The Alpine Slide At Action Park
Joe Shlabotnik/Wikimedia CommonsThe ski lift leading up to the summit of the Alpine Slide.
Action Park opened on the Fourth of July in New Jersey in 1978, with a Dolly Parton look-alike contest and a tobacco juice-spitting competition. At the time, it was one of America’s first modern waterparks — but being one of the first certainly didn’t make it one of the best, and according to HISTORY, the park quickly took on the monicker, “Class Action Park.”
Over the course of its 18-year run, Action Park was responsible for six deaths, including three drownings in a wave pool and one man being electrocuted by a malfunctioning kayak ride, and countless more injuries.
The first warning sign for the park was the Alpine Slide, which was described by an old Action Park regular as “essentially a giant track to rip people’s skin off that was disguised as a kid’s ride.”
Riders had to take a ski lift to the top of the slide, whereupon they were greeted with photos of injured children and reminders to keep their arms inside the device at all times.
Riders were supposed to be in charge of their own speed going down the slide, but the devices were frequently broken — some didn’t even have brakes, while others’ brakes were locked, inevitably causing the rider to slide down at a crawl only to subsequently be hit by a second, faster rider behind them.
So it perhaps came as no surprise that the Alpine Slide was responsible for the first of Action Park’s deaths in July 1980. A 19-year-old park employee named George Larsson Jr., unable to control his speed, went down Alpine Slide far too quickly and consequently flew off the track and fatally hit his head.
While this was the only death aboard the Alpine Slide, at least 26 others sustained serious head injuries on the ride, including 14 instances of fractures.
But perhaps the most infamous of Action Park’s rides was the Cannon Ball Loop, which the park’s owner, Gene Mulvihill, offered his employees $100 to test out.
Despite many of them receiving broken noses and bruises, he infamously opened the ride anyway.
Action Park finally shut down in 1996, having caused more than its fair share of damage to patrons.
