MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Action Park is one of those things that makes me feel a mix of pride and horror in America.I freakin' loved that place...
But even as a 10-yr-old with a pathological lack of self-preservation instinct, seeking a berserker's glorious death in epic battle, I looked at the Alpine Slide and said, "That... is a really bad idea..."
...Just before lining up for it, of course, lol.
And what they didn't mention in the article is that the fully enclosed waterslide with the full loop is actually underground (and the top half of the loop is bone dry), and after going through the loop it shoots you out into mid-air about twenty feet above the manmade lake where the rope swings are...
I went on all of the rides mentioned in that article, and I can tell you that, safety-wise, I'm fairly sure that the park owners had to be the safety inspector's cousin, or coke dealer, or something...
In the three times I went to that park in my childhood, every time both me and my brother came out of there minus some skin. Fun times.
Though, I have to say, stereotypes of America get overblown. A company I worked with had a partnership with a company in the Netherlands. Some of us would get to go to their to their annual meetings and in addition to the normal, boring, day-long presentations and motivational speakers, they would have various fun, bonding events.
I missed the year they did it at a shooting range, at which some of my colleagues were surprised that nobody got shot. The year I went, one of the days they had an event were we went out into the countryside (which in the Netherlands feels more like US suburbs mixed with medium sized farms) with a company where you'd rent a variety of old cars, motorbikes, mopeds, autoricks, etc. and ride them around on the public streets. I was in an old auto-rick (a three-wheeled, gas powered rickshaw, still common in India) and the guy driving it took it around a turn too quickly rolling and wrecking it. I'm hanging upside down by a seat belt and a guy below me was shouting at me not to take off my seatbelt until he got out. I'm shouting at him to hurry up because I'm seeing gas pooling up. Luckily nobody was injured. Must have made for an interesting sight to the old ladies peeking through their curtains at us.
During the same event, they had a scavenger hunt type activity where they had various challenges, each worth different numbers of points. The team with the most points won. You had to take photos as evidence and text them to the organizer. One of the challenges was to convince a stranger, who was not from either company to kiss you. I left that one to a Dutch colleague. Another challenge was to lick the face of a colleague. Another challenge was to deepthroat a banana. Not having the training or experience in deep-throating anything, I bought a banana at a market, cut two-thirds off of it and stuck the the end in my mouth, tilted my head up and had a colleague take a photo. Yeah, it was cheating, but the CEO of the Dutch company was in my group and gave me a thumbs up.
I think universal health care makes for a less litigious society. I can't see these kinds of activities being organized by many U.S. corporations.
Last edited:
