So, for discussion, what if it's like this? Parent and kid are in the hotel for an afternoon break watching a movie. Parent falls asleep because of having already seen "The Lion King" 47 times, not to mention the fact that they woke up at 4 AM to drive 8 hours from San Rafael. I am not going to call someone horrible under those circumstances. If everyone in the room was asleep, and the kid happened to wake up first, I'm not going to call someone horrible. If you are seriously suggesting that parents can't take a nap, I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that you don't have children yourself, or if you do there's only one. If this had happened in the middle of the night when the kid got up and slipped out, would you be saying they should stay awake all night? What if they made sure the balcony was locked, but the kid figured out how to get it open? Having not stayed at the GC, I don't know what the balcony doors are like, but are you really going to consider these people horrible if it wasn't secured before they even entered the room? What if this is the first time their child has done anything like that? What if someone in the room had been calmly trying to coax her back in because they were worried if they ran towards her yelling and screaming she'd get scared and slip, or run away from them......over the edge?
When I was that age, my parents had to put a fence inside our fence to try to contain me, and I'd still get away. Any suggestion that I had horrible parents will be met with hostility. At age 7, my first visit to Disneyland, I found myself seperated from them before we got past the Emporium, it doesn't take long. Please don't take this as an attack on you, because you seem a reasonable person from your posts. But it's a bad idea to come to a conclusion before knowing all the facts. Would YOU want to be judged by a jury that didn't hear the evidence before passing a verdict?
If, after knowing the facts, it turns out that they are, in fact, horrible, then, by all means, nail 'em!
I'm guessing that almost every person on this board can think of things they did at that age that could have caused great harm when their parents weren't looking. Shoot, my boy (8 yr) hit the side of a car rollerblading across the street, in a crosswalk, with a walk signal, doing everything right, and I was with him! Now the person in the car that didn't even stop to see if he was OK? That (obscene gerund) person, you may call horrible.
This is not how the incident was described.
"By now a group of concerned guests had gathered frozen in fear feeling helpless not knowing what to do!"
"The crowd stood by helplessly...Finally, a female guest..." That only sounds like one people to me. Actually, screams from a theme park are not that unusual.
Cheers