Action Park is open again? | The Boneyard

Action Park is open again?

nelsonmuntz

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It must suck now, because I don't see how that place would be fun with safe rides and sober employees.

Anyone ever go?
 

SubbaBub

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As a kid they let my 11 yr old brother drive one of the tennis ball tanks. He crashed it into the edge of the platform and wrecked it, but good.

Then there was the 30 ft cliff jump, the don't clog up the subterranean tube water slide, the make sure you avoid the sharp rocks Tarzan swing, the tree canopy rope net, and of course, the wave pool where every 30 minutes they would turn it off to collect the bodies. Good times, you snowflakes wouldn't last an hour.
 

nelsonmuntz

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As a kid they let my 11 yr old brother drive one of the tennis ball tanks. He crashed it into the edge of the platform and wrecked it, but good.

Then there was the 30 ft cliff jump, the don't clog up the subterranean tube water slide, the make sure you avoid the sharp rocks Tarzan swing, the tree canopy rope net, and of course, the wave pool where every 30 minutes they would turn it off to collect the bodies. Good times, you snowflakes wouldn't last an hour.

There was a tube rapids that became a high speed, downhill, bumper boats where I got chucked from my tube before the bottom more often than I didn't, with my tube occasionally taking off without me. I know I wasn't the only one this happened to because there were plenty of unmanned tubes throughout the ride. If I remember correctly, this ride emptied pretty close to the bottom of the cliff dive, because of course it did.
 
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I went at least twice per summer. It was a fantastic place. Picture a water park that was designed by kids and stoners and then built by adults without any responsible editing. If you go to a Disney/Six Flags type park and say "wouldn't that be fun if I could just...," you could do the "just..." at Traction Park. Bus rides home were for comparing wounds. Alpine Slide rashes usually won, and lasted all summer.

I remember getting my nerve up to dive head first off the higher cliff jump. I didn't look down until I had jumped. I missed hitting another kid by 2 feet that decided to swim across the landing area. Would've been real bad for both of us. My friend wanted to do the cannonball loop every year. It just teased us most of the time since it was only open once when we were there. That one time it was quickly closed when we saw a guy emerge with a broken nose. I was too wimpy to try it, but my friend used to call to see when it would be opened for good.

There are a lot of good reports of the heyday out there. here is one Action Park: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Dangerous Theme Park
 

nelsonmuntz

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I went at least twice per summer. It was a fantastic place. Picture a water park that was designed by kids and stoners and then built by adults without any responsible editing. If you go to a Disney/Six Flags type park and say "wouldn't that be fun if I could just...," you could do the "just..." at Traction Park. Bus rides home were for comparing wounds. Alpine Slide rashes usually won, and lasted all summer.

I remember getting my nerve up to dive head first off the higher cliff jump. I didn't look down until I had jumped. I missed hitting another kid by 2 feet that decided to swim across the landing area. Would've been real bad for both of us. My friend wanted to do the cannonball loop every year. It just teased us most of the time since it was only open once when we were there. That one time it was quickly closed when we saw a guy emerge with a broken nose. I was too wimpy to try it, but my friend used to call to see when it would be opened for good.

There are a lot of good reports of the heyday out there. here is one Action Park: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Dangerous Theme Park

The staff was right out of Dazed and Confused.
 

Fishy

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They had a water slide that made a loop at the very end - neither my brother or I weighed enough to stick to the outside of the circle. I think I landed on my face and bit through my lower lip and my brother came out with an egg on his forehead.

They also had an alpine slide where you could attain lethal speeds - it was the single most dangerous thing I'd done up to that point in my life. (Then we went to Germany where they had one down the side of a mountain without even a second of thought given to safety.)

You could race mini-speed boats, mini-indy cars - they did not care if you knew how to use them or if you wanted to use them as weapons. They had a ride where you rode a sled into a pool and inevitably they would send you off too soon after the last person and they send the next person too soon after you, so chances are that your sled would clobber the first person and then the third person would clobber you - that was a death pit.

It was kinda great.
 

nelsonmuntz

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The mini Indy car track was not open a single time I went. In something that is absolutely shocking in hindsight, they actually would close the track for even the slightest rain. Can you imagine how dangerous that track had to be when wet for Action Park to close it?
 

Fishy

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The mini Indy car track was not open a single time I went. In something that is absolutely shocking in hindsight, they actually would close the track for even the slightest rain. Can you imagine how dangerous that track had to be when wet for Action Park to close it?

Half the cars had their governers screwed with, so you'd have two cars going hells bells, two cars almost going hells bells and then four cars that still were governed to like 20 mph. Accidents were pre-ordained and then compounded by the fact that 90% of the drivers were 12 year old boys. The LOLA cars were even wilder - the ungoverned ones couldn't get around the track without using everyone else as a guard rail.

Rain might have made the whole thing safer - I don't think those cars could start moving forward on anything but the driest of pavement. That seems like more of a reason why they would close it than the foreign concept of safety.
 

8893

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Great memories. The employees weren't the only ones who were rarely sober.

I'm getting a pit in my stomach now just thinking about that alpine slide.
 

SubbaBub

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They had a water slide that made a loop at the very end - neither my brother or I weighed enough to stick to the outside of the circle. I think I landed on my face and bit through my lower lip and my brother came out with an egg on his forehead.

They also had an alpine slide where you could attain lethal speeds - it was the single most dangerous thing I'd done up to that point in my life. (Then we went to Germany where they had one down the side of a mountain without even a second of thought given to safety.)

You could race mini-speed boats, mini-indy cars - they did not care if you knew how to use them or if you wanted to use them as weapons. They had a ride where you rode a sled into a pool and inevitably they would send you off too soon after the last person and they send the next person too soon after you, so chances are that your sled would clobber the first person and then the third person would clobber you - that was a death pit.

It was kinda great.

I forgot about that one. They handed you a 20 lb sled and you went down a chute of those industrial rollers they use in assembly lines and skipped across a pool of water that was 18" deep.
 

August_West

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It must suck now, because I don't see how that place would be fun with safe rides and sober employees.

Anyone ever go?

Oh man yes!!!

Give me time I've got stories. And permanent scars. seriously. One on my arm and one on my leg from the cement luge thing.

The place was insane and so fun.
 

8893

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I'll bet I could still unearth some of the beers we stashed in the park.
 
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Went innumerous times as a kid and once or twice when in college. The first time down the underground tube with a hard right turn then threw you out 10' above the freezing cold water might be the best 10 seconds of a ride I've ever been on. Annual highlights were group roller sleds (mentioned above) races and standing at the bottom of the 'suicide' slide watching scenic wedgies.

On the last trip there we bungee jumped. It was about 8 stories with a crash pit below. My girlfriend went right before me, she jumped & landed successfully but the guy on the ground radio-d up about how her harness was on incorrectly and screamed DON'T EVER send anyone down like that again. Then I walked to the end of the plank, guy said 3-2-1 fall and I stepped off the plank...
 

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