It was officially called Action Park, but those who went there – and experienced the bone-breaking, skin-ripping rides firsthand – wouldn’t exactly call a park. Action Park was the brainchild of Eugene Mulvihill, a New Jersey developer who was looking for a way to keep his Vernon Valley ski resort popular in the off-season. The slides opened on Labor Day of 1976, and more attractions followed in 1978.

The horror of the Alpine Slide

This was basically a 2,700-foot-long concrete and fiberglass track down a mountainside so steep you needed a ski lift to get to the top. The daring would hop on a little cart with tiny wheels and some skids, then go barreling down the mountainside with only a little joystick-style control to combat friction and gravity. Action Park's first death came on the Alpine Slide in 1980, when an employee's cart jumped the track. A report says between 1984 and 1985, there were 26 head injuries and 14 broken bones just on the slide, but the most common injuries involved having skin torn from your body.

The ride too dangerous to keep open

Anyone with even the most basic grasp of physics can see why Cannonball Loop was a bad idea, and apparently, the Advisory Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety stepped in and shut it down.

Cannonball Loop was technically a waterslide, one at a 45-degree angle that had about a 20-foot drop. At the bottom, daredevils hit a full loop-the-loop, and occasionally, they actually made it all the way around. So many people didn't make the loop that they added an escape hatch to both, drag people out and clear the sand, gravel, and grit that collected inside. Those who did make it around were spit out not into a pool, but on a sort of vaguely wet mat.

The Tarzan Swing

The general principle of a Tarzan swing is that there's a rope or a tire swing and you swing out over the water for free-fall fun. But not only was this swing at the park the source of countless scrapes and other minor injuries, one man died there in 1984, when he hit water so cold it allegedly triggered shock and a heart attack.