5 Phrases From the ‘Incidents at Disneyland’ Wikipedia Page That Merit Closer Inspection
I’ll be honest: reading this Wikipedia list was a real slog. A lot of gruesome deaths, both accidental and premeditated, have served as a blood sacrifice to the ghost of Walt Disney. Lucky for you, there are a handful of kinda funny ones, five of which I’ve compiled below. Even if the events themselves are a bit nuanced, I think we can all agree: These are extremely funny phrases to read.
‘Winnie the Pooh Slapped a 10-Year-Old Girl’
In 1978, a dude in a Winnie the Pooh costume was accused of clocking a young girl in the head, causing recurring headaches and possible brain damage. It doesn’t appear that he disputed knocking the girl on her ass, but he claimed she was messing with his costume, and when he whipped around to see what was going on, he accidentally bumped her.
A plausible story. But how to prove this in a court of law?
During his trial, the guy came back from a recess in full Pooh regalia, and underwent questioning in character. He even danced a jig. Ultimately, the jury was convinced that the bulky suit left him physically incapable of winding up and KO-ing a fifth grader.
‘Fondled Her Breast While Shouting ‘Mommy! Mommy!’’
It should go without saying: Sexual assault isn’t funny. This phrase only makes the list because it was, most likely, an ill-conceived lie. In 1976, a park guest claimed that one of the Three Little Pigs felt her up in this cartoonishly lascivious way, and sued Disney for $150,000. She claimed that the mental distress from her assault (and “false imprisonment”) caused her to gain 50 pounds.
We’re no champions of Disney’s lawyers, but they came up with a pretty elegant way to test the veracity of this claim: They showed the alleged victim a picture of the Three Little Pigs costumes, which clearly featured stubby little pig hooves that were largely incapable of most forms of groping. Whether because it was a lie, or because it was clearly going to be an uphill battle to prove, the suit was dropped before it went to trial.
‘Left the Scene of the Accident, Exited the Park and Was Never Seen Again’
This may have been Disneyland’s very first “incident,” occurring the week it opened in 1955. America was only a couple of decades removed from the peak of carnival fever, and the entertainment business was still wildly unregulated and lousy with kooky carnival folk.
A brakeman on the Disneyland Railroad pulled his lever just a smidge too soon, causing his train, the Retlaw 2 — that’s “Walter” backward; what a fucking dweeb — to kind of split two tracks. He basically found a third option in that Trolley Problem meme; one that caused the caboose to slam into a concrete wall and immediately derail.
No one was injured, but this guy knew his bosses probably weren’t the “silver lining” type, so he calmly skedaddled from the wreckage and remains anonymous to this day.
‘Aggravated by the ‘Blaring Christmas Carols’’
If you’ve ever been in a CVS between the months of September and December, you know this guy’s pain. In 2009, a man was riding It’s A Small World during its special holiday overlay, when the ride broke down in the final room. He was stuck on a Disney ride for nearly 40 minutes, with Christmas music being blasted into his skull. Infinite Guantanamo Bay guards with infinite typewriters couldn’t come up with a punishment that cruel.
To make matters worse, he suffered from quadriplegia, meaning both his arms and both legs were paralyzed. This made it impossible for him to be evacuated with everyone else on the ride, forcing him to endure this torture alone. He successfully sued the park for not having better evacuation procedures — and warnings — for disabled guests.
‘Police Attempted to Escort the Yippies Out of the Park’
I was sure that Yippies were some highly sexual offshoot of Furries, but they’re even cooler than that. The Youth International Party, whose members were sometimes called the “Groucho Marxists,” was an anti-war, pro-marijuana movement founded in the late 1960s to fight injustice through the power of elaborate goofs. Picture Improv Everywhere, but with a pulse.
They were well-known for being peacefully facetious, but that didn’t stop Orange County from deploying every one of their police forces to the park, and setting up a special court to prosecute them, on the day of a planned rally in 1970. The group symbolically captured Fort Wilderness, replacing the American flag with their own — the communist red star overlaid with a cannabis leaf — causing the park to close down for the day. Eighteen Yippies were arrested for trespassing, and drug possession, naturally.