Action Park

Looking for a good Waterslide documentary? Checkout Class Action Park: a 2020 documentary film about the American amusement park Action Park, which was located in Vernon Township, New Jersey.

Daily Photo – The Joy of the Waterslide

I like to think the worlds first waterslide was invented on a fine, sunny day by two blokes on a particularly steep hillside. I imagine one, with a red, oil covered baseball cap and a large handlebar mustache whose name is something like, Hank, putting down his beer, turning to his friend Jerry, and saying:
“Hey, here’s an idea. If we make a long steep ramp and shoot water down it really fast like, into that pool of water at the bottom, we might really have something. We could even sit in things and leave our fate up to gravity.”
To which Jerry replies, “Yeah, we could invite our friends and charge people money!”

This random train of thought got me thinking that of course, not every waterslide adventure ends in fun and in my reading, I found some alarming statistics. In March last year, a study in Texas found that the most common water park injuries were slips and falls, traumatic brain injuries, spinal and neck injuries and near-drowning. Across the pond, our friends in the United Kingdom found in a similar study that more than half of injuries affected the face and head, 29% happened on landing, and 24% were caused by slipping. And here in New Zealand, in the year from 2021, we spent roughly $3 million treating injuries. Clearly, water slides are fun, though not entirely without risk – and not immune from acts of stupidity, like The Banzai Pipeline Stunt in California.

In June 1997, a group of graduating High School seniors were at Waterworld USA, location of the popular Banzai Pipeline water slide. On this occasion, ignoring both the lifeguard and park official warnings, the seniors attempted to pile over sixty people onto the one-person ride. The colossal, unexpected weight caused the elevated fiberglass to snap with a groaning collapse. The pipeline sheared apart, plunging the screaming, interlocked students three stories down onto the hard concrete deck below with over thirty severely injured.

Now, I have absolutely no idea who invented the world’s first waterslide, when it happened, or why, but my guess is they were American – and either extremely confident in their mathematical calculations or had been drinking a whole lot.