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[light dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- It's not really fair
to ask the question,

"What was Action Park?"

Basically, so it was
a waterslide park.

But in truth, it was so much
more than a waterslide park.

- Action Park was
the chaos summer park

with very little oversight,
too much alcohol,

whistles blowing,
people screaming,

motors running.

It was an energy, you know?

You knew you were
jumping into the firepit.

- The most dangerous
theme park of all time.

- There was a waterslide
that held one person

that went in a--
like, in a flip.

- It looked like
a bunch of kids built it,

because that's what it was.

- We'll be back with more
"Headbangers Ball,"

coming from Action Park
in Vernon, New Jersey,

the biggest water park
in the world.

- I think the very reason
people were attracted

to Action Park was because
they could get hurt.

That was the allure of it.

I mean, who wants to sit
on a Ferris wheel?

- It was a place
where death was tolerated,

where death was put right
into the number situation.

- Every member of my family
was injured in that park

at some time or another.

They called it
Traction Park.

- Class Action Park.

- Class Action Park,
the lawyers called it.

- It starts out with people
having fun,

and by the end,

crimes have been committed.

Cover-ups have happened.

The story hasn't been told
truthfully.

To me, that's probably
the worst thing of all.

♪ ♪

male narrator:
In order to truly understand

a place like Action Park,

we need to go back to New York
in the 1970s.

[light music]

Wall Street.
Everything was changing.

Bankers and brokers
were transforming

into masters of the universe.

- A ton of money starts
to enter the industry.

It is the place to be.

And that is part of
what creates the environment

that makes it perfect for
someone like Gene Mulvihill.

♪ ♪

- Gene Mulvihill
was Wall Street in the 1970s.

He was Gordon Gekko before
there was a Gordon Gekko.

- He's this mix of
P.T. Barnum, Donald Trump.

It's not just
that he's a businessman.

It's the personality
that he's bringing to it too.

narrator:
Gene ran a brokerage firm

called Mayflower Securities,

and every time
he'd make a sale,

he'd blast a bugle
through the office

while the champagne bottles
crack open.

- This was the era
of the penny stock,

of the pump-and-dump scheme.

- Penny stocks?
- Yeah.

narrator:
Penny stock scams

are when salesmen
take worthless stocks

and trick unsuspecting
investors into buying them.

- Come on.
Who buys this crap?

- Enters Robert Brennan,

fraudster, penny-stock king,

and best friend of Gene.

Brennan gets his start
as a salesman

at Mayflower Securities,
working for Gene,

and within a few years,

he's the president
of the company.

narrator: Under Gene
and Brennan's leadership,

it wasn't long
before Mayflower

got suspended by the SEC
for doing

what "The New York Times"
referred to

as "selling
worthless securities

in a bankrupt
electronics company."

Gene was effectively
kicked off of Wall Street.

So he did what anybody
in this situation would do:

buy up two ski resorts
in Vernon, New Jersey,

Great Gorge and Vernon Valley.

[lively music]

- Located within
the magic 45-mile radius

of metropolitan New York City,

Vernon Township occupies

67.9 square miles
of prime land,

with a population of better
than 20,000 people.

Also located in Vernon
is Wawayanda State Park,

and that's just the beginning.

- So many big,
larger-than-life people

looked to Vernon in the '70s,
and they saw possibility.

It's got all of this
amazing outdoor terrain.

You can ski in the winter.

You can hike or bike
in the summer.

- You would never think
it was in New Jersey.

For a country boy like me,

it was an amazing place
to grow up.

Everybody seemed
to know each other.

It was like this little
idyllic small town.

♪ ♪

narrator: In the early '70s,
none other than Hugh Hefner

opened a Playboy Club
in the hills of Vernon.

Gambling had just taken over
Atlantic City,

and Hef believed
it was on its way

up to North Jersey soon.

- And he wanted to build
the hopping spot,

the casino
that would draw people

from all over to New Jersey.

narrator: Vernon had already
been catching the eye

of outside investors,

but the opening
of the Playboy Club

took things
to a whole new level.

- Every weekend, there was
some celebrity coming.

People like Tony Bennett
would come to sing,

or Wayne Newton used to come.

- ♪ The love between
the two of us was dying ♪

- And Vernon was absolutely

poised to be the next Orlando,
even Vegas.

[Wayne Newton's "Daddy,
Don't You Walk So Fast"]

♪ ♪

narrator:
Since he couldn't negotiate

with New Jersey weather
and its short ski season,

Gene became a pioneer
in artificial snow.

He went so far as to construct

the world's largest
snowmaking machine

out of a jet engine.

[jet engine roaring]

- So the thing
with Gene's ski resort is,

there were summer months.

He had downtime.
So what do you do?

Well, Gene started
building rides.

- So he was looking
for something to do with it

in the summer,
and he got the idea

of starting an amusement park,

but he wanted to kind of take

the idea of where
you get on your skis

and you go down
and you control how fast

and where you go
to the amusement park.

male announcer: And we reflect
on the sounds and sights

of children's joy
at Action Park.

Everything here
is strictly do-it-yourself.

[light dramatic music]

♪ ♪

narrator:
To get his park built,

Gene turned to his old buddy
Bob Brennan,

always there
to find cash or investors

anytime Gene
had a wild new idea.

- They were saying
that New Jersey could compete

with Orlando
as a theme park destination,

and that's not that crazy.

narrator: Enough people
were sold on the vision,

and things started
to take off.

♪ ♪

- Action Park was one
of the very first

modern water parks
in the country--in the world.

Nobody knew what a water park
really was.

They had to invent it.

- Build it higher.
Make it faster.

Do something that nobody's
ever seen before.

That was what my father
was all about.

narrator: They were
designing it on the fly,

essentially throwing ideas
at the wall

and seeing what stuck.

Some worked okay.

Others not so much.

♪ ♪

And in 1978,

Action Park was born.

- ♪ Baby, let me take you
where the action's hot ♪

- ♪ Action, Action Park ♪

- ♪ We can ride
the excitement ♪

♪ And feel the park rock ♪

- ♪ Action, Action Park ♪

♪ The action never stops
at Action Park ♪

[exciting music]

♪ ♪

- When we would all pile
into the car

to go to Action Park,
it was always a little manic,

everyone just kind of
on the edge of their seat,

just all jacked up

about the excitement
that was about to ensue.

- Like, older teenagers
would take you.

So that right there
is already dangerous,

because they're just gonna
make you do things that they,

as 17- and 18-year-olds,
feel comfortable doing.

- I remember my parents
did not want me

to go to Action Park,

but we got lucky
because there was this family,

they grew up
up the street from us,

and their dad brought them
to Action Park.

I think my parents were like,

"Fuck, someone else
is offering it for free."

And these kids, classic '80s,
children of divorce,

they don't live with their dad,
and my parents knew,

"We can't say no.
We can't say no."

I remember my parents both,
on my way out the door,

being like, "Please be smart.

Like, please be really careful
and use your best judgment."

[mellow music]

♪ ♪

narrator:
Action Park was divided

into three main sections.

You had Alpine Center,
home of the Alpine slide;

Water World, filled with
fantastical waterslides;

and Motor World,
an area dedicated

to exhaust-spewing engines
and go-karts.

And, of course, splitting
the park down the middle

was a major highway, Route 94.

- One of the first things
you saw

when you walked
into Action Park

was the infamous
Cannonball Loop,

which for years,
it was like a myth

that the thing
had ever been open.

- Cannonball Loop was
an enclosed tube waterslide,

and you would climb to the top
of a series of stairs,

and you would ride down
the enclosed tube,

and at the very end, the tube
would go into a huge loop.

- I mean, you looked
at the thing,

and it looked like it was
something out of, like,

a Bugs Bunny
or a Road Runner cartoon,

where they just made a loop
and said,

"Yeah, there's our ride."

- Some lunatic clearly
just was like,

"Build me a slide
that's like that."

And then
they didn't consult anybody

who had a background
in engineering.

- So the story is,
they build the loop,

and they throw
some test dummies down.

Come out dismembered,
missing a head, missing arms.

"Okay, let's tinker
with things.

"Change the height.
Change the angle.

"Change the water pressure.

"Next step, let's put
some humans in this thing.

"Who we got?

How about these
teenage employees?"

So Gene's just waving
$100 bills in the air.

Any teenager gutsy enough

to go down this thing
will get one.

100 bucks, that's real money.

- I'm $100 richer
because Uncle Gene--

we always called him
Uncle Gene--

gave $100 for an employee

to test the Cannonball Loop.

- And I can remember looking,
staring down

into this black tube
and looking at the loop

and being like, "There's no way
that I would go on this thing."

- So you look down
the Cannonball Loop,

and all you see
is pitch black.

It's darkness.

- There's the water flow
at the top of it

that gets you mo--you know,
'cause you got to have water

to get, you know--
it's a waterslide.

You know,
somehow it's a waterslide.

And it's just way too steep.

- So they spray you down
with a garden hose,

and you go down,
and you're supposed to go down

feetfirst with your
arms and legs crossed.

- And then as soon as you,
like, kind of scoot forward,

it just takes you.

All of a sudden, you're going
really, really fast.

I'm like,
"I'm gonna shit my pants."

It was absolutely terrifying.

And then you feel--

all of a sudden,
you feel your feet go up.

And then as I go up,

you kind of lose contact
with the loop for a second.

It just kind of--
gravity just takes you.

You just...[slaps hands]
Kind of flop.

The catch pond,
wherever you landed,

was way too short.

You got to the bottom,
and I'm like,

"Shit, I did it.
I made it."

The loop was fun,
and yes, it hurt.

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.

- 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 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.

They had gotten their teeth
knocked out.

And these other people

were just going up
and ripping into it.

narrator: After Action Park
test pilots

came out woozy
and unable to stand,

Gene brought in
a navy physician

to measure
the slide's effects.

- Let me put it this way.

There's two places
that you can experience

nine Gs as a civilian.

One is the back seat
of an F-14,

and the other one
is at Action Park.

- You couldn't go down
the Cannonball Loop

if you were too small.

You couldn't go down
the Cannonball Loop

if you were too big.

Too big, you'd get stuck.

Too small,
you wouldn't get up

enough momentum
to make the loop.

There was a trapdoor
at the top that they--

that's how they would extricate
people from the loop

if they got stuck.

- So as you entered the park,

you saw this thing.

It was one of the things that,
you know,

you had kind of heard
whispers about.

So right away, you walk in,
you're like,

"Well, that's real.
This shit's real."

[upbeat music]

I did get hurt on a ride

that was called
Cannonball Falls.

And it looked like
a pretty normal waterslide.

You'd sit down.
You'd go down the waterslide.

What is not discernible
from the top

is that at some point,
you come around a corner,

and there's
this big black tunnel.

You feel like,
all of a sudden,

you're just going faster
as well.

And I'll never forget.

I'm going down this waterslide.

I enter the tunnel, and you
just hear people, "Oh, no!"

Ahead of you--
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no!"

So you're like, "What--
what's going on here?"

And then you'd see
this little piece of light

at the bottom of the tunnel,

and then you'd just get
shot out.

And you'd just be there in
the middle of, like, the air.

And I'm not kidding when I say

you're, at minimum,
ten feet in the air.

It shoots you out
the side of a mountain,

and you're just, like,
in the sky.

You think you're getting
on a waterslide,

and the next thing you know,
you're in the fucking sky, man!

- And yes,
you were over water,

but there was a few seconds
where you'd be like,

"I'm gonna fucking die.
What am I doing?"

And you just look around,

and then gravity would take you
down into the water.

- And you're in
ice-cold water, 17 feet deep,

so people were constantly
getting pulled out of there

for, you know,
being unable to swim

or just landing wrong
and being disoriented.

- There's nothing in the world
like Action Park.

[screams and laughter]

- The rides that got built
at Action Park

would often come to Gene

through people
who just had a wild hair

and wanted to build
this crazy idea that they had.

- A certain number
of the Action Park rides

were more or less
designed in-house

by people
without engineering degrees,

and I was certainly
one of them.

- The people who were kind of

on the fringes
of the ride-design world,

people who Six Flags or Disney
wanted nothing to do with,

these guys would literally
track Gene down

at amusement industry
conventions.

- You could tell these guys
went and did bumps of coke,

and were like, "Let's
fucking-- let's drill a slide

"right through the fucking
middle of a mountain,

and it'll shoot them
20 feet in the fucking air!"

You just couldn't
trust anything there.

- Guys would come to us,
and no matter

what the idea was,
my father would try it.

- And then when each of these
rides went into construction,

Gene would change them
drastically.

narrator: Action Park's
most prolific ride designer

was none other
than Gene himself.

After designs came in,
he would almost always

tinker with them
during construction,

making them bigger, badder,
more extreme.

And the Cannonball Loop?

Its design actually came about

when Gene drew a circle
on a cocktail napkin

and hired some local welders
to put it all together.

- Many of the rides
were experimental,

and on paper,
the design looked good.

But in reality,
once the ride was turned on,

it was not fit for a safe ride

by the average person
in public.

- One of those rides was

the Man in the Ball
in the Ball.

The Man in the Ball
in the Ball

was this giant ball
that we had

with ball bearings inside it
with another ball,

and you would open up two doors

and get in the ball

to go down the mountain.

And what he did is,
the guy built it

with PVC pipe
all the way down the mountain.

- Like, it's a great idea;
you can see how someone

would think that'd be
a lot of fun,

and I think it might work
and be relatively safe.

It turned out, you know,
there were limitations to it.

- It's a crazy concept.

I mean, it's so big
and so heavy and so unwieldy

that there's no way it's gonna
stay in any kind of track.

- The day that we were gonna
put a live man in it,

it got really hot,

and he didn't realize
that PVC expanded.

So when we put the live man
in the ball

and tested it
to go down the mountain,

the ride just fell apart.

And the guy ended up
going down the ski slope,

right over 94,
into the swamp down below.

It was unbelievable.

narrator: Another
prototype waterslide

was inspired
by zero-gravity airplanes.

Gene's vision: riders
would actually take flight

as they plummeted downhill.

- We built this, and we tested
several versions of it,

and we started sending
employees off of it.

And it was working perfect.

narrator:
But unfortunately,

after dozens
of successful test flights,

one went horribly wrong.

- This one kid went down,
and I don't know how he did it,

but he got himself going
way faster

than anybody else had.

He went way high in the air

and completely missed
the landing.

He had to be backboarded
off of the ride.

He's gone on
to lead a normal life,

but he was hurt that day,

and that was
the end of that ride.

narrator: While some rides
never made it

past the testing phase,

dozens of other
questionable ideas did.

- Right here,
that's called the Speed Slide.

It's over seven stories.

They tell me that you go
over 60 miles an hour.

So tell me,
any preparations

as we're about to embark
on the Speed Slide?

- Yeah,
Preparation H.

[soft music]

- There was a canopy around
the first 20 feet or so

in case you flew off.

The idea was that it would
bounce you back in.

You had a bar
you had to hold on to

and lower yourself
to vertical...

- And you just drop.

And you've got to be
free-falling

for a few seconds,

and then you actually

make contact
with the waterslide,

and you go down.

- Tops would come off.

Bottoms would be up
around their shoulders.

People would be
all disoriented.

Not the most pleasant
experience.

- What did you think
about the Speed Slide?

- I'm feeling
kind of juicy right now.

- It puts more fluids

through your system, that's--

I'm trying to think
of a nice way to say it.

What would you say?

- I'd say my fig
is puckered.

- I think the
Super Speed Slide was the one

that a lot of people would say
that it would just sort of,

like, shoot water
straight up their assholes,

that it was designed in a way
where you just--

you got your first colonic
for free

courtesy of Action Park.

- Everybody that got off
that ride walked funny.

Yeah, whether you're a guy
or a girl, you know,

you were not just getting off
and walking away.

You were, you know,
picking and prodding

and hopping and poking
for quite a while

after you got off that ride.

♪ ♪

narrator: Questionable
design decisions

weren't limited to the rides.

The construction and layout
of Action Park itself

had its own way
of leaving a mark.

- All the park was, like,
paved in asphalt.

So everywhere you went,
you had to walk around

on, like, dark, you know,
highway-grade type asphalt

that was absorbing heat

and reflecting it
back on you all day.

- So if you don't bring
your own flip-flops

or those water shoes,

you are going to suffer

from the notorious ailment
known as chopped-meat feet.

Everybody's, like, limping
around from running around

on fucking jagged
and poorly paved asphalt.

♪ ♪

- There was a great ride
called the Aqua Skoot,

which was essentially
warehouse rollers

built on an angle
like a ski jump.

You rode a plastic sled,
and then you would see

how far you could skim
across the water,

like a stone skipping
across the water.

- People didn't sit back
on the ride

and they'd lean
too far forward,

they would face-plant
into the water.

narrator:
Unbeknownst to most patrons,

the Aqua Skoot was also home
to a thriving bee nest.

Guests who lingered too long
were likely to be stung.

- I'll tell you something
about the Aqua Skoot.

Took one look at that thing,
I said,

"No fucking way.
No way, man."

That just looked like a thing
where you'd get

your fucking toes
or your balls

get caught in those--
Aqua Skoot.

I'm gonna Aqua Skoot
the fuck away from this thing,

that was my instinct.

[upbeat music]

The culture, the atmosphere
at Action Park,

it's most summed up
by the Tarzan Swing.

Everybody wanted to go
on the Tarzan Swing.

That was, like,
number one childhood

test your mettle,
prove you got some guts,

go on the Tarzan Swing.

- The idea was that you would,
you know, swing and release.

The problem was,

people couldn't hold
their body weight.

They would lean out
like they were gonna swing

and then just do
a total face-plant

from 10, 12 feet up
into the water.

- People would think
on a 90-degree day

that they were gonna be
jumping into pool water.

No, no, no.

That's a spring-fed stream

that held native trout in it.

It's cold, and, I mean,
people would go into shock.

People would hit and start
to scream because of the cold,

and they would actually
forget how to swim.

Man, what a shock
to the system.

- The Tarzan Swing was cool

because there was kind of,
like, an observation deck,

and that's where everybody
was waiting on line.

- So you might have,
I don't know,

probably over 75, 100 people

at given times that could all
see you as you went.

- Go to do it.

Your weight would hit.
You'd flip off.

You'd, like,
hit the back of your head

on the water.

No lifeguard would jump in
to help you.

The water's ice cold.

You come up for air.

You're all shell-shocked.

You're probably concussed.

And you have, like,
150 people from New Jersey

just being like, "Pussy!

"You fucking bitch!

You fucking wiped out!
Pussy!"

And that's, like,
when it's at its classiest.

- It was like,
"You fucking pussy, just do it!

This is Jersey!"

- "Oh, you fucking suck!

Start swimming, pussy!"

You know, I mean, it was just--

it was actually--
it was a very demeaning place.

- No one yelled at you.

No lifeguard
ever blew a whistle

and was like, "Hey,
stop chanting the word 'pussy'

at this injured,
bleeding person."

Nobody did that.

- They always tell people,

"No inverted jumps,
no obscenities,"

and people would go up,
do backflips.

People were dropping
their pants.

- So you got
the people who, like,

swing on the Tarzan Swing
and just, like,

throw up the middle finger,

and everybody's
fucking flipping--

or people are, like, taking
their dick and balls out,

mooning each other.

- Of course,
girls in bikinis would go,

they'd hit the water,
and, of course,

the bikini top surfaces
before the girl does,

and, you know, you get
the big round of applause,

and you see the girl
get to the top, and...

That happened all the time.

[light music]

♪ ♪

- Action Park felt,
in some ways,

like a strange
social experiment.

What happens when you take
a bunch of riled-up teenagers,

a bunch of alcohol,
bunch of dangerous rides,

and you put them into a place
where there are no rules?

- Yo, come on. Follow me.

- [laughs]

- Action Park was run by kids.

- Hell yeah!
- Oh, my God.

- You know,
the second you turn 14,

you got your working papers,

and then you went to work
at Action Park.

You know, even the people in
the lead supervisor positions,

it's like, "Oh, you've
been here for two years.

Here's a radio.
You're in charge."

- You had 16-year-old,
17-year-old kids

with no prior management
experience whatsoever

literally managing
a third of the park.

Hazing became
a rite of passage

at Action Park.

[indistinct chatter,
laughter]

It wouldn't be uncommon
to use a new recruit

as a victim in a drowning.

In the water, we would spin
the new employee over

and put him on a backboard,

strap him down real tight
while in the water,

and just leave him be.

There are certainly things
that happened at Action Park

that are never spoken about.

We lived through it,

we regretted some
of the things we did,

but we don't talk about it.

- I was probably
a security guard

for maybe three months,

and then they worked me up
to a supervisor

and then assistant
and then, eventually,

if you stayed there
long enough

and you had
anything going for you,

they would make you
director of security.

So it's not as impressive
as it sounded.

- Somehow I ended up
in the kitchen.

Like, all the bread products
in there--

everything was stale.

Everything was out of date.

So what they would do is,

they would put
the big pot of water on

and put, like,
a colander over the water

and then put the hot dog buns
in the colander

and cover it with a towel,
and in five minutes,

you'd have
moist hot dog buns again.

Damn, how did
we not kill people?

- I know there were people
older than them

who owned it,
but you never saw them.

Just literally imagine
teenagers you know right now

opening an amusement park.

That's what it was.
[chuckles]

- Everybody worked
at Action Park

because you knew
you'd get hired.

They'd give you as many hours
as you wanted.

But, you know,

Action Park didn't care
about, like, labor laws.

It was like,
"Yeah, I just worked 46 hours.

Yeah, I'm 16."

narrator:
According to New Jersey law,

employees had to be
16 years old

in order to operate rides.

According to local newspapers,
kids as young as 14

were, in fact,
working in these roles.

- They were kids.
They were teenagers.

So I'm sure their priorities
were on, like, hooking up

and getting fucked up.

- There was romance
between everybody.

They were teenagers,
horny teenagers.

- At the top
of the Alpine Slide,

we had a shack,
like, where we kept

our employee carts,

where you would put
your backpacks,

where you kept your water.

People would go in the shed

to smoke weed and have sex.

That's what they would do
in that shed.

Why anybody would want to have
sex in there, I can't fathom,

because it was always, like,
95,000 degrees in that thing.

And it always stunk
like dirty backpacks,

feet, weed,
and just ball sweat.

- There are definitely people
who worked at Action Park

who have stories about that's
the first time they fingered

and/or got fingered.

Like, clearly,
a lot of fingering

going on after hours,
I would imagine.

There's a child
who was conceived

at Action Park, right?

There's some kid who's, like--

you know,
his name's Adam Peter

'cause his initials are AP
'cause he got conceived

down behind the bumper boats
on one hot summer eve.

- Now, I was a good girl,
so I wasn't really involved

in much of the shenanigans
that took place.

But there were parties
that I heard about.

I may have attended one.

narrator: The Action Park
employee parties

became the stuff
of New Jersey legend.

- [shouts]

- We would save
all the money we found

in the pools over the course
of the summer,

and at the end of the summer,

one huge all-night bash
right up in Water World

called
the kamanawanalea party.

- Everyone stayed over,
so no one was driving,

but that was back in the days

when you could get away
with stuff like that.

- You'd find anyplace
you could find to sleep--

on the mats,
under the umbrellas,

on the picnic tables.

Some days, we'd wake up
after the kamanawanalea party,

we'd put our shorts on,

put the whistle
round our neck,

and find our way
to the lifeguard chair

as soon as we could.

[soft music]

narrator: Of course,
leadership comes from the top.

And Action Park's
free-for-all atmosphere

was inspired by
Gene Mulvihill's disdain

for rules of any kind.

- We called him Uncle Gene

because he actually did have
a lot of endearing qualities.

I mean, he was always out
and around in the park.

You know, he was a very
personable guy to talk to.

- So I go in his office
one day for a meeting,

and he has a cattle prod.

And he goes,
"Joe, I can't do this anymore."

And he takes the cattle prod.

He puts it to his chest,

and he hits the button,
and the thing goes boom!

And I get so freaked out
that I'm like, "Oh, my God."

He starts laughing
hysterically,

and at that point,
he basically goes, like,

"Don't get nervous.
It's fake."

And then he pitches me an idea.

"Joe, the people sneak
on the lift.

"And they go on the lift
without tickets,

"and we want to make sure
they all have tickets.

"So what I'm gonna do is,
I'm gonna get the cattle prod,

"and I'm gonna
stand by the lift.

"We got to get one of those
real dirty-looking kids

"that work down
in the train park.

"I'll be working the lift,

"and when they come up,
I'll go,

"'Hey, where's your ticket?'

"And they'll say,
'I don't have a ticket.'

"I'll take out the cattle
prod, I'll hit him,

"he'll pass out
like he's dead,

"and then we'll have patrol
come drag him away,

"and then everyone will know

not to come here
without a ticket."

I laughed like,
"Gene, that's some idea."

While I was out of town,
I get a phone call

from the person
who runs guest services to say,

"We have an issue.

"We have hundreds of parents
who are calling

"who are very upset

"because they saw someone who
works lift today kill someone

because they didn't have
a lift pass."

- I had a friend of mine
that had worked there

for couple seasons,
and he had told me

that Gene Mulvihill
had a MAC-10 machine gun

that he kept
in his office drawer.

♪ ♪

- He was far and away

the most unique character
I've met in my lifetime.

He was big and loud
and full of ideas.

Probably 90% of those ideas
were just so crazy

and off the wall
that nobody would get near him,

and the other 10%
were pretty close to that.

And we actually made
a lot of those ideas happen.

narrator:
Gene's rule-bending antics

may have been common
on Wall Street,

but in this small town,

the locals had no idea
how to handle him.

- Well, they obviously
didn't know

Gene Mulvihill's personality
until they got to know him.

But Vernon is a little bit
of a mixed bag.

There were those who embraced

someone like Gene Mulvihill
with open arms,

and there were those
who hated him

because they see him
as having destroyed

our beautiful, bucolic, sleepy
little town with his resorts.

- The man could wear a suit
in 90-degree heat.

I had no idea how he did that.

He just was a--
he was a cool dude.

- I think he was
a piece of shit.

narrator: Action Park's
growing reputation

posed an important question:

what insurance company
would dare cover

this creatively designed park?

- Gene didn't believe
in the concept of insurance.

He thought if you got hurt,
you should be responsible.

He shouldn't have to pay
an insurance company.

However, he needed insurance
to stay in business.

It was part of the terms
of his lease.

So he had a work-around.

narrator: He created
his own fake insurance company

based in the Cayman Islands.

Its name?

The very real
and very legitimate-sounding

London and World Assurance.

- This company's documents
were very, very homemade.

They looked like they were
ginned up in a basement.

The letterhead
was not official.

Might as well have been
on napkins.

narrator: Gene was,
if nothing else,

efficient with his schemes.

And so his fake
insurance company

wasn't just used to avoid
paying for insurance.

It also became a vessel
for him to launder money.

- I said,
"We can't do that."

And he said,
"Why can't we do that?"

And I said, "Because the state
says we can't do that."

And he goes,
"Well, who the hell are they?

They can't shut us down."

And I said, "Well, actually,
yes, yes, they can."

narrator:
These crimes would attract

the attention of the state
and eventually lead

to a large-scale
investigation,

three-day hearing,
and a 110-count indictment.

- Top officials

from the Vernon Valley
Recreation Association

today refused to testify

before the State Commission
of Investigation.

Gene Mulvihill did not appear,
citing client privilege.

narrator:
The outcome?

Gene pled guilty
to counts of fraud,

theft, and conspiracy

and was ordered to give up
control of Action Park,

which was partially
on state land.

But to Gene,
that would not do.

So he came up
with yet another scheme.

He decided to become
the worst tenant he could.

He stopped paying bills
and filing paperwork.

He basically did
everything he could

to antagonize
his landlord state.

- The SCI
accusing Vernon Valley

of "arrogantly violating
its agreement with the state

to lease land
for the ski resort."

Vernon Valley
allegedly diverted funds

to avoid paying the state

several hundred thousand
dollars in rent.

The SCI probe also disclosed
Vernon Valley

created a phony
insurance company

to avoid premium payments

and changed the terrain
of the ski resort

without obtaining permission.

narrator:
And it worked.

New Jersey got
so fed up with Gene

that they decided
to sell him the land

for just over $800,000

just to get him
off their backs.

Gene was free from the pesky
state of New Jersey.

And so Action Park continued
to expand and grow.

And anytime Gene needed cash
for a new ride,

his buddy Bob Brennan
was waiting in the wings

to support Gene's wild ideas.

- Excellence always succeeds.

When you have
an excellent facility

run by extraordinary people,

you're able to bring out
the fans,

and the facility does well.

[rock music]

narrator: But things
really started to take off

when Gene started running
TV ads

created by his daughter

and starring the park's
teenage employees.

- Just go to Action Park.
There's no other park like it.

- When it's hot out,
this is a great place

to spend the day
with your family.

- Race like a pro.
It's great.

- These are the most
amazing rides in the world.

I love it here.

- ♪ There's nothing
in the world ♪

♪ Like Action Park ♪

It's absolutely insane!

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

narrator:
A lot of Gene's ride ideas

took inspiration
from natural settings

and environments
that he grew up playing in.

His thinking was,
if kids couldn't make it

to real nature, he'd create
the next best thing.

How else to explain
an amusement park

that lets six-year-olds jump
off a 20-foot cliff?

♪ ♪

- They also had a slide
you could slide off

of the same cliff
into that water.

- So the slide version
of the Cliff Dive,

I think, was also
really good for people

who wanted to treat it
like a ride mentally

and didn't want to know
the feeling

of committing suicide.

- I remember being on
the diving cliff looking down,

being scared out of my life,
and to add to that,

there were people
right down below,

and they had no idea
you were about to jump.

- Conceivably, if you
just wanted to chill out

for a minute from all
the action of Action Park,

you could just hang out there.

You could be minding
your own business,

and somebody could land
right on top of you

without any warning.

So it was not actually
a chill-out area at all.

- You could do it safely,
but people didn't.

You know,
people just didn't listen.

They would jump stupidly.
They would slip and fall.

- And people would jump, and
the lifeguards always told you

to cross your arms
over your chest,

but people didn't listen,

and they would land
on the water like this,

and their arms
would get thrown up,

and they'd dislocate
their shoulder.

So you'd see somebody
coming out of the water,

and one shoulder's, like,

six inches lower
than the other one.

And their arm would just be,
like, hanging.

narrator: The floor
of the pool below the cliff

was eventually painted white
to make it easier

for lifeguards
to spot any bodies below.

[exciting music]

And this wasn't
the only attraction

that was to feature cliffs.

The original concept
for Surf Hill,

which was basically a giant
Slip 'N Slide on a mountain,

was to have guests
jump off a cliff

before the mat
would catch them.

This idea was abandoned
due to space limitations.

- Staff members started
building up the jump

by sliding the mats
underneath,

making it bigger
and bigger and bigger,

until eventually one of the
guests got seriously injured.

We had been told
the person broke his neck.

[cheers and laughter]

[indistinct shouting]

[people cheering and whistling]

narrator: Roaring Springs
was an expansive collection

of tube rides designed
to mimic the experience

of a mountain swimming hole.

- I remember this guy
coming up behind me.

He hit my tube
right before the tunnel,

and I went off to the side,

and I slammed my head
into the center of this tube

that you were meant
to go through.

- Some of the padding had got
torn away and exposed a bolt,

and one of the guests
came down,

and they basically
got impaled on the bolt,

and it tore a nice gash
through their midsection,

and they had to be evacuated
off the ride.

- Those ride attendants,

they spent their time
twisting their whistles

and then just going,
"Go, go, go."

And a lot of the time,
those tubes would bunch up.

And then what happens
when you get to the bottom

when you have to squeeze
into a particular area?

People were crashing
into each other,

slamming on top of each other.

One person would be
in the water.

The next person coming down

would then dunk
the next person and go under.

And if you couldn't swim well,
yikes.

- [laughs]

CFS stood for
"can't fucking swim."

- Security guys, lifeguards,
they carried Sharpies.

Action Park gave out
daily wristbands,

and they would write "CFS"
on the wristband.

If someone had CFS
on their wristband,

that means they probably
had gotten saved already

at some point in the day,

and it was a warning
to other people.

Like, if CFS
was on your wristband

and you knew
you couldn't swim,

what the hell are you doing
jumping off a 20-foot cliff

into a deep pool of water?

But people just--you know,
they thought, like,

this was some magical place
where all of a sudden,

they would have
the ability to swim.

- We should talk
about that other ride

that's right near there,

the Colorado River Ride.

Holy shit, dude.

I will say everybody talks
about Tarzan Swing.

Cliff Dive, Cannonball Falls,
you hear about those.

Colorado River Ride
may have been

the most underrated
dangerous ride.

- You would load in,
and they would just let

the laws of physics
take over from there,

which sometimes meant
that you would fly really fast

and also sometimes meant
that you would get stuck

at certain points of the ride

that they hadn't designed
all that well,

and then you would get punted
by another tube.

- That thing was just
a fucking whiplash machine.

You're going up on the side.

Your raft is getting stuck
on the wall.

You have to all team up
and push off the wall,

and now you're going backwards.

Like, this is clearly not--

there's no rhyme or reason
in this.

narrator:
The Colorado River Ride

actually began life
as a lazy-river ride.

But during construction,
Gene decided

he wanted a realistic
simulation of Class IV rapids.

Early test pilots reportedly
came out unconscious,

forcing him to turn down
the ride's intensity.

- There was one section
where tubes tended to go

right up an embankment,

and everyone was
looking at it expectantly,

waiting for them
to fly over the side.

You would hear people
audibly go, "Oh...aw,"

when they didn't actually fall
to their doom.

- I mean, we're holding on,
getting slammed into stuff,

the thing's getting stuck,
we have to kind of

stick our own legs out
and push our way off,

and then we go past
a lifeguard chair that,

you guessed it, is empty.

Nobody there
keeping an eye on anything.

- Gene got involved during
the construction process,

and he said...[as Gene]
"Look, when you go down

"the Colorado River in a raft,

"there's not some guy
in a lifeguard shirt

pushing your raft
down the river."

[normally] And I said,
"Look, Gene,

"this is not
the Colorado River.

It's a water park."

[indistinct shouting]

- A lot of fights
on the Colorado River Ride

for the dumbest thing ever--

you know,
rafts bumping into each other.

And then people would get out
and just start having at it.

Some of the worst fights we had
were people standing

in the Colorado River Ride
punching each other.

It was just dumb.

You would be like,
"Really? Why here?"

- There's morons
in the pool with us,

morons in the pool with us.

narrator: Action Park was like
the movie "The Purge."

Thousands of kids
with pent-up aggression

and a healthy dose of alcohol
were given a space

where they could do
whatever they wanted.

- You know when you were
at pool parties or things

when you were a kid and there
was always those idiots

who were like, "Let's jump
in the pool off the roof!

"No, let's get higher!

Let's do
the second-story roof!"

And you're always--you know,
you're kind of on board for it,

but then at one point,
you're like,

"Ah, I got to pull out
at this point.

This is where it's getting
too dangerous."

It was all those kids
in one park with no rules.

There were no rules.

And for a lot of kids,
that was heaven.

- Action Park was basically
the only water park

within the New York City area.

And it was a place
that filled a void for people

who weren't spending

their summer vacation
at a beach house.

They weren't going
to Cape Cod.

They weren't going to Florida.

They were going
to Action Park.

And I think because of that,
it might've attracted

a more, say,
working-class clientele.

[soft music]

narrator: The more
news reports warned people

about Action Park's
potential danger,

the more adrenaline-fueled
teenagers flocked to it.

It became
a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In a world filled with people
telling you no,

Action Park became known
as the land of yes.

- I'd work the front
of the lot

to let people know
the lot was full.

And what would happen is,
people would come

to try to get in the lot
after it was full.

And one of the ways they would
try to get in is, they'd say,

"Hey, I'm from New York City."

And I don't know
what they meant by that,

but I think they didn't realize

that everyone here
was from New York City.

So as a 14-year-old, I'd say,
"Oh, my God.

"Are there big buildings?

"What is it like there?

You think one day,
I can go there?"

- There were a lot of people
that came up there,

usually younger guys,
that were just coming up there

for the idea
of starting trouble.

- It didn't always bring
the best.

It did bring sometimes
a criminal element.

I once heard
a police officer tell me

the majority of their calls
during the day

were for Action Park.

- There were a lot of fights
at Action Park.

You know, hot, in the sun,
lots of places to buy alcohol,

people that don't know
any restraint.

- Trying to start fights
with each other,

trying to start fights
with the ride attendants,

pulling the ride attendants
into the rides themselves.

- We used to call it
a Code Brown.

That was the code for
"somebody shit in the pool."

How angry do you have to be
on vacation

to just shit in a pool?

- The average customer
at Action Park was just insane.

And they just didn't care
half the time,

and, you know, combine that
with liquor, and anything goes.

[indistinct chatter
and shouting]

- I lived through it, man,
I lived through it.

[indistinct chatter]

[lively polka music playing]

- There was a big fest tent.

That's where the beer
used to be.

And they would have, like,
Summerfest, Oktoberfest.

- My father was crazy
for that kind of stuff.

I mean, we had
a German brewer.

We had a German baker.
We had German bands.

- And I remember them doing
a big Polish festival,

Irish festival,
German festival.

- Anything you could put the
word "fest" on the end of it,

Action Park did it.

And they were
kind of free-for-alls.

- Jump, jump, jump, jump!
Come on, jump, jump!

narrator: Gene took
this stuff seriously.

He went so far as to literally

dismantle an entire brewery
from Germany

and have it sent
to New Jersey.

And during festivals,

such as Action Park's famed
Oktoberfest celebration,

Gene would be
front and center,

wearing lederhosen
and dancing to polka music.

[upbeat rock music]

♪ ♪

- Now, anyone who worked
at Action Park knew

Water World
was for the daytime,

and then at some point
around 4:00 or 5:00,

the adults would have
a little fun in the bar area,

and then they'd make their way
over to Motor World.

One side of the highway--

you have 94 that runs
through the middle,

and you have Water World
on one side

and Motor World
on the other side,

with all the racing cars,
the racing boats.

And that was usually
after they had a few drinks.

[steady rock music]

♪ ♪

- The design was flawed
because the Grand Prix cars

were right next
to the beer tent.

- So at 5:00,
guys would come up.

They'd get a bunch
of beers in them.

They'd go down to Motor World
to drive the cars.

- Out of all the rides,

my opinion,
that's the craziest one

because it's not the ride
attendant's fault, you know?

You can't always tell
if someone's been drinking,

and if you didn't stink
like booze,

they would never know.

- Gene said to me one day...

[as Gene]
"You know what we need here?

"When somebody comes in
under 55 seconds,

"we got to have these girls
in bikinis come running out

"and a huge champagne bottle
that pops the top off

and shoots champagne
up in the air."

[normally] And I was laughing
when he said it.

And I looked at him,
and he had a straight face.

He was dead serious
about doing that.

- Occasionally
with the LOLA cars,

we would get a guest that,

instead
of following the course,

would decide he wanted
to make his own course,

that he would just start
driving around on the course,

drive off the course.

- I watched a guy
go off the track

and start chasing one of my
employees around in the field

with a LOLA car.

And so this kid
was running around

kind of like a bullfighter,

like, trying
to make tighter turns

than the car could make so
the car couldn't run him over.

- I'd heard the employees
figured out

how to override
the speed governor

so that the go-karts could go

as fast as 50
or 60 miles an hour.

And I'd heard that they would
then take those go-karts

on the highway that ran
through the middle of the park.

- Yeah, I took a LOLA car
on 94.

It has a top speed
of over 60 miles an hour.

It was worth it.

[engines roaring,
people screaming]

narrator: Many amusement parks
feature bumper boats.

Action Park had full-on
"Miami Vice"-grade speedboats,

where riders
regularly tempted fate

by treating them
like bumper boats,

a common action
that would send many a guest

tumbling into a pond
murky from leaked gas and oil

and known by employees
to be infested with snakes.

- Like, you'd be driving
a power boat,

and you'd see something
slither out

from, like, in the high grass.

- Oh, yeah, there were
big black snakes.

Motor World had lagoons
and swamp,

and there must've been
four-foot snakes.

Used to scare the hell
out of the New Yorkers.

- The things would flip,
I mean, on a regular basis.

If I stood there for an hour,

I could almost guarantee
I was gonna see one flip.

- Well, if you were a lifeguard
in Motor World,

you were being punished for
something, for the most part,

or you were somebody
who didn't know anybody.

You know, it was not the place
you wanted to be.

- I worked at Speedboats,

and everyone would get
three times around this pond,

this gas, oily pond...

[chuckles] That was just loaded
with dead fish.

I remember that.

One day, we had
a group of people.

I think you had about eight
boats going at the same time,

and they did
their three times around,

and they would throw
a red flag.

And this one gentleman
is coming toward the dock,

and he comes up,
flies forward,

up and over the small dock,

and on top of this other boat.

I thought this gentleman
was decapitated.

And I walk over,
and I see that he's--

you know, he's stuck forward
and his neck is bleeding,

but he's breathing.

I'm shocked, and I'm afraid
that this guy

is going to get his hair
pulled into the prop.

I remember taking my rod

and slamming
on top of the boat

to get the guy to let go
of the throttle,

for--you know, for God's sake.

And the gentleman
who was on top of the boat

just jumps off the ride
and just heads to the monorail

like--as if he hadn't done
anything wrong.

[rock music]

- One of the coolest
attractions

I've never seen anywhere else,
the Battle Tanks,

you know, kind of homebuilt
tanks where you drove around

and shot tennis balls
at each other.

And if it hit a target
on the tank,

it would be disabled
and spin in a circle.

- I got a call down there
one time,

and one of the guests
had gotten hold

of one of the gas cans,
and he poured gasoline

on his tennis balls
and was putting them

into the air cannon,
lighting the balls on fire,

and was shooting them
at the tanks.

So he wound up getting ejected
from the park.

[serious rock music]

♪ ♪

- At Action Park, the most
dangerous ride, probably,

from sheer amount of injuries,

would be the Alpine Slide.

♪ ♪

- People would get
on the chairlift,

and this was crazy,
but they would actually take

the carts that were on
their cart and pull them off

and throw them off the cart
and try to hit people

that were coming down
underneath them.

- With just a little nudge
of your elbow,

it was pretty easy to knock
the cart right off the ski lift

down on to the track where
people are riding the ride.

- There were some times
it happened

a couple times in a day.

It certainly happened
a few times a week.

narrator: Once they reached
the top of the Alpine Slide,

parkgoers were greeted
with signs

bearing bloody photos of
the ride's previous victims,

a grim warning that what
they were about to endure

was, in fact, truly dangerous.

♪ ♪

- It had a stick,
and, ostensibly,

you were supposed to be able
to pull up on the stick

as a brake,

push down on it to go faster.

But one thing that I learned
was very true:

the sleds were often broken.

- I didn't know it
at the time,

but the Alpine Slide was made
of fiberglass, concrete,

and mostly asbestos.

- Cement track.
It's summertime.

People are in bathing suits,
and they're flying down

this path at full speed ahead,
and they would just tumble off.

- I wasn't particularly excited
to go on the Alpine Slide.

I knew it was unsafe.

- One of the reasons the
Alpine Slide was so dangerous

is because it wasn't designed
to keep you on.

If you didn't touch your brakes
in a couple of key spots,

you were going to fly off.

♪ ♪

- You'd go up into this lip,
and if you didn't know

how to distribute your weight
when you came out

of that bank turn,
the thing would flip on you.

And when the thing
flipped on you,

that's when it started to hurt.

- You had kids breaking
their collarbones,

their skin ripped off.

And when I was in high school,

you would come back to school
in the fall,

and you'd see
all these kids bandaged up.

And you'd walk in the hallways,
and they were like,

"Yeah, Alpine Slide, huh?"
"Yeah."

- Kid shows up back
in the neighborhood,

and, like, he's got a big burn
on his thigh and his hip.

You assume, "Oh, you fall off
the Alpine Slide?

Oh, when did you go
to Action Park?"

Like, that--
He'd have to correct you.

He'd have to--
"Oh, no, I had surgery."

[dramatic music]

- The area around the slides
was just rock,

so, I mean,
everything from broken bones

to concussions.

On an average day, you would
have 50 to 100 people injured.

On a weekend,
you could double that.

- When I was a kid,
I was extremely law-abiding,

so every single time
that I saw a sign

that said "slow down,"
I would slow down.

I hit a bump,
and I was sort of airborne,

and I looked to my side,

and I saw that the slide
that I had been riding on

was rolling down the hill
next to me.

And I was taken
to the infirmary,

which was
this unsettling-looking

sort of shed.

They took a look at my wound,
and they told me

that they needed to spray
some sort of stuff on it

so that it would scab over
and heal.

And then, unlike a doctor,

the person who was
administering this stuff

said to me,
"This is gonna hurt."

- First aid had this spray.

It was a little squeeze bottle,
like a Windex bottle,

and it had
this orange solution in,

which I've been told
years later

that it was alcohol and iodine.

I know it was an orange color.

And they would spray the person
with this thing,

and from the looks of things,

this was the most incredible
pain this person had ever felt.

I can specifically remember
one time where we had this guy

come in, and this guy
was a bodybuilder.

I mean, this guy was jacked.

And he had friction burns
on his arm and his leg,

and this guy was in tears.

We told him, "Okay,
now we got to do the leg."

And he was like, "No."

We're like, "Dude,
this is gonna get infected

if we don't spray it."

And he's like, "I don't care.

I'd rather have an infection
than go through that again."

- They had a circle drawn
on the floor

in the first aid room.

And while they were cleaning
your slide burns,

if you managed to stay in
the circle, you won a prize.

They said over, like,
two or three years,

only two people actually stayed
in the circle,

and the best they could produce
was an Action Park pen.

- You could walk
around Action Park

and just see the people
with the orange spray.

It was like
an Action Park battle scar.

- Action Park
was this litmus test that--

it was very clear
from the time

I was eight or nine years old,
like, you got to go there,

and you got to come back
with some scars.

You got to go take your lumps
at Action Park

if you really want to be able
to kind of grow up

and be a young man
in this world.

- After a while,
the town couldn't dedicate

its ambulances to Action Park

because, you know,
Vernon was a small town,

and we had two
volunteer ambulance squads,

and Action Park would
keep them busy all day long.

So there was a meeting,
and, you know, the town said,

"Look, you got to buy
your own ambulance."

And they did.
They had either one or two.

I think at their height,
they might have had two.

- My wife, she worked--
she was one of the admins.

One of her jobs, it took her
an entire week, 40 hours.

She made an Excel spreadsheet
of all of the injuries

for one season at the park.

And it was a lot
of dislocated shoulders,

broken arms, wrists,

slide abrasions
from the Alpine Slide.

It was just a crazy,
crazy amount of injuries

at this place.

[solemn music]

narrator:
It's impossible to say

exactly how many people
were injured at Action Park.

The state only required
that they report

"serious injuries."

Of course, that left it
to Gene to decide

what he viewed as serious,

meaning that unless you
left the park in an ambulance,

it was almost certainly
not going to be reported.

- If the government
doesn't require you

to report something,
there's no way

that someone could determine

how many injuries occurred
on a daily basis.

And if Gene wanted
to cover that up,

it'd be very easy to do so.

[steady music]

narrator: Amusement parks
often embody their creators.

They are the personification
of some individual,

some auteur's worldview.

Walt Disney looked
at the world

and wanted it to resemble
turn-of-the-century America

with a hint of fantasy
and the Wild West.

And thus, you have Disneyland.

Gene Mulvihill had a vision
of a place

where there were no rules,

something between Ayn Rand
and "Lord of the Flies."

- My father wanted
to give people the freedom

to control the action,
to control their speed.

He loved to have fun,
and so the park reflected that.

- The way things were done
in the '80s,

it seems to me,
created this situation.

You have this sense

of not being bridled

by a federal or state
or local government

that's trying to keep you
from having fun.

So Mulvihill created

a business that allowed people

to thumb their nose
at conventional norms

and thumb their nose at people
who worried about danger,

and they put themselves

in the teeth
of a dangerous situation.

[soft dramatic music]

narrator: And while regulators
may have been tough

on other amusement parks,

Gene had friends
in high places,

and Action Park suffered

virtually no fines
or citations.

- In the Reagan years,
there was this idea

that people
should govern themselves,

that red tape got in the way
of innovation,

that American capitalism
was at its best

when it was unregulated.

And it's in this environment

that Action Park
is allowed to flourish.

narrator: It turns out
that Gene was friends

with future president
Donald Trump.

According to park employees,
Trump was actually very close

to investing in Action Park
at one point

and even dropped by the park
to check things out

and have a look around.

When he saw Gene's vision,
he realized it was too wild,

too nuts, even for him.

- Trump found Gene's vision
too unhinged.

Fuck yeah, dude.
Good for Gene.

narrator: So what would happen
if you sued Action Park?

Well, Gene would refuse
to settle.

He'd force you to trial
almost every single time,

and he'd make that trial as
long and painful as possible.

- Gene's philosophy was,
"We fight every case.

"We don't settle it.

We bring it all the way
to trial."

And we won 93% of them.

narrator:
Eventually word got around

that he wouldn't settle,
and most lawyers thought it

too much trouble to even try.

Even if you went to trial
and won,

Gene would simply refuse
to pay

unless you sent
the U.S. Marshals

to his door to collect,

something that happened
on more than one occasion.

- The U.S. Marshals,
the first time they showed up,

they surrounded
the ticket booth.

[chuckles] I found my way
to them pretty quickly

and asked them
to please not shoot me.

After the first time,
they would just come

and knock on my office and say,
"Yeah, we're here."

Then we'd go
to the general manager's office

and take care of it.

[ambient music]

narrator: Action Park
was a product of its time.

It was like an '80s movie,

an era of latchkey kids
going on adventures,

far from the worried eyes
of attentive parents.

♪ ♪

- That was probably
the last decade

of unsupervised fun for kids.

- There was no cell phones.

You know, it's like,
you wanted

to hang out with your buddy,
you called him up,

and you went over
to his house and met him.

You know, whosever house
you were at at lunchtime,

that's who fed you.

- We were all kids
that climbed trees.

We didn't come home
until after 8:00.

Our parents weren't even
looking for us.

- The '80s were
about outdoing each other,

about keeping up.

The '80s were not about,
"How are you feeling?

Are you afraid to do this?"

- Like, we would try
to die for fun.

We would try to die for fun.

When I was in high sch--
I've been in at least

six different abandoned
mental hospitals for fun.

Like, that--
no joke, in high school,

you can show up to school
on Monday and turn around

and be like, "Hey,
what'd you do this weekend?"

And your buddy could look
at you and be like,

"Oh, yeah, we went
and broke into

"the abandoned
mental hospital,

"and we went
in the tunnels underneath.

"Turned out, there were some
fucking skinheads down there.

"So they came at us,

so we beat up a Nazi,
and we went to a diner."

And they'd be like,
"What'd you do?"

And you'd be like, "Oh, yeah,

I went and visited my cousin
in Freehold."

And those were, like, both
totally standard things to say.

- You know, I can remember
being 14, 15 years old,

and we lived about 15 miles
from Action Park.

And I can remember
a bunch of us,

unbeknownst to our parents,

jumping on our bicycles
and riding to Action Park,

spending the day there, and
then riding our bicycles back.

Parents never know.

I would beat my kid's ass
if I ever found out. [chuckles]

♪ ♪

- Looking back on Action Park
with grown-up eyes,

Gene wanted to make sure

everybody was having
a good time.

And it probably wasn't
the best idea

to have, you know, a place
where you controlled the action

and a place
where kids were in charge.

It was scary.
It was dangerous.

- An amusement park
is designed

to look like a kind of place
that it isn't.

It's meant to look dangerous,
but it isn't.

Its artifice is baked
into the story,

and you're told that
from when you're very young.

"Go on the thrill ride.
It's a thrill."

But it's not really going
to fall apart.

It's not really going
to kill you.

But Action Park
was truly dangerous.

♪ ♪

- A lot of places you go to,

unless the ride
catastrophically fails,

no matter how scared you feel,
you're not gonna get hurt.

Action Park was not like that.

If you wanted
to push the boundaries,

you could get hurt, and,
you know, it certainly became

a competition between friends
to see who could push it

a little bit more,
a little bit more.

And then if you got hurt,
you know, if it wasn't serious,

it was almost like
a battle scar.

[no audible dialogue]

- The magic and the horror
of Action Park

is that you can go there
expecting a great time,

expecting fantastic memories,

and you can leave
with those exact things,

or you can leave
in a body bag.

And you didn't know
which it was going to be.

[dramatic music]

- I would say probably
the most pleasant named ride

at Action Park,
the Kayak Experience.

But I later came to learn that

that is the one where someone
was electrocuted to death.

- There were underwater fans
that would help push the water

and created rapids,
like you were kayaking.

And somebody flipped
out of one of their kayaks,

and one of these fans
short-circuited,

and they either touched it
or were close enough to it,

and they got electrocuted.

- Negligence doesn't begin
to even capture

that particular death.

Ungrounded electricity
in a water park,

that's the Kayak Experience.

[chuckles]
The Kayak Experience.

♪ ♪

- I knew better than to go
on any rides at Action Park.

I saw people get hurt
on every ride in the park,

and I was like, "I don't
want any part of this."

I had a stack of comp passes
to give out to people

that was probably
six inches thick.

There were hundreds of them.

So if something went wrong,
somebody got something stolen,

I would give them
complimentary passes.

I never gave one to a friend.
People got hurt there.

- When shit got real
at Action Park,

the, like, golf cart,
Cushman first aid thing

would roll by,
and there'd be somebody,

like, completely immobilized
on that thing,

you know, with the backboard
and the neck brace

and the pads on the sides
of their head.

And you'd talk
to the first aid guys,

they'd be like, "Oh, yeah,
he got medevaced to Morristown.

"He had a fractured vertebrae

in his neck
from hitting his head."

I'm like, "Holy shit.
Are you kidding?"

And that's when I started
to realize, it's like,

this place is dangerous.

[indistinct chatter]

[serious music]

- When I think back
to the Wave Pool,

I remember being excited
to go in it

and, even as a young kid,
walking up and going, like,

"Oh, no fucking way.
This is nuts. This is"--

I mean, shoulder-to-shoulder
human beings

in a wave pool that was
far too violent and powerful.

- If you go to the beach,
that water is buoyant.

So when the waves come in,
you go up,

and when the waves go down,
you go down.

But a freshwater pool
doesn't do that.

- We'd often have people
that would jump into the water

that didn't know how to swim.

I can't tell you
how many times someone

would come up to me and say,
"Sir, how deep is that water?"

And I wouldn't even tell them
how many feet.

I'd say, "It's over your head."

I'd turn around,
and they would jump in.

- When people got
to shoulder-height depth,

we called that area
"the death zone."

Panic would set in,

and they'd grab everybody
and anybody around them.

And I've seen
literally families

of 8, 10, or 12 people
taking each other down.

- The guards at--we used
to call it "the grave pool."

The guards at the grave pool,

they couldn't relax
for a second.

- To break a new lifeguard in,

they'd be assigned to
the death chair, and that was

the lifeguard stand
that overlooked the death zone

on the Wave Pool.

And literally their first
30 minutes to 45 minutes

sitting in the death chair,
that new lifeguard would save

three to four to five people.

People thought that drowning
at the Action Park Wave Pool

was part of the ride.

They thought it was part
of the experience.

They expected to drown
at the Action Park Wave Pool.

narrator:
Lifeguards at the Wave Pool

had their hands full.

The water was murky enough
that bodies often

couldn't be spotted
below the surface.

The culprit?

A mixture of muddy runoff
from a nearby hill,

human waste, suntan lotion,

and gore from open wounds.

- That was one of the reasons
they used to stop the thing

every so many minutes,
so they could scan the bottom

and make sure there wasn't
any bodies there

that they had missed.

Those guys did a great job,
but it's hard to see.

And this guy went down,

and by the time they found him,
it was too late.

- When you're a kid,

I think you can separate
yourself from it,

because I didn't work
in that department.

[laughs] I thought,

"That's somebody else's
responsibility."

But it was a common occurrence.

I don't know how many people
died at Action Park,

but it wasn't just one person.

- The fact
that more than one person

died in your Wave Pool--

who's that second
son of a bitch?

That's who your heart
really bleeds for.

Nobody should ever be

the second person to die
in a wave pool.

You know why?
'Cause after the first person

dies in a wave pool,
close the fucking wave pool.

Put up a fucking sign
or something, man.

- It was a place
where death was tolerated,

where death was put right into
the number situation.

"Oh, we've only had
this many die."

One is too many.

[ambient music]

♪ ♪

My firstborn was Georgie.

He was actually born
on Christmas night

in 1960,

but he was delivered
right after midnight,

so he wasn't
the Christmas baby.

We were just so thrilled
to have him.

Just to look at his little
face, it was wonderful.

And then 11 months later,

we had our second child,
Brian.

- My brother and I were
basically raised as twins.

My dad would actually say
that we were twins

so we could play
on the same football team.

We did everything together.
It didn't matter what we did.

We were like the kids
on "The Sandlot."

- Georgie was
very, very popular.

He had many, many friends.

- My brother George
was a handsome guy.

My brother George felt
like he was invincible.

And our whole family thought
my brother was invincible

because of how strong we were.

On July 8, 1980,
my brother George

was supposed to be working
with my dad and I.

- He wanted to go
to Action Park,

so I loaned him the money
in the afternoon,

and a friend of his
went over there to meet him.

And they were just going
to have fun that day.

- He goes
onto the Alpine Slide,

and he's going
down the hillside,

and the cart brake,
I don't believe, was working.

And he went off the track

and flipping down the hillside
and into some rocks

and hit his head on rocks.

- And I had a phone call.

I'll never forget it.
I was sitting at home.

I was looking forward
to watching a movie.

They said,
"Your son has been injured.

He's in the trauma center."

And they told me
that what I had to do

was get a neighbor
or somebody to bring me,

because my husband was
on a sales call that night.

- My dad got the phone call
while we're working

about my brother being hurt.

Stopped working immediately

and went to go see my brother.

- I just didn't think
it was any big deal

because he was so athletic.

And I thought scrapes
or bumps or something,

maybe a cut,

but I had no idea
how awful it was.

When we got to that hospital,

he had been moved
to another hospital,

and I saw the bed
that he had been in.

There was blood
all over the pillowcase,

all over everything.

- When I first saw my brother,
I knew he was hurt bad.

I just knew real bad.
[cries softly]

They were checking
for brain waves

to make--to see
if he still had brain waves.

And not only once, obviously
two times or three times--

multiple times to make sure,

to see if he's with it
or not with it.

- There was no sign
that he was going to wake up,

and we just kept
talking to him.

Dr. Houser, who was
my brother-in-law's brother,

came in from Connecticut
just to be with us.

And he checked him out
thoroughly too,

and he said, "No."

- On July 16, 1980,
he passed away.

- I remember that moment
very, very well.

I went out
to the waiting room,

and my husband was with me,

and we told our other children
that he had died.

My daughter ran down
the hallway screaming,

and everybody was crying,

and it was, like,
not believable.

So we went to the rectory
that night,

and then on the way--
I hate to say this--

but on the way back
to the hospital...

we were--walked
across the street,

and I deliberately walked out
in front of a truck.

And at that point,
my husband pulled me back,

and he just screamed at me,
"What are you thinking?"

I was thinking I couldn't live
with that kind of pain.

It just hurt so much.

And here, 39 years later,

I can still feel that pain.

- My brother George

was supposed to be
best man at my wedding.

My wedding was gonna be
July 20, 1980.

He died on the 16th.

And I had to have
my other brother as best man,

and everything was in a cloud.

- Gene Mulvihill
never called us

and never called the hospital.

He had no heart.

He cared about himself
and the almighty dollar.

- In the investigation
of George Larsson's death,

the spokesperson for the park
claims that

the alpine ride
didn't kill him,

that the rock his head hit
killed him,

and therefore,

the Alpine ride was safe.

The newspapers were told that
George Larsson was an employee,

that this happened at night,
and that it was raining.

He wasn't an employee,
it wasn't at night,

and it wasn't raining.

narrator:
The truth was,

while Larsson worked
as a lift operator

at the park's
sister ski resort

during a prior season,

he never worked at Action Park

and indeed entered the park
during normal business hours.

One likely reason
for the lie:

the park never reported
his death to the state,

dubiously claiming
they didn't need to

because he wasn't part
of the general public.

- The state of New Jersey

had told them
that they could not open

for the Fourth of July.

And they wanted to open
for the Fourth of July,

but they never
removed the rocks

that they were told to remove.

And when my son
went on that ride,

the car flipped him off,
and his head hit the rocks.

The newspapers were taking
Gene Mulvihill's side.

They believed his story,
and they printed it.

Gene lied about my son's death

because he had
fake liability insurance

in the Cayman Islands.

Fake.
It was fake.

- Anyone that sues the park,

if there's not
proper insurance,

is gonna walk away
with not a whole lot of money.

That's the bottom line.

- We never even got
to go to court

because we were told
by our attorney

that a teenager
isn't worth much money.

He's a liability
to the family,

and you can't expect to settle
for very much money.

We eventually settled
for $100,000.

[solemn music]

♪ ♪

narrator: George Larsson's
death happened in 1980.

He was the first person
to lose his life at the park,

but he would not be the last.

In July 1982,

a 15-year-old from Brooklyn
drowned in the Wave Pool.

A week later, a 27-year-old
man from Long Island

was electrocuted
on the kayak simulator.

In 1984, a guest drowned
in the Roaring Springs area.

And in 1987, the Wave Pool
claimed yet another life.

♪ ♪

- The thing about Action Park
is, Action Park becomes

a huge part
of the local economy.

And if Action Park
creates revenue taxwise,

creates revenue for other
stores when people come in,

the city and the folks there

are gonna take
a much more friendly look

at that operation
if it's making money.

- How many hundreds of people
had jobs, you know,

between, like, those lifeguards
and the concession stands

and the ticket takers
and the janitors

and the support staff?

Like, that's a few hundred
jobs for your town.

I would think there might have
been a town councilman or two

who was willing
to look the other way

to keep the money faucet
turned on.

- Some of the town officials

were clearly on Gene's payroll,
absolutely.

They worked in his restaurants,
in his bars.

They worked in Action Park.

Their children worked
for the resort.

There were elected officials
that he bought homes for.

That there are
local town officials,

chairpersons
of our planning boards,

our zoning boards who had
free memberships to the spa,

free season passes
and that type of thing.

It's not always about being
on the payroll.

I think it was always about,
"What could I get from Gene?"

And Gene knew that,
and he played that.

And that's
why Gene Mulvihill got away

with as much
as he got away with.

- Gene was so much larger
than life than you can imagine,

and there's things about Gene
that I will not tell anybody,

and we'll just leave it
at that.

- When I went back
to work for Gene again,

after years away,

the first thing he said to me
when I saw him was...

[as Gene]
"It's great to have you back.

I mean, you know where
all the bodies are buried."

- I believe
that the people in Vernon

turned a blind eye to it.

They didn't want to know
anything negative about it.

I think they thought
that there would be

repercussions
from Gene Mulvihill

or that Gene Mulvihill
was telling the truth.

He's a very good liar.

- I think he made that
very clear,

especially when he started
into a business relationship,

that crossing him
was not a good idea.

- Let me put it this way:
when I got fired

from the local newspaper
as its editor

because of Gene contacting

my boss, my publisher,

he told me point-blank
in a phone conversation

that he was threatened
by the local officials

that if he didn't go to my boss
and get me fired,

they were not going to approve
his projects anymore.

- I have heard a lot of stories

that Gene was involved
with mob associates.

[somber music]

Around 1993, I filed a lawsuit

for defamation
and wrongful discharge.

And I deposed him.

And he came to the deposition,

and every answer
to every question was,

"I don't recall.
I don't remember."

He didn't answer
one single question.

And I was so upset with him

that as we were leaving
that deposition,

I'll never forget
what I said to him.

I said,
"You, Gene, are a lowlife."

I said, "I don't care
how much money you have

"in this lifetime.

You are a lowlife for what
you did to me here today."

♪ ♪

narrator: By the mid-1990s,
things began to change.

As the bad press
and lawsuits mounted,

attendance dropped,
and Gene found it harder

to move money around
and cover the bills.

The park hit
another turning point

when Gene's friend Bob Brennan

finally faced a reckoning
with the SEC

after years
of committing fraud.

Soon after that,
Brennan was found guilty

of money laundering
and bankruptcy fraud,

landing him in prison
for almost ten years,

meaning Gene's
never-ending spigot of cash

dried up as well.

Before long, Action Park's
parent company

had to declare bankruptcy.

And when the park
shut its gates

at the end of the 1996
summer season,

it soon became clear
that it would be its last.

- I think it ran its course.

I think, like anything else,
people grew wise to it

and people grew weary of it
and people moved on from it.

Plus, the whole
legal environment did a 180.

And New Jersey
was the Wild West

when Action Park opened,

and by the time it closed,

it was not
the Wild West anymore.

- The people's mindset
changed.

They weren't willing
to take the unbridled risks

associated with the way it was
in the '80s.

That just wasn't
acceptable anymore.

Its time came and went.

[soft dramatic music]

♪ ♪

narrator: In 1998,
Action Park was purchased

by resort giant Intrawest,

the multinational corporation
behind Whistler Mountain.

The new owners stripped out
most of the park's attractions

and renamed it Mountain Creek.

Gone were the looping tubes
and fireball-shooting tanks.

Without Gene's vision
leading the way,

it became a generic
regional water park.

Action Park as we knew it
was gone.

♪ ♪

- One day
after I came home from work,

I walked into the house,

and my husband, George,
said to me,

"Esther, get out the best
bottle of red wine you have.

We're gonna celebrate."

And I said, "What are we going
to celebrate?"

And he said,
"Gene Mulvihill died."

And we did.

He's the only person
that we celebrated his death.

He deserved to be gone.

He didn't care
about any of the riders,

any of the people.

- I would say in the last four
or five years of his life,

we became very close,

and I talked to him
all the time.

And I learned
about a different Gene,

a very generous,
a very benevolent Gene.

I am not glorifying
Gene Mulvihill.

I am not telling you

that he was a good,
decent, honorable man.

But I did see a side
to Gene Mulvihill

that was different from what I
had always thought about him.

Was he a villain or a victor?

I think he was both,

depending on the circumstances,

depending on what he could do

and what
he could get away with.

[soft upbeat music]

[indistinct chatter]

- It was so easy
to romanticize him

because he does what a lot
of people wish they could do.

A lot of people wish
they could ignore the law.

A lot of people wish
they could ignore rules.

Gene actually did that.

- The spirit of Action Park
lives on today

in the Fyre Festival,
in Theranos,

and all these other schemes.

- The Fyre Festival's
bullshit, man.

He gave them a cheese sandwich.

Gene gave you everything
he fucking promised you.

He said,
"Come to my amusement park.

"Do whatever the fuck
you feel like.

"You might get hurt,
but you're probably

gonna have
a shit ton of fun."

It was what it said it was.

But it was fucked up.

- Even though I was scared
to do those rides,

I fucking did them.

There's also a part of me
that's like,

"If you can't do them,

then fucking get out
of Jersey."

♪ ♪

narrator: In 2010, just
two years before his death,

Gene Mulvihill led
a group of investors

to take back control
of the park

he had founded
decades earlier.

In 2014, Gene's son Andy
revived the Action Park name

to cash in on a growing sense
of nostalgia

for the original park.

The following year, the park
announced its intention

to build an updated version
of the Cannonball Loop

called the Sky Caliber.

That ride was never built.

In 2018, the resort,

once again called
Mountain Creek,

was acquired by Vernon native
and onetime teenage

Action Park employee
Joe Hession.

♪ ♪

- When you look back
at Action Park these days,

I think everybody romanticizes
a little bit.

I remember enough
about working at Action Park

to remember that everybody
that worked there hated it

when they were there,
but they always came back,

and we always kept the friends

that we made
while we were there.

It's an '80s movie
that was real life,

and it's something
that'll never happen again.

- I hold it so near and dear
to my heart.

I'm so glad
that I got to go there.

I wear it as a point of pride.

That being said,
I think back to the fact

that I was a child, and I think
about the things that I saw

and that I participated in.

And even at the age of 39,

to no small degree,
it does scare me

that that was happening,

that that was allowed
to happen,

that--that life
could be that way.

- I look back as it was
a positive thing.

You know, be able to,
I don't know,

make your own decisions
on how ambitious

or how adventurous
you want to be

and living
with the consequences.

I think it teaches something.

- Everything's
in your face today,

and I think we're
more fearful, rightfully so.

I think our parents should've
been more afraid, right?

I think everybody in this room
would say...

[laughs] "My parents should've
known what I was doing

on this day or that day."

- We live in an era
when kids

don't really go outside
as much.

When they do go outside,

people are scared
they're gonna get hurt.

In the '80s,
kids were running free.

They were running outdoors.
They were scraping their knees.

They were going to Action Park.

We look back
at our childhoods.

It's carefree.

We didn't have jobs.

We didn't have to answer
to anybody.

We could do what
we wanted, right?

We look at Action Park,
and we remember

this heightened version
of this.

We could do whatever we wanted.

So when you're nostalgic
for Action Park,

you're nostalgic
for childhood.

You're nostalgic for freedom.

You're not nostalgic
for being hurt.

You're nostalgic
for everything else.

- When you talk to other people
who went there,

there's a certain
shared level of...

sort of survivor's respect.

Many of the people you talk to
who grew up in New Jersey

laughing about Action Park,

if you ask them
on a basic level,

"Do you think the way
you grew up

was healthy for a kid?"

they'll say, "No."

We laugh about it, 'cause
what else are we gonna do?

But we don't think
it was healthy.

And those people understand,
like, no, it was really--

You were swimming in pools

where the lifeguards
weren't paying attention.

You were going on rides
that were poorly designed

that people got hurt on
all the time.

And we felt like
we were on our own.

We felt like the world
was an unsafe place.

But it's what we got,
so fuck you.

[David Bowie's
"All the Madmen"]

- ♪ Day after day ♪

♪ They send my friends away ♪

- We are extraordinarily happy

that we were able to grow up
the way we did

and, simultaneously,

so furious that we had
to grow up that way.

♪ ♪

- ♪ Day after day ♪

♪ They tell me I can go ♪

- A lot of kids
who grew up in the '80s,

they like to talk shit
and tell stories,

and when they got
a couple drinks in them,

it's about how fucked up
and funny it was.

But when they're
with their shrink,

it's just about
how fucked up it was.

But a lot of things were.

A lot of things were
back then.

- ♪ I can fly, I will scream ♪

♪ I will break my arm ♪

♪ I will do me harm ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Don't set me free ♪

♪ I'm as heavy as can be ♪

♪ Just my Librium and me ♪

♪ And my EST makes three ♪

♪ 'Cause I'd rather
stay here ♪

♪ With all the madmen ♪

♪ Than perish
with the sad men ♪

♪ Roaming free ♪

♪ And I'd rather play here ♪

♪ With all the madmen ♪

♪ For I'm quite content ♪

♪ They're all as sane as me ♪

♪ ♪