Class Action Park Review
After watching the fascinating yet cringe-inducing new HBO Max documentary “Class Action Park” I thought for sure the marketing heads were lobbied by water parks across the US to hold releasing the film until after the sunny season so as to not affect attendance. The film hit the tiny screen a week before Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer. Is there something in the timing? Then I remembered everything is shutdown in this country so there goes that idea. But it speaks to the power of the injuries, risks, negligence and complete buffoonery present in the flick. No water park in the world would want you to see this before you made your weekend plans.
The title is a nod to the eventual legal issues of the chaotic facility known as Action Park, a former NJ ski resort converted bonkers crazy regulations-be damned nightmare created by Eugene Mulvihill, known as “Uncle Gene” to employees (your first clue something is off at this place).
Other signs this wouldn’t be a place to send your kids, no matter how bad you want some alone time:
Two parts of the park, water world and motor world, are divided by a freeway.
Some rides were created by people with zero engineering backgrounds, and tested by the teen employees, who were paid to give the new rides a try.
There’s no way of knowing how many injuries occurred because of state requirements that they only report “serious injuries,” making it up to the Action Park owner to decide what met that threshold.
People died at the park as early as 1982, yet the park had lucrative years in the ‘80s and still remained open until 1996.
Image: “Class Action Park” on HBO Max
While there are many experiences that make you wonder, it’s the Cannonball loop, a fully enclosed tube water slide that propels riders into a full circle before spitting them out high above the water, that got my claustrophobic attention. Not only was it a dark trip, but in order to have enough energy to get you through the loop, the beginning of the slide had to be steep. You also had to be the right size (not too big, not too small) to make it through the upside down experience or else you would be stuck. In the dark tube. Not knowing if these knucklehead employees would just send another person right after you, causing a backlog of swimmers in the pitch black, made my stomach turn. A tiny door at the top of the loop allowed people to be extracted if need be, though they didn’t say how long of a darkened wait that was. Oh, and there’s some gnarly teeth scenarios in that cannonball ride that I’ll just let you watch for yourself.
Image: “Class Action Park” on HBO Max
As kids of the ‘80s, we liked that our parents didn’t look for us every minute. We could run off with our friends (whomever had access to a car) and test out new adventures at the water park or in my case a lake. Sure the water was murky and mysterious, but we were free to take a dip if we wanted, or sit on the uneven grass, sipping on a Cragmont pop (I’m a latebloomer) while playing tunes from a boombox.
Whatever the outing of choice for your teen years, it was a different, unregulated time and “Class Action Park” brings you right back to that era. You’ll feel the nostalgia and then the realism as you see what was really lurking in the carefree world of ‘80s theme parks: financial greed at the risk of injury or worse.