
‘People Were Bleeding All Over’: America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park - fortran77
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/nyregion/action-park-movie.html
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listenallyall
Action Park's most notorious rides mostly had design flaws that made it quite
easy to hurt oneself. The Cannonball and Tarzan Swing dumped riders into ice
cold water from about 15 feet, temporarily paralyzing many of them. Alpine
Slide had no speed regulator to prevent a rider from taking a curve in excess
of the max speed, causing a ton of cart flips and literal slides down the
concrete, tearing off wide patches of skin. Surf Hill's runoff area was too
short to prevent riders from slamming head first into the minimally-cushioned
wall (like gymnastics pads).

Although the rides were dangerous, the most lethal attraction was actually the
simple wave pool. The problem was the huge size of the pool and large crowds,
making it difficult for lifeguards to see everyone. Then the waves made it
harder for lifeguards to see who was underwater from a wave vs from exhaustion
or lack of skill. And plenty of the guests had literally never been in a pool
before and lacked any swimming ability.

With all that said, Action Park was fun as hell.

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graupel
This place was so much fun and so crazy as a kid; I can remember some kind of
ride where you were in a tank and could shoot tennis balls at other tanks at
close range which 'paralyzed' your tank if you got hit and then everyone would
shoot at you at once, etc. Would never fly in today's world.

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RaceWon
We (my best friend and I) lived at that lola track for a couple of summers, I
still remember my best lap and my best 10 lap average. I also remember nearly
flying off that insane alpine ride the one time we tried some other rides.

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ErikAugust
Removing the paywall:
[https://beta.trimread.com/articles/252](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/252)

