Is Disneyland heading for a major tragedy?

[truecoat]

It’s largely true, just not because of or unique to Disney. There are rules around who can pronounce death and in most cases it required a doctor.

It also requires someone to care about your safety or life and not about their image.

 

[lazyboy97o]

It also requires someone to care about your safety or life and not about their image.

I’m not following. Who isn’t caring about safety by requiring doctors to declare death?

 

[truecoat]

I’m not following. Who isn’t caring about safety by requiring doctors to declare death?

You don't have to declare death if you take measures to save your guests.

 

[Sailor310]

This is what I was thinking about for my original comment. The nurse working on this guy bleeding out for twenty minutes because Disneyland doesn't want to look bad by rushing an ambulance through the park.

Groovy History

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[lazyboy97o]

This is what I was thinking about for my original comment. The nurse working on this guy bleeding out for twenty minutes because Disneyland doesn't want to look bad by rushing an ambulance through the park.

Groovy History

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There’s video from not too long ago of fire trucks roller down Main Street, USA at Magic Kingdom.

 

[Sailor310]

There’s video from not too long ago of fire trucks roller down Main Street, USA at Magic Kingdom.

I've never seen anything like that before.

 

[Phroobar]

So how many Splash Mountain logs have to sink before Disney management wakes up to maintenance problems on both coasts?

 

[Disney Irish]

So how many Splash Mountain logs have to sink before Disney management wakes up to maintenance problems on both coasts?

Is that really a maintenance issue, or is it a operations issue by overloading the logs? My understanding is that it’s more likely the latter rather than the former.

 

[PiratesMansion]

So how many Splash Mountain logs have to sink before Disney management wakes up to maintenance problems on both coasts?

Unless I missed something, I believe every single one of the sunken Splash boats has been in Florida.

Florida uses very different boats than DL does.

So I don't know that these incidents can really be used to make any sort of statement about Disneyland maintenance.

 

[Dear Prudence]

It also requires someone to care about your safety or life and not about their image.

THIS.

 

[Phroobar]

Is that really a maintenance issue, or is it a operations issue by overloading the logs? My understanding is that it’s more likely the latter rather than the former.

I've seen flooded logs/boats at Knotts and Magic Mountain too. It's the nature of the ride when the log gets too heavy it scrapes the bottom and fills up with water at drops. It still isn't good to get stuck and have another log barrel in from behind. Those kind of rides are just not made for the modern park goer's body frame.

 

[Disney Irish]

I've seen flooded logs/boats at Knotts and Magic Mountain too. It's the nature of the ride when the log gets too heavy it scrapes the bottom and fills up with water at drops. It still isn't good to get stuck and have another log barrel in from behind.

I completely agree, having worked a log flume ride myself I can say it happens.

But overall this is an operations issue with not balancing out a log in favor of packing a log to get hourly numbers.

 

[DrAlice]

I completely agree, having worked a log flume ride myself I can say it happens.

But overall this is an operations issue with not balancing out a log in favor of packing a log to get hourly numbers.

Then this speaks to either:
#1 poor cast training
#2 poor priorities on the part of management
#3 both

Guest safety should be at the top of the priority list, not hourly numbers.

 

[Disney Irish]

Then this speaks to either:
#1 poor cast training
#2 poor priorities on the part of management
#3 both

Guest safety should be at the top of the priority list, not hourly numbers.

Again I completely agree, probably mostly #1 with a little bit of #2.

Notice its happening at WDW and not DLR, so there is something to be said about the DLR CM training.

 

[Phroobar]

Did I ever tell you the time I was on the lift hill of Riddler's Revenge when I realized the employee forgot to check if I was seat belted? I got it connected just before the drop.

 

[usty]

I havent been to DL myself in years. WDW is looking very sketchy to us when we went late last year. Lots of stuff going down for multiple hours or whole days. DL seems to get the better treatment as it is the Original to me. I dont see near the complaints about downtime coming from Anaheim as I do Orlando, my experience also leans that Orlando is much worse in that regard IE lack of maintenance, and need of TLC.

We just got back from our first trip to DLR after going to WDW in May. And both my wife and I commented that in the vast majority of situations, the rides in DLR are in much better shape - maybe it's because we didn't know anything was "missing" from our experience since it was our first time, but everything seemed more "loved" at DLR than currently in Florida where things sit obviously broken on multiple rides.

 

[smooch]

Did I ever tell you the time I was on the lift hill of Riddler's Revenge when I realized the employee forgot to check if I was seat belted? I got it connected just before the drop.

One time my family went ziplining and the first "run" was a test hill with a relatively small drop and it went uphill actually, like a ski lift. They forgot to attach my mom and her harness to the zipline so she was holding her entire weight hanging and they told her to just let go and take the small fall. You can imagine that she double checked before every run to ask the staff that she was fully clipped in. Really scary stuff.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Back in 1999 after the failed opening of DCA, Paul Pressler was quoted in the LA Times saying "We have to ride these rides to failure to save money." Pressler and Cynthia Harris tried to squeeze every penny out of Disneyland with dramatic budget cuts, low maintenance standards and focusing on merchandise. He tried to impress Michael Eisner with short-term gains over long term health and safety risks.

In 1998,

• 24 December 1998: In a tragic Christmas Eve accident, one Disneyland cast member and two guests were injured (one fatally) when a rope used to secure the sailing ship Columbia's it docked on the Rivers of America tore loose the metal cleat to which it was attached. The cleat sailed through air and struck the heads of two guests who were waiting to board the ship, Luan Phi Dawson, 33, of Duvall, Washington, and his wife, Lieu Thuy Vuong, 43. Dawson was declared brain dead two days later and died when his life support system was disconnected.
  This accident resulted in the first guest death in Disneyland’s history that was not attributable to any negligence on the part of the guest (it was the result of a combination of insufficiently rigorous ride maintenance and an insufficiently experienced supervisor’s assuming an attraction operator’s role) and prompted a movement for greater government oversight of theme park operations and safety procedures.

Then in 2003,

• Twenty-two-year-old Marcelo Torres, a graphic designer and aspiring animator, was seated in the lead passenger car of the ride vehicle at Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain attraction when a tragic accident happened on the ride in 2003. The crash was the result of the failure of a mechanical part on the locomotive ride vehicle. The bolts falling off caused “an axle to jam into the railroad’s ties. The locomotive nose-dived, and its rear hit the top of a tunnel. The force snapped a tow bar connecting the locomotive to the lead passenger car, which slammed into the locomotive’s undercarriage,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Marcelo Torres was killed in the accident, and ten other Guests were injured as well.

It seems history is repeating itself within the current management of Disneyland (and Disney World). We are seeing huge budget cuts, not enough cast members that are properly trained, broken effects and substandard ride maintenance all while nickel and diming everything. Are these a warning of a major tragedy in the near future? Is Disneyland and Disney World safe?

If anything happens, the current management of Disneyland (and Disney World) can blame it on COVID.

 

[Phroobar]

One time my family went ziplining and the first "run" was a test hill with a relatively small drop and it went uphill actually, like a ski lift. They forgot to attach my mom and her harness to the zipline so she was holding her entire weight hanging and they told her to just let go and take the small fall. You can imagine that she double checked before every run to ask the staff that she was fully clipped in. Really scary stuff.

This is why I would never go ziplining in a foreign country. You have no clue how well maintained everything is or if they guy that doesn't speak English knows what he is doing.

 

[Phroobar]

We just got back from our first trip to DLR after going to WDW in May. And both my wife and I commented that in the vast majority of situations, the rides in DLR are in much better shape - maybe it's because we didn't know anything was "missing" from our experience since it was our first time, but everything seemed more "loved" at DLR than currently in Florida where things sit obviously broken on multiple rides.

Yeah, that feels like it is changing.