Friday, March 18, 2005

Accident at Disneyland Forces Ride Closure

The Storybook Canal Ride at Disneyland was shut down because a boy injured his finger. According to the OC Register:

The child's fingers were pinched between the boat and the dock while passengers were unloading, a state report says.

The ride remains closed while state officials investigate whether any corrections need to be made, said Dean Fryer, spokesman for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
And this requires a State investigation??

The kid got his finger pinched between the boat and the dock. Is this Disneyland's fault, or his parents' fault? It seems like we've moved to the point where getting hurt at Disneyland is like winning the lottery. If not for the litigious atmosphere that plagues Disneyland, there wouldn't be a state investigation.

But better yet, is this the first time a child got his finger broken on the Storybook Canal ride, or any of the other boat rides, in Disneyland's 50-year history? I bet this has happened before, but was always accepted to be the parents' fault.

And of course, such an investigation would only occur at Disneyland. I mean, what if a door got slammed on some kid's finger at school? Would that prompt state officials to shut the school down pending a safety review? Of course not; I imagine more fingers have been broken in Orange County Schools than at Disneyland. So, why pick on Disneyland?

3 comments:

  1. When I worked on the Jungle Cruise, I was working one evening in the front loader dock position. Two women and a litle girl approached as the boat was filling up. I was talking to the Mom, asking if they wanted to wait for another boat as this one was nearly full.

    Before any of us knew it, the litle girl had stepped off the dock and fell between the boat and the dock. The water there is about 12 feet deep, and she was completely submerged.

    I fell on my knees in the boat opening and fished for the girl in the water. I found her and pulled her out. It was a couple of seconds at best, but felt like minutes. Her eyes were like saucers, and she started crying almost immediately. All I could do was hold her close, then handed her off to her Mom.

    There was no threat of a lawsuit. The Mom said she should have been watching her. I was not punished by Disney, though I did have to go back to wardrobe to change into dry clothes.

    It did earn me the nickname "Lipton".

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  2. When I was working at the Hyperion, the que is surrounded by chains for crowd control. Every guests think they are used to sit on. No matter how much we spill about no sitting on the chains they do. Well one day a guy decided to try and jump over the chains his foot got caught and he fell slamming his knees, hands and face onto the concrete. He was so embarassed he didn't say anything but is Disney liable for chain sitters and jumpers that fall?

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  3. Growing up in OC of the 1960s, the kids on my street used to tell 'horror stories' of local sites and people, one of which was the 'Disneyland Death Plunge'. This was supposed to have been an accident as a result of 'sabotage' to the cables running the Skyway, causing them to break, and the buckets to fall. Of course, according to the legend, every one was killed, the worst being people whose buckets were inside the Matterhorn, yada, yada...

    ...always have wondered where that particular one got started? Kids seem to delight in scaring themselves and their friends with this kind of thing back then. But this was tame, compared to the "Old Lady Irvine" legend....

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