From drownings to deadly rides - inside America’s most dangerous theme park

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These aren’t Disneyland style ‘most magical place on earth’ memories. These are packaged more in a ‘if you don’t have a scar, were you even there?’ kind of vibe.

Tracey McLaughlin is talking about the time she took a summer job, along with hundreds of other New Jersey teens, at one of the biggest theme parks in America during the eighties.Like many who worked and went to, Tracey has fond recollections of the resort and still shares them today across the many social media platforms dedicated to the now defunct theme park.

Here in the UK, 11-year-old Evha Jannath died after she fell from the Splash Canyon ride rapids ride at Drayton Manor theme park. In 2015, Alton Towers suffered its biggest accident to date when a carriage carrying 16 people on the Smiler rollercoaster smashed into an empty stationary car causing four passengers to suffer serious leg injuries. Resort owners were fined £5million and faced civil court cases from the victims.

‘As I got older, my memories of what I saw there – insane rides, bodies flying in off of said rides, and a general atmosphere of debaucherous chaos – didn’t square with my concept of how society was supposed to work. Like, there’s no way that actually happened.supports HTML5 video But within the badge of honour banter that echoes through those who ‘survived’ Action Park, there are also the horrifying stories of those who didn’t make it home after a trip there.

Andy himself admits that the lifeguards pulled ‘thousands and thousands of people who had no business in the water.’ From 1984-86 Evan Schuman was a reporter for the New Jersey Herald tasked with writing investigative pieces about Action Park. Around the same time, Gene Mulvihill was charged with criminal conspiracy, fraud, theft, embezzlement, forgery and tax evasion in connection with an alleged conspiracy to create a fictitious insurance company. He pleaded guilty to having intentionally created a paper insurance company to save money and was fined $300,000 dollars – however it was rumoured that the real reason he had tried to set up his own insurance firm was because he was having trouble finding anyone to insure the park.

‘I reported it to the New Jersey Labor department, who did a ‘sneak inspection’ but they didn’t find anyone underage staffing the rides. I knew they wouldn’t as one of the young girls I’d spoken to told me that she’d received a call that same day to say that anyone underage who usually operated rides had been told either not to come in, or if they did they could just spend the day on the rides. The park had been tipped off by someone, but I never knew who.

 

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