Having cut the cord from the cable companies years ago (And saving roughly one grand per year in the process), we generally sign up for HBO for a month or two each year to either binge watch some show that we like or to catch a big movie sooner than later. On our last sign up a few months ago I came across a gem of a documentary called “Class Action Park” (CAP), the story of an amusement park in northern New Jersey back in the 80s. I found this movie particularly interesting, as I’m one of what can only be a handful of guys who have the unique perspective of having both financed the park as well as enjoyed it as a customer. If that sounds like a strange claim, I promise you that this will all make sense soon enough…
Let’s start with the financing part. My first job out of school was in a Boiler Room operation. I worked 80 hours per week pushing high risk / potentially high reward stocks. Think of The Wolf of Wall Street (minus the hooker & coke), or the dead on accurate speech Ben Affleck gave in Boiler Room, an otherwise forgettable movie. One of the stocks we pushed was for a company called Great American Recreation (GRAR – its NASDAQ ticker symbol). This was the holding company for a number of golf courses, ski slopes, and an outdoor amusement park in the Vernon Valley / Great Gorge area known as Action Park. The owner, Gene Mulvahill was mostly backed by a shady financier by the name of Bob Brennan. Both names, especially Gene’s, would come up in CAP.
Just before the stock’s initial public offering (IPO), we had what’s called a Due Diligence Call. My take on the ones we had was that they were basically our version of a pep rally for stock brokers. The meeting for my office in the DC area was personally attended by Brennan, and had Mulvahill on the call up in New York. At the end of the call, I remember Brennan advising his swarms of brokers to think less like eagles and more like geese, basically to think more like a team than as individuals. The money quote that I remember at the end was informing us that no eagle ever laid a golden egg. At that moment part of me wanted to raise my hand and ask if he knew that the goose that laid the golden eggs wasn’t real, but thought better of it.
Now onto Action Park itself – I say without hesitation, that it was my favorite amusement park ever. My buddies & I would drive up there to get to the park the moment it opened so we could jam in a few rides on the best rides, spend the day getting battered on the various water rides before heading home in the evening bruised, scratched and sore from the day but having had a ton of fun. The park’s water rides, especially the raft and inner tubes kept us running from ride to ride all day long. Apparently some rides were were far less safe than others, and the park had its share of serious injuries, even a few deaths. In fact, there were so many injuries that Gene personally maintained two ambulances for taking park goers to the nearby hospital. If this sounds completely insane, well, it kind of is. What I loved about Action Park was that unlike the more popular Great Adventure down the Jersey Turnpike, is that instead of passively riding on roller coasters or other rides, the water park had you personally at the center and controlling all of the action.
The movie captures what I just wrote about the park, and goes into so much more depth behind the scenes, the park’s history, the larger than life Gene Mulvahill, and of course the park’s demise (along with Brennan’s downfall). After watching the film I reached out to a few buddies with who I’d frequented the park and was amazed that we’d only scratched the surface of the jackassery that went on there (such as drunk driving their grand prix race cars). What impressed me the most about the movie was that it would have been easy to portray Gene as a misunderstood genius or heartless b*stard for how he treated the families of those who died in his park, but it did a great job of showing both sides of Gene and neither judging nor excusing him.
A park like Action Park is completely inconceivable today. I’m absolutely not excusing Gene’s neglect nor his disregard for the families, but with a few modifications the park could have been made to work without killing anyone via neglect. But what I truly miss is a park where Americans who are willing to take a few lumps are free to do so. Just as I wrote about The Cannonball Run a few months ago, the main reason Action park could not exist today is that I just don’t see enough young people who could roll with a rough and tumble kind of amusement park these days. Hopefully I’m wrong and that spirit hasn’t been bred and indoctrinated out of the American people. I’ve got a feeling that the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way, but it won’t happen without The Radical Left fighting to drag our country even further into their misery. Here’s hoping that in the end they’ll be proven wrong.
Brother Bob is no longer on Facebook (although you can see his archives there), and is winding down his presence on Twitter, but is ramping up on Minds and Gab, as well as Parler, and has his biggest presence on MeWe.
Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
See authors page
Of course any public venue should be safe enough not to kill or seriously injure anyone, but we now live in a society that is both litigious and adverse to taking responsibility for their own actions. Many seek the thrills of risk; hell, isn’t that the very appeal of a roller coaster, the instinctive feeling you are about to be thrown off the tracks and killed? The problem comes about when someone gets a bump or bruise due to the decisions THEY made. Then they sue the venue because their own bad decisions (or lack of skill) is someone else’s fault. Then, out of an abundance of caution, the rest of us have to suffice with the dumbed-down version forever after.
An example is a riding lawn mower I bought a few years back. Nowadays, they have circuits on them so that you cannot back up with the blade engaged. This is because some idiot backed over a child somewhere. Yep, that guy’s stupidity is now translated into a massive inconvenience for us all (the Husqvarna I bought evidently doesn’t have its heart in it; there is a switch position which allows reverse with blade engaged).
Yeah, the bruises and scrapes you always had after a day at AP was a mark of pride!
Ah. Bob Brennen. Now there is an acid flashback if ever I’ve had one, especially as relating to the horse racing industry which I’ve been in my entire life.
I had the opportunity more than once to go to Action Park. my kids loved it and quite honestly I never was much for the bigger parks.
Ah, you must be referring to International Thoroughbred, one of the FN Wolf stocks I rea dabout when I first started but never sold.
AP was one of the few amusement parks I truly loved – glad your kids liked it