Tom
Beta Return
That's a good idea! It'll be much faster and more efficient than standing at a drinking fountain for minutes at a time. See, look at all the potential that comes from this new water feature!
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MK Casey Jr. Being "Reassessed"
- Thread starter Amused to Death
- Start date
That's a good idea! It'll be much faster and more efficient than standing at a drinking fountain for minutes at a time. See, look at all the potential that comes from this new water feature!
RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
How much will someone pay me to lick the railing at Casey Jr's? Seriously, people need to calm down about the sanitation issues. Yes, it's disgusting to think about, but it's no different than any public water play area. There's no reason why this new area should be held to a standard that's any different.
vinnya1726
Active Member
Great Idea
Captain Chaos
Well-Known Member
And then you'll kiss your wife with that mouth??? Ewwww you'd get less cooties from a night with Sookie than licking the Casey Jr railing LOL...
G00fyDad
Well-Known Member
Captain Chaos
Well-Known Member
Dag typo.... SNOOKIE SNOOKIE... not Sookie... I'd take Jessica over Sookie though... 
RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
I'll take Sookie over the Oompa LoompaHmmm....
Sookie....
And Snookie....
I'll take Sookie any day. LOL
FettFan
Well-Known Member
Then those guests need to be removed from the park. No refund.
Patricia Melton
Well-Known Member
I have a few thoughts on this, as both a mom and a business woman.
I own my own aquaculture business and whenever we build anything on my land I need to think long and hard about a few things, even though I am not open to the public. I have a lot of ponds where we raise our fish and every one of them has to be built so that any child who happens on my property doesn't fall in and drown (even though my land is fenced and the nearest neighbors are a few miles away). I just don't ever want any chance that a child can be hurt. I also have to make sure that animals don't either get at the fish or that they don't drown either. So I scrutinize EVERYTHING for about 100 hours (it seems) before I sign off on a design for something.
So, I'm just floored to be honest that the Casey Jr. train was built like this.
When I saw the hideous railings around the train I thought "uh-oh, during focus group testing some kid must have gotten hurt on the engine". There are some sharp edges on the red doors of the coal part of Casey. As a mother, that horrifies me because when my son was little he had a tendency to run without looking. He ran smack dab into a tree branch once and nearing poked his eye out. It got him in the forehead, but if he had been a little taller he'd have been blind in one eye today. I am still horrified by the thought.
The water play area is a great idea. Theming it to Casey was a wonderful idea. But making Casey NOT intentionally climbable was foolish. They should have built Casey's engine with the intent and design for him to be climbed on by the kids, because kids are going to climb on him anyway. He is bright red, blue, and yellow and everything about him screams to a child CLIMB ON ME.
I want to say that my son and daughter were raised well and that they almost always behaved in public because I would not accept acting out. But if they were under 13 or so, I bet they'd have taken off running straight for Casey to climb on him if they'd have built this water play area in the 80s when my kids were young. There is nothing on earth I could have done to stop them, too. And I bet any money they would have hopped that railing and climbed into the cab. And if they didn't do it because they were afraid I'd be mad, they would have sulked the rest of the day because they didn't get to go inside the cab.
I just don't know what the Imagineers were thinking with this one.
I have to bet that the lawyers are responsible for the ugly railing and that the original intent was for Casey to be climbed on...but during testing some kid probably slipped and fell or otherwise hurt him/herself and so the railing was installed at the lawyers' insistence.
I think they need to build a new Casey engine that is 100% climbable with no sharp edges. Then, just take apart the current Casey and remove him (but no need to touch the train cars), remove the railing, and put in the new climbable engine.
Problems solved!
I own my own aquaculture business and whenever we build anything on my land I need to think long and hard about a few things, even though I am not open to the public. I have a lot of ponds where we raise our fish and every one of them has to be built so that any child who happens on my property doesn't fall in and drown (even though my land is fenced and the nearest neighbors are a few miles away). I just don't ever want any chance that a child can be hurt. I also have to make sure that animals don't either get at the fish or that they don't drown either. So I scrutinize EVERYTHING for about 100 hours (it seems) before I sign off on a design for something.
So, I'm just floored to be honest that the Casey Jr. train was built like this.
When I saw the hideous railings around the train I thought "uh-oh, during focus group testing some kid must have gotten hurt on the engine". There are some sharp edges on the red doors of the coal part of Casey. As a mother, that horrifies me because when my son was little he had a tendency to run without looking. He ran smack dab into a tree branch once and nearing poked his eye out. It got him in the forehead, but if he had been a little taller he'd have been blind in one eye today. I am still horrified by the thought.
The water play area is a great idea. Theming it to Casey was a wonderful idea. But making Casey NOT intentionally climbable was foolish. They should have built Casey's engine with the intent and design for him to be climbed on by the kids, because kids are going to climb on him anyway. He is bright red, blue, and yellow and everything about him screams to a child CLIMB ON ME.
I want to say that my son and daughter were raised well and that they almost always behaved in public because I would not accept acting out. But if they were under 13 or so, I bet they'd have taken off running straight for Casey to climb on him if they'd have built this water play area in the 80s when my kids were young. There is nothing on earth I could have done to stop them, too. And I bet any money they would have hopped that railing and climbed into the cab. And if they didn't do it because they were afraid I'd be mad, they would have sulked the rest of the day because they didn't get to go inside the cab.
I just don't know what the Imagineers were thinking with this one.
I have to bet that the lawyers are responsible for the ugly railing and that the original intent was for Casey to be climbed on...but during testing some kid probably slipped and fell or otherwise hurt him/herself and so the railing was installed at the lawyers' insistence.
I think they need to build a new Casey engine that is 100% climbable with no sharp edges. Then, just take apart the current Casey and remove him (but no need to touch the train cars), remove the railing, and put in the new climbable engine.
Problems solved!
maryszhi
Well-Known Member
i am sorry but when i have children i will reiterate fences like that mean do not cross. the train itself looks amazing but needs some barriers. it looks a bit dangerous, especially if somebody climbed on the top. i hope they figure something out soon before someone gets hurt 
Patricia Melton
Well-Known Member
i am sorry but when i have children i will reiterate fences like that mean do not cross. the train itself looks amazing but needs some barriers. it looks a bit dangerous, especially if somebody climbed on the top. i hope they figure something out soon before someone gets hurt
Mary --
Here's the big dilemma for parents (and trust me, you will see this when you have kids because it used to drive me NUTS when my kids were young): what do you do about the people who flagrantly break all the rules?
I always made sure my kids never climbed fences, cut in line, pushed or shoved, or did other bad things. But sure enough, wherever we went, I'd see other people let their kids do all those things. Sometimes my son, especially, would push and push and push me to let him do things he saw other kids doing. I heard a lot of "It's not fair! That boy's doing it!".
Personally, I just think Imagineers need to see things more black and white, with only two options available:
1. Whatever you are building is meant to be climbed on and is safe for kids
2. Whatever you are building is designed so that there's no way a child will see it as fun to climb on
Casey was built NOT to be climbed on but was made to look like the most fun thing in the world for a child to climb on, so it was a real failure in planning for WDI. Someone should have assumed that kids would see it and want to climb it and that a mere railing would not be any disincentive to climbing for bad parents who allow their kids to do as they please.
danlb_2000
Premium Member
I don't know that this is a safe assumption to make. It appears that the engine of Casey WAS made to be climable and we have even heard that there are things up in the engine cab that kids can interact with. I speculate that Imagineering designed this to be climable, felt that it was safe, but someone higher up, or maybe in the legal department, steped in at the last moment and raised a concern. It may be a case of being overly cautions with safety, or as has been mentioned earlier in the thread, that there was a concern about running afoul of possible new ADA requirements.
I just don't think we know enough to say where things actually went wrong here.
ExtinctJenn
Well-Known Member
I have to agree with danlb_2000 here. The Imagineers didn't build something that wasn't meant to be climbed on and then added a fence after. I'm pretty sure they do just as much planning etc. and make just as many considerations for safety as you do in your business. I don't think someone got hurt (we would've heard about it by now - Disney can't hide from the media with things like that). The fence wasn't there one day and then suddenly before soft-opening it showed up. I think the speculation (throughout this thread) that it was a sudden "OMG we forgot about ADA compliance" moment or something to that effect is correct.
Either way - there is no excuse for these parents who are seen helping their children over/through the fence. I don't care why it was put there... parents need to use their brains and teach their children right from wrong instead of fun over wrong.
Patricia Melton
Well-Known Member
danlb --
I'd like to think about the ADA requirements for a minute...and would hope someone more knowledgable would chime in if she or he reads this.
Could a playground be built today that includes a slide, jungle gym, swings, merry-go-round (not a carousel, but the big round thing that you spin by pushing it while the kids ride and hold onto metal bars), etc. because kids in wheelchairs can't really play with any of this (and can't reach the handles for the monkey bars or the rings for swinging)?
Does EVERYTHING have to be built so that someone in a wheelchair can use it to? I don't think that the ADA requirements are that stringent.
Looking at the Splash and Spray area in total, I can see kids in wheelchairs being able to enjoy it. They can wheel around and be sprayed by the water. They can be placed inside of Casey's cab by their parents (lifted up and put in there the same way they'd be lifted up onto swings at a playground or lifted up and put onto a merry-go-round to be swung or lifted up and put into a slide). I don't think it's an ADA requirement that something like Casey would need a wheelchair ramp or that the cab would need to be big enough to have a wheelchair roll through. I think that would be a little ridiculous.
The ADA requirements in my understanding are there to ensure the handicapped have access to things like restrooms and the entrances to buildings. I read earlier in the year about the ADA requiring swimming pools to be accessible (and they want every new pool to be built zero depth entry like the pool at Animal Kingdom Lodge and the Nemo pool at Art of Animation). This way people in wheelchairs can roll themselves into the pools if they want and not worry about having to plop over an edge into the water unsafely.
It's not like Casey was built with steep stairs in front of it so that someone in a wheelchair cannot roll up to him.
Ironically enough, adding the little fence around Casey has now made it more difficult for a child in a wheelchair to have the same experience with Casey that a non-wheelchair-confined child can have by just climbing over the fence. Disney actually constructed a barrier that is non-ADA compliant, since it's the wheelchair kids who can't get through but the able-bodied kids can still climb the fence and then do whatever they want with Casey.
bethymouse
Well-Known Member
Oh dear! and the Imagination pavilion where the kids stand on the water to try to make it "stop" or just to touch it.I take it none of you saw the thousands of people — children and adults alike — who used to frolic in what was once a pair of beautiful fountains out in front of Countdown to Extinction. At first there were CMs on hand to get everyone out of the water, but they eventually succumbed to the sheer numbers of idiots who thought it was perfectly okay to wade in the fountains, and they ended up putting up those god awful cement planters to keep everyone out. Now you can't even tell there are fountains behind that horrible mess. A crying shame.
bethymouse
Well-Known Member
Especially KIDS!
bethymouse
Well-Known Member
Common sense? Who has that anymore?
My best friend is an engineer, and one of the things that she sometimes truly lacks is "common" sense. I love her to death, but maybe that's the minds of the imagineers: great ideas, just no "common" sense.
bethymouse
Well-Known Member
Wow- so many "complaints"@! I can't imagine what it'll be like when the mine train actually opens! PHEW!