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Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill and Jake Rossen is a memoir of Mr. Mulvihill who is the son of the park’s creator and owner.

s book caught my eye since I grew up in the New Jersey area, and Action Park was always in the background. I haven’t been there many times, but I remember all news it generated.

Action Park by Andy Mulvihill and Jake Rossen is a fascinating and interesting read. Gene Mulvihill, the park’s owner, and the author’s father was a businessman who believed in bending the rules to the point where they start to crack – which makes for a hilarious read. Even though I knew how dangerous Action Park was, and all the laws and regulations it was skirting, I couldn’t help but cheer for Gene many times.

Andy Mulvihill gives the reader an insider look into the workings of the park. He grew up working in it, running some of the attractions, and managing the “lands”. With great humor and wit, he describes the most dangerous aspects of the park, especially concerning/amusing/charming/entertaining are his descriptions of the water rides and pools. Frankly, the fact that they didn’t have a daily death count of drownings is either a miracle or a testament to the lifeguards.
You choose!

Action Park would never be able to operate today. Gene Mulvihill believed that the owner is responsible to operate the park, but it’s up to the patrons to figure out if it’s safe for them to ride. There were no helmets, or protection. A wrong move would scrape your skin off, break teeth, or worse.
And patrons loved it. They loved the freedom and the actual, not perceived danger.

As entertaining as this book it, it’s also a cautionary tale. People cannot be trusted, insurance and regulations exist for a reason (mostly) ( )

If you grew up before safety nazi’s took over and neutered all the fun out of everything, you will enjoy this book.
If you remember doing crazy, reckless, activities, using poorly thought out decision making you will love this book.
If doing any activity that was reckless or dangerous and you remember thinking, “if only we had...” you will have fun reading this book. ( )

I grew up on Long Island, maybe two hours from Vernon, NJ, and was in college when Action Park closed. Their commercials were a prominent feature of local TV. I went to Great Adventure and Dorney Park--both further away--but never Action Park, because my mother forbade it. Its reputation preceded it: you went to Action Park to get hurt. Not only were the rides dangerous, the crowds who thronged the park were willing to push the rules.

Andy Mulvihill, the son of the founder of Action Park, is here to tell the behind the scenes story, and it's a good--if horrifying--tale. His father, Gene, wanted one thing: the most thrilling amusement park he could build. In the 1970s, regulations were weak and that suited him just fine. At Action Park, he wanted the thrills to be real. And they were. Formula 1 Lola cars, a slide that could scrape your skin off, a wave pool where people nearly drowned on a daily basis. People got hurt, and sometimes people died. Andy is defensive about the park's operations, but the story tells a tale of a tragic mix: people who were willing to try dangerous things, not understanding just how badly it could go, and an owner who was willing to give them those thrills--and let the buyer beware. The story is much more gruesomely funny than it has a right to be, but how can you not laugh at lines like "And then I saw my first guest shitting on the floor?"

Of course, such a park couldn't last--eventually the law, the insurance companies, and everything else caught up with it. But nothing sums up 1980s New Jersey quite like Action Park. ( )

Very funny writing (but watch out for the descriptions of grim accidents) recounting the history of Action Park, where fun was always prioritized over safety. The descriptions of the teenage workers’ shenanigans took me back to my own youth, where we did things that were largely less stupid than what these people did, but with the same sense of recklessness and cameraderie. ( )

The author is one of the children of Gene Mulvihill, who built the infamous Action Park in Vernon, NJ. The park opened in 1976 and quickly became known as "Class Action Park" and "Traction Park". This is the insane story of a New Jersey institution that is remembered as fun in hindsight, in a "I went there and here's my scar," kind of way. But this book is also focused on the author's father and how much he was able to get away with because of the era in which he was doing it and because he knew how to make his problems go away.
From this story, it appears that the owner had his children and a crew of ski lodge employees build the majority of the rides, most of them water-themed, which gave guests a good chance of drowning, which they did. Guests were also electrocuted, thrown from rides, and fed tainted food at the concession stands. The owner firmly believed in letting people take responsibility for their own safety, and if that decision included getting hammered on the concession stand beer and driving a mini racecar that went 50 mph and had no guard rails or safety equipment, so be it. His comment was, "They don't want helmets, they want to feel the wind in their hair."
Another attraction was an arena of Battle Action Tanks, small contraptions the park mechanic had come up with that were equipped with cannons that shot 100 mph tennis balls. Guess what players did when an employee had to run out in the arena and collect the balls?
The owner would hire people who had no engineering experience to build experimental rides if he liked their idea, and of course, the danger that he demanded from a ride led to insurance problems, which he solved by making up a phony insurance company.

The book opens with sixteen year-old Andy, the author, suited up in all his hockey protective gear and taking the first ride down his father's newest creation, The Cannonball Loop, a water ride the had a complete loop in the end that would force the rider to defy gravity before being spit out into a pool. Because he couldn't bring himself to disappoint his dad by telling him how dangerous and terrifying that loop was, the kid said it was fun. Which sent two employees down without protective equipment. The first guy got his two front teeth knocked out and the guy behind him had his arm cut on those teeth, which were embedded in the wall of the loop. The loop was never officially opened to the public though it stood for twenty years as the owner tried to figure out how to make it work.
By far the most dangerous ride was The Alpine Slide, in which riders went down a cement track on a twenty pound piece of plastic. The incline was pretty drastic and the rider had to know how to lean their weight and work the brake. This ride was the first to have a fatality.

"If you stuck your arm or leg out to balance yourself, it was like holding your body against a sander. The surface of the track scraped off your flesh, leaving an oozing, blistering wound. For superficial injuries, we sprayed a pink iodine liquid that bubbled up like acid and made the tender skin flare with pain...On busy days, the area around the slide could look like a leper colony. We eventually put up photos of these ghastly wounds at the top of the ride, a visual reminder of the potential for carnage."

The author is aware of how irresponsible his father was and how carelessness led to people being hurt. Yet the park was very popular precisely because there was a real element of danger. The park slogan, "Action Park: where you're the center of the action." was re-worked by visitors to "Action Park: where you're the center of the accident."
As the story and years progress, he becomes more admiring of his dad's remarkable ability to wriggle out of legal matters, even when there was a fatality involved. I found Gene Mulivill hard to like, but this story of Action Park is fascinating and often hilarious. ( )