Action Park is a memoir written by Andy Mulvihill, whose father, Gene, founded the titular amusement park in 1978. Located in New Jersey, Action Park was known for its innovative rides with lax safety standards, and was popularly known by nicknames such as “Traction Park” and “Class Action Park”. This book tells the horrifying, fascinating story of the park from its founding to its eventual closure in 1996 following six deaths and countless personal injury lawsuits. Andy, who spent his youth helping his father test rides and later worked his way up to supervising a crew of disinterested and poorly trained teenage park employees, details everything that went wrong at the park, including irresponsibly designed rides, underage staff drinking parties, and insurance fraud.
On the whole, I enjoyed this book. Action Park’s blatant disregard for guest safety is almost unbelievable, and it’s incredible to think they could have gotten away with so much for so long. However, readers may find it hard to sympathize with the author: he makes a lot of excuses for his father’s behavior, and talks about the park’s unsafe conditions in a lighthearted way that can seem disrespectful to the guests who were injured or killed. Regardless, if you want a look behind the scenes of a safety nightmare, Action Park is riveting.