Have you been to an amusement park? If you have, there probably have been some rides considered dinky in the thrill value.

But what if I told you that there was a park so dangerous, so wild, so fun, that any kid who went there would make lifetime memories?

You see, Action Park was an amusement and water park located in Vernon Township, in northern New Jersey. It opened in 1978 and remained open until 1996. But there would be lots of factors adding up to its closure.

In 1976, Eugene Mulvihill wanted to make money outside of the summer season. So he opened an alpine slide down one of the ski trails. A couple of years after that, Mulvihill added two water slides, a go-kart track, and grouped them together to form the Vernon Valley Summer Park. And on July 4, 1978, Vernon Valley Summer Park officially opened and was hereby christened as Action Park.

More things were added to the park in the years that would follow, like a deep-water swimming pool and a softball field in the park’s Waterworld section. Pretty soon, the Motorworld section was made out of swamplands along NJ State Route 94. Altogether, the 250-acre park became America’s earliest modern waterpark.

But things wouldn’t stay this jolly.

In 1982, before the park entered infamy, two guests were killed, making one ride close forever. Nevertheless, parkgoers attended the place in big numbers, but Action Park’s fortune turned towards going into the red after 1984, when two more people were killed. Soon, the first court case was issued against Action Park, and the charges were, strangely enough, insurance fraud.

In the ’80s, the park’s attendance rate reached the millions, which led to countless visits to the ER, some reaching 5 to 10 people on busy days. The park bought Vernon Township ambulances to keep up with the staggering injury rate.

The rides themselves, however, are so strange that it makes you wonder how these got approved. Take, for example:

• The alpine slide had a lift heading up, but the path down was difficult. Riders sat on a sled with a measly brake handle and a speed controller that went really slow or really fast. The chutes had pieces of fiberglass, concrete, and asbestos. Most of the time, riders went on the sleds wearing bathing suits, multiplying the terror of the slide. In fact, the first death at this park was caused here; an employee fell off his sled and hit a rock; he died days later.
• Super Go Karts were, well, go-karts, but some employees figured out that if you lodge tennis balls under the go-kart, it could go a lot faster. This led to the part becoming practically a bumper car arena, and head injuries were rampant.
• The Cannonball Loop was a waterslide that seemed normal, but the wildest part was that there was a loop-de-loop at the end of the slide. It was so unsafe, employees were offered $100 to test it, “bloody noses and back injuries” were reported by riders, and a Navy physician found out the ride subjected 9 Gs of force to its riders! It was closed a month after its original opening, and for good reason.

Oh, and did I mention they served booze on the grounds?

In total, six people died in the park from 1980-1987. Soon, Action Park drowned in the many lawsuits, it went into bankruptcy in 1996, and it officially closed the next year.

But this isn’t the end for the park; in 1998, the Canadian company Intrawest purchased the resort and turned it into Mountain Creek Waterpark. The state cracked down on its ride rules, but in 2010, Intrawest also went into bankruptcy. The company sold the park to Crystal Springs Resort, which, in 2014, rechristened thee as Action Park, but in 2016, unrechristened [sic] thee as Action Park.

So, that was the story of Action Park. A park so unsafe it burned a time of trauma in the minds of New Jersey Gen Xers. But this unusually long story begs the question:

Why did you think the Cannonball Loop was a good idea?!