Disney Deaths Pt. 2: The Disney Dark Ages

The new park was a companion piece to disneyland, on the same plot of land, but across a small plaza and through a separate ticketed entrance. While Disneyland was the classic, family oriented park the disney brand was known for, pressler wanted California Adventure to be more grown up. He relied on vendors and merchants to design the parks rather than imagineers, wanting to create a space that would allow adults to enjoy the disney experience while simultaneously spending as much money as possible on goods.

And on that sunny winter day in southern california, Paul was probably looking at the parks palm tree lined streets and spanish style architecture thinking that this would be his legacy. 100 years from now when they talk about the disney parks, this would be what he’s remembered for.

But Paul would be wrong. See, Paul Pressler would be the man that ushered in what was known as the dark ages of the Disneyland parks. A period of time regarded as the bloodiest era in it’s history.

Today, I’m going to shed light on some of those stories, and more. And as always, listener discretion is advised.

INTRO

Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore

This is a community of people who love to follow their dark curiosity wherever it leads them. Those of us that want to get to the dark underbelly of something as harmless as i dont know, the disney parks. If you’d like to dive further into the community, you can follow the show on instagram and tiktok for smaller doses of spooks at heart starts pounding, or join me in our patreon community dubbed The Rogue Detecting society. there , you’ll have access to some bonus content. If you were a part of our patreon, you would have heard some of these stories I’m going to share today in a patreon exclusive episode last month. Just a heads up, I’ll be off next week for the 4th of July holiday, but will be back with regularly scheduled programming the week after. If you’d like more content in that time, I encourage you to check out the Timekeeper, the fiction audio drama podcast I produced earlier this year. It’s streaming on it’s own feed wherever you get your podcasts

So to start, I actually wanted to clarify something from last week’s episode. Last week, I mentioned how in 2005, 6 people had already been taken to the hospital from the Mission Space ride in Disneyworld. Upon further reading did I realize that number only reflects the amount of people who were taken to the hospital. 194 people had the paramedics called for them after riding the ride from passing out, nausea, dizziness, etc. The ride seemed to be doing more harm than good, and it was this discovery that lead me down an even deeper, darker path of safety concerns in the disney parks.

And with that tidbit, let’s dive back into part two of Disney tragedies, because I want to tell you more about the Disneyland Dark ages that I referenced earlier. A period from the mid 90’s to early 2000’s known for it’s malfunctioning rides, underprepared attendants, and as a result, deaths. One of the worst accidents to occur under this leadership, was the that of Brandon Zucker

On September 22nd, 2000, The zucker family went to disneyland. They actually lived in orange county, california, so Disney was basically down the street for them.

That afternoon, Four year old brandon and his mother, Victoria, went to go on the Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Ride, a ride designed for younger kids based off of the Roger Rabbit IP.

The ride is composed of individual cars that take you through a few rooms decorated with various cartoon scenes. The cars don’t move very fast, basically walking speed, but riders can spin them from side to side using a wheel in the car, kind of like teacups.

You load into the cars from a small opening on the right side. Think like a passenger side door that doesn't close. The left side is completely solid, so it was recommended at the time that children load in first, that way adults are against the opening. However, when Brandon and his mother loaded into the car, the attendant let his mother in first, meaning that the 45 pound boy was unprotected on one side.

It was also discovered that the seatbelt, which in 2000’s was a pull down lap bar, wasn’t pulled down far enough to secure the boy in place.

At one point during the ride, Brandon reached down to grab something that he had dropped, when he tumbled out of the car completely. He lay on the track, stunned from the impact. Within moments, he was struck by an oncoming car which folded his body in half, and dragged down the track.

At the time, protocol required employees to call the disney security center, not 911, who would in turn call the anaheim fire department. Disney didn’t even have paramedics on sight which means that precious time was wasted, and in total, Brandon was trapped under the car for around 10 minutes before paramedics were able to reach him. He was in rough shape, but he was alive.

His injuries included a fractured pelvis, a collapsed lung, and a torn liver and spleen. Brandon had also suffered cardiac arrest as well as brain damage, and was rushed to the hospital where he was placed into an induced coma for over a month.

He would survive the coma, but, he would never speak or walk again. His mother said that he would sometimes laugh or smile, but he was unresponsive other than that. Disney reached an undisclosed settlement agreement with Zucker's family, and some lawyers who have worked on similar cases estimate that it was between 20 to 30 million dollars. Brandon died peacefully when he was just 13 years old from complications from the accident

There were a few things that went wrong to lead to this accident. For one, not having paramedics on site,two, the attendants were not trained properly on how to close the seatbelts or load in passenger, and three, there were no basic safety precautions some kids rides have, like sensors on the cars to know to stop the ride if someone falls out. This accident seemed to be a direct result of policies put into place when. Paul Pressler became president of the disney parks in 1994. By 1997 he decided that new safety measures would be implemented on an as needed basis. That meant instead of preemptively fixing rides and adding safety measures at disney, which costs money, The park would wait for incidents to arise. That way they were only spending money when they needed to. I guess settlements with families of the deceased and OSHA fines were less expensive rides, i dont know, I’m not a business man.

Before, each ride had it’s own maintenance crew, but now. There was one team of maintenance workers that floated around on an as needed basis. oh , and they were typically asked to work at night, when there were less people in the park. So if something happened during the day, there was no one there to fix it. Employees hated this, and begged for the newly implemented system to change back, but Pressler was all about savings,

The first major disaster to occur because of this rule was in 1998, on a colonial style ship called The Columbia that did a slow loop on the Rivers Of America. On Christmas eve, the ship came in too fast. Typically, if a ship overshoots the dock, the crew was supposed to wait for it to slow down, and reverse back to the dock, where they would tie it up and let people off. But a castmember was filling in that day, and wasn’t trained on this protocol. So as the ship was speeding in,They grabbed the rope that was attached to the ship and tied it to the dock, not realizing that this was not going to make the ship stop.

The speed of the ship made the rope too taught, and it ripped an 8 pound metal piece from the side. The piece whipped through the air and hit a guest, 33 year old Microsoft engineer Luan Dawson, square in the head. It was ruled that he died from a brain hemhorrage and skull fracture. His wife who was standing beside him suffered quote “horrific facial trauma”. The sight was so bad that multiple cast members had to be hospitalized JUST FOR SEEING WHAT HAPPENED.

When police arrived at the scene, they were met by disney executives who brought them into a conference room for four hours while they waited for the crime scene to be scrubbed of blood and Dawsons brain matter. So by the time the police got to the scene, it didn’t look so bad. It just looked like a piece of the boat ripped off. Police ruled in Disney’s favor, it was clearly just an accident.

But in reality, staff knew that the Columbia was in rough shape. They had been making complaints that the wood was weak and needed to be patched up. But their requests went completely ignored, because that was not protocol. The ship would be repaired when it was broken, and at the time, it wasn’t broken yet. They didn’t yet realize that by the time it did break, it would be way too late.

Again, Disney reached an agreement with Dawson’s family for an amount that’s estimated to be about $25million. And an investigation reversed the polices initial findings and exposed disney for cleaning up the crime scene. This was the first time in the parks history that a death was ruled to be the fault of the park and not the individual. I can’t imagine the savings were making this dangerous new precedent worth it.

The deaths at the park were the most visible to the public, but the amount of smaller accidents stacking up under Presslers rule was also astonishing.

In 1999, an 11-year old boy was riding the teacups when he was flung from the ride, suffering a fractured vertebrae and concussion. During his trail, the judge ruled that the teacup he was riding in had not been properly maintained, and a safety check that was performed on the ride after the accident was not done thoroughly

And then there was James Eubanks, who was riding splash mountain when disaster struck. He and his girlfriend were sitting next to each other in the log vehicle, when all of a sudden it jerked forward quickly. James threw his hand forward to stop himself, and in the process, his ring got snagged on a screw that was protruding from a piece of wood outside of the ride. This resulted in his finger being ripped off from the socket.

Disney ruled that James’ hand shouldn’t have been outside of the vehicle for any reason, and refused to pay the man’s lost wages and medical bills. They had a reputation to uphold. A reputation that was getting harder and harder to keep squeaky clean.

Pressler left Disney in 2002 but the legacy of his policies would take years to improve. The rides were in worse shape than ever from years of missed maintenance checks. That’s why the last of the disasters, and one of the worst to happen to a specific ride, occurred in 2003

On september 5th, 2003, recent college graduate Marcello Torres went to disney with his friend Vicente. He had just started a business in California, after years of traveling back and forth between America and Chile to finish his education.

Around 11:15am, Marcello loaded into the Big Thunder Mountain coaster, sitting in the first passenger car. Big Thunder Mountain coaster opened in 1979, and is modeled after a train speeding through gold mines. It takes you around a few fast turns and over some small hills as you zoom through the red rocks of the pioneer west. It’s a fun ride, built for families to enjoy. The first car of the ride is the front of the locomotive, and people load into the cargo crates behind, two to a car. So when I say that Marcello was in the first passenger car, know there was an empty train car in front of him.

30 minutes before Marcello entered the rides, a few employees heard a strange clanking noise coming from the coaster. They decided to let it run for 12 more times, all of which ran successfully but still had a strange clanking noise coming from the front of the coaster. Ultimately, it was decided that the ride would go for one more run before they called maintenance. That was the run Marcello was on. The 13th run.

The ride started out ok, but as it made it’s way through one of the first tunnels, a bolt came loose in one of the front wheels of the first car, the car in front of Marcello. This caused the wheel to come off, resulting in the front of the car nosediving toward the track. The force of the nosedive cause the back of the front car to lift, which in turn cause the bar holding marcellos car to the front car to snap. Before anyone could even register what was happening, the back of the front car hit the top of the tunnel, and marcellos car continued forward, slamming into the bottom of it.

The attendants working the ride didn’t see what happened, it was blocked by the tunnel. But they heard it. Metal scraping, cars all slamming together like an accordion, and screaming. Next thing they knew, they could see passengers running from the tunnel. Help, someone’s hurt! they screamed

For the rest of the passengers, the ones that were trapped from the crash and couldn’t escape their cars, it was an hour before the fire department and paramedics could get them out.

All In all 10 riders had gotten hurt, but Marcello was pronounced dead at the scene. His friend Vicente was the most hurt of the other riders. He had cuts to his face, a bad chest injury and potentially broken ribs, but he would go on to make a full recovery.

Unlike the case of Brandon Zucker, Disney admitted fault for Marcello’s death. They wouldn’t, however, admit that it was due to a systematic safety issue from years of forgoing maintenance checks to save money. However, it was found that someone who didn’t inspect the ride signed off on it being safe, and that attendants were not trained on what to do if a ride was making sounds they weren’t familiar with. Marcellos family settled with disney for an undisclosed amount, and half a million dollars was donated from the settlement to Brooks College in Long Beach for scholarships.

The safety concerns were mounting at the Disneyland parks in the early 2000’s. But across the country at disneyWORLD. Another concern was mounting. After the break

BREAK

So while Disneyland was having it’s own safety concerns over rides breaking down. Disney world was having safety concerns over something else. In seems that in their quest to design the worlds most thrilling rides, they had created some rides that were not fit for human riders.

Mission Space is a great example of a symptom of this problem. In an effort to build something the world had never seen before, they ended up building a ride that needed extensive medical intervention.

Maybe this was because in part, Disney didn’t hire traditional imagineers to build this ride. They hired Environmental Tectonics Corp. I’ll give you 1,000 guesses as to what this company specialized in building. I’m serious. What do you think they make? Well the answer is flight simulators for the military.

Should the people who make training simulations for combat be designing childrens rides, Walt??? Walter. Mr. Disney?

Well actually, maybe they should, because in 2001 they abandoned the project. This was after accusing Disney of blocking them from conducting important safety testing on the ride. So the ride was going to be intense, but they were experts in how much force a human being could reasonably handle.

The issue seemed to stem from Disney’s way of conceptualizing rides. They come up with a fun concept, usually one more thrilling than the last, and THEN they start figuring out how to build it. They don’t start with what’s possible, which honestly is probably why so many of their rides are amazing. They’ve only had the occasional miss.

But on some of these thrilling rides, there are opportunities for the guests to hurt themselves, like Disneyworld’s Splash mountain. In 2000, William Pollock was not feeling well on the ride, and in a panic, decided to bail. The ride had come to a stop, and guests were not strapped down in the flume, so William decided to get up and jump from the log towards the exit. However, as he got out of his seat the ride started again. He fell into the water and was hit by an oncoming boat, dying on the spot. If you build rides that are too much for people, some may want to exit halfway through.

I said this in the last disney episode, but though there are some issues in the park, it’s still extremely safe to ride the rides. And the issues outlined in this episode are NOT exclusive to disney. If anything, disney has more of a reputation to uphold than some other theme parks WHICH I will definitely talk about in a future episode. When safety measures are upheld there’s rarely any issues, it’s just when they’re ignored, which is usually in the name of saving money.

Speaking of which,

I wanted to end with another story, though not about disney. The tragedies that occurred under paul pressler's leadership were direct results of safety measures being cut for profit. And in the last Disney episode, i told a story about how I worked at a fast food restaurant that had issues with the back freezer they wouldn't fix. And how I got locked in one time. And a bunch of you sent me the following article.

On May 11th of this year, 63 year old Nguyet Le was found frozen to death inside of an Arby’s freezer in Iberia Louisiana. This location had opened last year, and Nguyet was temporarily assigned to be the general manager, a job that was supposed to last for four weeks but had been extended by two.

We now know, that the door to this Arby’s freezer had been malfunctioning since August of 2022, and employees were using a screw driver to open and close the door. They would also use a box of oil to keep the door propped open, similar to what I used to have to do. You can’t see me right now but there is smoke pouring out of my ears.

On May 11th, Nguyet was dropped off early in the morning to open the store. It would be a few hours before the other employees, one of which was her son, arrived for their shifts at 10. At some point while opening, she went into the freezer and got locked in. There was no one else in the store to witness this.

It was her son who found her, face down on the floor of the -10 degrees F freezer upon arriving for his shift. The blood on the door indicated she had been banging on it until her hands were bloody.

The problem had been reported to the district AND regional managers since August, the latter of which visited the restaurant to inspect the door. During this inspection, Nguyet personally showed him that the door was broken.

Her family is suing Arby’s, as well as Turbo Restaurants, the private owner of this specific location, and Sun Holdings who owns turbo.

Articles reporting on Nguyet’s death made mention of other times tragedies have struck in industrial freezers. at The Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, Carolyn Robinson Mangham beat her knuckles bloody against a freezer door before succumbing to hypothermia. Weeks before her death in 2016, another employee had gotten locked in the same freezer and had to beat against the back wall until someone heard her and let her out just in time. After Carolyn’s death, the medical examiner, OSHA and a representative from an equipment servicing agency performed over 30 tests on the door to figure out what mechanism had failed. And each time they performed the test, the door opened perfectly.

But three weeks later, another two employees got trapped inside after the exit button malfunctioned. Luckily, they both survived.

When you go into a Disney Park, or a walk in freezer for that matter, you shouldn’t have to assume that what you're doing could be a risk to your life. The responsibility can’t fall 100% on the individual all of the time, so long as you’re adhering to standard safety measures.

So, be careful out there, and enjoy the upcoming holiday. I’ll catch you when we’re back on the 12th.

This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Music by artlist.

Another special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com

Until next time, stay curious, oooo

Kaelyn Moore

Disney Deaths Pt. 2: The Disney Dark Ages

SOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Murder On The Lake: Finland's Greatest Unsolved Mystery

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Heart Starts Pounding