Newsworthy Things That Happened During Your Vacation?

[Cosmic Commando]

I'm watching Saving Mr. Banks tonight. It'll always be special to me, because I was actually on vacation at Disneyland and in the park when they were filming it. I even saw a place where Tom Hanks recently was! The center of Fantasyland with the carousel was closed off, but you could look in from the sides to get a bit of a peek if they happened to be filming. We missed the main actors, though. It was neat to see the park with the attraction posters near the floral Mickey in front of the train station, and the car in which P.L. Travers arrives at Disneyland was parked in the esplanade between DL and DCA. The one strange thing is that there were chunks of the park without any background music, in order to keep things tidy sound-wise for the filming.

For WDW, I learned about the death of Osama bin Laden from the USA Today paper box outside of Classic Hall at Pop. It was pretty surreal-- a reminder that there's a real world out there when you're on vacation.

Anyone else have similar things happen during their trips?

 

[DisneyGigi]

Arrival day 2009 when the Orlando office building shooting had just happened. All my videos are of swat teams and helicpoters. We barely made it thru before I-4 shut down, like the last car! Machine guns and all pointed towards buildings in downtown Orlando. Crazy stuff!!!

 

[JoeRohdesEarring]

We have been there for the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Columbine Massacre, Death of Steve Jobs and a few major natural disasters.

Maybe something is telling us to stop going. Everyone be careful November 5-11, ok?

 

[Cosmic Commando]

We have been there for the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Columbine Massacre, Death of Steve Jobs and a few major natural disasters.

Maybe something is telling us to stop going. Everyone be careful November 5-11, ok?

That's during my trip, too... we're really in trouble!

 

[Kate Alan]

We found out Philip Seymour Hoffman died while on Carousel of Progress. My friend was checking her phone alerts (we were film critics on the side at the time) and relayed the news to us, causing us to cry out (loudly) in unison "Philip Seymour Hoffman DIED?" - just as "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" kicked in. It was the best/worst musical cue ever, and has become a bit of a dark humor joke with us - none of us can think of him without that song playing now. Our group was watching Twister the other day and someone started humming it without meaning to.

 

[pajammies]

We have been there for the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Columbine Massacre, Death of Steve Jobs and a few major natural disasters.

Maybe something is telling us to stop going. Everyone be careful November 5-11, ok?

Really? That's a little strange... Are you there all the time?
We will be arriving November 11th, so I'll be watching the news!

 

[wdwfan4ver]

The closest is Hurricane Andrew happened on the last full day or 2nd to last full day at WDW on the last full day on the 1992 trip I was on.

I heard about celebrity deaths on vacation before, but it wasn't at WDW outside of Don Meredith. I was on Vacation when Princess Diana died back in 1997, but it was on one of my Upper Midwestern vacations with me founding out about from the hotel room television set.

 

[JoeRohdesEarring]

Really? That's a little strange... Are you there all the time?
We will be arriving November 11th, so I'll be watching the news!

Just once or twice a year, I suppose we just have coincidental bad luck?

 

[PrincessVic]

For us, we were in WDW when the date for Prince William and Kate's wedding date was set. Being English, the amount of times we were told "Hear you have a big wedding coming up" was quite amusing, especially once I realised what people were meaning - the first time I did wave my wedding ring at them in confusion!!!!!

 

[Matt_Black]

My last trip, the day before we were scheduled to leave and fly home was the day that crazy guy shot up (I think) LAX. Needless to say that the next day the security checkpoint line was even more of a bloated slow moving clusterfu... um... FUDGE than it usually is.

 

[Missymoe4]

I'm watching Saving Mr. Banks tonight. It'll always be special to me, because I was actually on vacation at Disneyland and in the park when they were filming it. I even saw a place where Tom Hanks recently was! The center of Fantasyland with the carousel was closed off, but you could look in from the sides to get a bit of a peek if they happened to be filming. We missed the main actors, though. It was neat to see the park with the attraction posters near the floral Mickey in front of the train station, and the car in which P.L. Travers arrives at Disneyland was parked in the esplanade between DL and DCA. The one strange thing is that there were chunks of the park without any background music, in order to keep things tidy sound-wise for the filming.

For WDW, I learned about the death of Osama bin Laden from the USA Today paper box outside of Classic Hall at Pop. It was pretty surreal-- a reminder that there's a real world out there when you're on vacation.

Anyone else have similar things happen during their trips?

Wow! I would have loved seeing this. I'm a major fan of Mary Poppins, and of course Disney.

As a child I remember the baseball strike in the '90s I believe. Also, I ran into Tom Cruise (with his daughter) in the MK post break up with Katie.

Otherwise, nothing too noteworthy, but I do look forward to the responses of others.

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

Pass few trips in January I have the pleasure of the Winners of The Super Bowls visiting the Magic Kingdom..........I avoid that park that day at all costs....

 

[Tuvalu]

We were in the Town Square hub by the flagpole when we learned about the Sandy Hook tragedy. We were in line at ToT when we heard about the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. And we had just arrived in our room in Beach Club last summer when we discovered the shooting down of the Malaysian airplane.

@JoeRohdesEarring and @Cosmic Commando, we'll also be in the world November 5th.

 

[Slipknot]

Not exactly news worthy (to me, at least) but I was at the Magic Kingdom the day the Chilean miners who were stuck underground for months were in the park. I hardly pay attention to the news, national, local or otherwise, so I didn't recognize one of them when we passed each other by the TTA. All I remember was seeing him, his family and a VIP guide and overhearing another guest mention something about them being there later on that day.

 

[kvandmx]

I Was there on 9/11/2001 working as a subcontractor. I was Installing Theatrical lighting as the Sorcerer Mickey hat was being constructed. They evacuated all the parks that day. Was very surreal.

 

[Bairstow]

I'm from Chattanooga.
The first day of our last trip this July was the day of the shooting at the Naval and Marine recruitment and reserve centers.
We were in the Animal Kingdom and I kept getting texts from my friends and family who work in various government buildings and hospitals and were on lockdown for most of the day. No one really knew what was happening and it felt really terrible to be out of town and unable to do anything.

If we're talking about newsworthy things in the parks, I was on Splash Mountain at the bottom of the lift hill when the rockwork above the load/unload dock started falling apart and nearly hit people. The ride was stopped for about 15 minutes, then we did the drop and exited, noticing that no one else was being loaded on. The ride was closed for the rest of our trip and we didn't find out what happened until later and the safety tarps went up.

 

[Walt Disney1955]

2009 we were at WDW when all of that scandal broke out about David Letterman's mistress and the extortion money requested.

 

[allgiggles]

Not sure if this counts or not, but I won't forget either of these....

June 2011 trip - Casey Anthony trial started while we were at Disney World. It was on what seemed like every channel of the TV all day, every day -- literally every local channel and every national news channel was showing it. And if the actual trial wasn't on, there was a report/show about the trial/case. And this was back when there weren't as many channel options in the resort rooms as there are now. Our choices were basically watch the trial or watch one of the Disney channels.

June 2013 trip - George Zimmerman trial started while we were there. Same deal as the Casey Anthony trial. It was on what seemed like every channel all day, every day. Rachel Jeantel was quite interesting to watch, though.

We were there again this past June. Thankfully there were no high-profile trials going on this time.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

I was in WDW the day Robin Williams passed away -- it's weird to be in such a happy place and walk around with news like that inside you. I remember there being a strong audience reaction to the Genie segment in Wishes that night.

 

[draybook]

Not sure if this counts or not, but I won't forget either of these....

June 2011 trip - Casey Anthony trial started while we were at Disney World. It was on what seemed like every channel of the TV all day, every day -- literally every local channel and every national news channel was showing it. And if the actual trial wasn't on, there was a report/show about the trial/case. And this was back when there weren't as many channel options in the resort rooms as there are now. Our choices were basically watch the trial or watch one of the Disney channels.

June 2013 trip - George Zimmerman trial started while we were there. Same deal as the Casey Anthony trial. It was on what seemed like every channel all day, every day. Rachel Jeantel was quite interesting to watch, though.

We were there again this past June. Thankfully there were no high-profile trials going on this time.

We were down there when he first got arrested for it. I remember telling my wife, "man, this is going to get ugly".