hello and welcome to the very first prism of the past a weekly series about historical events people and situations from the fascinating to the forgotten for a lot of people the perfect way to spend a hot summer day is heading to the local water park because nothing helps you beat the heat quite like being forced into close proximity with thousands of sweaty strangers in their bathing suits then launching yourself down a poorly designed chute at high speeds with zero safety equipment and finally
plunging into a pool of stagnant water that also happens to be the perfect breeding ground for e coli and brain eating amoebas now i'm not saying water park enthusiasts are lunatics just that they have a much higher threshold for risk than perhaps some of us out there might and if you were looking for thrills in new jersey in the late 1970s and early 80s your mecca was action park [Music] actually water park is a little mild for what action park really was it's been described as disney world me
ets jackass it was an anything goes adrenaline fest designed for maximum fun and zero thought put into the safety lots of big things for little kids to do booze drugs and sex were common not just among the visitors but among the employees themselves who were often teenagers and received almost no training owner and ceo mulvahill imagined action park as a place where the visitor was in almost full control of their experience on the park's notorious alpine slide attraction which we will discuss a
little bit later on riders would get into a cart and slide down a winding luge-like track their carts were supposed to have hand brakes but many of the brakes didn't even work and if the brakes did work it was up to the rider to decide whether or not to even use them this is also a good time to tell you that action park included several bars and even a fully functioning brewery you can do the math yourself but as one action park enthusiast put it the alpine slide was essentially a giant track to
rip people's skin off that was disguised as a kid's ride this hands-off style of theme park building might sound great to a libertarian but in practice it meant people got hurt and a lot of people got hurt one er doctor at a nearby hospital estimated he saw between five and seven injuries per day from the park after it opened the park was also unfortunately responsible for at least six fatalities during its years of operation but even though action park was a literal death trap it was one of th
e state's most popular tourist attractions and a huge tax revenue generator just go to action park there's no other park like it while the state technically had the authority to monitor the park and impose safety measures it mostly looked the other way happy to bring in tax dollars while people got hurt millions of new jerseyans still have happy memories of the park and its rides even for folks who are injured in the park so here's the story of action park how it was built how it operated how it
became one of new jersey's top tourist attractions how it would avoid serious punishment for over a decade and how it all came to an end even when it really wasn't the end now before we dive into action park it helps to look at water parks in context are the guys who built action park absolute thrill junkies with zero care for human life or are water parks themselves inherently dangerous i'm not qualified to make a ruling on the former but i can definitely make a call on the ladder water parks
are far from safe for starters water parks aren't very old the first water slide was built in new zealand in 1906 and the first log flume style ride meaning one that allows riders to climb inside a device and ride down the slide instead of sliding down with their own body was built in 1923 but the first park entirely devoted to water attractions didn't open until 1977 that water park was orlando's wet n wild built by sea world founder george malay wet and wild the hair-raising mind-blowing breat
htaking non-stop fun spot action park opened just one year later so when action park opened it was one of the first water parks in the country we would say that water park safety was still being figured out in 1977 but to suggest that they were even thinking about safety might be generous even in 2020 the laws regulating amusement parks have come up short the federal government doesn't inspect or regulate the rides at our nation's amusement parks the occupational safety and health administration
does regulate health and safety rules at amusement parks but only as they apply to the park's employees not guests water park regulations fall under the jurisdiction of the state but the actual level of oversight in each state depends on factors like the budget and personnel that can be dedicated to it six states have no agencies mandated to oversee amusement parks at all in new jersey where action park was located water parks are regulated by the state advisory board on carnival amusement ride
and safety part of the department of community affairs since 1975 the carnival and amusement ride safety act has empowered the njdca to inspect rides and issue permits for their operation but like in many other states the actual level of oversight these parks may receive can vary often amusement parks are only required to carry a minimum amount of insurance and safety precautions are left up to the parks themselves all of that might lead you to conclude that water parks are far from safe and yo
u'd be correct according to the us consumer product safety commission 4 200 people were hospitalized by injuries sustained at water parks in 2015. these injuries ranged from bumps and bruises to concussions broken bones and spinal injuries and again those are just the injuries that required a hospital visit a 2014 report from the new jersey department of community affairs stated that water park rides cause the most injuries of all theme park rides in a survey of theme park accidents from 2009 to
2014 water rides like wave pools surfing rides slides and water play areas were responsible for 40 of all injuries even though water slides only represent 11 of the total rides operating in the state fatalities still happen too in 2016 a ten-year-old boy in kansas city kansas was decapitated on the verruckt waterslide at the schlitterbahn state park the verruckt waterside claimed to be the world's tallest at the time in response congress considered a law that would have created tighter safety r
ules for water parks but the law failed to pass i'm sort of shocked sometimes how hard-headed we are in the institution so today's water parks still don't operate under the strictest possible safety rules even when a water park tries to be as safe as possible visitors can still get easily hurt now take away all those safety features and you have some idea of what we're dealing with when it comes to talking about action park safety was the last of their concerns if it was a concern at all but mos
t of all it's got action action park makes today's water park seem tame by comparison now action park operated under an anything goes mindset the thing about anything goes is you can cut it two ways yes it gives your guests the feeling that they have total freedom and control over their experience but it can also be a way to justify some not entirely legal behavior so let's meet action park's founder eugene mulvihill he's directly responsible for the park's anything goes attitude and it's eviden
t in how he ran the park he was in charge of the park's operations but he was also one of the park's main ride designers and this was despite the fact that he had no experience designing theme park rides and no apparent knowledge of the laws of physics either for example in 1985 he designed a ride by literally drawing it on a cocktail napkin we will discuss the ride in detail later but spoiler alert it wasn't open for very long gene mulvahill was big and loud and full of ideas said former park o
perator manager ed humans in the documentary class action park probably 90 percent of those ideas were just so crazy and off the wall that no one would get near him and the other 10 were pretty close to that he actually made a lot of those ideas happen mulva hill's anything goes attitude was in place long before he got into the water park business he was born in 1934 in west orange new jersey he got his start on wall street in the 1970s this was the era of the pump and dump scheme if you've seen
the wolf on wall street you should be familiar with this concept but basically stock brokers would convince unsuspecting customers to spend their life savings on penny stocks that were actually worth almost nothing in 1973 the securities and exchange commission charged mulva hill and his brokerage firm the mayflower securities company with violating federal law mulva hill had convinced his clients to buy stock in management dynamics inc an electronics company that he claimed was valuable but wa
s in fact bankrupt the sec suspended mayflower for 15 days more recently a 2015 lawsuit accused one of mulva hill's business partners of defrauding an early investor according to the lawsuit new jersey businessman anthony p maliel jr owned 16 000 of stock in franklin resources a company that mayflower had helped go public when meal died of a heart attack in 1984 franklin never disclosed his stock ownership to his estate his son who was three years old at the time sued for 150 million dollars in
damages the public censure made doing further business on wall street difficult so mulva hill was forced to turn his brokerage company's sizable portfolio to look for new ways to make money one of mayflower's investments was the vernon valley ski area home to the mountain creek ski resort the economic recession of the 1970s had driven the ski resort to bankruptcy mulvanehill's great american recreation corporation bought it in 1974 and he set out to revitalize the property his dream was to turn
it into a mega resort this would include one of the country's biggest artificial snow systems and an array of shops and restaurants but the economic downturn meant that turning around the resort's fortunes wouldn't be easy and mulva hill needed more ways to monetize the location since the ski resort was only operational in winter months the more obvious move was to bring in summertime attractions the man whom action park employees would affectionately refer to as uncle gene had been described as
a pioneer of the new jersey recreation industry but he was also an individual motivated by profit with a clear disregard for the cost of human life in his business decisions and now he's going to start building theme park rides what could go wrong well almost everything as it turns out and now we get to the reason why many of you are probably tuning in the rides well i tell you to buckle up but few of these rides even had seat belts but hold on to your bathing suit because there's more lots mor
e action parks rides which included both water attractions as well as theme park rides were some of the first of their kind ever built jean mulvehill was open to trying nearly any idea no matter how far-fetched or dangerous the rides would be built with minimal attention paid to safety features they had height and weight requirements but park employees rarely enforced them action parks employees were seldom over 30 and many of them were underage teenagers working summer jobs while off from schoo
l underage employees often operated the rides themselves in violation of federal labor law former park employees recall park management telling underage employees to go home on days that labor department inspectors arrived at the park though the park denies this the park was built on 30 acres and park employees remember knowing all sorts of places to hide from management and party so if you were so inclined it was very easy to get drunk stoned laid or all three action park didn't start out as a
water park that came a few years later the first summertime ride built at mountain creek ski resort was the alpine slide which opened in 1977 the alpine slide utilized the ski resort ski lifts to bring guests to the top of a ski slope at the top of the ski lift along with safety warnings advising them to keep their arms inside the ride at all times guests would see photos of children who had been injured on the ride riders would climb into wheeled sleds and ride a sled down 2 700 feet alpine sle
dding track while the carts had hand brakes in practice many of them didn't work one former ride operator said the sleds would either be unbearably slow or inoperable the ones without brakes were said to ride at a speed called death awaits and let's remember handbrake use was entirely optional in the first place according to the park you didn't have to use it if you didn't want to often a rider in a fast sled would plow into the back of a slow sled without warning the shoots the sleds were suppo
sed to travel down were made from concrete fiberglass and asbestos they had no guard rails and steep embankments guests had no helmets or other safety equipment the park did provide hay bales in the inevitable event of a sled jumping the track which happened frequently sleds routinely became stuck or flipped over making them targets for the next sled careening down the hill the park insisted the ride was safe and one employee claimed that 90 year old grandmothers and babies had ridden safely dow
n it in reality the alpine slide was the cause of the most lawsuits and injuries of any attraction in the park and it caused the park's first death and while we're at it another thing to remember about action park is that guests often wore their bathing suits throughout their entire visit wearing a wet bathing suit on a seldom maintained sled in 90 degree heat is a great way to get ride rash or worse that's going to be the case for practically every ride in this place the alpine slide was a hit
and the next summer great american recreation built their first two water slides and go-kart track gene mulvihill renamed the area vernon valley summer park the summer after that the park expanded more and more over the next several summers jean mulvehill promoted the park with marketing gimmicks like a tobacco spitting competition and a dolly parton lookalike contest by 1980 it was officially called action park the alpine slide would expand to become the alpine center the go-karts become motorw
orld and the water slides became water world each section of the park would have attractions that were both as iconic as they were notorious the tidal wave pool opened in 1979 it was also lovingly referred to as the grave pool and it was a massive tide pool 100 feet by 250 feet and up to eight feet deep it used four large electrical fans to generate tidal waves these could be up to four feet high in other words it's extremely choppy guests would wade into the tidal wave pool and swim with the wa
ves which churned in 20-minute intervals with 10-minute breaks the pool was large enough to hold up to 1 000 swimmers at a time swimming in 4-foot waves in the ocean is already quite difficult but since this was fresh water even experienced ocean swimmers would need to work harder to stay afloat unfortunately many swimmers were inexperienced or even unable to swim in a crowded pool guests often crashed into each other and sank the park kept 12 red cross lifeguards on duty at the title pool they
recall having to dive in and save up to 30 guests a day not over the course of a summer in one day another early water ride was the kayak experience this one attempted to simulate the experience of kayaking down a river churning with white water rapids they certainly succeeded on recreating the dangerous part guests would kayak down a man-made river in a kayak unlike a real river with white water rapids the kayak experience substituted river rocks for chunks of concrete it created white water ra
pids by using more submerged electrical fans kayaks often tipped over crashes were common like on the alpine ride guests didn't have helmets or other safety protection or padding you also may have noticed an ongoing trend with action park underwater electronics like fans in 1982 the use of these devices would prove to have terrible consequences that year a 27 year old kayaker tipped over and stood in the river to upright his boat he stepped on exposed wiring from one of those fans and he was ins
tantly electrocuted and died the ride was closed for an investigation drained and never reopened again action park was built on 30 acres of swampland and woodlands as the park expanded it utilized parts of the natural terrain the design for the tarzan swing was a simple one a 25-foot cable was suspended by a steel arching beam over a pool fed by natural spring water guests would swing over the cable and dive into the icy waters below i can't wait to jump in the car sample onlookers standing on t
he side of the pool would shout and taunt the tarzan swings victims the shock from the cold water surprised many guests and required many lifeguard rescues in 1984 the shock gave one man a fatal heart attack and now we arrive at the ride that was drawn up on a cocktail napkin jean mulvahill's cannonball loop it was an enclosed slide that went in a complete vertical loop like a roller coaster in theory guests would slide down then go up through the loop entirely upside down and then down again di
d you notice how he said down then up because gravity doesn't really work that way in practice riders actually got stuck at the top of the loop during the testing phase it's said that park employees were bribed with hundred dollar bills to participate in the trials rather than scrap the ride entirely the park opted to build a hatch at the top of the loop that could be used to retrieve stuck riders and a dummy that was used to test the cannonball loop apparently was decapitated during that test r
un mulva hill's son andy worked at the park as a teenager and even tested some of the rides describing the cannonball loop he said it pulled your stomach through your throat and you'd come out all disorientated it was a ride more to be survived than enjoyed even though the cannonball loop was so obviously poorly conceived and built it did manage to open in 1985. this was one of the few times that the new jersey state advisory board on carnival amusement pride and safety would actually step in an
d enforce rules at action park the board ordered the cannonball loop closed after just one month of operation after the closure of the kayak experience the great american recreation tried another simulated rapids-based ride in 1987. the colorado river ride was billed as a family ride guests in two-person rafts would voyage down another concrete river through a heavily wooded area rafts were often under-inflated and folded easily crashes were again common and there was no safety equipment like he
lmets bruises concussions and broken bones were routine then there was motorworld originally built in a drained swamp across route 94 from the original ski lodge it expanded from the original go-kart track to a complex that included over two dozen attractions by 1992 here guests could try out various motorized vehicles speed boats grand prix race cars dune buggies and live-action battle tanks and yep i said battle tanks on this ride guests could operate actual working battle tanks they were esse
ntially armored go-karts with front mounted cannons that shot tennis balls sensors on the tank recorded when it had been hit which would temporarily shut the tank down however in practice the tanks routinely malfunctioned and park employees would have to run into the tank arena to upright them even though they were repeatedly warned not to guests would pelt employees with tennis balls instead it was one of the least popular rides to work on as the 80s went on into the 90s jean mulvihill and grea
t american experimented with other kinds of attractions in 1987 a german company designed one of the world's first simulated wind tunnel rides at action park called the aerodium guests in skydiving suits would ride upwards wind currents generated by a 650 horsepower fan that were up to 100 miles an hour this would lift them several feet off the ground before abruptly being shut off sending guests crashing down to the floor in 1992 inspired by the popularity of the tv show american gladiators act
ion park hired two former new jersey bodybuilders brothers michael and vince mancuso to design an obstacle course attraction the obstacle course tested guests fitness and agility first with a run up a 16-foot ramp against a downward moving conveyor belt and then swinging with a 24-foot rope over a pit then they climbed a cargo net rode down a hundred foot zip line maneuvered through a rotating foam cylinder before jumping into a ball pit if the guests survived that then they would face off again
st an actual gladiator in a joust on a three-foot platform the mancuso brothers scouted local gyms to find muscular new jerseyans to basically fight drunk teenagers with foam joust all day long if a guest could dislodge a gladiator then they fought an even bigger gladiator called the titan on top of a six-foot platform michael mancuso told the schenectady gazette that 250 guests would go through the obstacle course in a day on a nearby hillside friends and family of the combatants would look on
and cheer now on the business side of things action park was actually doing quite well for itself its peak years were the early to mid 1980s when the park attracted 1 million guests a year action park brought an endless stream of radio and television ads and blanketed the airwaves in the surrounding region the action park jingle was burned into the memories of countless new jerseyans and new yorkers for many action park became synonymous with summertime compared with a million annual visitors pa
rk officials argued that the injuries occurring in action park were statistically insignificant action park also loved to point out that as a theme park with a hands-off attitude to safety any injuries sustained inside the park were the guests own fault among the park employees guests were nicknamed gumbys often for how they would bounce off of things because visiting action park was a dangerous proposition injuries were a routine daily occurrence doctors in four surrounding counties reported an
uptick in injury-related hospitalizations caused by the park action park eventually bought the township of vernon ambulances to handle the influx of new hospital patients action park's reputation as a dangerous place was well known the new york times reported in 1983 that employees jokingly referred to it as traction park in terms of numbers it's unknown how many people were maimed at action park between its opening in 1978 and its closing in 1996. the park would be fined for under-reporting in
juries so we will never know for sure but its numbers are in the thousands in 1985 alone there were 110 reported injuries including 45 head injuries and 10 fractures one guest on the aerodm remembers falling to the ground after the air was abruptly caught off and broke his shoulder sustaining permanent nerve damage the alpine ride was one of the biggest dangers it was responsible for most of the injuries the most lawsuits and 40 percent of the park safety violations between 1984 and 1985 guests
sustained 14 broken bones and 26 head injuries on this ride and remember those are just the reported injuries and this park was later fined for under reporting its injury numbers the alpine ride was also where the park's first death happened in 1980 a 19 year old george larson jr rode a sled down the alpine ride during the park's off hours lost control and went off the track and hit his head he went into a coma that lasted for several days and then later died at the time great american recreatio
n did not report larson jr's death to state authorities under the logic that he was a former employee of the park and thus the company wasn't obligated to disclose the information in reality larson had never worked at action park but had only worked at the vernon valley ski area as a lift operator his mother and brother have alleged the company purposely misrepresented his employment status in order to avoid reporting the death two years later action park saw another fatality the 27 year old man
who was electrocuted on the kayak experience stepping on that exposed wire gave the man a heart attack action park claimed the heart attack couldn't have been caused by electrocution since the man's body had no burn marks but the coroner ruled that it was cardiac arrest caused by electrocution then again we returned to the tidal wave pool nicknamed the grave pool a grim nickname because three people did drown in it a 15 year old in 1982 a 20 year old in 1984 and an 18 year old in 1987. and whil
e all this carnage was happening the state of new jersey was largely indifferent so the question remains how did action park get away with all of this in theory the new jersey carnival amusement ride safety advisory board was empowered to regulate action park and other theme parks like it and in practice it rarely did the new jersey herald reported on the park's troubles with the state in 1986. according to the herald the park had been cited for safety violations 53 times in 1984 and 1985 combin
ed and this was despite the fact that state inspectors had to announce their visit beforehand these citations included violations like having worn out brake pads on the motorworld vehicles not installing foam safety padding on certain rides and lap bars that didn't operate properly but in spite of these violations action park was only fined once between 1979 and 1985. other theme parks in the state routinely received fines for their first offenses but action park was exempt from this treatment e
ven though its violations were identical sometimes action park used creative means to skirt the rules the tidal wave pool was classified not as a theme park ride and thereby subject to regulation but as a swimming pool this only required that the water be kept clean and lifeguards be stationed on duty action park didn't see a problem with any of these numbers there's nothing in the world like action park park officials pointed out that the numbers of accidents was small compared to the 1 million
annual visitors they also argued that the park's reputation added the allure of danger which was part of the draw seems like those two arguments cancel each other out but hey that's just me the fact is action park was a huge tax revenue generator for the state as well as a great advertisement for new jersey it was one of the major contributors to the state's tourism industry despite his checkered past on wall street jeanne mulvahill was respected and influential within the new jersey business c
ommunity he was able to use his persuasive skills from his wheeling and dealing to charm a labor investigator who might otherwise penalize his work and he wasn't shy about using his influence either various journalists brought action park's darker side to public attention throughout the 1980s many of them wrote the articles that we had to look through to even create this episode a former reporter from the vernon times jess paladini alleges that mulva hill called her boss and got her fired above
all the park's traction park reputation didn't slow down its popularity not at first because of all these factors action park was allowed to operate virtually punishment-free at least as far as the state was concerned in the courts however it was an entirely different matter if the state of new jersey wouldn't intervene to stop the madness injured guests could still take action park and great american recreation to court and they did often personal injury lawsuits were a routine occurrence for a
ction park in the same report from the new jersey herald it was reported that the park had been the target of more than 100 personal injury lawsuits from 1983 to 1986. many of these lawsuits allege the same problems that state investigators had uncovered in their inspections like faulty equipment and employee negligence at first gene mulvehill defended himself from these lawsuits with the classic rich guy strategy of tying up the plaintiffs in endless litigation while lawyer fees bled them dry b
ut even though he tried everything to avoid it mulva hill did end up having to pay out at least four six figure settlements as of 1986. the endless lawsuits basically made action park uninsurable but that's when mulva hill's pump and dump instincts kicked right on in since no insurance companies would insure him he created his own insurance company mulva hill registered london and world assurance inc in the cayman islands it was a completely fake insurance company that allowed him to meet legal
requirements but not actually have to pay out damages it also allowed him to launder money but by 1994 the law caught up with gene mulvahill like it had 20 years prior he was served with a 110 count indictment related to the insurance scheme which included charges of fraud theft and embezzlement he pled guilty to many of the charges and was forced to give up control of his beloved theme park after mulvahill's departure the personal injury settlements were adding up and the state finally did begi
n citing the park for safety violations and as everything was adding up attendance was finally dropping and in 1996 great american recreation went bankrupt with a reported 48 million dollars in debt but action park actually managed to remain open for one more summer it operated in 1997 without liability insurance and then finally closed action park has done it again [Music] but the action park brand wasn't quite dead yet in 1998 the canadian holding company introwest purchased the park and upgra
ded many of its attractions it also finally shut down the alpine slide and motorworld and improved the safety features on many of the slides the park was renamed to mountain creek water park the newer more responsible park operated until 2010 when declining attendance forced it to close that year gene mulvahill led a group that purchased the park they changed the name back to action park and reopened it in 2014 there's a new zero-g water slide with a 100-foot drop built by a respected ride engin
eer mulvil's company owned the park until 2015 and in 2016 the new ownership changed its name back to mountain creek water park in 2018 joe hessian a former park employee who had worked there as a teenager bought a controlling interest in the park the mountain creek water park continues to operate to this day as a kinder and gentler version of its ancestor gene mulvihill didn't live to see his park return from the grave he passed away on october 12 2012 at age 78. at the time of his death new je
rsey governor chris christie said jane mulvihill's contributions to the economic development of sussex county are unquestionable his unique vision and entrepreneurial spirit will be greatly missed gene mulvihill's son andy grew up at the park and worked as a lifeguard and a ride tester recently he's written a tell-all book about the behind-the-scenes operations of the park but he also continues to fight for his father's reputation as a recreation pioneer which to be fair he really was many guest
s have fond memories of summers at the park in 2014 in response to the news that the park was reopening new jersey senator cory booker tweeted i still have scars from long ago visits but i so want to go back as dangerous as action park was it was still insanely popular and wouldn't have survived without millions of new jerseyans coming back again and again these are the most amazing rides in the world they knew full well what they were getting themselves into but it was all part of the thrill an
d with that being said that's where i'm going to end the first episode of prism of the past if you enjoyed this episode make sure you're liking following and subscribing so you stay up to date on every single new episode and if you want to let me know how this first episode was make sure to check out my link tree link it's in all the little description boxes wherever you're listening to this so that you can let me know on twitter instagram my discord server whatever fits your fancy so thank you
so much for making it to another episode love you guys and i'll see you in the next one bye
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