Today, the thought of growing up during the 1970s and 80s has become very romanticized. TV shows like Stranger Things, opens a new window and anecdotal tales from Generation X and “Old Millennials” tell of a lost paradise before our hyperconnected age when children and young adults could go on exciting adventures into the unknown. But what has been eclipsed by nostalgia was the very real danger of growing up in a time before modern safety regulations. Perhaps the most dangerous adventures in those days could be found in Vernon Township, New Jersey, where the infamous amusement park Action Park once operated. The story of this park’s founding, life, and eventual demise is chronicled in Andy Mulvihill’s book Action Park, opens a new window. Presenting a real-life story both humorous and horrifying, Mulvihill’s book is a compelling tale of a time in America when thrills walked hand in hand with the potential for injury.
The Madness Begins
After an exciting prologue where Andy Mulvihill describes testing the incredibly dangerous “Cannonball Loop” slide in 1980, the book begins with the dawn of Gene Mulvihill’s theme park dreams in 1976. A gifted salesman with a talent for manipulation, Andy’s father Gene managed to obtain ownership of two ski resorts in Vernon. But his restless mind was unsatisfied with the revenue from resorts that could only operate seasonally, and he searched for a way to make money year-round. Gene also found conventional roller coasters and other popular theme park attractions boring because their route was always predetermined, and the ride experience the same each time. What he truly wanted was a theme park experience that would satisfy even his thrill-seeking nature–a park where the customer was in control of the ride as much as possible.
Gene Mulvihill named his ski resort the Vernon Valley Fun Farm and found his thrill ride through a West German designer. Dubbed the “Alpine Slide,” the ride consisted of a plastic cart on wheels that went down an asbestos chute that the rider could control with brakes and a joystick. Gene was so enthusiastic that he encouraged all his children to work on the construction of the ride–even if they were only 12 years old! The ride would set the set the pattern for most of Mulvihill’s later attractions. The asbestos track could horribly scratch a rider’s skin if they tried to stabilize the cart with their arms or legs, and the amount of freedom riders had meant they could violently ram each other, causing a jarring impact and potentially knocking the victim off the track. Despite numerous injuries and some cringeworthy attempts at public relations by Mulvihill, the Alpine Slide was a massive financial success.
Thrills and Spills Into the 80s
The book’s excitement doesn’t let up as it describes the end of the 1970s and the dawn of Action Park itself. Mulvihill’s concept of marketing his theme park as a place “Where You’re the Center of the Action!” was solidified by the opening of Motor World in 1978. Motor World offered visitors the chance to race in replica Formula 1 cars and dune buggies and to drive “military tanks” that fired tennis balls at targets…or park employees who showed up late too often. Gene Mulvihill’s drive to become the “Disney of New Jersey” didn’t stop there, and he tried his own unique answer to the monorails at Disney theme parks. Readers will thrill at the hair-raising account of the “Bailey Ball,” a real-world equivalent of the gyro sphere vehicles from the Jurassic Park, opens a new window films, that goes horribly wrong.
The expansion and upgrades to the park are illuminated in the book by a deep character study of its creator. Andy characterizes his father as a fascinating contradiction--a man with very little patience and almost no regard for his children’s safety, yet with a distinct strategic vision and a gift for manipulating everyone around him. Gene pits his children against each other in endless contests to prove their mettle, manipulates the town of Vernon by selling his park as essential as the local beach in Jaws, opens a new window was to Amity, and constantly pushes the envelope with ever more elaborate and dangerous attractions. It is Andy Mulvihill’s memories of his father—sometimes nostalgic, sometimes regretful, but always shadowed with a sense of danger–that serve as the glue that holds Action Park together.
The Edge of Disaster and the End of Action Park
As Action Park moves further into the 80s and 90s, the specter of fear and the potential for tragedy start to enter the narrative. It begins early on, with disturbing accounts of injuries and fatalities on the Alpine Slide, and the sense of danger is heightened as Andy and the other Mulvihills become more involved with the park’s operations. A cavalier disregard for personal safety is the binding thread of the park’s many bizarre misadventures, from inviting people from the Bronx with no swimming experience into a turbulent “wave pool” to escalating brawls between staff and customers. The chaotic and violent atmosphere of Action Park is the stuff of teenage dreams and adult nightmares.
As time goes on and lawsuits and bad press accumulate, Gene Mulvihill frantically searches for new funding sources and battles safety and environmental regulations. Willing to offer both a “carrot” (support from a popular local priest) and a “stick” (an alleged secondhand connection to the Mafia), Gene is able to twist his way through years of financial difficulties…until the book’s end, when the demands of running a modern theme park finally take their toll. By the late 90s, theme parks were not defined so much by notoriety and thrills as by branding and unique experiences. Over the next decades, both Universal Studios and Disney World would go on massive spending binges to design new areas and attractions. Action Park could not compete with the blockbuster rides of modern theme parks, nor did it have the stable funding of large corporations like Disney or Universal.
Action Park’s Aftermath
A successor to Action Park, Mountain Creek Waterpark, opens a new window, opened in 1998 and still operates today, with its attractions redesigned and its notoriety mostly gone. Andy speaks of it dismissively, as the rides that defined his childhood became sanitized and ultimately removed when Intrawest acquired the park in 1998. The Mulvihill family was able to buy the park back once more in 2010, but this did not mean the return of the thrilling, dangerous Action Park of Andy’s youth. In a final passage, he writes that it was financially unfeasible for him to build a newer, safer Cannonball Loop, as the park’s attendance had fallen in the 2010s in the face of expensive modern theme parks. Action Park is now a symbol of something forever past, a childhood that seemed fun–if you were lucky enough to survive it. It lives on only in Mulvihill’s witty, evocative memoir of his younger days.
