price.

They could get lunch at a nearby deli, see one of the shows, and spend. and 15 minutes at Titty Hill where they could even legally beat off as long as they did so with their pants still on. Gene started selling oversized sweatpants in the gift shop

to facilitate that and made thousands. What this big deal? No, Gene didn't quite do that. For a low-price, seniors could get lunch at a nearby deli, see one of the shows,

get a charter bus ride to and from the retirement home. Gene didn't want to lean too far in that direction, though, still wanted to keep things spicy. So he added a beauty pageant. Entrance fight up for a cash prize, a sash that read Miss Action Park

to get people into it the emcees pitted different groups of people against one another say a woman from New Jersey, a woman from the Bronx with their factions in the audience cheering wildly for them, booing their opponent but that worked a little too well too many of the beauty pageants

ended up in fucking riots so they canned them in favor of expanding a new children's area called Fantasy Island in an effort to continue attracting families the park also introduced their version of Disney's Main Street USA opening a collection of quaint shops, small-town storefronts that overlooked water world.

Man, they're going huge. Dubbed Cobblestone Village, its purpose was to bridge the gap between the winter and summer months by remaining open year-round. Very smart. Had 24 shops, including a candle store, a deli, a Bavarian pretzel outlet, a photo lab, ice cream shop. A little down the way, Jean added Cinema 180, an expensive new theater with a giant 180-degree screen, showed footage of Mount St. Helens erupting, a first-person car crash, there was no chairs inside. We had to stand for the 10-minute reels.

By the end of the summer, it appeared like all the jeans, additions, and modifications were working. Employees were staying. The park was more wholesome. Things were not necessarily running super well, but they weren't running worse than before either. And then there was time for that end-of-the-season party. It would be funded from a practice called scarfing, where teenage lifeguards would canvas the wave pool, other water rides for money that had slipped out of people's bathing suits

and by the end of the summer they collected over a thousand bucks and now it's fucking party time there were two parties the first was a nighttime water world extravaganza for any employee who wanted to blow off steam some of the kids there would be as young as 14 but they still got to drink party punch

alcohol dumped indiscriminately into trash canes and swirled around with fucking juice and shit soon everybody is wasted and most people wanted to do one thing bone the party basically turned into a work sanctioned adolescent orgy with kids going skinny dipping or going at it in the pump rooms.

And this teen orgy fucking great for business. My God. Of course it was. The following summer, more kids never apply to work at Action Park. Yeah, I bet they did. But there was still the matter of Gene's insurance scandal. The matter grew more serious towards the close of the 1983 season. The SCI actually had no authority to fine or penalize Gene, but they could and did hand

their findings over to the state's Attorney General. And the Attorney General could punish. them. The Attorney General decided to pursue a criminal complaint indicting Gene on a hundred and 22 separate charges. According to the government, Gene was now the alleged central figure of a complex

massive conspiracy to defraud various state agencies. The state's division of criminal justice spent months putting their case together, ultimately listing more than 200 acts of fraud, theft, excuse me, embezzlement, with some forgery thrown in. Gene held a press conference to a denounce at all.

If convicted, he could spend up to 12 years in prison. Was he scared? Well, if he was, he didn't show it. He mostly seemed excited to launch another attraction. Roaring Springs. Of course he did. And he produced another commercial to promote it. This summer, be the action star of your very own blockbuster at Action Park. Forget the rides and find the ball of death in the woods. Have a friend push it on the mountain. Who cares who's below? It's not murder if it's fun. Then head to Titty Hill. New Jersey's age of consent is still just 16. And at Action Park, maybe it's 14. Live life like there's no tomorrow

because you truly might die today at Action Park. Okay, real commercial now. Also, thank you Retro Stuff YouTube channel who put an Action Park instrumental commercial up. This summer, Action Park invites you to cool down in the mighty roaring springs, where you can slide, dive, and splash into coolness.

Rev it up in a high-powered speedboat or grab hold of a sleek Grand Prix race car. Discover the world's most innovative theme park, action park, with over 50 spectacular ride shows and attractions. There's nothing in the world like it. And now we're in 1984. Roaring Springs was supposed to be not only thrilling but beautiful. It was a massive, massive installation on the side.

of the mountain meant to mimic swimming holes of years gone by. Twin lanes carried guests and intertubes along powerful water currents resembling the strong flow of a wild river. Their thrills while considerable paled in comparison to those on offer at the Colorado River Ride, another new attraction inside the Roaring Springs area, which sent guests and raft down a rushing watershed and through underground tunnels that carry them into the darkness, then back out into the sun. There were ledges to jump from, to simulate cliff diving, giant water.

water slides leading into new pools. Stone steps led people around the area. Water fell from above, ran across the landscape, immersing visitors in an oasis. The big new eight acre stretch was Gene's magnum opus. All this opened in the summer of 1984 with the rest of the park. And this summer the staff were determined no more catastrophes. And that would quickly prove to be optimistic. Just like with the other parks attractions, people quickly behave like animals, doing shit like shoving each other off of the diving cliffs, screaming obscenities at those who wavered as they decided whether or not to jump. Abandoned vessels became bouncing projectiles on the river trips, plunging on top of people who'd already been, you know, through a rapid, and people fucking loved it.

They swarmed the area, which made it very difficult to supervise and more difficult to save someone's life. In August, the call came through on the staffed walkie-talkies for a code red. A lifeguard reported that somebody came down off of a slide, went under, and didn't resurface, and the water was too murky to quickly find them. Lifeguards canvassed the area, hoping it was a false alarm, that the person had simply swum off to someplace else. But then they tragically spotted a limp body, curled along the back wall, moving along with the current.

The EMTs gathered there, hoisted him out of the water, started CPR immediately, but it was too late. No pulse. His name was Donald DePas. He was just 20 years old. Officials looking into his death came to believe he had just inhaled water when he hit the pool and just didn't come back up.

Like with a kayak incident, there was a lot of ambiguity. Had something malfunctioned, was, you know, this is a dangerous area or just a freak accident to be filed under your shit happens. People drown in all kinds of bodies of water.

Lakes, oceans, rivers, pools at water parks every year. Gene, meanwhile, braced for an inevitable lawsuit, but Donald's family did not sue. They were Jehovah's witnesses, and they believed that Donald's drowning was God's will.

And following his death, death, Gene began advertising heavily for more Jehovah's Witnesses to come to Action Park. He sent employees to Kingdom Halls from Maine to Mississippi, and by 1990, only Jehovah's witnesses were allowed to work for him or buy a ticket for admission. Overall attendance would go down, but there was no more lawsuits, even though annual deaths fucking skyrocketed, thanks to abandoning all safety precautions at the park. On a daily basis, dead bodies would be collected and dumped off in a circular lazy river built specifically for these bodies

called God's Will Lagoon, where families could pick up the corpses of the loved ones as soon as they floated back around. And obviously, that's ridiculous nonsense. No, despite not getting sued again, the park tried to correct after Donald's death. Park staff played safety info from recorded tapes on megaph banners went up saying certain areas

were for only experienced swimmers, expert swimmers only. For their part, the press quickly lost interest in the story as the legal case against Gene revolving around all the criminal charges stemming from insurance fraud was now growing more salacious. New charges had now been leveled against a few of the office staff, including Gene's secretary, Mary Myers, a bookkeeper named Deborah Evers, and Michael Tesher, a German real estate broker from Aspen who had facilitated some land deals for Gene. Evers and Tessier had signed documents, presented them as officers of London and World.

Everyone would plead innocent, including Jean. Eventually, Myers, Evers, Tesscher, they would enter what was known as New Jersey's pre-trial intervention program designed to save the state the cost of a trial for first-time offenders, and so would Jean. He would end up getting three years probation for pleading guilty to a number of charges, including submitting false documents to the state, doing business as an unauthorized insurance company, and using a corporation for criminal activity. He refused to plead guilty to fraud because he claimed he didn't defraud anyone. The state admitted he hadn't gained anything personally, and the judge acknowledged, that Gene had no prior criminal history and had not caused harm to anyone. But they did slap on a $240,000 fine.

And that was a lot of money for an amusement park operator who immediately invested most of his profits back in the new rides with not, quote, or not much of a, quote, nestache to fall back on. Still, Gene's thrilled. He wasn't going to prison and his park was still making tons of money

and scaring and exciting a lot of teens. Outside the courtroom, he said triumphantly to reporters, someone tried to make a mountain out of a mole. the hill. Okay. He said that even though he was not allowed to actually operate the park anymore, he said that, even though he wasn't, since the state owned much of the land the park was on, they could effectively evict him, and they planned to have an independent party operate the resort going forward, paying rent about Gene and the state. Soon, however, the state would relax that stance and say he didn't have to give up control, but he did have to appoint a fiscal agent

to oversee his accounting. And so Gene did just that, and then forged on. But then for the 1995 season, something new happened. They started hosting poca dancing. You already know that Action Park has the world's most innovative and exciting rides. The Alpine Slide, Grand Prix race cars and spectacular water rides like the mighty roaring springs perfect for cooling off when the heat is on. But Action Park means more than just great rides.

It means super live shows, fantastic summer festivals and scrumptious food and drink, including an authentic German brewer. Come to Action Park because the rides aren't the only thing that's great. Sorry for the sound quality on that one, but I still wanted you to hear it. Also, in 1985, a ride got shut down for the first time. Cannonball loop was no more. In an unprecedented decision, the Carnival and Amusement Ride Safety Advisory Board urged the Department of Labor to shut it down, declaring it as too unpredictable.

It was the very first time the state had ever taken such a measure. God, when an advisory board that Greenlight's grocery store parking lot carnival rides shuts you down, you know that whatever they are worried about is dangerous as fuck. Perhaps the greatest change at Action Park in 1985, though, was a lack of change. There was no new rides, only repurposed once, as money was now scarce. However, Gene could and did drum up money from investors via another tactic, not for a ride, but for an authentic German brewery. He wanted the exact tents, benches, pretzels, and beers that Germans used at the

the world-famous October Fest. And based on that commercial, you just heard, you know he got it. He met an investor who agreed to send him over to Germany, introduce him to a brewer, who would proceed to take apart his brewery, ship it to the US of A wholesale. The only domestic part of the entire operation

would be the water. This was another classic gene idea. To bring an experience, you might only have a couple times in your life, like swimming in a natural watering hole or going to October Fest and make it accessible to the masses in New Jersey and the surrounding areas.

And like many classic gene ideas, It also invited chaos in the form of drunk people. The beer they'd had before was not very good, and people only drank it out of necessity on hot days. This was different. The quality invited excessive consumption, which then invited excessive behavior. Gene would name the new thick-logger,

old-world classic beer. As the brewery ramped up, Gene faced another employee shortage. Statewide, a prospering economy meant there were more jobs than people, meaning people could be choosier and not choose a place increasingly known for violence, chaos, and accidents. So recalling that the teen party slash orgy had greatly increased applications, Gene tasked his son, Andy, with opening up a nightclub to keep employees happy,

which, of course, quickly devolved into underage kids, drinking fruit-flavored cocktails, hosting their own wet t-shirt contests, and fucking each other's brains out. This whole thing feels like a real-life version of wet, hot American summer. Screwballs, spring break, some other 1980s teen sexy comedy film. Gene had another idea, too. He asked Newark's mayor if he could start a program for low-income kids

where a bus would take them to and from work at Action Park each day, keeping them out of trouble. Kenneth Gibson, the mayor, loved the idea, and on the first day, 50 fresh-faced employees

arrived at the park, and they promptly disappeared to take rides, play basketball, enjoy themselves, and not work. It was a noble attempt, but a huge misfire.

Gene next turned to travel subsidies, particularly for young people from Ireland and France, who wanted to work in the U.S. after graduating college, hilarious. A lot of the employees working at the bed hot, oh my God, a lot of employees working at the bad magic wet hot summer camp

this summer here in just a few weeks will be coming from Ireland. Very excited for that, by the way, to see a lot of you there, yes! Okay, the problem here was that they needed housing. So Gene set them up in an area known as a swamp, repurposing ramshackle houses at employee dorms. And by the way, if you want information,

to try and get a last minute ticket to bed hot oh my fucking god to it's a lot of words to bad magic wet hot to the wet hot bad magic summer camp there we go uh you can go to bad magic productions dot com but anyway this plan of his works great to uh use the swamp as dorms the foreigners had no family they needed to get back to no personal obligations they just wanted to hang out at the at the fucking park also that summer in addition to replica october fest action park would hold an irish festival uh and action park was still just as dangerous as ever as ever May 24th, 9.75, a fire caused an estimated 100 grand of damages to a water slide ride, though it would not injure anybody. Park spokeswoman Julie Mulvahill, Jean's daughter, said the fire started when a red-hot piece of metal from a welder's torch dropped from a hundred-foot slide tower and ignited some bales of hay beneath it, set in a year-old fiberglass water slide ablaze. The fire would not stop anyone from coming, though. The park had over a million visitors that year, up to 12,000, on.

busy weekends. And by the winter of 1995-1986, Gene was thinking about his next big venture. For much of the 1980s, paintball had been virtually illegal in New Jersey, the victim of language in the New Jersey Gun Control Act, prohibiting any kind of design that too closely resemble

in an actual firearm. You needed a permit to own one, making a recreational paintball area a logistical nightmare. But when the state finally eased regulations, courses began popping up everywhere. So Gene brought in a paintball advisor along with a small army of weapons to test out. to test out.

Apparently the salesman told him that it wouldn't hurt to get hit by pellet, which the two of them decided to test out on some of Jeans' employees. It did hurt, but not bad enough to not do it. It hurt just enough for players to feel like they really survive some shit, which was perfectly on brand for Action Park. And so the paintball attraction was a go. Unfortunately, as with the former beauty pageants, it was too easy for participants to group themselves into factions and declare war on one another,

and guests would start literally pistol whipping each other. Once he ran out of pellets, cue screaming, bloody faces, assault charges. One participant that we know of even aimed his gun at a fallen foe, put two in the back of his head, point blank, like a mob hit. Hell yeah, he did. Given half the chance, I would have loved to do that when I was 16. Meanwhile, based on Gene's recent criminal ruling, the three sides, Gene, the state, any new person who might step up to be Gene's partner,

but really the supervisor, they were locked in a stalemate that summer. That was because even without the state land, Gene still owned significant parts of the area, including the ski lodge, the brewery, motor world, and parking lots. It would be impossible to run the business without giving people a place to drink or park their cars. Both things Gene could refuse if he did not care for the new Guardian's decisions. The state couldn't do anything to force the issue either except shutter the park, which they were not going to do because Action Park made them a lot of fucking money.

It had become infrigal to the local economy. So Gene eventually came up with a plan. It began with Robert Little, a member of the New Jersey General Assembly, a political ally of Jeans in Sussex County little agreed to sponsor a bill that offered an alternative solution instead of kicking Gene off the state-owned land the bill proposed a state allow him to buy

the nearly 1,300 acres outright. The state would normally balk at such a deal, but it was so desperate to end the stalemate it was open to the idea. As much as a lot of politicians and regulators might not have liked Gene, they loved the tax revenue and the jobs that his part brought to the area.

So after a few months of haggle, and with the help of a lobbyist, Gene hired the new bill passed the State Assembly was approved by the State House Commission. Governor Tom Keen signed it under protest, realizing there was no other solution. The DEP, which owned the land, was equally annoyed to lose this valuable slice of real estate. In a workaround, Keen and the DEP did build a provision into the deed, mandating that a portion of the land considered environmentally protected only be used for conservation, recreation, or fish-and-game purposes.

Gene then insisted that if the commercial prospects of the land, had become limited he should get a discount so instead of paying well over 1.6 million now he buys it for 837,000 he then quickly set about working to build some campgrounds and it was soon discovered that in addition to being a politician robert little that member of the new jersey general assembly and jean's political ally of jean excuse me from sussex county i was also an appliance salesman and jean bought from him a stove refrigerator and microwave for every one of his hundreds of condo units now. Another one of this guy's side businesses. Classic case of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Also, government corruption, but legal. Somehow, the DEP would fight

with Gene. It would do stuff like Find the Park, $10,000 for using a faulty ozone generator, typically used to keep water clear that ended up releasing a toxic cloud of built up ozone, causing 28 people to pass out. In response, Gene installed himself as a spokesperson, a sponsor for a group of Vernon Townspeople who were protesting New Jersey's attempt to relocate some radioactive soil from a nearby defunct watch factory to an abandoned quarry in Vernon. Gene even threw a live aid type concert called ActionAid with proceeds going towards that cause. And finally the state relented and shipped the soil to Nevada. So high off of that temporary victory and with the renewed trust of the townspeople, Gene now starts planning another attraction for the summer of 1986 and we get another commercial.

Action Park in Vernon is open again for business this summer And we've got more action than ever With our new experience, Hellscape Drive a weaponized dune buggy Through a half-mile course Full of burning buildings, flaming pools of gasoline Trapped employees willing to kill for their freedom Landmines, Axel Russian soldiers shooting at you

with real AK-47s and demons Can you and a friend in your mounted machine gun Make it out alive? All the action this summer at Action Park and a real commercial now. Fill your summer with action. Oh, hell yeah. Twist, turn, and burn action.

And when it's hot, we've got the coolest action around, where you can swing, slide, and dive into crisp mountain water. This summer, catch the action at action. Action Park. There's nothing in the world like it. Love the new beat and guitar riffs. Gene called his new 9-106 attraction, the aerodeum, and it was literally a propeller, the same type used in DC3 planes, situated in the middle of a vertical wind tunnel, 20 feet high, 80 feet in diameter, powered by a 700 horsepower engine.

It screamed with enough force to take a multi-tonned aircraft to cruising altitude in the sky. And Gene would use it to simulate skydiving. The guest, the gust from the propeller blade would blast people wearing special suits, 60 feet up in the air. The propeller was covered by a steel netting, so guests wouldn't be shredded into oblivion if they came crashing down. As with many of the newer rides, Gene had seen it at an amusement convention because he considered it a temporary structure. He did not ask for site approvals and just put it up near the Alpine Center. And then noise complaints started to roll in. Condo owners live in just 1,200 feet from the site where aghast at the throbbing machine that could make

The dishes in their kitchen cabinets rattled. They complained, and to placate them, Gene hired a sound engineer, had him design a makeshift noise buffer for the engine. Following the engineer's instructions, the workers stacked up a series of trailers on four sides of the unit, acted as a big muffler, and actually worked pretty well. Within two weeks of opening the ride, Action Park logged a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder, but that didn't seem to stop anybody else from wanting to take a crack at it. And the new attraction drew big crowds all summer. action park packed like always but now jean has another problem to deal with one of the biggest insurance companies for theme and amusement parks balboa company went out of business after their underwriter collapsed in the summer of 86 now it was harder a lot harder for parks to get any kind of coverage at all and with the government keeping an eye on him jean could not just pretend to have insurance again the famous cyclone at coney island closed because new york demanded a five million dollar policy for it and the company wanted to excuse me which no company wanted to provide however in response to the this New Jersey Attorney General Michael Boker approved a plan with some lobbying from Gene, of course, and probably promises of giving him some campaign money in the future, something else akin to a bribe,

that allowed all operators to forego the standard $100,000 in liability coverage per ride so they wouldn't get drained by exorbitant premiums. The old requirement would have meant maintaining $4 million in insurance for Action Park. The new rule said an operator could get away with a policy on bond as small as $250,000. Gene opted for only a notch above the bare minimum posting a $300,000 bond on the entire park. Gene defended that by citing the fact that overall accidents were down, which was true. It seemed like people were finally developing an understanding that the risks involved or of them, and they were adjusting their behavior accordingly, but there was still the occasional accident.

The following summer, 1987, a 55-year-old fractured his hip at the end of a water slide, died three weeks later from complications. Then on July 19th of that summer, an 18-year-old named Gregory Grandchamps drowned in the wave pool. Gene again survived the litigation, kept expanding. He was seemingly willing to do just about anything to keep his beloved park afloat, including some questionable things. 1980, he purchased a nearby Playboy Club Hotel for what was considered a bargain, $11 million. The club had struggled to maintain its flirtatious aesthetic in the rural ski area and passed through the hands of a revolving door of operators who had tried and failed to keep it afloat. just buying a hotel of course was not questionable but how he bought it was to keep uh excuse me to help fund the acquisition jean persuaded representatives for pamela herriman a socialite and future u.s ambassador to france to invest he then sold the attached golf course the only real item of value to a japanese billionaire named itaro itytoyama conducting the transaction on his preferred business stationary of choice a cocktail napkin after enlisting one of his long-time investors bob brennan to

feign interest as a rival buyer, Gene persuaded Itoyama to purchase the course for a staggering $20 million, worth closer to $8, actually. Instant profit. He now had a hotel and whatever was left to the $7 million he made buying it after taxes to invest in it. Fucking shady, the way he did that with a fake competitor, not something I would feel okay about doing, but from a strictly business perspective, you know, obviously a savvy move. Gene took his extra money, built condos now. He left running the hotel to his business partner, Pamela Harriman, and he used the profits from the sale of those condos to keep his park running. Meanwhile, Harriman sucked most of her kids' trusts into a failing hotel, and her stepkids wound up suing her for losing their

inheritances. A Vanity Fair story framed the whole thing as a giant con and called the hotel a fetid sinkhole. But it allowed Gene to keep doing what he was doing. With all the new money, came decisions about what to do with it. There were, of course, some new attractions, found at trade shows, like 1992, 70-foot-tall two-station bungee jumping tower near the alpine slide. Patrons would pay five bucks, one of the few rides subcharges, apart from the aerodeum, to ascend the 122 steps to the top of the platform and get buckled into a harness. Julie persuaded Snapple that an upstart beverage company to sponsor it, in exchange for renaming it the Snapple Snapup Whipper Snapper,

the company gave Gene a lump sum that he then turned around and gave to the ride's creator to cover costs, making the tower essentially free to have been built. Also in 1992, the new Gladiator Challenge Show attraction was opened, loosely based, well, I say loosely, pretty closely based, on the TV series American Gladiators. It allowed guests to compete against other guests in an obstacle course and against Park-employed Gladiators in Jousty Matches, fucking awesome. Former bodybuilders Michael and Vince Mancoucchko designed the attraction, and the employees against whom guests would compete in the Joustic.

were found by scouting local gyms. They were given names like Titan, Flash, Star, and Warrior. And those names happen to be the exact same names of gladiars from the TV show. Gene's construction crew built a series of obstacles on a hill, including the slope treadmill, 24-foot vertical hand ladder, cargo net climb. After a zip line run, contestants would climb a 10-foot tall wall

on a rope, navigate a rotating cylinder, then jump into a ball pit, crawl under a low net to the finish line. At the end were twin platforms, where contestants would stand and face gladiators in a climactic jousting battle using weapons with padding on both sides. But since there were no physical requirements

on the guests who could participate, the gladiators often won easily batting them backwards and onto a mat seven feet below. People watching from the stands would cheer as over and over, people had their candy asses kicked by muscle-bound gym rats. It was quite the spectacle. And honestly, I would have loved to have been in that audience, baked out of my mind watching it.

Sometimes the fake violence would spill over into real violence. On one occasion, a guest who felt a gladiator he contended against had been too rough, striking him frequently on the head with a stick, returned to the attraction with some friends in an effort to exact retribution. But then the gladiator called in back up of his own and eventually a fucking huge brawl, involving several dozen people, bloody people, broke out. The Vernon police had to be called in to restore order. And then, of course, there was a matter of the copyright.

Within weeks, Gene was served with a lawsuit. from the Samuel Goldwyn company alleging trademark infringement. Yeah, of course. Come on, Gene. You can't just replicate a TV show and use its exact format, name, even names of the characters, and not expect some legal action. A Goldman employee acting as a spy

had taken videotape of the show and interviewed some people and then played that in court on the video. Contestants declared that the Action Park course is, quote, very much like, exactly like, and identical to the one they saw on the TV show. So now they have to dismantle it. Gene will try and open it the next year, 1993 is a Tarzan-themed fantasy show,

then is a military-themed show, but it just never takes off the same way again. Oh, well, he's got more tricks up a sleeve. 1993 saw the introduction of the Slinghot, a bungee cord ride in which two riders sat in a seat were strapped in while the ride was shot up into the air and supported by a bungee court. And that attraction called for, of course, another commercial. Do you like action? Or are you some kind of scared fight?

fucking twerk, who deserves to have their tiny little nuts rubbed off. If you're fucking cool and not some pathetic nerd, you'll come hop in the slingshot. The slingshot will shoot you at least 200 yards into the air with no parachute. We literally don't know where you'll land. The base spins around, the operator's drunk, and we let a monkey hit the launch button. Be the first one to ride the slingshot and not die. We dare you this summer in Vernon's own Action Park. And now for the real commercial.

Action Park has brought you the greatest adventures on earth Action Park Has done it Again The human slingshot Action Park turns bungee jumping upside down It's unbelievable, it's the biggest rush I've never had Only action park would do something this incredible

Ride the human slingshot at Action Park Minutes away in Vernon, New Jersey I just love the music of that era in the commercials. For insurance issues, the slingshot was an upcharge attraction again, with an additional admission charge of five bucks. One former employee would later recall, we often wondered how many whiplash cases came out of that ride. Despite another big, dangerous new attraction, however,

attendance at the park was dipping in 94. And then it would dip down a lot the next year. It would go down by 22% from 94 to 95, and things were not looking good. Also in 95, First Fidelity Bank, which had lent $19 million to Gene and some 15 other connected corporations filed suit against them in an effort to begin the process of foreclosing on debt owed. Law firms owed money for services rendered between 1991 and 1993 also began filing suit and more personal injury cases flooded in. The total liability for personal injury claims would climb to $3.8 million in 95 with 41 cases pending. Not once but twice, Federal Marshal stormed the gates of the park.

They seized admission revenue in order to pay someone who had won a lawsuit. Damn. Gene began searching for more money to cover the park's overhead, maybe liquidating some of his other businesses. While all this is going on, he has several side investments. Maybe he could find some more loans, transfer assets from one business to another like he'd done in the past, but none of that would work out. Gene's lucky run was over. Instead, in November, Gene negotiated a deal with a Noramco, oh my gosh, Noramco Capital Corporation and the Pregium Fund. of CS First Boston

in which they would purchase the debt owed to First Fidelity temporarily fending off and pending foreclosure. But that would not be enough to keep them afloat. In February of 96, the creditors who had taken on Gene's

$14 million in debt petitioned to force action park into bankruptcy. Gene filed for Chapter 11 following March. He remained optimistic. They could somehow regain their financial footing within a year.

To boost morale, he opened another fucking attraction in the midst of all this. The space shot ride. a tower drop like Disney's Tower of Terror. After closing at the end of the season, as usual, on Labor Day 1996, Action Park launched a website where visitors could find info about rides,

directions to the park, lodging, enter a lottery for park tickets. As the 1997 summer season approach, Jean remained optimistic that Action Park was sticking around. I was going to open as expected on June 14th, in spite of massive layoffs at the end of the prior ski season. But the opening date was then pushed back two weeks, then push back again into mid-July, And finally, on July 25th, Gene announced the secession of all operations, including Action Park.

Pradium Recovery Fund purchased the Vernon Valley slash Great Gorge Resort, including Action Park for $10 million. The investment group put Angel projects in charge of managing the resort aimed to spend $20 million to upgrade the ski resort's equipment and trails and remodel the water park. Instead, Canadian resort developer Intra West purchased the property in February of 98. It revamped the Waterworld section of Action Park, reopened it for the 98C. season as Mountain Creek Water Park, while the Alpine Center section had its bungee tower demolished and space shot that ride was dismantled. They did keep the Alpine slide open with adjustments. Riders were now required to wear helmets and knee pads, and it was fucking lame. As Gene predicted, that took all the fun out of it, and attendance fell off a cliff.

The last day of the slide's operation was September 6th, the day before the park closed for the season. Excuse me, the shoots were torn out afterwards, but the route can still be seen from the gondola that replaced the chairlift. The motor world's section of the park remained in place undisturbed until at least mid-2000 when work began in Mountain Creek's Black Creek Sanctuary. What about Gene? Well, with the son, Andy, the two went on to build Ballywine, a golf course that actually became the top public course in the state, or it's Bally Owen.

Excuse me, not Bally-Owen, not a big fucking golf guy. Gene was a fucking survivor, man. True grinder was so much grit. Alongside the course, Gene also built hundreds of residential homes, a hotel, restaurants, a spa, a spa, all of which encompassed a resort called Crystal Springs. Never content to pursue just one venture at a time. Gene also tried to create a robotic parking garage startup company, and he invested heavily in a wine scanner that used magnetic resonance imaging to pick up levels of ascetic acid and aldehyde markers of deterioration. The machine could tell if the wine had gone bad without opening it. But that project went nowhere.

Facing resistance from the wine community, he gave up. So we turned back to rides. This time as an exhibitor, not a buyer. He partnered with Stan Chekitts, the creator of Action Park Space Shot, built up a roller coaster and amusement ride firm, S&S Power, and built it into one of the largest in the country. For a while, S&S laid claim to having the world's fastest roller coaster, the Thrust Air 2000.

Installed in Japan, it used compressed air to go from zero to 100 miles an hour in two seconds. Fuck me, I would hate that so much. my stomach would shoot out my neck. They also put a space shot-style ride on top of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas. Oh my God. And when Gene and Stan sold that business, they each made a bunch of money.

And then Gene invested his profits into yet another idea. In 2010, the Mova Hills bought back Action Park property from Infra West, the ski conglomerate that had scooped it all up in bankruptcy. Just like Action Park,

Intra West had faced problems. Its major resort project, the Appalachian opened or Appalachian, opened a year late with units that were wildly overpriced. It promised to renovate Route 94 into a scenic road flanked by cute shop, small-town amenities, but that never materialized. That upset the people, of course, who purchased condos based on those plans. Then the ski lodge burned down an electrical panel fire in 99, forcing IntraWest to put up a temporary tent in its place.

The owners promised to erect a bigger, better building within months, but the tent was still around after a decade. An even bigger conglomerate, the massive Fortress investment group bought out IntraWest in 2006. But Fortress was suffering from another real estate recession, missed a $524 million debt payment. Desperate to reinvigorate the property, Intra West leased the water park to Palace Entertainment, but that didn't pan out either. And finally, they disannounced they're just willing to sell it. Gene was willing to buy. He put in $700,000, got partners to fund the remaining $6.3 million, and he renamed the new facility. Mountain Creek. Then his daughter Julie got to work, first restoring the ski lodge,

improving on its 1960 design. Gene wanted it done in time for the 2011-2012 ski season. They also opened a fine dining restaurant called the Hawks Nest with a massive fireplace, giant windows, chairs made out of skis. And in the summer 2010, they would open for a regular summer amusement season, just like the action park of old. But it just wasn't the same. Too safe, too lame. People did not scream excitedly when guests wiped out. Like a bunch of silly dickheads. They were concerned, tried to help him. The culture had shifted.

Kids were more responsible. Nobody heckled. Giant brawls did not break out. Teen employees had no orgies. Because of regulations, there were no more risks. Though Gene would have kept trying to recapture his old 1980 Porky's magic, his time was running out. And he died October 27, 2012, of a suspected heart attack at the age of 78. His funeral coincided with the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, which bombarded New York.

Jersey, washing out roads, drowning, you know, or downing power lines, causing gas shortages all over the Garden State, fitting in a way. Family and friends were determined to make it to the funeral to give Gene a proper send-off, construction workers, investors, towns, people, former employees at the park and Moore gathered at Christ the King Church and Harding Township to pay their respects despite the storm. After his death, his kids would keep trying to figure out his park, see if the biggest piece of Gene's legacy could survive in a new era. In 2014, they tried to capitalize on the park's history by renaming

at Action Park, but soon internet commentators began to mock the decision. News stories reported on the many accidents and deaths that happened under the Action Park name. Investors demanded a slogan to clarify the new action park was not the same. The Mulva Hills came up with all the thrills,

none of the spills. Pretty good fix. Ongoing disagreements between the investors would lead to the Mova Hills selling the park, though, to the Coffin family, one of Jean's original investors, and then to the snow operating company, which today has controlling interest in what is now called Mountain Creek

Water Park. And the outfit CEO, this is pretty cool. Joe Heshen, a kid who once patrolled the parking lots at Action Park when he was 14. Mountain Creek is still open today in Vernon, New Jersey. Check out their commercial. Fuck you, bitch.

You think you can hide from Action Park? We have to call ourselves Mountain Creek Water Park for legal reasons, but we still are rocking underage parties at Titty Hill, and we still don't give a fuck if you live or die. If you want action, come right along in our new Snake River. We've added literally thousands of cotton-mouthed vipers and anacondas

to a new 3,000 feet tall water slide, and the snakes are never fed. They only eat the guests. Vernon's Action Park, the only amusement park in the world brave enough to fucking kill you. No, but they do... They do actually have a commercial. Don't let summer pass you by without making your trip to Mountain Creek Waterpark.

New York's closest and most unique water park It's just an hour's drive away and nearby Vernon, New Jersey. Splash, slide, and jump into our 22 action-packed rides, slides, and attractions. Save big when you buy your tickets online at Mountain Creek.com. Life is cooler at the mountain. So skip the traffic this summer and head to Mountain Creek. Summer elevated. I mean, good production value, you know, but so sanitized.

So safe. So lame. After the violent thrills of Action Park. But you can visit. But you'll likely not be able to experience what you might have experienced as you flew across surf hill, shedding your bathing suit for a crowd of cheering spectators, or got pummeled by a hundred mile per hour tennis balls, or got the shit beat out of you by a bodybuilder. Is that a good thing or not?

Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. Did this episode make you a bit nostalgic? It did me, right? Action Park. I was only in grade school during its 80s heyday, but some of my friends had older siblings.

I remember watching movies like Porky's, Revenge of the Nerds, Breakfast Club, etc. That had the kids who would have gone to a place like this. And, you know, it was still a bit like this in life in the 90s. I remember going to a water park in Las Vegas, 92. There was this high-speed ride called Durstuka, which seemed pretty dangerous. I remember cute older girls and tight bathing suits

running it along with boys a few years older than me, who seemed so much older, so much cooler, doing reckless tricks. I remember my buddy John forgetting to close his legs on the way down, getting an enema that was so bad. He started crying in the pool at the bottom, even though he was 15. Ready to go to the first aid tent.

Had to see a nurse. He was wearing white shorts. On the way down, a bunch of water that shot up his ass at fucking crazy speeds. Well, started coming back out. He started crying again. And then we had to leave early because he was humiliated

and in a bunch of pain. I remember another classmate when I was still in Las Vegas, my sophomore year of high school before moving back to Riggins, getting lit up on the way to school by kids with paintball guns. Poor bastard had nasty bruises on his calf's arm and back.

It was scary, but also exciting. I also remember my parents and the parents of, you know, my friends not caring nearly as much about our safety as I care about the safety of Kyler Monroe. Flying down the highway just outside of Riggins, 60 miles an hour, in the back of a fucking truck, no seats, let alone seatbelts.

I definitely got some concussions in high school. No one considered taking me to the doctor for. It was a very different time. For sure, more reckless, more dangerous, in a lot of ways that was not good. But sometimes it was so fun. I would have loved Action Park. Man, if I would have went, I would already been talking about it in past episodes. Probably talking about it so often you would be sick about hearing about it.

Crowds of people, so many of them teens pushing, pulling, cheering, cheering, shouting, eating too many hot dogs jumping into pools with reckless abandon fucking around on rides trying to see how fast you could go and not die getting too sunburn losing your voice from screaming on roller coasters hopefully making out with some hot girl at a party if i worked there that's what i would have wanted to do you know heading home feeling like i had the best day or the best summer of my fucking life or maybe i would have headed home in a body back as one former park attendee would say in an hbo documentary about action park called class action park the magic and the horror of action park is that you can go there expecting a great time, expecting fantastic memories, and you can leave with those exact things, or you can leave in a body back, and you didn't know which it was going to be. In the end, action park, as many Gen X childhoods are, is the studying extremes. On the one hand, the extreme fun of being allowed to do virtually whatever you wanted to do. Of being a latchkey kid, we could come home, slam a couple of pop tarts, a couple cans of soda, strap in for an afternoon of watching MTV while your parents were still at work, of being empowered to use a car or

or a slide or a pool, not how the directions told you, but how you wanted to. On the other hand, a couple decades down the line, does this lack of oversight feel a little less empowering and a little more like neglect? Do parents who aren't around start to look a little less like people providing their families or providing for their families and a little more like people who just didn't want to look after their kids? The people like Gene Mulvahill who want to give you awesome experiences look a little less like benevolent entertainers and more like people who, you know, bottom line just want

to take your money. Even if that means risking your safety and maybe your life to get it. But then again, if Gene Mulvahill would have only been motivated by money, well, he would have stayed there, dedicated his time to, you know, developing more condos, that kind of thing. Things are safer investments. He could have done any number of things, but he sank so much time, money, and effort into Action Park because he fucking loved it. He seemingly truly wanted to give people a once in a lifetime experience. Action Park was his baby. It's very dangerous, sometimes murderous baby. A lot of baby, he seemed to have truly loved all the same. Overall, especially based on some YouTube comments, I've seen under videos about the park, I think a whole lot more people

at the park had the time of their life than got hurt. Sometimes they got hurt and had the time of their life. That has to count for something, right? I think overall with Action Park, the good did outweigh the bat. And while I understand why it's not still around today, I do wish I could have gone. Oh man, I'd love to have been able to meet some of you there, blast you in the head with a 100, an hour tennis ball, race you down a mountain. What a time it was to be young. Now it's time for today's top takeaways. Time suck.

Top five takeaways. Number one, Action Park opened in 1978 in Vernon, New Jersey, born out of Gene Mulva Hills desire to capitalize on his ski slopes on the offseason. Action Park featured attractions like the infamous alpine slide, a concrete track that riders descended on sleds, and also rides. that were never really able to open for long, like the cannonball loop,

a water slide with a full vertical loop. The park was divided into three main areas, Alpine Center, Motor World, and Waterworld with this notorious wave pool slash grave pool. Number two, people acted like fucking animals at Action Park. From ignoring speed limits at Motor World to purposely crashing cars or carts into each other while hammered to cheering as people's clothes got ripped off

watching from Titty Hill. For some reason, Action Park seemed to bring out people's wildsides. While some accidents and deaths were undoubtedly because of ride malfunctions or dangerous conditions, some of them definitely were because people just were not being safe. It's still up for a debate if the accidents that befell people like George Larson and Jeffrey Nathan were due to actual design defects or simply freak accidents. Number three, for a long time, Gene operated the park without insurance. Used a fake insurance company called London and World Assurance Limited that sounded real but only existed on paper. And that allowed Action Park to operate without real liability coverage and Gene would see.

simply pay off people who threatened a lawsuit out of pocket. While failing that, tie them up in court for as long as possible with his strange hippie lawyer. Number four, by the mid-90s, the injuries, fatalities, and lawsuits had taken their toll. In 1996, the park filed for bankruptcy and Gene Mulva Hill sold it off. While some rides remained, the new management focused on safety and regulation. The Mulva Hill family would buy the park back, but it would be sold again. Finally ended up under the control of CEO Joe Heson, who had parked cars at Action Park as a 14th. year old. How cool for him. And number five, new info. Did you know Action Park was the inspiration

for a Johnny Knoxville movie. Johnny Knoxville produced and starred in a movie called Action Point, based entirely on this park. It was released in 2018. Knoxville, the star of the Jackass franchise, has over the course of his career, been pepper sprayed, stun gun, shot out of a cannon, hitting the balls with a sledgehammer, knocked out by a professional boxer, among other exploits. He has suffered numerous injuries. None so great is what happened to him on the movie's version of the alpine slide. An ambulance waited as Knoxville flew off the track, peeking at about 20 feet in the air,

then landing face first on the ground with a severe concussion. When he got home after going to the hospital, his fucking left eye popped out. Unfortunately, the movie bombed, grossing just $5 million. And Knoxville later said, It's one of my greatest disappointments that I was unable to do right by Gene Mulvahill and make a successful movie.

I wish I could go back and unfuck it. Haven't seen it. Don't know if I will. it's gotten a 16% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes only 27% of the audience thought it was worth watching maybe some action

just can't properly be captured on film Time suck Top Five Takeaways Action Park America's most dangerous amusement park has been sucked I know that was a different kind of episode but I really liked it

and I hope he did too thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all their help and make and time suck thanks to Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins thanks to Logan Keith helping to publish this episode

designing merch for the store and more at badmagic productions.com thank you to Sophie Evans again for this research and thanks to the all seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page the mod squad making sure

discord run smooth and all the peeps at the time suck and bad magic subredits and now time for this week's Time Sucker Updates Updates Get your times

Sucker updates. First up, stink bomb sucker, Josh Blevance, sent on an email to Bojangles at Timesug Podcast.com with the subject line of, I Witness some fart magic, and here's what he wrote. In the early 2000s, my friend had a back injury, and every time he farted, it smelled like he shit himself. They were bad. One night, our group of friends goes out to eat, and afterwards, we hit our local mall.

While in Spencer's Gifts, which was packed, it was a Friday or Saturday night, the The store isn't that big. We couldn't easily move around because it was so packed. And all of a sudden, it was almost empty. Someone asked me, if I did it, I didn't know what they were talking about. And then the shit smell hit me. I said something like, if I did, I would have claimed it as I covered my nose with my shirt as everyone else was doing. I ran out of the store, saw my friend laughing about his silent but deadly.

I can attest this hurt their sales for at least 20 minutes at night. Oh my God, Josh, clearing out Spencer's gifts. I used to love that store. That was quite the accomplishment. Question of what kind of back injury? Give somebody really stinky farts. Do you have a butthole infection? The doctors replaced some of his vertebrae or discs with stink bombs or skunk turds.

I shouldn't admit this because I'll probably get back to her now. Because Lindsay and I tried to never fart around each other. But last week, I took Lindsay and her dad who was visiting for a ride out on a boat with the kids. And when we're in the middle of the lake, I just let out a little test fart. You know, it's going to be a while until we got back to the house. My stomach was kind of hurting. I just thought worst case, the wind would quickly blow it away. We were probably going like, I don't know, fucking 20 miles an hour or something.

Oh, no. It was horrific. And it somehow followed us across the water. It was actually so bad that no one on the boat even thought for a second, it seems like it was a fart. They thought it was something like dead animal in the water. Maybe somebody septic tank had exploded or something on shore. I played along. I was like, oh, God, what the hell?

Acted offended. Try not to laugh about how I would just fucking crop dusted my father-in-law, wife, and kids. next up real-life superhero sack Sarah Gray sending a message with a subject line of 988 line and LGBTQIA plus support hi Dan and crew

I want to take a minute to say thank you for clarifying what Reagan said about 988 not being an option for LGBTQI plus for youths I am a current clinician that works with 988 to provide support I would like to add a little more info to what you said

this community is still encouraged to reach out to 988 we are all trained on talking with people of all communities and being able to provide support. 988 will always be kept confidential unless the visitor is at imminent risk of harm and emergency services are needed. We will always work with visitors to increase their safety and help those to make and help them make a plan. If someone is part of the LGBTQIA plus community that wants support specifically related

to that and does not trust 988 for whatever reason, they can reach out to the Trevor project. Their website has a chat option online if you're not comfortable talking on the phone. if you share this in an episode thank you just want you people or just want people to know that we are here 24-7 to provide support and we want all people to feel comfortable reaching out for support we do this because we care and because suicide is never the answer i've been a counselor for over 10 years i've worked with nine and eight for the past year it truly is rewarding and the chats i've had have ranged in so many ways please please please reach out if you are struggling it does not even have to be because you're thinking of suicide any form of crisis is encouraged to reach you out for support. We are here. Sarah. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for being who you are and doing what you do. What a truly noble cause to give your valuable time to. I'm sure you don't get paid enough. And I wonder how many lives you've already saved. Thank you for mentioning the Trevor Project. Yes, thetrevorproject.org. They have Skype, chat, text options. They're a

wonderful organization. Great option for members of the pride community struggling with mental health issues, uh, who are in need of a friendly voice, a friendly face, or just some caring texts. Uh, you're wonderful, Sarah. Don't stop being you in Hail Nimrod. And then finally, Blake from New Jersey is a sack with a tail. This is crazy. Blake sent in an email with the subject poop revengeworthy story. And it's incredible. And here we go. Hey Dan and the whole bad magic crew. Right now with my poop story. Not a revenge story, but, uh, there for sure is some cosmic revenge headed the way of these fecal offenders. Back in middle school slash high school in my town,

there was a strip mall called Strathmore that served as the meetup hangout spot for most of us at one point or another. Every grade had a gang of kids who could be found there seemingly 24 hours a day, all the old days of mall rats, earning themselves the title of Stratt rats. Most of the time, it was harmless milling about,

loitering in front of the movie theater, eating at Taco Bell, skateboarding down a set of stairs just to get a rise out of the shop owners, bored teen shit well one day when I was in eighth grade a group of particularly malicious rats one grade above mine hatched a diabolical

plan centered around the return slot at Blockbuster Video and one nameless member's remarkable ability to shit on command their target was undefined but the mission could not have been clear two people would hoist up this shit sharpshooter

align his vertical crack with the horizontal crack of the video return slot and fire off a brown round. Now I'm sure many listeners are too young to have ever visited a blockbuster, but it cannot be overstated. What an impressive feat this would have been to pull off. The video slot was just slightly larger than a VHS tape, maybe an inch and a half wide at best. As someone who wipes their ass like they're clearing cobwebs from the corner of a basement, knowing exactly where your biscuit bider is to that degree of specificity is baffling to me. Or specificity, yeah. Aside from the

narrow target, the return slot sat just below chest height, meaning the shit bird would need to be perched a good two to three feet off the ground, balancing on two friends while maintaining masterful sphincter control. I'm not saying what they did was right, but I am impressed they pulled it off. And not just once either. Nope. They got so proficient with it and did it so frequently that they boarded up the video return from the inside, making every patron enter the store to return their videos. In my head, I like to imagine the scene from the inside of the store the first time these turd terrorist struck. A bored 20-something-year-old sitting behind the front desk, accustomed to the sound of the video slot being open probably

dozens of times a day, always accompanied by the tinny plastic clatter of another tape fall into a large bin full of other tapes. Something that wouldn't even garner a glance in that direction due to its monotonous familiarity. But not this time. The slot creaks open. Then nothing. No clatter. No creak of it being closed again, but instead a pregnant pause. Followed by a dull plop and the snap of door closing again. Curiosity beckons the unsuspecting victim to the edge of the return bin. First confusion at the seemingly impossible sight, then disbelief followed by the ghastly confirmation from the smell. I'm not sure if or how are they connected to work at Blockbuster Video after that, but if they did, the creaking sound of the return door must have

been forever recategorized in their brain from a benign background noise of the job to a harbinger of shit. Love all the shows. Love all you guys stand for. Congrats on 1 million plus and donations. Keep on sucking Blake from New Jersey. well Blake thank you for sharing that debauchery I cry laugh the first time I read your message incredible so impressive and disgusting and disrespectful and disrespectful all the same time fuck that is funny

I hope I never feel too old or too serious to enjoy a good tale of fecal terrorism thanks everybody next time suckers I needed that we all did well thank you for listening to another bad magic productions podcast

be sure and rate and reviewed time suck if you haven't already. Check out Nightmare Fuel. Please and thank you over on the Scare to Death podcast feed. Have fun, but stay safe this week. If you're going to rig some TVs or ATVs with tennis ball cannons on them and have a tank battle at least wear goggles and a helmet and stay off public roads and maybe a little drunk or a little high, it'll keep you loose and the balls will hurt less.

And keep on sucking. and Magic Productions And now I want to wrap up with some testimonials found in the comment sections of various videos about Action Park from those who claim to have survived it. At WRX, Tim O'9, posted, I was pushed off the diving cliff when I was 10 years old. My dad and I took a charter bus there from New York City

with a group of people, and at the end of the day, half the people boarding the bus were scraped up, bruised, bandaged. That place was awesome. At Airborne 829 wrote, They sold my dad beer while he was in line for the Indy cars. The cars were at least 50 miles an hour and he was blitzed. I also remember seeing people without skin on the sides of their legs and arms,

thanks to the alpine slide. God bless Action Park. At Wisest Wizard, wrote, Only us tough kids went there and parts of us never left there. at Alan McAwatsky 9368 wrote As a fellow New Jerseyan who went there every year with his friends That place was off the charts reckless fun Countless memories of mayhem there

Had a great time despite all the minor injuries incurred I'm aware of the deaths there But it doesn't change the fact it was a fun place to go You knew going there the rides had some type of risk But life has risk if you don't take heated precautions At Cooper Minion 825 wrote I remember they're going there with my friends one in summer of the 80s. They laughed at me for bringing a motorcycle helmet in a mouth guard.

Friend A went home with chipped front teeth from the raft ride. Friend B scraped his face up pretty well in the same ride. I survived that ride with teeth marks on my arms. However, I wiped out on the alpine slide and landed face first on another kid's track. My friend saw the cracked visor and bloody lips. They didn't tease me about being safe anymore. I was the only one who could still get a date that summer because they still bore their war wounds. And then at Michelle Lurray 9138 wrote, At 50 years old, I still have scars all over my body from injuries sustained on rides at Action Park.

It was glorious. And finally, at Charlie 77-ish wrote, Am I too late or is this still around? Rest in peace, Action Park. Rest in pieces. And Hail Nimrod.