Disney Worker Killed During Parade Preparations.

[buffalobill]

Don't have any information yet but MSNBC is reporting that a worker in costume was killed (run over by a float) during preparations for a parade. Horrible news.

[Disney Guru]

That is trajic news that a fellow disney worker died while working on the parade. Hey was there a person driving the float. Was it inentional for this man to die ? What is the complete story ?

[englishboy]

It was magic kingdom, orlando.



NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS - News) worker was killed during a parade at the Magic Kingdom theme park Wednesday afternoon, the Orlando Sentinel reports in an article on its Web site, citing rescue officials.

The worker, a costumed character taking part in an afternoon parade, was killed about 3:15 p.m. EST (2015 GMT), Bo Jones, assistant chief of the Reedy Creek Fire Department, told the newspaper.

"It was a costumed character, but I don't know which one," Jones said, according to the Sentinel. Jones was unable to confirm reports that the worker was killed after being hit by a float.

Though unaware of the cause, Jones said the accident occurred in a backstage area, out of sight of guests. Jones said the Orange County Sheriff's Office was looking into the death, the newspaper said.

Disney officials didn't immediately return calls to the paper.

[Prince Adam]

Was it a full-fledged masked costume? Was it due to poor visibility? Clumsiness? Or was it an accident at all?

This is horrible. The fact that a person died, I mean. The fact that it happened to a Disney Character is even worse.

I can hear the newscaster now:

"Parents, you may want to clear the kids out of the room for this one. _______(insert Mickey, Donald, Pooh etc) has been run over by a float."

[Tangela]

Wow! This marks the 10th death at the Disney parks... Several other people died:

May 1964: Mark Maples, a 15-year-old Long Beach, CA, resident, was killed when he tried to stand up on the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Maples (or his companion) foolishly unbuckled his seatbeat and attempted to stand up as their bobsled neared the peak of the mountain. Maples lost his balance and was thrown from the sled to the track below, fracturing his skull and ribs and causing internal injuries. He died three days later.

June 1966: Thomas Guy Cleveland, a 19-year-old Northridge, CA, resident, was killed when he attempted to sneak into Disneyland along the Monorail track. Cleveland scaled the park's sixteen-foot high outer fence on a Grad Nite and climbed onto the Monorail track, intending to jump or climb down once inside the park. Cleveland ignored a security guard's shouted warnings of an approaching Monorail train and failed to leap clear of the track. He finally climbed down onto a fiberglass canopy beneath the track, but the clearance wasn't enough -- the oncoming train struck and killed him, dragging his body 30 to 40 feet down the track.

August 1967: Ricky Lee Yama, a 17-year-old Hawthorne, CA, resident, was killed when he disregarded safety instructions and exited his People Mover car as the ride was passing through a tunnel. Yama slipped as he was jumping from car to car and was crushed to death beneath the wheels of oncoming cars.

June 1973: Bogden Delaurot, an 18-year-old Brooklyn resident, drowned trying to swim across the Rivers of America. Delaurot and his 10-year-old brother managed to stay on Tom Sawyer Island past its dusk closing time by climbing the fence separating the island from the burning settlers' cabin. When they decided to leave the island a few hours later, they chose to swim across the river rather than call attention to their rule-breaking by appealing to cast members for help. Because the younger brother did not know how to swim, Delaurot tried to carry him on his back as he swam to shore. Bogden Delaurot went down about halfway across the river. The younger boy remained afloat by dogpaddling until a ride operator hauled him aboard a boat, but Bogden was nowhere to be found. His body was not located by searchers until the next morning.

7 June 1980: Gerardo Gonzales, a recent San Diego high school graduate, was killed on the People Mover in an accident much like the one that had befallen Ricky Lee Yama thirteen years earlier. Gonzales, in the early morning hours of a Grad Nite celebration, was climbing from car to car as the People Mover entered the SuperSpeed Tunnel adjacent to the former America Sings building. Gonzales stumbled and fell onto the track, where an oncoming train of cars crushed him beneath its wheels and dragged his body a few hundred feet before being stopped by a ride operator.

4 June 1983: Philip Straughan, an 18-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, resident, also drowned in the Rivers of America in yet another Grad Nite incident. Straughan and a friend -- celebrating both their graduations and Straughan's eighteenth birthday -- had been drinking quite heavily that evening. They sneaked into a "Cast Members Only" area along the river and untied an inflatable rubber maintenance motorboat, deciding to take it for a joyride around the river. Unable to adequately control the boat, they struck a rock near Tom Sawyer Island, and Straughan was thrown into the water. His friend travelled back to shore to seek help, but Straughan drowned long before his body was finally located an hour later.

3 January 1984: Dolly Regene Young, a 48-year-old Fremont, CA, resident, was killed on the Matterhorn in an incident remarkably similar to the first Disneyland guest death nearly twenty years earlier. About two-thirds of the way down the mountain Young was thrown from her seat into the path of an oncoming bobsled, her head and chest becoming pinned beneath its wheels. An examination of Young's sled revealed that her seatbelt was not fastened at the time of the accident, but because she was riding alone in the rear car of a sled no one could determine whether or not she had deliberately unfastened her belt.

24 December 1998: In a tragic Christmas Eve accident, one Disneyland cast member and two guests were injured (one fatally) when a rope used to secure the sailing ship Columbia as it docked on the Rivers of America tore loose the metal cleat to which it was attached. The cleat sailed through air and struck the heads of two guests who were waiting to board the ship, Luan Phi Dawson, 33, of Duvall, Washington, and his wife, Lieu Thuy Vuong, 43. Dawson was declared brain dead two days later and died when his life support system was disconnected.
This accident resulted in the first guest death in Disneyland's history that was not attributable to any negligence on the part of the guest (it was the result of a combination of insufficiently rigorous ride maintenance and an insufficiently experienced supervisor's assuming an attraction operator's role) and prompted a movement for greater government oversight of theme park operations and safety procedures.


5 September 2003: A 22-year-old man, Marcelo Torres of Gardena, California, died, and several other guests were injured, when a locomotive separated from its train along a tunnel section of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Torres bled to death after suffering blunt force trauma of the chest.

I didn't know another one had died just last year...
This info comes from:

Snopes.com
Where the nightmares live!

Check it out, many other Disney legends are stored here...

[Prince Adam]

This is a horrible thing to say, but many of these deaths are the result of the victim's stupidity: you just don't jump from car to car, or swim across the Rivers of America if you can't swim!

I'm sorry they died, though .

[Tangela]

This is a horrible thing to say, but many of these deaths are the result of the victim's stupidity: you just don't jump from car to car, or swim across the Rivers of America if you can't swim!

I'm sorry they died, though .

You're right, Prince Adam, most of the deaths that I've listed above were foolish teen-agers, so it isn't really a horrible thing to say, since its true.

[jambo*rafiki]

3/5 of the victims you've listed were under 20 and died because of their own stupidity. 7/10 were under 22. Although the fact that 10 people have died is horrible, knowing that it's happened only to that many in 40 years is pretty reassuring. The message is simple here, kids: don't try to mess with the Disney Park rules. They're there for a reason.

[Disneykid]

That really is horrible news. Did the CM die right then at the parks or did they die afterwards? I ask because there's only been one actual death at any of the Disney parks (the Big Thunder Mountain accident a few months ago at DL), and absolutely none at WDW, so this would be the first there.

[Tangela]

That really is horrible news. Did the CM die right then at the parks or did they die afterwards? I ask because there's only been one actual death at any of the Disney parks (the Big Thunder Mountain accident a few months ago at DL), and absolutely none at WDW, so this would be the first there.

There was a rumor that said than no one had ever being declared dead while on Disney property, they would wait until they had taken the bodies away before declaring them gone. I know this was somewhere at the Urban Legends Reference pages, but I do not remember if it was true, or false.

http://snopes.com/disney/parks/declare.htm

There's the story, fellows, but as the red bulllet says, it is a false statement.

[MickeyMousePal]

That's horrible accidents always happen in Disneyland because people are not carful.

I feel bad for all the deaths that happen there.

[AwallaceUNC]

So any updates on what actually happened? Which costumed character, exactly how it went down, was it intentional (doubtful), when they died, the aftermath, etc.?

-Aaron

[Tangela]

So any updates on what actually happened? Which costumed character, exactly how it went down, was it intentional (doubtful), when they died, the aftermath, etc.?

-Aaron

Hmmm... I've tried the Urban Legends Reference Pages http://snopes.com but they don't seem to have updated anything yet. It seems that more than 9 people died, since this list was only talking about guests, there were two crew members killed, one of them was caught in a rotating wall in the Carousel of Progress.

[Tangela]

I have some info here, that might be interesting, I have just found out which dressed character it was, it was the guy dressed as Pluto and the man had two children.

That's all I know.

[Chernabog]

Here you can read about it all:
http://www.mouseplanet.com/wdwupdate/accident/

[AwallaceUNC]

Thanks. So sad

-Aaron

[Anders M Olsson]

Even though this news item has nothing to do with Disney, I still think it's worth mentioning because it's so bizarre.

It was all over the newspaper billboards yesterday here in Sweden.

This past weekend, a young man in a moomintroll costume was run over by a car and killed. Apparently he was lying down in the middle of the road while his partners were videofilming the whole thing.

You can read the full story here:
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local ... 781418.ece

(Note that the article says "mummy-like costume". I guess that the translator didn't know the proper English word for moomintroll.)

Edit: They have changed the article now, so that it no longer reads "mummy-like costume".

[karlsen]

It has been all over the Norwegian news as well (the link you had was for a Norwegian paper)

There are a lot of sick people around that just want to do something crazy, and they are inspired by the Jackass programs.

The trouble is that normal people with a steady mind know that this is stupid, but somebody else might think its a good idea.

This kids first idea was to go into the road and wave to the cars, but then suddenly decided that he was going to be lying down instead.

The first car missed him, but then he moved a little and the next car did not see him before it was to late.

It is ofcause sad for the whole family, but I can't manage to get sorry for him. Something is just to stupid to do.