newswire: 9/15/2020
- In a new essay, college student Lexi Lane reflects on how the HBO Max documentary Class Action Park gave her insight into her sheltered upbringing. Raised by an overprotective Gen-X mom, Lane didn’t realize how wildly different her mom’s own childhood was and how that shaped her parenting. (NBC News)
- NH: This is my first time hearing of Action Park, a water park in New Jersey that was better known as “Accident Park” or “Traction Park.” It was notorious among Gen Xers growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s and ‘90s, who considered “getting seriously injured at Action Park” a rite of passage. Between its opening in 1978 and closure in 1996, six people died there. Two of those deaths occurred in the same week in 1982.
- For a Millennial, the world described in the documentary must feel like it’s being beamed in from the Twilight Zone. Alcohol flowed freely among the patrons and staff, who were mostly teens themselves. Visitors rode down the Alpine Slide in sleds that often had faulty brakes or no brakes or all. The Tidal Wave Pool (dubbed “the Grave Pool”) was filled with freshwater and created giant waves that engulfed people who couldn’t swim. The Cannonball Loop, a water slide that consisted of an enclosed vertical loop, reportedly decapitated the dummy doll that was sent through it in a test run. But it opened anyway. Action Park ended up buying the town of Vernon new ambulances to handle the volume of trips to the hospital.
- The most telling part of the story is that when the park finally closed, it wasn’t because of regulatory action or public outrage. It’s because it went bankrupt. The number of lawsuits against the park and the cost of liability insurance got too expensive.
- The writer, a college student, says that learning about Action Park helped her better understand her mom, who raised her and her brother with far less freedom. Like many Xers, her mom defined herself as a teen by taking risks and pushing the limits--only to decide later that her own kids were having none of it. It’s a wry and enjoyable take on what happens from generation to generation: We raise our kids in opposition to how we were raised ourselves. That’s why each generation tends to end up more similar to its grandparents (or its great-grandparents) than to its parents.
- Action Park has since been replaced by Mountain Creek Waterpark, a much tamer destination. Alcohol is banned, trained lifeguards oversee every ride, and patrons aren’t allowed to run, wear skimpy swimwear, or show offensive tattoos. Now this is a place that Millennials and Homelanders recognize.
