Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/21/trailer-for-hbos-class-act.html
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Any HBO documentary about Traction Park? I’m there!
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Defunctland did a fairly comprehensive history of the park over on YouTube, highly recommended for anyone who has the stomach for it.
I winced a significant number of times.
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I started to watch the trailer at the bottom of the story and I… just… can’t. I am an unfortunate person who simply can’t find amusement in folks painfully hurting themselves for laughs. A little slapstick is fine, but some of that stuff was just way too much for me.
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I never went myself, I was a bit too young, but my dad used to bring my sisters there. That is, until he got a little older and started taking longer to recover from the aftereffects of each trip, and also internalizing just how dangerous some of the rides were. Crazy stories just from them!
@cepheus42 Same here. The new documentary looks interesting. The slapstick movie, not so much.
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There’ve been a couple of Slate articles about Traction Park, most recently this one:
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Some colleagues and I stayed at a ski resort during a late spring business trip. After check in we took our complimentary tickets and did their alpine slide. Out of about 10 of us, three ended the slide with cuts and bruises. One of them showed up to dinner that night with just about his entire forearm wrapped in bandages.
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Nobody’s going to watch this because they’re not going to recognize it from the title. “Traction Park” is the preferred nomenclature, please.
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Pulp! It’s a print format! It’s a kind of bad bruise in the making! Hardly ever happens on a planetary scale for long at all! We’re hoping you brought some safer planets…
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I visited Action Park several times during the summer between the ages of 10 and 15 and have just a really warm, fuzzy feeling when remembering those times. I guess all of the really dangerous rides had been closed or cost extra, but we always came out of the place unscathed. My friend’s dad, a Vietnam vet, must have considered those rides child’s play as he was dropping us off and picking us up.
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I highly recommend the book released just a couple months ago, Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill, son of the park’s founder. It’s just amazing and I had a blast reading it.
Please don’t buy it from Amazon, pick up a copy from your local bookstore (many of them can mail it to you, or at least offer curbside pickup so you don’t have to risk COVID).
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Even as a reckless teenager, I took one look at that looping slide and went…hmm no.
But Ill stay and watch!
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I remember a run down waterslide in rural Colombia that gave everyone fiberglass slivers with each ride. But it was so much fun that I went several times. I used to love waterslides as a kid, but as an adult I have gotten scraped up on all three I have tried.
If you’re into danger, and I know you are, then this is the motherload
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Growing up in New Jersey, I used to see commercials for Action Park on TV all the time, but I never did go there. Even as a small child, I remember watching those commercials and thinking, “that actually looks more dangerous than fun.”
And I will forever be disappointed that this documentary didn’t use the classic nickname of Traction Park.
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Probably the closest thing we had to an Action Park scenario in my neck of the woods were the flooded, abandoned quarries in the area. Some of these were basically open to the public, and people would routinely do their own cliff-diving. All of them have been closed off now, and one of them belongs to a scuba club.
I have been to lots of “Alpine Slides” or “Sommerrodelbahnen” as they are called in the actual alps, and have never regarded them as particularly dangerous. At least not more so than alpine skiing. So while some of these rides do look questionable, I also think there’s a bit of sensationalism in the way people talk about this park.
Maybe so, but the video of that guy tumbling out of the course fits well with my recollection of the alpine slide at Action Park. Before visiting this one, I had just visited a couple of others elsewhere. Before the descent, I thought to myself, “I got this.” Afterward, I found the slide be steeper and faster the others, and distinctively lacking in “freeboard” and braking distance.
Probably some, yes. These stories always get better with time. However the injury and death statistics for Action Park are alarming and well outside the bounds of what most people would consider acceptable. This isn’t just heresy- we have the numbers.
I have to say that HBO trailer was excellent. The Vaporwave styling and the punchlines hit me just right. “Nobody should ever be the second person to die in a wave pool! Close the fucking wave pool!” 
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