I read the book Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park last year. It was written by Gene Mulvihill’s son, who worked at the park as a teenager. Fascinating stuff! It looks like the documentary has a little different focus, so I’ll check it out. I highly recommend the book if you liked the topic.
ETA: or like JohnnyEcks said above. Didn’t notice that at first.
I can’t watch the HBO doc but I’ve seen the Youtube vids. I can’t believe how lax they were with alcohol. I was in my late teens when they opened and they weren’t lax about “minor in possession” (and I was trying to NOT be noticed).
Do you get TNT? I saw it on that station.
For those of you who lived in the area, or better yet went there, I’m curious: Did the park charge one admission fee for, say, all day, or did you have to do stuff like buy tickets for different rides or different sections of the park?
I saw that early “Simpsons” episode where Krusty ran a summer camp.
“My letters from home!” “My brownies!” “My insulin!”
I recall there being just a park fee, I remember it being cheaper than Great Adventure. I’m going to say under $20 with a coupon.
My crowd mainly went to Long Branch Amusement Pier or Seaside Heights along with Great Adventure. Keansburg Amusement Park was another. When I was a kid, Asbury Park still had fun Amusements.
Of my friends that did go to Action Park, none came back broken. For us it would be a nearly 2 hour drive to Action Park. I never bothered.
“Shut up and eat your pine cone!”
The part in the documentary where they were spraying the alcohol/iodine mix on cuts and scrapes and even the toughest guys were brought to tears hit home with me. When I was a kid back in the 60’s and 70’s there was this first aid spray that was nothing more than an alcohol aerosol. It burned like a mutha fugger!
Probably Bactine. My parents never used that, or Merthiolate either, but I sure heard horror stories about it.
The product is still on the market, but has been reformulated several times.
I remember that stuff as mercurachrome (which wiki says is banned in the US now).
In high school track, our triple jumper scraped himself up pretty badly on a failed jump. In the locker room afterward, a coach came up with the mercurachrome, looked at the bottle and said “huh, guaranteed not to sting.” A few of us looked at each other, confused because that stuff stung like hell. Coach sprays it, and it stung like hell as the triple jumper’s face twisted up in pain. It took us a few seconds to realize that the coach was lying about the stinging.
Mercurochrome usually came in a little bottle with a tiny dip stick and usually wasn’t mixed with alcohol. I think there was a spray bottle version but we never had it.
The stuff I’m thinking of was nothing more than rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle. On an open wound it burned like a sonovabitch!
I didn’t go often because it wasn’t close but I did go several times. I certainly don’t know what it’s like to have worked there but the other parts of the documentary seemed very accurate to me. It really did feel like the wild west there. I like many others hurt myself on the attraction that looked relatively innocent, the Tarzan Swing. You just grab the rope and swung out over the water. What could go wrong with that? Well it was pretty damn high up. I miss calculated and let go too late which made me turn and hit the water headfirst at an angle. Then I meekly paddled over to the ladder in pain. All under the glare of a teenage lifeguard that might’ve been a year older than me. My neck has never been the same since.