VERNON — The rainbow letters, a visual blast from the past, were put up at the Mountain Creek Ski Resort on April 1.

But “Action Park” is not an April Fool’s joke – the name that became famous, and infamous, in the 1980s before shutting down, is coming out of mothballs.

“It’s not April Fool’s – the Action is back,” said the ski resort’s Facebook page Wednesday.

The water park is returning to the same name abandoned about 20 years ago, the resort added.

Bystanders might be pardoned for thinking it was an April Fool’s joke, since the name several decades ago had wide connotations with a series of accidents, and a pair of drownings when the park was opened between 1978 and 1996, according to local news accounts.

An aerial shot of Action Park, taken in 1996.

People jokingly referred to the water park as variously “Class-Action Park,” “Accident Park,” or “Traction Park” due to the notoriety.

But times have changed - and so have safety regulations, said Bill Benneyan, the president of the resort. Action Park has "kept the thrills, and lost the spills," he said in an interview this afternoon.

The name-change was spurred by the coming debut of a new loop slide, which is similar to a discontinued ride at the original Action Park. The "Tarzan" swing and some other rides are the original rides from the original park. And a continuing nostalgia from visitors prompted management to switch back to the original name, Benneyan said.

“We thought, let's call it what it is,” Benneyan said.

Eugene Mulvihill, the developer behind Action Park and the establishment of various Vernon resorts, passed away in 2012.

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