New Jersey’s Action Park resort to return vertically looping waterslide, bigger and faster than before
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, March 9, 2015, 8:17 PM
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This 100-foot-tall monster waterslide featuring a vertical loop is slated to open at New Jersey's Action Park resort in 2016.
For a brief moment New Jersey's Action Park resort boasted the world's first vertically looping waterslide before a series of injuries and accidents abruptly shut it down.
Now plans are underway to bring it back.
The Sky Caliber, a terrifying first-of-its kind waterslide featuring a gravity-defying vertical loop, 40-foot free fall and speeds of more than 50 mph has been announced to open at the park come summer 2016.
"It's the first waterslide to freefall — to go straight down — and first only true vertically looping waterslide," Sky Turtle Technologies' CEO Adrian Duke told the Daily News of his 100-foot-tall creation that mirrors the park's former Cannonball Loop.
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Plans have been announced to return Action Park's former vertical loop-the-loop waterslide in New Jersey.
That stomach-dropping ride briefly adorned the Vernon amusement park in the 80s, amid a long series of injuries and even deaths that plagued the resort from 1978 until its 1996 shutter.
Those incidents branded the park the "The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever” in a 2013 documentary.
It reopened two years later under the name of Mountain Creek, before later swapping back to its original name, capitalizing on former guests' nostalgia — which could include fear considering its popular nicknames as "Accident Park," "Traction Park" and "Class-Action Park."
But those chilling memories associated with the park don't appear to faze Duke.
"We've had a 100% success rate in our tests so far," he said of his prototype, which is located outside of St. Louis. His company, based in British Columbia, also boasts zero injuries related to any of their slides.
"If someone wore baggy pants or shorts or didn't get enough speed they would get stuck," he said of the former Cannonball's 360-degree hurtle. "Or in the worst case, they would fall inside the loop and hurt themselves."
We're hoping to break the waterslide speed record.
On the Sky Caliber, riders lie down on single-occupancy rafts as they rip through a similar 30-foot-tall tunnel that takes about eight seconds to complete, he said.
"It's very quick and frightening," he described. "We're hoping to break the waterslide speed record."
Like the Cannonball, the tube is equipped with an exit panel should anyone get stuck and require assistance from outside, but "it's not something that's needed," he said.
Bill Benneyan, president of Mountain Creek, told the NJ Advance Media that he's excited to bring the "huge thrill" back to the park with the vertical slide.
"We're just proud because a lot has changed in the past 30 years in terms of safety and design," he said. "It's just good ole' guts and glory, and a lot of fun
