Qualla: Action Park https://qualla.com/action-park en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/4/action-park-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Action Park https://qualla.com/action-park Action Park: Introduction https://qualla.com/action-park/ Photo credit Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA, CC BY 2.0. The opening day promotions tell you everything. On July 4, 1978, a new amusement park in Vernon Township, New Jersey, celebrated its grand opening with a Dolly Parton look-alike contest and a tobacco juice-spitting competition. Action Park had arrived, and for the next eighteen years, it would become the most notoriously dangerous amusement park in American history -- a place where healthcare workers nicknamed it 'Traction Park,' where at least six people died on its rides, and where a popular New Jersey joke list begins with: 'You've been seriously injured at Action Park.'

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Image: Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/4/action-park-wp/dr74-action-park-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Action Park: A Ski Resort's Summer Fever Dream https://qualla.com/action-park/ Photo credit Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA, CC BY 2.0. Eugene Mulvihill had a problem common to ski resort owners: summers brought no revenue. His company, Great American Recreation, owned the Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski area in the mountains of Sussex County, and in 1976, Mulvihill installed an alpine slide down one of the steep s...

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Image: Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/4/action-park-wp/dr74-action-park-a-ski-resorts-summer-fever-dream.mp3 0:06 2 full Action Park: Rides Built Without a Blueprint https://qualla.com/action-park/ Photo credit Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA, CC BY 2.0. Action Park's designers seemed to build rides first and ask questions about physics later. The Cannonball Loop was a water slide with a complete vertical loop -- like a roller coaster, but with your bare skin against fiberglass and water. Employees were offered $100 to test it; o...

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Image: Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/4/action-park-wp/dr74-action-park-rides-built-without-a-blueprint.mp3 0:06 3 full Action Park: The Grave Pool and the Toll https://qualla.com/action-park/ Photo credit Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA, CC BY 2.0. The deaths accumulated across the park's history like dark footnotes. The Tidal Wave Pool, which opened in 1981, claimed three lives by drowning -- a fifteen-year-old boy in 1982, a twenty-year-old in 1984, and an eighteen-year-old in 1987. But the pool's true infamy lay in the n...

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Image: Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/4/action-park-wp/dr74-action-park-the-grave-pool-and-the-toll.mp3 0:06 4 full Action Park: The Slow Unraveling https://qualla.com/action-park/ Photo credit Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA, CC BY 2.0. By the 1990s, costly lawsuit settlements and rising insurance premiums were picking off rides one by one. A recession thinned the crowds. The park still advertised itself as the world's largest water park, but behind the scenes, creditors were circling. First Fidelity Bank sued o...

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Image: Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/4/action-park-wp/dr74-action-park-the-slow-unraveling.mp3 0:06 5 full Action Park: Traction Park's Afterlife https://qualla.com/action-park/ Photo credit Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA, CC BY 2.0. Canadian resort developer Intrawest purchased the property in 1998 for $10 million, gutted the most dangerous attractions, and reopened the water section as Mountain Creek Waterpark. The Alpine Center's bungee tower was demolished. Motorworld became condominiums and parking lots....

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Image: Joe Shlabotnik from Forest Hills, Queens, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/r/7/4/action-park-wp/dr74-action-park-traction-parks-afterlife.mp3 0:06 6 full