Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Disneyland Accidents

An anonymous OCThen reader posted a comment on an old article regarding an accident happening at Disneyland. His comment is about an incident he was involved in on the Jungle Cruise...

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".
I wanted to ask our readers if they can submit their memories of other Disneyland accidents. I'm not looking for deaths, or major injuries, since those have all been well covered in the media. I'm looking for the stuff that didn't get reported in the papers, which involved little to no injuries.

Maybe someone fell into the water at Pirates of the Caribbean, or someone who actually got sick in the middle of watching Circle Vision, or some kid who got his head stuck between the bars of a fence and had to be greased up to pull it back out. I dunno.

I'm sure past and present Disneyland employees have lots to share.

I haven't witnessed any accidents, other than the countless times I slammed into the back of my buddies on the Autopia Cars. Though there was that time I nearly ran over a parking attendant because I had the sun shining in my face.

If you have something, click on "Post a Comment", and let's get this thread going.

25 comments:

  1. I literally just walked in the door from Disneyland. While I was there, I went on "It's a small world." I was telling my friends that I once saw a little boy, of about 8 or 9, fall while getting off one of the boats.
    He hit the deck with his lip pretty bad. The part that I remember most was that they had medics there in minutes. They were upon him and nursing him before he could even realize what had happened.
    That Disneyland. They really have everything thought-out. Even accidents.

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  2. In the early 60's, one of our model plans came off it's line while in flight, went over the fence, and his a man in a wheel chair in the wrist. He promised not to sue or create a problem over it if he could have the plane. We agreed. Retail price for the plane and accessories was about $20.00. People were nice back then.

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  3. There used to be a website that documented all of the accidents at disneyland. It was a bit sensationalist dubbit it the Deadlinest Place on Earth and The Tragic Kingdon. It is now nowhere to be found, but I did come across this with a simple google search: http://delatore.com/kfiles/archives/Deathney.html

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  4. When I was 8 years old, my mom took me on the Dumbo ride. Back then, Dumbo's ears extended out much farther than those of the newly refurbished Dumbo we all know today. When the ride ended, a stream of people were immediately let in before the other riders had a chance to exit and my mother and I hurried out to make way for someone else. We had barely stepped onto the loading/unloading platform when the ride operator started the ride. Several people were still standing on the platform and they all must have been whisked out of harms way the way I was, because I don't remember anyone actually being injured. I just remember seeing Dumbo's huge gray ear whoosh past my head just as my mother pulled me to safety. I go to Disneyland all the time and that's the closest I or anyone in my family has ever come to peril at The Magic Kingdom.
    That memory jostled another one that happened the same day. I was waiting in line for Autotopia when I got a terrible nosebleed. I completely wiped out the front of my tee-shirt and after the nurses at the First Aid center helped me stop it, one of them produced a brand new Minnie Mouse tee-shirt for me so that I wouldn't have to wear the bloody one. I thought that was a really nice gesture and I've always remembered how kind they were.

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  5. I remember going with a Day Camp that I worked at back in 1982. I was a counselor to several children and we were on Tom Sawyer's Island. One of the boys was messing around along the water edge fell into the water, I tried to grab him and ended up stepping into the water, probably about up to my knees. Spent the next couple hours with wet jeans.

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  6. Last year, or possibly the year before, my family was on dumbo at disneyland in the mid afternoon. My little sister was riding with my mom and she was only about 3 at the time and was scared so the elephant was as low as you can fly it and a female employee was walking around and was over the line on the ground that marks where it is safe to be during the ride and my mom's elephant knocked her out. By the time the ride was stopped we were on the other side and were left up in the air for at least half an hour while the employee was tended to. She eventually was able to walk away with a paramedic on each side of her (but clearly walking fine) but the ride was closed for most of the rest of the day and we were all given those fastpass for any ride tickets. My mom never wants to go on Dumbo since then.

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  7. I HEARD A GUY GOT HEAD AMPUTATED WHILE RIDING ON BIG THUNDER MOUNTAIN I DONT KNOW WHEN THIS HAPPEND,I KNOW THAT THE TRAIN SIRENS WENT ON AND THE TRAIN STOPPED, WHEN THE WORKERS WENT TO SEE WHAT HAPPEN PEOPLE WERE WET WITH BLOOD THEN THEY SAW A MAN IN FRONT THAT HIS HEAD WAS AMPUTATED.
    ALSO I HEARD WHEN THE HAUNTED MANSION OPENED UP AROUND 1960 A MAN AND HIS DAUGHTER WERE ON IT, WELL THE DAD WANTED TO BE A HERO SO HE LIT A CURTAIN ON FIRE AND WHEN HE TRIED TO SAVE HIS DAUGHTER HE COULDNT THE RIDE KEPT GOING AND THE DAUGHTER BURNED AND NOW SHE WALKS AROUND THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBEAN.DONT KNOW WHY WHEN SHE DIED IN THE HAUNTED MANSION

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  8. I heard that some visitors try to spread the ashes of their deceased loved ones on the Haunted Mansion. When people did that Disneyland closed the whole ride and got a Hazmat team to clean!

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  9. I also remember someone getting something amputated on Big Thunder Mountain, but I don't remember details.

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  10. I was working on the remodel of Tommorrow land back when they changed the ride from Captain EO to Honey I Shrunk The Kids. It was all night work of course. One morning about 4am a crane fell over and struck the Matterhorn leaving a hole in the mountain. Luckily no one was hurt. OSHA rules say when a crane tips over it has to stay until OSHA investigates. But due to the power of Disney, by 8am the crane was gone, the hole was strategicaly covered with bushes, and the park, as usual, opened on time.

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  11. On Tuesday, June 21st, we ere in the Alladin theatre and the show had been going for about 8 minutes when we saw "Alladin" fall from the high wire he was tied to all the way down to the floor. There were two "Alladin's" on stage and for an instant I didn't know what happened but then all the action on stage stopped and we all knew it had been an accident where the actor was plummeted to the ground when his wires weren't performing correctly. He hit one of the stage walls and immediately the curtains were closed. Within minutes the show was called off and everyone left the theater. Not a fun Disney experience.

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  12. I was at Disneyland in the late fifties/early sixties, when a lady riding the tea cups got her dress caught somehow in the center wheel as she was turning it, and it completely ripped her dress off. They stopped the ride and employees formed a circle around her to provide privacy. An employee went over to frontier land and brought back a frontier dress from one of the shops. The whole employee circle happened so quickly that I thought that they must have had some training for such an occasion. That, or it happened frequently and they had a lot of practice.

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  13. I worked at Disneyland from 1969 until 1974 while going to college. It was a great place for college students to work. I spent many a day and night working on the Haunted Mansion during that time.

    I remember and incident one day, when a young boy, probably between 6 to 8 years old came into the Mansion with his family and they were waiting in the foyer for one of the expanding rooms to open. He happened to be standing near the sliding doors that opened, and as the door opened, his hand and part of his arm slid into the wall along with the door. When he started to scream we were able to shut down the ride and evacuate everyone except his family. It took Disney rescue personnel and maintenance workers in order to get his arm out of that tight enclosure.

    I am not sure how badly he was injured or if there was a lawsuit over the incident. I do know I never had to testify.

    We also used to get many people who would get out of the cars in the Haunted Mansion and wander around inside the ride which was very dangerous. We actually had a couple of positions we worked where we would we walk around inside the ride and to try and make sure people would stay in there cars.

    Once in a while when we were bored we would stick our head in a car and scare people, no extra charge of course!

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  14. Debbie Stone died on America Sings. It was horrible for everyone. Her brother Stevie was the sweetest kid. I never knew her, but it was an awful, awful, event. Must have been in the mid-70s.

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  15. In the mid-80's I was at Disneyland and saw a kid get his head stuck between the bars in line for the Dumbo ride. The fire dept. was there but we didn't stick around to find out how they got him out. Poor kid.

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