Saddest thing I just realized about Gravity Falls...
...is that the Stan bros missed out on Action Park in New Jersey! I mean, yeah, there's this Mountain Creek thing where Action Park used to be and allegedly it reuses a lot of the same stuff, but it's got all these rules and things like "sober, experienced adults in charge of management" and "no alcohol allowed" and "'it might be funny' is not a valid reason to endanger yourself and others."
I'm talking the one where the alpine slide's carts only came in snail's pace and FASTFASTFAST, with a corresponding risk of getting yote off the tracks. Where employees were offered $100 to test a water slide called the Cannonball Loop with a 360 degree loop that decapitated test dummies and made people experience an amount of Gs normally reserved for astronauts. Where employees, most of whom were local teens, were often some combination of drunk, high, or hungover and frequently stayed (or broke into the park) after hours for crazy late night parties. Where beer from craft microbreweries flowed as freely as the perpetually ice-cold mountain water, and age limits for alcohol consumption were treated at best like a friendly suggestion. Where if you had a buddy on staff they'd suppress the limiters on the bumper boats and go-karts for you so you could go super fast. Where lifeguards competed for points on how close you threw a ring to drowning swimmers in the wave pool, with dozens of scoring opportunities daily, and hitting swimmers in the head got you the highest amount of points. Where the park owner had to make his own insurance company using mob money because no legitimate insurer would touch the place with a ten-foot pole. Where poolgoers shared ponds with water snakes, and at least one of the 30-ft tall water slides dumped into a pool open for everybody to use.
I'm aware of how horribly unsafe the whole place was, but you cannot tell me that a teenage/college-aged Ford and Stan would not have had an absolute blast there. Especially with cartoon physics on their side. I can see them getting way too into competing on the bumper boats, swimming circles around the city kids in the wave pool, buying so much beer they'd never have access to otherwise, wrestling on the rafts in a way easily mistaken for attempted homicide because nobody's stopping them, Ford trying to look cool on the Tarzan swing, and Stan trying to flirt with the attendant for a fast cart on the Alpine Slide (and getting a slow one for it, womp womp). They would come home with big gashes, bigger bruises, and the biggest smiles.
Alas, it was founded in 1978 and got rebooted into a safe, family friendly destination in the 90's. Still, it's fun to rotate the idea in my head.
