Category Archives: Action Park

The New Jersey Herald is my local newspaper and the other day they reported on two different television production companies approaching Action Park about doing a reality TV show. (Chances are this link will be dead or under a subscription wall in a few days, so click now.)

Action Park, if you don’t know, is a notorious water park located in the Northwestern NJ town in which I live. The park has been through several incarnations, but its first, from the 1970s through the mid-1990s, was the worst. If you visited the park during that time, it was likely that you would leave it with some kind of injury. Mostly of the minor scratch kind, but four people died there, and more were seriously hurt. There were the usual lawsuits and newspaper stories as a result.

Eventually, Action Park closed, and then was taken over by another company. It became Mountain Creek Water Park for awhile and supposedly was a much safer experience. This past April, the new owners (who are also the original owners) decided to return to their roots and call it Action Park again.

They did so to capitalize on the huge amount of nostalgia people have for the place. Even the injured get all misty when they recall the days when you could risk it all at an amusement park–when the world wasn’t ruled by class action lawsuits and people could introduce the craziest ride concepts and get actual volunteers to test them out. They gaze lovingly at their scars and share a strange kindred spirit with their fellow victims.

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote a story about Action Park for Weird NJ that highlighted this same nostalgia. Continue reading →