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Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr8 of 9
TIDAL WAVE POOL - ACTION PARK
Are you starting to get the idea that Action Park was a bit… sketchy? Because if not, you might want to consider the statistics on their uniquely large and powerful wave pool, which inevitably became known to fans as the “Grave Pool.”
Featuring 40-inch-tall waves for twenty minutes at a time at a park where half the people were drunk and the other half didn’t know how to swim (in the words of park officials, the low-cost attraction tended to bring people in from urban areas who had little other chances to swim), the Tidal Wave Pool killed two people and hospitalized hundreds more.
Twelve lifeguards were on duty at all times, and former employees claimed as many as thirty rescues each day—compare that to the average lifeguard workload of maybe one or two people for an entire summer and you might better understand just how nuts this innocuous-seeming wave pool really was.
Surprisingly, the wave pool was one of the few features to survive Action Park’s lawsuit-aided demise—it exists in much tamer and shallower form as the High Tide Wave Pool at Mountain Creek Waterpark, which stands on the old Action Park site and reuses much of its infrastructure, albeit with much more comprehensive state-mandated safety rules.
RULE No20
Be clever with your pick-up lines. No more mirrors in pants or tired legs, fellas.
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Who writes this stuff? "crude sleds or carts featuring cruder brakes and (if you’re lucky) seatbelts." Hello? What good do seatbelts do on a "vehicle" that masses less than you do? Just guarentee that your sled comes flying with you (adding to you mass), rather than go flying off course by yourself!
January 23 2013 at 3:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe phrasing of the Traver's Triplets suggests that Cyclone was resopnsible for both deaths. In fact, one was a woman on the Lighting (uncertain if she jumped or fell), and the one attributed to the Cyclone was a man who decided to stand up and take his coat off (showing stupid customers are not a modern convention, though "idiot stopper" restraints are). Hardly attributable to the design or construction of the ride.