Disney Declassified: Tales of Real Life Disney Scandals, Sex, Accidents and Deaths (13 page)

Back in March of 2002, in the Dino Land section of the Animal Kingdom, a new roller coaster premiered, the Primeval Whirl. Primeval Whirl is a very un-Disney-like ride. The ride is a type of roller coaster known as a “wild-mouse” or “mad-mouse” the term mouse has nothing to do with Mickey. This type of coaster has been featured in amusement parks all over the world since the 1960s. The ride itself is synonymous with small cars that are usually much wider than the track itself. The small cars usually seat four or fewer people and take riders on very tight, flat turns without banks or huge drops, at speeds under thirty miles per hour.  The wild mouse track designs are usually in amusement parks because they are cheap to introduce and require minimal square footage. Something unusual for Disney, as they usually don’t offer many “industry standard” attractions that guests can ride in other places.

Even industry-standard amusement rides that have been in existence for fifty-plus years can be the scene of accidents. In November of 2007, sixty-three-year-old Karen was working as a ride attendant at the Primeval Whirl. On that fateful day, Karen stepped onto a restricted area to assist some guests on the ride platform. Seconds later, the ride started again and another car came by. The car struck Karen and pushed her ten feet. She fell nearly three feet to the ground where she hit her head. Karen was rushed to the hospital where she passed away a few days later.

In the months after her accident, changes were made to the ride, primarily to the entry and exit platforms. The platforms received sensor mats in the restricted areas that will shut the ride down if someone walks in the area. These changes were done proactively before the completion of the OSHA accident investigation. In May of 2008, OSHA concluded their investigation and charged Disney with five safety violations, three serious violations, a repeat violation that wasn’t fixed from an earlier inspection, and a paperwork violation, and fined the company $21,500. 

Three years after OSHA’s investigation, the government agency was back on-site investigating another employee death at the Primeval Whirl, in March 2011. This fatality resulted in $69,000 fine against the park from OSHA.

Back in April of 1998, before Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened, when the park was dealing with the negative publicity regarding the deaths of numerous animals, their spokesman, Rick Sylvain, released an interesting statement:  “Because it’s Disney, people think animals shouldn’t die. But deaths happen. It saddens us”. This too is applicable for the employee and guest fatalities, a hundredfold.

 Not to trivialize or compare the death of an animal to the death of a person: a father, mother, son or daughter, etc., but accidents do happen. Many of the early catastrophes in Disney history were with guests displaying reckless behavior. The other accidents probably could have been avoided had certain safety measures been implemented, most notably with small children and Disney employees. Regardless of all that, Rick Sylvain’s statement is very true.

People DO die at Disney theme parks, however, people have been trained to not expect bad things to happen in the utopia and fantasy worlds Disney works so hard to present and maintain. Their name is synonymous with happiness and capturing fantastic dreams, and not with a Disney death tour. This is not how the world wants to view their Disney. After all, people go there to escape from the real world. When the real world encroaches and starts to seep into their Disney dreams, people have trouble dealing with it.

Again, millions of people visit these parks each year and ride these attractions multiple times during their stay. This translates into hundreds of millions of rides each year multiplied by the amount of years the parks have been open. Compare that to the amount of deaths over the years. Translation: visiting their parks is safe.

As for the employee fatalities, where according to OSHA, Disney seems to be a bit more negligent in things, think about all the shifts worked and upwards of 100,000 cast members that work every day across all of the theme parks. Many parks and resorts actually have a staff running twenty-four hours a day.

      The accidents leading to fatalities can be one of those freak things, but it seems there is a good share of blame with rider error and operator error.  The theme park industry in general says the odds are 1 in 24 million of being seriously injured and 1 in 750 million of being fatally injured at a theme park; sounds great, unless you are that one.

      I’ll take my chances at riding an attraction at Disney. I do just about every year. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say some of these stories have resonated a bit and will probably linger in my thought process as I’m standing in a queue at some point. With decades in the theme park business and billions of rides, the Disney death tour stands in the very low double digits.

Peter Pan’s Fight

In July of 2004, Ronald Iden, a former FBI agent and California’s director of Homeland Security, left the public sector and joined Disney as the head of worldwide security for the Walt Disney Company.

Over the years, Disneyland and Walt Disney World have been the target of violent threats. On February 3, 1972, the Walt Disney World telephone switchboard operator received a troubling call. The man on the line demanded $90,000 in $20 bills or a bomb would go off at the park. The caller told the operator, “If you don’t think I can blow up the place, just look in the utility shed.” The call became much more serious when a timed bomb was in fact discovered near a utility shed in Frontierland. Luckily, it was discovered three hours before the timer would set it off.

A bit more than a month later on March 13
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, another bomb threat was phoned in and the same caller demanded $250,000. On this day, no bomb was found, and no money ever exchanged hands. A courier was sent with the ransom, but no one ever came to pick it up. Roughly three months went by without any additional threats or leads in the case. Then in June of 1972, police arrested a former Walt Disney World employee and charged him with the threats.

Robert was that employee. He was twenty-three years old at the time (and son of the president of Tupperware Home Products) and worked at Disney World from December of 1971 through March of 1972. He was arrested on an eight-count indictment of charges of planting a live bomb at Walt Disney World and extortion.

In January of 1973, the case took an interesting turn. The federal charges that were pending against Robert were suddenly dropped. A U.S. District court judge had dismissed the charges on a motion by U.S. Attorney John Briggs. Briggs stated he acted at the request of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, but that was all he would divulge. Perhaps daddy’s money or clout had some influence over this situation.

A year later and over 2,500 miles away, in December of 1974, twenty-four-year-old Craig, a transient living at a motel in Santa Barbara, phoned into Disneyland security and informed them a letter had been left at the Santa Barbara bus station detailing plans to blow up both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Disney contacted police, who then picked up the letter. The letter claimed seven bombs would be detonated over a fifteen-day period at both parks unless Disney paid a $3 million ransom.

If Disney left $1.5 million at a location the bomber specified in Santa Barbara and another $1.5 million at a location in Orlando, they could avoid any tragedies. Disney agreed, and with help from the FBI, they placed a box with the ransom at the specified location in Santa Barbara. Craig pulled up on a motorcycle, retrieved the box and was promptly arrested by the Santa Barbara police and FBI for extortion.

The previous stories ended without harm. The same can’t be said for the next one. This story made news headlines around the country and was featured on an episode of Dateline NBC in 2006. In April of 1996, teens Kevin Foster, Pete Magnotti and Chris Black from Fort Meyers, Florida went on a crime spree of arson, destruction and eventually murder.

The crew dubbed themselves the Lords of Chaos and started on their path of crimes and arson by setting a supermarket construction trailer on fire, a Baptist Church, a restaurant, and then a historic Coca Cola bottling plant. They next moved on to armed robbery and carjacking. Another component of their crime spree was set for Walt Disney World and Grad Nite. The crew planned for their “ultimate crime of chaos” on that evening.

The plan was for the thugs to enter the park, assault a few Disney characters in costume and steal their outfits. They would then re-enter the park and shoot and kill any African-American or minority guests in the park.

In the days leading up to Grad Nite, they set out to rob a Dillards department store for clothing to wear for that evening. The crew planned to enter the department store and set off a homemade smoke grenade. When the store filled with smoke, they would grab clothing and run out. The smoke grenade never went off and they abandoned that plan. Instead they headed over to their high school to vandalize and burn the school auditorium. After breaking into the school and stealing latex gloves, a fire extinguisher, two staplers, and a bag of canned peaches, they were approached on school grounds by a music teacher, Mark. Mark confronted the boys and told them to go home and expect a visit from the school's deputy the next day. Before the next school day came, Kevin Foster, Chris Black, Pete Magnotti, and Derek Shields found Mark’s home address and went over to his house at 11:30
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The thugs rang the doorbell, Mark answered, and Foster pulled out a shotgun and murdered him in cold blood. All of this was over the possibility of Mark informing authorities about the minor vandalism they did at the school. The teens were arrested and charged with murder and arson. Foster was sentenced to death and the other teens to life in prison. By a snafu in their plans at the department store, police determined that it might have saved the lives of numerous people, as their plot to terrorize Walt Disney World would have ended, as sheriffs put it, in a “blood bath.” Had the teens met any resistance, they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill anyone in their path or crosshairs. When police searched the teens' homes, they found a large stash of firearms and ammunition. Tragically, Mark was on the other side of the department store snafu.

Fortunately, all of the major plots on Disney’s parks never came to fruition, but tempers do flare from time to time in the land of the mouse. The family-centric environment and happiness oftentimes isn’t enough to deter violence within the parks. The wall-to-wall crowds, hot Florida or SoCal sun, combined with some unruly kids can definitely take its toll on people, sometimes in a more detrimental way than others. Let’s dive in to the fisticuffs Disney-style, routinely just minor squabbles and fights. Although there have been some very violent confrontations at both Disney properties, they’re just very infrequent. Let’s start with Disneyland first and then head across the country to Walt Disney World.

Long before Downtown Disney in Florida increased their security presence back in 2007 due to suspected gang activity; Disneyland had their own violent brush with gangs in January of 1975. On a Saturday night in the Tomorrowland section of the park, two rival gangs from San Gabriel, California faced off in a brawl just before midnight. That evening, the park was closed to the general public but still had an evening attendance of over 7,000 guests. A Junior Chamber of Commerce group (who knew the chamber of commerce had any gang affiliations!) rented out the park.  

As the melee broke out, a seventeen-year-old gang member whipped out a .22 caliber gun and began firing indiscriminately. Two males, ages fifteen and seventeen, were hit, as well as twelve-year-old girl. The three were taken to the hospital and survived their injuries. The seventeen-year-old was apprehended and charged with attempted murder. Thankfully, no one lost his or her life during this shootout; however, Tomorrowland was the scene for another violent confrontation a few years later that did end in death.

Disneyland’s first death stemming from violence was in March of 1981. In an odd similarity to the gang shootout, on the evening of March 7
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, Disneyland was again rented out for a private party, this time by the Rohr Corporation. Eighteen-year-old Mel went to the park that evening with a few friends; some stories indicate that Mel may have been intoxicated. Their evening of joking around and having fun near the Matterhorn escalated to a dangerous apex when Mel supposedly pinched the rear end of a woman walking by him. The woman, twenty-five-year-old Julie, told her boyfriend, twenty-eight-year-old James, who confronted Mel. A fight between the two men ensued. After an exchange of punches, the two men ended up on the ground, where the two pummeled each other and rolled on the ground. Mel eventually rolled off James. His shirt was covered in blood; he had been stabbed with an 8.5-inch buck knife.

The knife pierced his heart, diaphragm, and liver. As Mel lay in Tomorrowland bleeding to death, James fled the scene.

As security scoured the park for James, he was found hiding in a bush in Adventureland. He told police Mel was choking him on the ground and he must have fell onto his knife repeatedly when the two were tussling around on the ground. James was arrested and convicted of second-degree murder charges. He received a sentence of sixteen years to life in prison. While James was hiding in a bush, Mel was dying. A nurse that happened to be visiting the park that evening, saw him on the ground bleeding and immediately started to work on him. She was trying to stop the bleeding from his wounds by applying pressure with her hands, hoping an ambulance was on its way.

Instead, and this is where some of the stories get fuzzy and play out in years of long court cases, the park nurse employed by Disney came on the scene.  She determined that Mel must be transported to the hospital. Rather than call paramedics, she would accompany Mel, as he was bleeding to death, in the Disney first aid van on a trip to the hospital. The trip to the hospital took over ten minutes as the ride was in a first aid van; basically just a regular old van, driven by a Disney security guard. There were no flashing lights or medical equipment. They encountered traffic along the way and obeyed all the rules of the road by stopping at traffic lights on the two-plus-mile trip. When Mel arrived at the hospital he was already dead. Mel’s family filed a $60 million wrongful death suit against Disney. The lawyers for Mel’s family said Disney was ill equipped to handle the situation. Rather than loading him into the first aid van, paramedics should have been called and perhaps his life could have been saved.