There was an amusement park in the US which, at its height, welcomed over a million visitors a year – but it had a number of people die on the rides.
New Jersey’s Action Park ended up becoming known as ‘Class Action Park’ due to all the lawsuits filed against it for injuries and deaths which occurred there, and they even ended up making a documentary about the place, which used the notorious nickname for a title.
A total of six confirmed deaths occurred at Action Park, which closed down at the end of the season in 1996 and failed to reopen the following summer, before being bought out and reopened as Mountain Creek Waterpark.
The place switched back to the name Action Park in 2014, but that only lasted for a couple of years before it was relaunched as Mountain Creek Waterpark once more.
The six confirmed deaths occurred in the 1980s, and include a man who flew off a ride and hit his head on a rock, someone who had a heart attack after plummeting into a freezing cold pool underneath a rope swing, a man who was electrocuted after stepping on a grate that was exposed to live wiring, and three deaths in the water park’s Tidal Wave Pool.
Rogan suggested ‘there should be a place where it’s f**king risky’. (YouTube / The Joe Rogan Experience)
No doubt about it, this place was f**king dangerous, so naturally, Joe Rogan and Joey Diaz spent a segment of Rogan’s podcast watching footage from the heyday of Action Park.
Diaz joked that ‘every time you were in there they’d kick you out in a neck brace’ as the pair watched people taking their very unsafe trips to Action Park.
“How many kids got broken legs from this?” Rogan wondered aloud as they watched all the various water park attractions in use.
Among the attractions they watched was a bridge where people would jump off into the water, leading Rogan to speculate that people would have tried to land on each other on purpose.
He said ‘that’s a great way to break your neck’ as he imagined ‘someone flying and landing on you’, and then exhaled sharply.
“Someone flying and landing on you, that’s a great way to break your neck.” (YouTube / The Joe Rogan Experience)
In and among the footage were newspaper clippings of all the accidents which occurred at Action Park.
Diaz told Rogan that accidents would happen at the water park ‘every other weekend’.
The podcast host said: “Here’s the question, guys who are doing BMX flips, guys who are practicing for those things, how many of those guys get hurt?”
“A lot, right? How often do they get hurt? But why is it ok if they get hurt, but it’s not ok if you go to a park where you’re reasonably certain you have a good chance of getting hurt.
“It’s basically people paying to have the same kind of risk factor as you would do if you were doing something else crazy.”
Topics: Joe Rogan, Theme Park, usaonlinenews
A shocking documentary shows the horrific incidents and scenes that took place at the world’s ‘most dangerous’ amusement park where multiple people faced their death.
While a young boy was decapitated by a ride at a Kansas City park, Action Park in New Jersey is also infamous for having had a number of tragedies.
Back in the summer of 2020, Class Action Park was released on HBO in the US, telling the story of the infamous water park with its wild attractions.
The documentary has a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes as viewers are horrified by what went on there – with some even reminiscing on their own visits to the spot also dubbed as ‘Traction Park’.
Action Park was very popular in the 80s and 90 after opening in 1978 – despite the young staff reportedly having to rescue 100 swimmers from the wave pool on its very first day.
In the documentary’s trailer, an interviewee explains: “If you couldn’t swim, well, yikes.”
Class Action Park is the first-ever feature-length doc to explore the ‘legend, legacy, and truth behind a place that long ago entered the realm of myth’.
Action Park was supposed to be the most ‘spectacularly fun amusement park on Earth: a place where unruly 1980s teenagers were given free rein to go gonzo on strange contraptions that seemed to violate the laws of common sense (and perhaps physics)’.
But in the end, it was nothing but ‘an ill-conceived death trap’.
The documentary claims there was 110 injuries in just one year – including 45 head injuries, with the availability of alcohol on-site credited with contributing to these numbers.
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Class Action Park takes a deep dive into the notorious 1980s water park (HBO)
Class Action Park is ‘told through the eyes of kids that went there and worked there’ and is described as ‘darkly comedic’.
A large part of the park’s management team consisted of under 18s with people as young as 14 operating rides – which was against New Jersey law.
Six people are known to have died directly from rides at the park, and one of the main focuses of the film is the death of George Larsson Jr.
The 19-year-old died after riding the 2,700-foot-long Alpine Slide.
Made of concrete, fibreglass and asbestos, it saw riders sit on small sleds with a brake/accelerator stick and descend the slope.
But Larsson’s brake was broken, causing his sled to run off track.
The Cannonball Loop slide (HBO)
The teen then fell into an embankment, hitting his head on a rock and ended up in a coma before dying.
It’s said that Alpine Slide was responsible for 26 head injuries between 1984 and 1985 alone.
Class Action Park has a whopping 96 percent on the Tomatometer with critics calling it ‘riveting’ and ‘easily justifies the reason for OSH worker’s existence’.
One added that ‘the wave pool had a death zone’ as another wrote: “This nostalgic trip back to the carefree summers of decades past is a hoot until you realize that people actually died here.”
