Action Park
Action Park was an amusement and water park located in Vernon Township, New Jersey, United States, on the grounds of the Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski resort. The park consisted primarily of water-based attractions and originally opened to the public in 1978, under the ownership of Great American Recreation.
Action Park featured three separate attraction areas: the Alpine Center, Motorworld, and Waterworld. The latter was one of the first modern American water parks. Many of its attractions were unique, attracting thrill-seekers from across the New York metropolitan area.
While extremely popular, Action Park had a reputation for poorly designed rides, undertrained and underaged staff, intoxicated guests and staff, and a consequently poor safety record. At least six people are known to have died as a result of mishaps on rides at the park. Healthcare workers and locals had nicknamed the place "Traction Park", "Accident Park", "Class Action Park" and "Friction Park".
Little effort was made by state regulators to address those issues, despite the park's history of repeat violations. GAR's management resorted to illegal financial schemes to keep itself solvent, which led to indictments of its executives, some of whom, like founder Gene Mulvihill, pled guilty to some charges. In its later years, personal injury lawsuits led to the closure of increasing numbers of rides, and eventually the entire park in 1996.
In 1998, resort developer Intrawest announced the purchase of the majority of the Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski area, including Action Park and other developable real estate lands that GAR had owned. The park received a massive overhaul, which included extensively renovating and repairing attractions, especially those deemed either outright unsafe or inappropriate relative to Intrawest's vision of the park, with some being removed entirely. Afterward, the park reopened as Mountain Creek Waterpark.
History
In 1976, Eugene Mulvihill and his company, Great American Recreation, the owners of the recently combined Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski area in Vernon Township, New Jersey, wanted to make money during the summer off-season. Following the example of other ski areas, they opened a alpine slide down one of the steep ski trails. For the summer of 1978, Mulvihill added two water slides and a go-kart track, and named the collection of rides the "Vernon Valley Summer Park". Action Park was formally opened on July 4 of that year, with two opening-day promotions: a Dolly Parton look-alike contest and a tobacco juice–spitting contest.The following year, more water slides and a small deep-water swimming pool, as well as tennis courts and a softball field, were added to what became known as the Waterworld section of Action Park. By 1980, Motorworld had been carved out of swamplands the ski area owned across State Route 94. Combined, the park's formed one of North America's earliest modern water parks. It evolved into a major destination with 75 rides.
"Gene didn't want to do the same old shit, where you just get strapped into something or it twirls around," Andy Mulvihill, later the park's head lifeguard, recalls of his father's philosophy in creating Action Park.
"He wanted to take the idea of skiing, which is exhilarating because you control the action, and transfer it to an amusement park. There's inherent risk in that, but that's what makes it fun."Action Park's most successful years were the early and mid-1980s. Most rides were still operating, and the park's dangerous reputation had not yet developed. In 1982, two guests died at the park within a week of each other, leading to the permanent closure of one ride. Despite this, people continued to come in massive numbers. The park's fortunes began to turn with two more deaths in the summer of 1984, and the legal and financial problems that stemmed from the ensuing lawsuits. A state investigation of misconduct in the leasing of state land to Action Park led to a 110-count grand jury indictment against the nine related companies that ran the park and their executives for operating an unauthorized insurance company. Many took pretrial intervention to avoid prosecution; Gene Mulvihill pleaded guilty that November to five insurance fraud–related charges.
Action Park entertained over a million visitors per year during the 1980s, with as many as 12,000 coming on some of the busiest weekends. Park officials said this made the injury and death rate statistically insignificant. Nevertheless, the director of the emergency room at a nearby hospital said they treated from five to ten victims of park accidents on some of the busiest days, and the park eventually bought the township extra ambulances to keep up with the volume. In September 1989, GAR negotiated a deal with International Broadcasting Corporation that would result in the sale of Vernon Valley/Great Gorge, and Action Park, for $50 million. IBC later backed out of the deal, feeling the site was not suitable for their needs upon further inspections of the properties.
In September 1991, GAR petitioned the township committee to put a referendum on the November ballot that, if passed, would have legalized the operation of games of skill and chance at Action Park. The effort failed because only 643 of the 937 signatures on the petition came from registered voters.
A few rides were closed and dismantled due to costly settlements and rising insurance premiums in the 1990s, and the park's attendance began to suffer as a recession early in that decade reduced the number of visitors. Action Park was still advertised as the world's largest water park.
In early 1995, GAR operated Vernon Valley/Great Gorge and Action Park with no liability insurance. New Jersey did not require it, and GAR found it more economical to go to court than purchase liability insurance, since they relied on their own self-insurance. However, they ultimately purchased liability insurance from Evanston Insurance Company in May of that year to cover Action Park and the skiing facilities. As 1995 progressed, GAR's financial woes continued to accumulate. First Fidelity Bank, which lent $19 million to GAR and some 15 other connected corporations, filed suit against them in an effort to begin the process of foreclosing on the debt owed to them. Law firms owed money for services rendered between 1991 and 1993 also began filing suit. As November approached, GAR negotiated a deal with Noramco Capital Corp. and the Praedium Fund of CS First Boston, in which they would purchase the debt owed to First Fidelity, temporarily fending off an impending foreclosure.
In February 1996, the creditors who had taken on GAR's $14 million debt petitioned to force it into bankruptcy. GAR filed for Chapter 11 protection that following March, but remained optimistic that they could regain their financial footing "within a year". After closing at the end of the season as usual on Labor Day 1996, it launched a website where visitors could find information about rides, directions to the park, lodging, and enter a lottery for park tickets.
As the 1997 summer season approached, GAR remained optimistic that Action Park would open as expected on June 14, in spite of massive layoffs at the end of the prior ski season. The opening date was pushed back two weeks, and then into mid-July. On June 25, GAR announced the cessation of all its operations, including Action Park.
Following the demise of GAR, Praedium Recovery Fund purchased the Vernon Valley/Great Gorge resort, including Action Park, for $10 million. The investment group put Angel Projects in charge of managing the resort, and aimed to spend $20 million to upgrade the ski resort's equipment and trails and remodel the water park. Instead, Canadian resort developer Intrawest purchased the property in February 1998. It revamped the Waterworld section of Action Park, and reopened it for the 1998 season as Mountain Creek Waterpark, while the Alpine Center section had its bungee tower demolished, and Space Shot ride dismantled. The Motorworld section of the park remained in place, undisturbed, until at least mid-2000, when work began on Mountain Creek's Black Creek Sanctuary.
Alpine Center attractions
Action Park Gladiator Challenge
The Gladiator Challenge attraction, loosely based on the television series American Gladiators, opened in 1992. It allowed guests to compete against other guests in an obstacle course and against park-employed "gladiators" in jousting matches. Former bodybuilders Michael and Vince Mancuso designed the attraction, and the employees against whom guests would compete in the jousting matches were found by scouting local gyms.The matches could lead to real violence. On one occasion, a guest who felt the gladiator he contended against had been too rough, striking him frequently on the head with the padded end of his pugil stick, returned to the attraction with some of his friends in an effort to exact retribution. The gladiator called in support of his own, and eventually, a brawl involving several dozen people broke out. The Vernon police had to be called in to restore order.
Over the course of a day, three shows were put on, and the guests who ran the fastest obstacle course times in the earlier shows were brought back to compete against each other later in the day. By 1995, the attraction was removed and replaced with a beach volleyball court.
Alpine slide
Action Park's alpine slide descended the mountain beneath one of the ski area's chairlifts, which provided guests access to the top of the slide. The path underneath the chairlift resulted in verbal harassment and spitting from passengers going up for their turn. Guests riding the lift would also often knock the sleds off, slowing down operations as employees had to retrieve them.Riders sat on small sleds that had only a brake/accelerator control stick and rode down the slide in long chutes built into the slope. The ride, and more specifically the sleds, became notorious for causing injuries. The stick that was supposed to control the sled's speed in practice offered just two options on the infrequently maintained vehicles: extremely slow, and a speed described by one former employee as "death awaits". The chutes in which the sleds traveled were made of concrete, fiberglass, and asbestos, which led to severe abrasions on riders who took even mild falls. The tendency of guests to ride in bathing suits made the problem worse. Hay bales at the curves were put in place in an attempt to cushion the impact of guests whose sleds jumped the track, a frequent occurrence.
While park officials regularly asserted its safety, the slide was responsible for the bulk of the accidents, injuries, lawsuits, and state citations for safety violations in the early years of the park. According to state records, in 1984 and 1985, the alpine slide produced 14 fractures and 26 head injuries. The slide was the site of the first fatality at the park: In 1980, 19-year-old George Larsson Jr., who had previously been a ski-lift operator at Vernon Valley, was thrown from the slide when his car jumped the track, and his head struck a rock. After several days in a coma, he died. Action Park said it was nighttime and raining the night the accident happened; they also claimed Larsson was an employee and as such the death did not need to be reported to state regulators. Larsson's mother and brother said his employment had ended prior to the accident, accusing park management of using his previous employment to get out of having to report the death. Years later, employees noted that the inspectors had already ordered the rocks to be removed but never returned to make sure the order was carried out.
When Intrawest reopened the water park as Mountain Creek in spring 1998, they announced the slide would remain open for one final season, but riders were required to wear helmets and kneepads. The last day of the slide's operation was September 6 of that year, the day before the park closed for the season, as that year's Labor Day was rainy and the slide had to be closed. The chutes were torn out afterward, but the route can still be seen from the gondola that replaced the chairlift. The resort's mountain-bike route travels down the site and crosses over a few wooden footbridges that provided access over the alpine slide. In 2012, Mountain Creek introduced an alpine coaster, which combines elements of an alpine slide and a roller coaster.