Class Action Park Review: The HBO Max Documentary on Action Park

Class Action Park review: what the documentary covers

Class Action Park is a documentary directed by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III, narrated by John Hodgman, and released on HBO Max on August 27, 2020. Before that it had a virtual premiere at the 2020 Florida Film Festival on August 20, 2020, and it later aired on TNT on December 27, 2021. The film runs about 90 minutes and was made with Warner Max, Pinball Party Productions and Strategery Films. Its subject is Action Park in Vernon Township, New Jersey.

The review in Rough Cut Review opens from the point of view of someone who grew up in New Jersey, with the Atlantic shore, boardwalk games and Long Beach Island as the respectable version of summer. Action Park was the other version. The review calls the documentary a portrait of the theme park everyone wanted as a kid and nobody should have been allowed to have, a Willy Wonka factory with a catch, and it compares the park's no-rules logic to a Westworld where the guests were teenagers and the staff were not much older.

The story the film tells is organized around one man. Eugene Mulvihill, known as Gene, was a penny stockbroker who wanted a park with almost no rules, and he opened Action Park in 1978 with funding from Robert E. Brennan. The documentary follows what that idea produced over the next two decades: rides built on improvisation, workers who were mostly teenagers, injuries treated as part of the price of admission, and deaths that the park allegedly tried to cover up.

The last third of the film is about those deaths. Wikipedia's article on the park lists six people who died there between 1980 and 1987 and describes that list as at least six. The review pays its respects at the start of the piece to three of them by name: George Lopez, Gregory Grandchamps and George Larsson Jr. That is a fair signal of the film's balance. The jokes arrive early and often, but the film does not let the viewer forget why the joking has limits.

What Action Park was

The park opened in 1978 on the grounds of the Vernon Valley and Great Gorge ski resort and grew through the 1980s into a sprawling complex with a water park, a motor-sport area and an alpine ride. Its owner, Great American Recreation, was founded by Mulvihill. Lawsuits and insurance problems followed. Mulvihill later pleaded guilty to five insurance-fraud-related charges after a 110-count grand jury indictment, and the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in March 1996. The 1996 summer season was the park's last.

After the collapse the site changed hands. Intrawest bought the resort in 1998 and reopened the water park as Mountain Creek. A revived Action Park ran from 2014 to 2016, and the property is again known as Mountain Creek today. The documentary uses that history as a frame, but its energy is in the original years.

The rides the film remembers

The review sorts the park into zones, the way a visitor would have walked it. In the alpine area, the Alpine Slide was a 2,700-foot concrete track on which riders controlled their own speed with a lever. Larsson died there in 1980 after his sled left the track. The review argues that the park blamed the dead teenager, and calls that response unacceptable.

Motor World had the Super Go Karts, which were governed to about 20 miles per hour, but employees could jam tennis balls into the governors and push them toward 50. It also had miniature Lola cars and the Battle Action Tanks, where guests fired tennis ball cannons at each other's sensors. A hit disabled a tank for 15 seconds. The review passes along the film's stories about teenagers soaking tennis balls in gasoline and the staff sneaking beer from a nearby brewery.

The water attractions are where the film gets its darkest material. The Tidal Wave Pool opened in 1981, held 500 to 1,000 people and produced waves up to about 40 inches, which earned it the nickname the Grave Pool. Two of the park's deaths happened there. Then there is the Cannonball Loop, a closed water slide with a full vertical loop that opened in 1983 and was shut for good by the state after a month of use in 1985. The review treats its story as the film's crowning absurdity: riders broke noses and faces, and a worker could be paid $100 to test it.

The people on screen

The film leans on former staff, journalists and comedians. Wikipedia lists Chris Gethard and Alison Becker among the interviewees, along with former security director Jim DeSaye, former operations manager Ed Youmans, former lifeguard Faith Anderson and Esther Larsson, the mother of George Larsson Jr. Financial journalist Mary Pilon and Vernon newspaper editor Jessi Paladini supply context. Hodgman's narration holds the mixture of comedy and grief together.

Rough Cut Review singles out the narration and the comedians, and says Porges and Scott show how a maniacal and magical idea can turn into a forest fire. Gene Mulvihill's son Andy later wrote a book about the park with Jake Rossen, which is a good follow-up for viewers who want more detail than a 90-minute film can carry.

The Action Park story in detail: rides, injuries and the Class Action Park legacy

A good way to read the documentary is as a tour in which every stop has a hazard and a story. Wikipedia's article on the park supplies the plain facts behind each stop, and they line up closely with what the review recounts from the film. The detail matters because the park's reputation is so extreme that it tends to invite exaggeration, and a careful reader will want to know which parts are documented.

The attractions that drew the most attention are the ones that mixed speed, water and teenage staff. None of them was an exotic machine. A concrete slide, a wave pool, a go-kart track and a pond with speedboats are standard summer-park equipment. What made them notorious was the way they were run, and the film keeps returning to that point: the same ride could be a harmless afternoon or a trip to the emergency room, depending on who was on shift.

The Alpine Slide

The Alpine Slide stretched 2,700 feet down the mountain. According to Wikipedia, the sled's control stick offered only two speeds: extremely slow, and a speed one former employee described as death awaits. Riders who chose the fast one met the bumps, the turns and the concrete. George Larsson Jr., 19, died in 1980 after his sled jumped the track and his head struck a rock, which is the first death the film covers and the one it returns to most often.

The review adds the human angle that the encyclopedic version lacks. It describes the aftermath for riders, the spray applied to scrapes, and the feeling of a chairlift passing overhead while a rider tries not to bleed on the track. It is a vivid picture, and it explains why so many viewers remember the slide before anything else.

The Tidal Wave Pool

The pool opened at the start of the 1981 season. It measured 100 feet wide by 250 feet long and could hold 500 to 1,000 people. Waves ran for 20 minutes at a time with 10-minute breaks and reached up to 40 inches. Twelve lifeguards were on duty at all times, and on busy weekends they might make as many as 30 rescues. George Lopez, 15, died there in 1982, and Gregory Grandchamps, 18, in 1987.

The review observes that wave pools are supposed to imitate the ocean and usually do it badly, and that this one did it too well in the wrong way. Its argument is about numbers: one lifeguard watching a crowd that size cannot protect everyone, and the staff's own accounts, as relayed in the film, treat saving dozens of people in an hour as the job.

Motor World

Motor World gathered the park's vehicles. The Super Go Karts were governed to about 20 miles per hour, but employees could wedge tennis balls into the governors, pushing speeds to around 50. Head-on collisions followed. The engines were poorly maintained, and gasoline fumes sometimes overcame riders. The Lola cars were miniature open-cockpit race cars that employees could speed up in the same way. Former employees said that after a nearby microbrewery was set up, they broke in, took beer, and drove the cars onto Route 94.

The Battle Action Tanks were the strangest ride in the zone. Guests paid extra to climb into a tank for five minutes and fire tennis ball cannons at sensors on other tanks. A hit disabled a tank for 15 seconds. The people most at risk were the workers who went into the cage to free stuck tanks, who were often pelted. The area where Motor World stood was a vacant lot by 2018, with condominiums and a restaurant planned or built on part of the site.

The Cannonball Loop

The Cannonball Loop was an enclosed water slide with a complete vertical loop, built in 1983. It was open for roughly a month in 1985 before the state's Advisory Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety ordered it closed. A worker said there were too many bloody noses and back injuries. Employees were offered $100 to test it, and one of them, Tom Fergus, said the money did not buy enough booze to drown out the memory.

Wikipedia reports that a rumor about test dummies being dismembered was confirmed by Andy Mulvihill to The New York Times in 2019, and that he was the first live person to test the slide afterward, wearing ice hockey protective equipment. Some early riders had cuts from teeth that had been knocked out and lodged in the interior walls. The loop reopened briefly in 1995 and 1996, then was dismantled shortly after the park closed. The review calls it the park's coup de grace for good reason.

After the park: lawsuits, bankruptcy and the site today

Class Action Park closes on the legal and financial story, and the facts are worth setting out in order. Personal injury lawsuits closed rides one by one over the years. Mulvihill pleaded guilty to five insurance-fraud-related charges after a 110-count grand jury indictment. Great American Recreation filed for Chapter 11 in March 1996, the 1996 season was the last, and the company ceased all operations on June 25, 1997. Praedium Recovery Fund bought the resort for $10 million, and Intrawest acquired it in February 1998 and reopened the water park as Mountain Creek Waterpark.

The name came back later. In May 2010, Mulvihill led investors who reclaimed the park and restored its former name, though the planned updated Cannonball Loop was never built. A revived Action Park operated from June 14, 2014 to May 29, 2016. By 2018, Joe Hession, a Vernon native and former employee, had acquired the property, which was again called Mountain Creek. A different kind of afterlife is the 2018 comedy Action Point, which Wikipedia says was inspired by the park's reputation.

For readers who finish the documentary wanting more, the main companion is the 2020 book by Andy Mulvihill and Jake Rossen, Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park. It tells the story from inside the Mulvihill family, which the documentary only touches.

Action Park attractions at a glance

Figures are taken from the Wikipedia article on Action Park, which is linked in the sources below.

Verdict: is Class Action Park worth watching?

Yes, and the review does not hedge about it. As a documentary, Class Action Park is paced like a comedy special that slowly turns serious. The early stretches are a string of stories that sound like urban legends, told by people who were there. The last third reorders them as a body count. A film that handled that turn badly would feel exploitative, and this one mostly does not.

The review's own conclusion is split in a way that helps the reader. It says the park is a place that should never have existed, and in the same breath says it is glad the documentary exists, because the park was at the vanguard of the 1980s and 1990s and no account from actors, creators, workers, designers or fans captures it quite like the film does. It praises the directors, the narrator and the pacing, and it treats the Mulvihill business story as the real engine of the film: a man with overseas investments to funnel money, a young workforce and nothing to lose.

Who is Class Action Park for? Anyone who grew up near a park with a legend attached, anyone curious about how a place like this stayed open for so long, and anyone who likes documentaries that earn both their laughs and their anger. Viewers who are bothered by accounts of injuries to children and teenagers should know the film spends real time on them.

One more point on tone. The review is blunt about the park's owner and gives him no softening. A reader who wants a purely comic nostalgia trip will find that the film keeps pulling toward the human cost, and that is where it is strongest.

Sources

• Class Action Park, Wikipedia — Release dates, directors, narrator, interviewees and reception.
• Action Park, Wikipedia — Park history, attractions, fatalities and the site's later life.