Action Park: The Water Park of Your Nightmares with Sasheer Zamata & Chris Gethard | 9

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It's 1981.

Andy Mulvajill is working his lifeguard shift at the pool when suddenly he hears a splash.

He turns around and sees a kid thrashing around in the water.

There's no question, this kid needs help.

See, this isn't just an ordinary pool.

It's the wave pool at a New Jersey water park called Action Park, owned by his father, Gene Mulvehill.

Three-foot-high waves crash across the surface for 20 minutes at a time.

You can't tell the deep end from the shallow end.

Plus, hundreds of people pack into the wave pool together.

It tests even the most experienced swimmers.

Andy jumps into action, swims over, grabs the kid, and pulls him to safety.

He saves his life.

Now, at most other lifeguard gigs, you might expect a thank you, but not at Action Park.

The kid looks at Andy in the face, searching for the right words to say.

He looks him square in the eye and tells Andy to eat a dick and then dives right back in.

So over the course of the weekend, Andy says he and his fellow lifeguards will save no fewer than 30 people from drowning.

And that's just at one attraction.

In the 18 18 years Action Park was open, people of all ages broke bones, tore flesh, lost teeth, and yes, even lost their lives.

For some, Action Park was a rite of passage.

For others, it was a lawless wasteland that needed to be stopped.

This is the story of Action Park.

Action Park was wild and quite frankly, a lot of people got hurt over there.

The The most dangerous theme park of all time.

The owner was like, I'm not going to hassle the kids with a bunch of rolls.

I'm just going to leave safety up to them.

It was like Lord of the Flies with booze and weed.

These are the most amazing rides in the world.

I love it here.

There's nothing in the world like Action Park.

We

are

on a single kingship.

From Wondery and Atwill Media, this is The Big Flop, where we chronicle the greatest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time.

I'm your host, Misha Brown, social media superstar and your ticket to a good time at Don't Cross a Gay Man.

And today we're talking about the most dangerous water park in the world: Action Park.

Here to join me on the wild ride that is Action Park, our comedian and host of the podcast, beautiful anonymous, Chris Gethard.

Thanks so much for having me.

And comedian Sashir Zemeta, whose new special, Sashir Zameta, The First Woman, is out on YouTube.

Welcome to the show.

Hello.

Thank you for having us.

Chris, you're like an Action Park aficionado, right?

I went to it.

I went to it in its heyday.

I don't know if I'm an aficionado so much as someone who survived to talk about it and is happy to ramble about it.

Well, without giving away too much, can you talk about what was it like to go there as a kid?

I grew up in North Jersey, and even before you went there, one of the important parts of the Action Park story is you heard about it.

You heard about it from older kids.

You knew people got hurt there.

There was a Catholic church in my neighborhood.

The church used to send the altar boys on an annual trip there, and they'd all come back like cuts.

A kid came back one year with a broken ankle.

And these stories of like surviving the place.

Going there, I was scared.

I was scared when I went because I'd heard all those stories for years, but it sort of felt like you kind of had to go.

Sashir, I read that in Indiana where you grew up, you have a bunch of these world-famous wooden roller coasters.

So I was wondering, are you an adrenaline junkie?

Do you love a good old-fashioned death trap?

I feel like I used to, but I think as I got older, I was like, these hurt.

Why am I doing this?

I went on the cyclone a couple years ago in Coney Island, and I was like, this, my body actually feels like rattled.

Why I don't want to put myself through this anymore.

So Action Park may have been the wettest, wildest, most hardcore water park in history, but our story begins in another lawless wasteland, Wall Street.

In the early 70s, our hero and future owner of Action Park, Gene Mulvihill, is working on Wall Street.

Some people spoke to a documentary filmmaker about him, and in the movie, they describe him in some pretty colorful ways, like Gordon Gecko before Gordon Gecko, a mix of P.T.

Barnum and Donald Trump, and a piece of crap.

Well, A stronger word was used, but you get the idea.

So Gene Mulvehill is in his 20s, and he and his pal Robert Brennan are running a brokerage firm called Mayflower Securities.

And just like the wolf of Wall Street himself, they're running what's called a pump and dump scam.

So they're basically tricking people into buying bad stocks and they're making a buttload of money doing it.

And then zoinks in 1973, they get suspended by the SEC.

So now look, you can take the wolf out of Wall Street, but you can't take the Wall Street out of the wolf.

I mean, the man's a mover.

He's a shaker.

He's not going to sit around twiddling his thumbs, even if he's been banned from his favorite hotspot in New York City.

What do you think is the next logical step from Wall Street?

A weird dangerous water park on the side of a ski mountain in northern New Jersey.

Obviously.

That classic pipeline.

He does what anyone would do.

He decides to make a new hotspot of his own.

So in the late 70s, he buys two ski resorts in Vernon, New Jersey.

But he's joined by his sketchy partner from the Mayflower Securities, Robert Brennan, and a few other investors as well.

And they named their company Great American Recreation.

So in the 60s, Vernon was a pretty sleepy town with around 2,000 people.

But in the early 70s, it got a pretty surprising new addition.

I believe you're probably referring to a Playboy Club, one of the Playboy Clubs opened up there.

Yeah.

So, I mean, and for Mulva Hill, this makes Vernon the perfect spot because the writing's on the wall.

People are starting to travel from New York to Vernon, not just because of the Playboy Mansion, though I'm sure it doesn't hurt, but also because gambling is legal in Jersey.

So, Mulva Hill is pretty sure that Vernon, New Jersey is going to be the next Vegas.

And remember, whatever he does, he does it at 150%, whether that's cheating people in their investments or operating a ski resort.

And according to the documentary Class Action Park, he makes the world's largest snow-making machine out of a jet engine.

But even so, there is a problem and a big problem for a guy who wants to make a slope load of money by the way of a New Jersey ski resort.

And you could probably guess what his big dilemma was if he wants to make money year-round.

No snow.

It's very hot.

No snow.

I'm in New Jersey right now.

It's 90 degrees.

Yeah, so he needs to pivot.

And he comes up with this idea that's different and something new.

And it actually is new,

a water park.

So water parks, they weren't really a thing in the 70s, but I think that's pretty sound logic.

I think pivoting to a water park when you have a ski resort is a pretty good idea.

That was like kind of the kingpin.

There were other weird amusement parks around Jersey.

Like there's Wild West City.

There's the land land of make-believe, there was Bowcraft.

There were a bunch of these sort of like janky side-of-the-road amusement parks all over the state growing up.

But Action Park was a beast.

It was kind of like them but on steroids in a big way.

Well, Action Park opens in 1978.

And at this point, it's just a few water slides, a go-kart track, along with a few other simple attractions.

But of course, this is only the beginning.

And he divides the park into different zones.

The water park, known as Water World, Motor World, and Alpine Center.

So Mulva Hill has a somewhat unusual philosophy that feels very quintessential boomer, because according to his son, Andy, he feels like people are too coddled.

Like even a roller coaster is too passive of an experience.

So he wants people to be in control of the action.

So when it comes time to add rides, there's this big question.

What will they be and who will design them?

Like, what are the biggest priorities to consider when designing an attraction?

Sashir, what would you like to make the top of your list?

I think safety would be first.

Big one.

Yeah, you probably want to get like,

you know, the best engineers, people who are experienced with designing rides for the masses.

Yeah, so safety is a huge one.

But as you can probably imagine, because of the nature of this show, Mulvahill concerns himself with none of that.

He's basically like, I got some ideas, let's build some stuff.

Chris, if you could design any ride, what would it be?

Maybe something where you could just like drive a car full speed off a ski jump or something like that.

Like something that's just true mayhem.

There's a way to do that safely.

Yeah, that sounds fun to me.

Yeah.

What about you, Sashi?

Any desires desires for a ride?

I think I would do something slow.

Like if you're like in a sinking ship or something, and just like the adrenaline that you'll get of trying to not go fully under would be enough to carry you through a day.

That's emotionally torturous in a way.

I really love Sashir.

The ultimate escape room.

Well, speaking of sinking, among the rules that Mova Hill doesn't believe in, it is actually the rule of gravity.

Because one of the most famous attractions that he came up with was called the Cannonball Loop.

So I'm going to show you a couple of pictures of the cannonball loop.

Oh, God.

Could one of you describe what we're seeing here?

It kind of looks like a didgeridoo.

It does have a didgeridoo vibe.

Yeah.

Or like one of those like curly cue straws from the 90s.

It's like a tube and it's down at a very steep steep angle and at the very bottom, there is a full circular loop before it shoots you out into, is that a pond?

It does look kind of like a pond.

Yeah.

Just going to blast you out and let you fend for yourself.

You know, I can tell you, I saw this in person.

You did.

It was still standing.

It was not in use.

So I had heard about that thing before I ever went.

And then I went and it did put some fear in my skin for sure.

So now everybody, you know what the ride looks like.

You may be wondering, wait, this guy is not just going to like make up rides and throw guests in.

That's crazy irresponsible.

And to that I say, don't worry.

Mulva Hill may be an eccentric man and someone who actually at this point has committed financial and insurance fraud, but he's not crazy.

Of course he's going to test the ride before opening them to the general public.

First, they test it out on crash dummies.

Apparently, that doesn't go so great.

The crash dummies go through the opening at the top, disappear into the slide, and come out missing body parts, including their heads.

So that doesn't bode very well for the slide.

But Mobile is like, hmm, maybe this will just be better when it's real people.

So he pays his teenage employees $100

to test it out.

Here's a clip from the documentary Class Action Park.

You know, going through the loop and having your nuts get smashed on a, you know, a fiberglass tube was not fun.

But then, you know, Uncle Gene's standing there and he hands you 100 bucks.

Uncle Gene.

How perfectly teenager-y is that?

Yeah, they're nailing it.

This year, would you have done this for $100 as a teen?

I would say

no.

Like, do I have a choice?

Do I have any other options?

Can I pay you to get out of this?

No.

Even if there was no loop at the end, I wouldn't even want to do that slide.

Like, it looks so scary and terrifying.

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How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

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There is no accident.

This was 100%

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They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

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The cannonball loop.

It finally opens, but it only stayed open for a month because of a somewhat alarming problem.

Listen to this clip from the Class Action Park documentary.

The first couple people that came in came out and their mouths were all bloody, and that was before they had put sufficient padding in the top.

There was a a little bit.

So they sent a couple other people down.

And when those people came down, they came down with lacerations.

They couldn't figure out why these people had lacerations from a giant loop.

Then they took the loop apart and they found teeth stuck in the padding from the first couple people that went down the slide and they had gotten their teeth knocked out.

And these other people were just going up and ripping into it.

There it is.

Straight out of the mouth of an employee.

Pun intended.

I should not be laughing at that, but it makes me laugh really hard.

So teeth in the slide.

It sounds like something out of a horror movie.

If I got attacked by someone else's teeth and they weren't in their mouth, I think I would just walk away and never come back.

I think I would just go home and be like, I don't want to ever talk about this experience again.

I love New Jersey so much.

I love that I grew up here.

I love that I moved back here.

I just love this place.

Really, this is bringing me back to my childhood.

I mean, good thing it's like pitch black in there, right?

Also, they once had to remove someone who got stuck inside at the top of the loop, like, so they had to like create an extraction hatch.

But let's not worry because the cannonball loop was only one of the many attractions at Action Park.

And just to show you how many options there are, we're going to play a little game.

I'm going to say the name of an attraction, and you have to guess whether it was a real attraction or one we just made up.

Sashir, you guess, and Chris, you tell us if you went on it or not.

So the first one, the Tarzan swing.

Real or fake?

Real.

Yes, it was real.

And they describe it as the guests would grab a 20-foot cable and then swing over a spring-fed pool of water, which at one point wasn't water at all, but rather a cushioned area, and jump in.

I've been on this one, yeah, three or four times and it was horrible.

I can't believe I went on it more than once.

That's on me.

Yeah, it was really wild.

You would just dangle off this wire and it would drop you into freezing cold water while people just mocked you and laughed at you.

Oh my gosh.

All right.

So this one's called the Alpine Slide.

That's the real one?

Yes, it is a real one.

So the Alpine Slide was a 2,700-foot slide that you basically ride down in a little go-kart you can't steer on a track that's not actually secure enough to hold in place.

People would sometimes get thrown off the slide suffering road rash and broken bones.

While taking the ski lift up 2,700 feet, people would also sometimes drop their own sliding carts on people zooming down below.

I've been on this ride as well.

It was treacherous.

There is not a way for me to verbally explain how ill-advised this ride was.

I know there's things like this.

There's other things called alpine slides now, but it was lawless.

I saw it myself.

I should not have been allowed to go on this as a child.

It was really scary and really bad.

Did you ever see someone dropping their carts that they were carrying up?

No, I was once in a situation though, where the person in front of me had a cart where the brake was stuck.

So they were going very, very slow.

And I hit them from behind.

And then I got off, took my cart off, ran in front of them, put my cart on, and jumped back on.

So that gives you a perspective that I must have been probably 12 years old at the time.

Like a 12-year-old could just get off the ride at will

and then run in front of someone.

That was my most lawless experience with it.

But you always knew in my neighborhood when the church sent the altar boys to Action Park because people would come back with Alpine Slide-specific, like road rash, because they had been flung off of their carts onto the stone track, and people would be covered in these scabs and bruises.

So, the next ride: the guillotine limbo, real or fake?

I'm going to say fake because I feel like they accidentally dismembered people.

I don't think they would purposely want to advertise that they were doing that.

We made this one up and we have the 70-foot Bungee Tower.

Sashir, real or fake?

I'm going to say fake.

70 feet sounds too tall.

My brother has a funny story from that.

My brother went on the Bungee Tower.

I think it was Warp Tour, the big punk rock festival used to play at Action Park.

My brother went and he went on the Bungie Tower

and the worker there, I still applaud this worker.

As my brother was falling backwards, the guy just went, oh, wait, oh, no, no, no, and made it seem like the thing wasn't connected correctly.

And my brother legitimately thought he was plummeting to his death.

Yeah, I feel like that's a trend on social media these days are these videos that go viral of these ride attendants who kind of do the same thing.

But I think that with the reputation of Action Park, that's like a whole different level of.

Psychological cruelty in a big way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's the lay of the land of Action Park.

The director of an emergency room at a nearby hospital said that they would treat five to 10 park goers on some of the busiest days.

The park actually bought the township extra ambulances because of it.

So So now, of course, usually a park like this would have to report their injuries to the state, but Mulva Hills, like, hmm, that sounds like it might be legally pesky.

So he decides to only define injuries as accidents that require ambulances.

And then he still doesn't even report all of those.

Of course, the beer stations all around the park surely aren't helping.

So, Sashir, I know you said you wouldn't have gone to this park as a kid.

Would you go as an adult?

Like, what are the vibes?

How are we feeling?

Are we going to hang out at Action Park together anytime soon?

Absolutely not.

I can't believe it existed as long as it did.

I just can't believe that people kept patronizing it.

In 1980, something very terrible happened.

A 19-year-old named George Larson is riding down the Alpine slide and his cart flies off the track, which isn't super unusual, but when he lands, he hits his head on some rocks, rocks that action park had been ordered to remove but hadn't and george is in a coma for several days and then dies

not much seemed to change after that so movahill lies and says that george was an employee so that he doesn't have to report it to the state and he also pretends that it was after dark and raining and none of these things are true Two years later, there's a second death.

A 15-year-old kid drowns in the wave pool.

Just one week after that, someone's electrocuted on the kayak experience.

And in 1984 and 1987, there are three more deaths.

One person has a heart attack after riding the Tarzan swing into the freezing water, and two other people drown.

This is super sad at this point.

So, do you have any ideas like how they're skirting around this and able to keep open?

Do you have any theories?

I'm guessing because the park brought the town a lot of money.

I feel like there's a long-standing tradition of New Jersey politicians getting paid off for stuff, and I wouldn't be shocked if a few palms got greased on this one.

What?

Could it be?

I mean, it is a great question, and there are different theories.

And you two definitely hit two of the most popular.

So, the documentary mentions accusations that elected officials are turning a blind eye in exchange for free memberships and season passes.

Which let's shoot a little higher, guys.

Some people speculate that it's just because because Action Park is so important to the local economy, like Sashira suggested.

But there's also rumors that Mulvihill's in the mob.

That's very stereotypical.

Come on, guys.

But regardless of whether or not this is true, Mulvajill has the power of ruthlessness on his side, because according to the documentary, he almost never settles.

He drags almost any lawsuit into court for years and he basically just wears people down.

And he also shows this kind of sociopathic disregard for these deaths because Action Park had so many visitors per year that park officials say that their injury and death rate wasn't statistically significant.

Wait, what?

Yeah, I was always baffled as a kid, you know, kind of assuming that a lot of the stories we were hearing were urban legends.

And to find out back then, and certainly in the years since, how real it all was and how it was like much more real than even the urban legends say.

It's actually very disturbing to think about because I think we all heard the stories, and I think everybody was like, ha ha ha, Action Park, let's go get hurt, everybody.

Somebody might get killed.

And that was kind of like a joke.

And then to realize that it was absolutely real, sort of like a horror movie in hindsight.

Gene Mulvajill can't get away with all of this forever, and he doesn't.

In 1983, there is a state investigation of misconduct, but it's not because of the safety of the park or the injuries or the deaths.

It's because of a fake insurance company that he made up since he couldn't get away with a real insurance company to cover his business.

Gene Mulvajill pleads guilty to five insurance fraud-related charges, but he gets lucky.

No prison time for him.

But his former business partner isn't nearly as lucky.

Robert Brennan winds up spending 10 years in prison from a different fraud investigation.

But Action Park is still super popular at this point and continues to see huge amounts of visitors per year.

So separate question.

What do you think would be the equivalent of Mickey Mouse for Action Park?

Like, is it a guy dressed up as a tooth you might be missing?

Is it just a drunk teenager in a costume of a bigger, drunker teenager?

Like, what's the mascot here?

I feel like a wet cigarette.

Well, alas, despite how much money Action Park was raking in, it just couldn't make enough to keep up with the massive amount of lawsuits coming through.

And thus, Action Park finally flopped its way into bankruptcy.

Because it turns out, regularly, injuring your customers doesn't pay off in the end.

And Action Park officially closes September 2nd, 1996.

Chris, were you sad when you heard the news of the park closing?

I was.

I mean, I understood it.

I had been there.

I had seen it.

I think it's probably for the best, but I do remember being struck by a feeling of, you know, there's certainly a piece of my childhood that's gone.

And also there's a certain lawlessness that I grew up with where it's funny.

It's one of those things where I go, man, I would never let my son go to a place like that.

I wouldn't allow it.

But I do feel like there was some value in having that option when I was a kid, even though I'm thankful that my kid will not have that option.

I have very layered opinions on this.

It's almost like an era ends, right?

You know, when something like that goes away, we'll never have something like that again.

No chance.

And honestly, good.

And also sad, but good.

Yeah.

Let's do a little where are they now?

In a turn of events, in 1998, a Canadian resort developer, IntraWest, purchased Action Park property and reopened it as Mountain Creek Water Park.

In 2010, Gene Mulvehill led a group that actually bought back Mountain Creek.

Sadly, he died two years later in 2012.

New Jersey Governor Chris Chrissy had this to say about his death: quote, Gene Mulvehill's contributions to the economic development of Sussex County are unquestionable.

His unique vision and entrepreneurial spirit will be greatly missed.

End quote.

I mean, that's pretty wild to only bring up like, he was a great entrepreneur.

That's very Chris Christie, and there's a real Republican entrepreneurialship above safety and all else.

So in April of 2014, the Mulva Hill family reverted the name back to Action Park, but injuries still plagued the place.

So, in 2016, the Action Park name was then once again retired due to the stigma, and the park went back to being called the Mountain Creek Water Park.

I will tell you when it was reopened as Action Park, it did coincide with the year I got married, and I did go on my bachelor party to Action Park.

Not Mountain Creek, it was officially Action Park again.

So, really, I did get to relive that.

And when we went, I asked a worker the quickest way to get to the Tarzan swing, and he just told me and all my friends to hop a fence and run across a field and hop another fence.

So I was like, oh,

there's still no rules.

There's still no rules here.

That's great.

Still no rules.

I guess he did instill the spirit of

do-it-yourself and freedom and like no rules.

Yeah.

There's like some sort of charm to it that you can just create whatever you want.

Definitely.

Okay, I wanted to share some other notable things about what is now Mountain Creek Water Park again.

A handful of the old action park attractions never left.

The 23-foot cliff jump is still there, as are a few water slides.

The Colorado River ride now requires helmets with face masks.

And New Jersey Senator Corey Booker tweeted that he still had scars from the old park, but said, quote, I so want to go go again.

So, you know, I think that speaks to, you know, Chris, the same thing, like, even though it was this wild and dangerous experience, there was something really memorable and special about it.

People still talk about it all the time around where I live, and it will live in infamy forever.

We love silver linings around here.

So, Action Park was also the inspiration for Johnny Knoxville's 2018 film, Action Point.

The movie is about a daredevil who creates his own theme park.

And for the next generation of park rowers, you can still visit Mountain Creek Park for a ticket of just $50 and ride something called the Bombs Away, where you drop into a steep slide that ends with an 18-foot drop into the pool.

It's no corkscrew, sure, but at least you probably won't lose your teeth.

So knowing everything we know about Action Park, do we think that this is a baby flop, regular flop, or a mega flop?

flop?

Well, I don't think it flopped in a huge way because it was around for a long time.

There was an entire generation of people that went there.

I do think it flopped in the sense that it's now mentioned in conversation in only negative, cautionary ways.

And in that sense, it's like, man, especially Gene, the guy who founded it, like, he lives on in a way that's almost as like a cartoonishly manipulative guy.

And I'm sure that he was a layered person who loved his family in real life.

But in that sense, yeah, it's a flop.

It left a real bad legacy, even though it did last for a bunch of years.

It left a really bad legacy.

This was a huge mega flop.

People died.

I don't even know if you could say that's a flop anymore.

That's a tragedy.

I mean, I guess it's his success that he was able to get away with so much.

I feel like this was the ultimate scam.

Somehow, this thing existed for so many years.

But yeah, major flop.

Well, that is the story of Action Park.

So thanks to all of you for listening and thank you to my amazing guests, Chris Gethard and Sashir Zemaida for coming on the show today.

Come back next week to find out what happens when Pepsi decides to make a soda that's as healthy as it is crystal clear.

That's right.

We're talking crystal Pepsi with comedian Dulce Sloan.

Well, here's the thing.

We're all

stupid.

Because if you wanted healthy soda, just drink bubbly water.

You're coming to a pig asking for chicken nuggets.

That's what you're doing.

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We are

on a sinking ship.

If you like the big flop, you can listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

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