Watch Class Action Park

Class Action Park is an eye-opening and often hilarious documentary about the infamous water park of the same name that was located in New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s. Directed by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III, the film capitalizes on the nostalgia for the time when young people were able to take risks and let loose in a way that now seems almost unimaginable. Featuring interviews with former employees, visitors, and journalists, Class Action Park paints a vivid picture of an amusement park that was equal parts exhilarating, terrifying, and deadly.

The park, which was originally called Vernon Valley/ Great Gorge Ski Resort, was transformed into a summer destination when Gene Mulvihill purchased it in the 1970s. He built a water park adjacent to the ski slopes, and it quickly became a haven for teenagers as well as families. Park-goers could ride down a waterslide called the Cannonball Loop that had a full loop in it, which in theory should have been impossible. Visitors could also ride on a dangerous alpine sled or jump off a cliff into a pool of water. The most notorious ride was called Zero G, a water slide with a steep 90-degree drop that led into a man-made wave pool.

The film shows how the park became a symbol of a particular kind of freedom, one that allowed young people to take incredible risks and push the limits of what was possible. Class Action Park was a place where the danger was palpable, and that sense of danger only added to the excitement of going there. The documentary features interviews with several people who worked at the park as teenagers, and they recount some truly unbelievable stories. Employees were often left to their own devices, with little to no supervision, so it's not surprising that things got out of hand. One former employee even recalls that every day there would be at least one ambulance call, and at least one of those calls would involve a broken bone.

But the documentary also reveals the dark side of this kind of unregulated fun. Class Action Park had an incredible safety record, meaning that visitors were constantly getting hurt or killed. The film features interviews with parents who lost their children at the park, and it's heart-wrenching to see how the park's carelessness led to such devastating losses. Class Action Park was, in many ways, a death trap, and it's a miracle that more people didn't lose their lives there.

As much as Class Action Park is about the park itself, it's also about the culture that surrounded it. The film is a reflection on a particular moment in American history, when the Reagan era pushed back against government regulations and unleashed the forces of the free market. With no oversight, Class Action Park became a microcosm of that deregulated world, where individual freedoms were celebrated above all else, even if those freedoms could be deadly. The park was a product of its time, and the documentary is a compelling argument for why that time period was both exhilarating and tragic.

Peppered throughout the interviews are vivid descriptions of what the park was like, and these descriptions alone are worth watching the film for. From the smell of funnel cakes to the sound of metal scraping across cement, Class Action Park gives a visceral sense of what it was like to be there. The documentary is also peppered with old footage of the park, and these videos capture the park's anarchic energy perfectly. Anyone who went to an amusement park in the 1980s or 1990s will feel a sense of nostalgia for that era of pure adrenaline.

Class Action Park is an entertaining and insightful documentary that manages to find humor in a subject matter that could easily have been depressing. The people who worked at the park, and the visitors who went there, had a sense of camaraderie and adventure that's hard to replicate elsewhere. But the documentary is also a reminder of the dangers of unchecked capitalism and the importance of government regulations. Class Action Park may have been a symbol of a particular kind of freedom, but that freedom came at a steep price.

Class Action Park is a 2020 documentary with a runtime of 1 hour and 30 minutes. It has received mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 7.0 and a MetaScore of 69.