The following article is based on a report from a family’s experience at Disney World as relayed via a long-time poster on the “Disboards”. To read the entire account from one of the family members, click on this link.
A family reports that they were admitted to the Tiana’s Bayou Adventure attraction (formerly known as Splash Mountain) at Walt Disney World Resort during a thunderstorm. These individuals who would have clearly exhibited mobility issues to Disney World workers, were put into a ride vehicle during inclement weather and were then sent on their way. Shortly into the attraction, the ride stopped and announcements were made over the intercoms. The family alleges that the weather was so bad that the Disney workers were ordered to take shelter over the announcements. However, this disabled family — along with their medical devices — and other guests were reportedly left out in the storm, under thunder and lightning, stuck on the ride with no way to escape. It was so bad that they allege their medical items were damaged during the long period of time in which they were stranded with no way to find help.
Felipe the Frog, Mayra the Frog, Isabel the Green Tree Frog, and Mondo the Frog inside Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
Dear reader, let us present the following as a kind of “thought experiment” for the following scenario:
You are waiting in an airport for your flight in the lounge at the gate and looking out the window at the plane that is about to take you and another 200 passengers and crew up into the 40,000 feed of the wide open sky. The plane is a pinnacle of modern science, engineering, and industrialism with hundreds of thousands of parts and procedures all designed and constantly checked to make the flight effortless, routine, and most importantly….SAFE. The airline is a major, not some literally fly-by-night no-name in the 3rd world that might cause you concern. You’re ready for your voyage and in a positive frame of mind.
And then, watching a maintenance person attending to the huge engines that develop thousands of horsepower to take you into the stratosphere, you see her, casually and almost by second nature, look at something in an engine, frown slightly, shrug, and then reach in her bag of tools and extract a roll of common plumber’s duct tape, roughly tear off a chunk, slap it into the engine works, cursorily inspect her work, shrug again, and slap the cowling down with a rough thud and move along.
The question: DO YOU GET ON THAT PLANE???
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure via TheTimTracker YouTube
ANOTHER consideration in the imagination for your exploration:
You’re in the kitchen of a famous gourmet restaurant. You’ve been invited to a special tasting menu dinner with the world-famous chef and his crew. You’re enjoying the sights, smells, and views of these professionals preparing the makings of your feast. You’re happy. You’re hungry. You’re ready to dine in style.
AND THEN, an assistant chef in those crispy whites opens a fridge and extracts an unwrapped, uncovered, and visibly mouldy and olfactorily off-putting chunk of what looks like week-old fish, notices you watching, smiles, and shrugs as if to say “Good enough—I’m not eating it—you are” and goes on with it to continue preparing your meal using the clearly spoiled, potentially health-threatening ingredient with a sigh of “no biggie” and another shrug and another bored grin to you.
The question: DO YOU EAT THAT MEAL?
Concept art for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
WHY DO I ASK? Because in a story that even now the crack fact-checkers and verifyers here at That Park Place and The Pro Channels are running down that seems, so far, to be honest, accurate, and true, recent guests at Walt Disney World were put in an ongoing, life threatening, dangerous and inescapable position by Cast Members who themselves sheltered from that situation even while leaving these guests, who happened to be disabled and thus even more helpless, to suffer, to risk potential illness, and to quite literally be placed in a situation entirely of Disney’s making and in which they had real potential to be KILLED.
And after these amazing breaches in good management, in legal liability, and in, by the way, potentially “killer” bad publicity, they were literally offered a poncho, a shirt, and a ride pass with that same shrugging smile we imagined above.
And again, the question? If you or your friends or your coworkers or the millions of potential visitors to Walt Disney World (the place on earth, happy or otherwise magical, that provides the largest chunk of profits to the entire multi-faceted Walt Disney Company) hear about this when it is verified as true and imagine yourself or people you know and care about put in similar jeopardy as A PART OF THE ROUTINE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES GOING ON DAILY AT THE PARK……DO YOU TAKE THAT MULTI-THOUSAND DOLLAR VACATION….EVER AGAIN?
Because the truth is in this day and age nothing like ANY of our scenarios above—the two imagined ones and the one potentially real imagineered one—takes place in a vacuum. It gets out. We all carry cameras. We all talk to the world on social media. And just as in bygone eras when we only gossiped verbally without all of the reach-enhancing electronic ability we now have, the BAD news and the BAD experiences and the SHOCKINGLY DANGEROUS is what gets shared the most. As they used to say in the newspaper business, “If it bleeds, it leads!”
The entrance to Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World via DocumentDisney YouTube
So…since every mom and pop enterprise in the world that’s lasted more than a few days in business knows this, even those owned or managed by callous, uncaring, good-for-nothing people we’d reject as friends and doubt as human beings, they FIX this stuff before it happens, they HIDE this stuff from public view, and they PREVENT this stuff by following basic, sensible, safe practices not perhaps because they’re caring souls—but because they know that their businesses and livelihoods are in jeopardy if they don’t.
You don’t have to be a sensitive, caring, decent, and careful manager working for a multi-billion dollar international corporation to know this. All you have to be (and all that you should need at bare minimum to be hired) is smart enough to know that what may KILL a customer—indeed is likely inevitably to do so—is not good for business. And what’s bad for business is bad for YOUR future financial, legal, and personal health and safety, too.
Promotional image of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure via Disney World website
But apparently this is what kind of management now runs the attractions at Walt Disney World. And if the managers allow this on a ride, what do they ignore in the kitchens, hotels, transportation vehicles, and other areas (not to mention in hiring people to serve their customers without sinister ulterior motives and/or criminal records?)
HOW BAD IS IT? This bad, it seems. And it brings us back to the same questions: Given that this seems to be the current status quo under the “professional” management of the Bob Iger Company, well….do you invest? Do you spend money? Do you potentially risk your life and that of your loved ones by walking through the very expensive price of admission door?
And IF “Mom’s Greasy Spoon” understands this….and “Ivan’s High Altitude Airline” understands this…and if YOU and ME and ANYONE who finds out about this who is NOT in that business or management understand this and gives a damn… WHAT ABOUT BOB?
