One More Action Park Story
From Dan Spezzano:I went to Action Park twice a summer, at least. I even went there as a counselor for a day camp. The slide that was kind of like the cannonball that dropped you into an ice cold lake was the worst ride. I swear that water was so cold you almost couldn't swim. However, my injury story comes from the Alpine Slide.
I was tooling down it when just moments in I figured out the very helpful hand brake wasn't catching anything. I was starting to move really fast--maybe 25-30mph--and couldn't slow down. I didn't want to purposely crash because the side of the track was littered with white rocks (I kid you not--rocks outside the track). So I decided to ride it out.
That's when I saw the turn coming.
About halfway down, you reached the big bank turns if you were on the "fast" track. No way was I going to hold that turn. Before I could even think, I was thrown, with sled, off the track and into the air, landing in some brush about 20 feet away.
I have no idea how high I went. I just know if I went another 15 feet or so, I would have been thrown into a tree. In later years they cleared that area, so I imagine someone actually did hit a tree at least once.
I loved Action Park. Lucky for them there were no cell phone videos back then.
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