Editor's Note: Kevin will have two columns this week. Look for part two of his Walt Disney World round-up on Thursday. - Al
Rumors... World of Color?
I have no inside scoop on this question, but wanted to ask it anyway: what are the chances that they plan to roll out an actual show at Pleasure Island once the transition to Hyperion Wharf is done? A friend recently examined the artwork posted at PI with me, and together we noticed a few things.
Look closer…
First, there is terraced seating in the image. That doesn’t exist pre-refurb, so obviously it’s something they plan to add. By the looks of the image, this is right outside the current Harley Davidson store. Why would they build amphitheater seating next to Paradiso 37 unless they intended to add a show?
As for which show, the artwork reveals “Flowers and Trees” designs on columns… and that yellow Mickey design in the background—two things that remind me of DCA’s World of Color show. Could it be?
Clearly they couldn’t bring over the whole show. The water screens in particular would pose a problem for viewing. And could they (would they?) drain the lagoon to install fountains? Still, stranger things have happened. I’ve seen them wall off a section and drain just that (I think they did that for Anaheim’s Fantasmic a few years ago), so maybe they could install some fountains after all. Even if Hyperion Wharf only gets the smaller fountains and the dazzling color LEDs, it could be very cool indeed. I’m crossing my fingers.
An unrelated photo: the Beast’s castle is rising in Fantasyland!
An unrelated update: the castle projectors were covered one weekend in this
oddly-themed building, but it was gone the weekend after that.
Rumors... Tropical Serenade?
Speaking of tasty rumors completely unsubstantiated: what if the super-long extended closure of the Enchanted Tiki Room Under New Management was *NOT* for the purpose of replacing the fire-damaged Iago animatronic? What if the reason for the ultra-long closure was instead to replace the show with something closer to the original “Tropical Serenade” (ie, “regular” Tiki Room show) version of the attraction?
Supporting evidence:
- The attraction has been closed WAY too long to simply replace one burned animatronic (Iago)
- They didn’t originally block the view of the preshow from the walkway, but after several weeks, the preshow birds disappeared from view and THEN a wall went up, implying they are changing the show
- A manager in the area told a friend who told us (yes, this is all very third-person) that the “original” show is coming back… and one of the Iago animatronics (there were two) which was NOT damaged will be repurposed as the “Orange Bird” to serve as emcee.
- There’s been an awful lot of Orange Bird promotion with Disney lately, including on the artwork for the 40th anniversary stuff… are they prepping us for something?
Under New Management: Not long for the world?
At the end of the day, this is still just a rumor. I haven’t heard independent confirmation yet, but I have to say, I won’t be too surprised if we hear as such. This rehab is taking an AWFULLY long time to just replace one burned-up animatronic.
40x40 Meet
As you recall, I’m going on all forty attractions at the MK for the 40th anniversary (to be finished on October 1). Newcomers and first-timers are welcome to join in the fun! We meet every Saturday at 2pm, and have several regulars now. We have changed the meeting location to be in the air-conditioning (and away from summer rains): we now meet at Curtain Call Collectibles (which is at the EXIT to Meet Mickey in Town Square, not the entrance). There’s a large open carpeted area here by the door where we just set up residence, and we usually depart by 2:10 for our destination.
Each week, we visit one honored attraction. You can see the list of attractions, kept updated, here. This particular weekend, we’re going to the Astro-Orbiter. If you’re on vacation and want to drop by for the one attraction, feel free to melt back into the crowds after the ride. Several regulars stick around, though, and we travel as a group to whatever ride we feel like doing next. Everyone is welcome to do that, too!
If you’d like an email reminder of the meet each week, email me ([email protected]) and I’ll get you added to the yahoo “listserv” group. And/or you can opt to join a Facebook “page” to get updates on meets.
An unrelated photo: the Adventureland bridge is finally done!
Life and Death in the Magic Kingdom
I have a sad coda to include in today’s update. This past Saturday I witnessed a death at the Magic Kingdom. Normally I wouldn’t mention this kind of incident in the parks—it wasn’t Disney’s fault, and this kind of death is more frequent than most of us care to think about, even in Disney’s parks (it’s usually not reported unless an attraction is involved). But witnessing the event affected me pretty deeply, much more than I would have expected.
First, the facts. This appeared to be a collapse due to a medical condition. It happened on a sidewalk in Town Square. I was walking from the City Hall bathrooms toward the train station when a female guest (she was short, I think, but I can’t remember if she was a juvenile or an adult) crossed my path near City Hall and intercepted a blue-shirted Cast Member manager, saying “someone’s been hurt and there’s blood.” I glanced to my left and saw a woman on the sidewalk. She was doubled over, as if she were sitting cross-legged and with her head down so far her forehead was almost touching the concrete. It looked to me like she was moving her head almost continually in small motions (a little bit of up and down, perhaps some side to side), as if she were silently crying, but I couldn’t tell for sure, as she was facing the ground and her hair obscured her face. And I couldn’t hear anything.
I went up the train station steps and found my party on the second floor looking down at Town Square, so I pointed out to them the incident. “Look,” I said, “a Code-1” (this is Disney-speak for ‘medical situation…non-emergency’). The blue-shirted manager was bent down next to the woman, and the children (presumably with the woman) were clustered around as well. By now a few Cast Members were also nearby, facing outward in that familiar stance of warding off curious bystanders, keeping the area clear.
“That’s more than a Code-1,” said my friend, who is a Disney manager in another location. “That’s a Code-3. Look, he’s performing CPR!”
“CPR?! Where?” Donny, a fireman who was with my party that day, snapped into action, followed the silently pointed finger, and bolted without a word down the stairs. Before I knew it, he was at the side of the woman. The manager was indeed performing chest compressions, and Donny lent a hand. Some other Cast Members were in the area by now, including one with a defibrillator. I was impressed that none of them had sprinted into the area, which I’d seen in Code-3 situations at Disneyland some years before. Everyone seemed very professional. In fact, the Cast Members across the board performed well, and deserve to be commended.
At this distance, I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but Donny later shared that he applied the portable Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and made sure no one was touching the woman as it ascertained whether to administer a jolt. There was no pulse. Within a few minutes, paramedics from Reedy Creek had arrived with a stretcher, and they loaded the woman onto the stretcher and took her backstage, administering the breathing bag as they went. Donny later told me that in the absence of a pulse for so many minutes, it was all but impossible that the woman would recover (and if she did, she’d be brain dead). Her condition and lack of response, in fact, implied that she was probably dead before he even arrived on the scene. Possibly even before she hit the ground.
Not knowing what else to do, after a few minutes we collected our thoughts and decided to ride the train anyway, if for no other reason than to give ourselves time to process what had happened. By the time we returned from the round-trip voyage, the sidewalk had been cleaned (by bleach-water?) and was wet, but there was otherwise no trace of the incident.
Lacking any other information, I pieced together what I could by talking with Donny. The “bleeding” which I had heard about was likely on the woman’s forehead, and may have resulted from her smacking her face on the ground. Did she maybe trip and that caused the injury? My memory, increasingly hazy the more I poked at it, suggested she was not “lying down” when I first saw her, but had her legs under her. That seemed to argue against a trip/fall – maybe she collapsed first and then doubled over, smacking her head in the process? That would explain the blood. She may have had a heart attack or stroke, or some other calamitous medical emergency that robbed her of life very quickly.
It occurred to me at that point that those small motions I had seen may well have been convulsions in death rather than a sign of life and struggle. In other words, she may have been dead already by the time I saw her doubled over, with her forehead bobbing up and down just above the ground. I’ll confess that this is haunting my thoughts as I replay the image over and over in my imagination, which brings the horror of the situation into even sharper relief for me. My heart aches for the people in her family who were there, seeing everything I was.
I’d known that people have died at Disney parks before. Like many, I have heard the propaganda that “no one dies at Disney” – supposedly they don’t issue death certificates until the person is ushered out of the parks. But how can a death certificate claim death occurred “later” in those situations where vehicles had caused the death? So we’re dealing with semantics here.
Most of the time, you don’t know exactly WHERE it happens. You may hear “Typhoon Lagoon wave pool,” but you don’t know which exact corner that refers to. I only have a general idea usually, with the exception being the one tunnel in Disneyland’s Big Thunder where a bump upward marks the spot where the train derailed several years ago. That incident led me to thinking about the accident for several rides thereafter each time I was right here.
Having a specific spot to mark the incident rendered it more “real” somehow. The effect was magnified in my case because I had walked by only a few paces away, before there was a single Cast Member on the scene. I’m not sure how long it will be before I can walk by this section of concrete and not think of the incident. Into my brain are seared images of the woman’s young female companions (daughters?) who clutched at each other desperately at one moment as I watched from a distance. They must have realized at that moment that there was no pulse.
If Disney parks are the ultimate form of escapism, it seems the ultimate insult for death to come visiting here. Almost as if Fate it thumbing its nose at the idea of escapism—there *is* no escape, it almost seems to say. For someone who ponders the meaning and reception of Disney parks literally on a daily basis, this is a heavy message to absorb. It makes me chastise myself and wonder why I’ve been so shallow previously as to not “hear” the message until it unfolded right before my eyes. Why have I been so callous as to not see the symbolism of previous deaths at Disney parks?
To be sure, the Magic Kingdom is a place of happiness. I can follow the logic of the sole consoling thought in this whole affair; namely, that this woman shuffled off the mortal coil surrounded by loved ones while in the “happiest place on earth.” This is true, as far as that goes. When I go someday, as we all must, maybe I’d also like to be amidst the splendor of Walt Disney’s magical realms, where I’ve spent so many happy hours.
But for the people left behind, which certainly includes this woman’s family, the calculus is far less certain. The “place of happiness” will become a “place of sadness” for them—and possibly for me, too, at least for an uncertain period of time. Perhaps this emotional reaction will be localized just to the exact spot in Town Square where it unfolded. If so, that will be convenient. It will mean I can go about my day elsewhere in the Magic Kingdom. But that, too, will be problematic. I’m sure I will experience “survivor’s guilt” and hate myself for daring to have a good time in a place of tragedy.
Those exact emotions overtook me a few times that same day as I went about my business. I also could not help myself from photographing my own young children more that day than usual. Life-and-death situations have a way of reinforcing a true perspective—only on such days can you truly appreciate what really matters.
A little bit of the luster has rubbed off the “Magic” Kingdom for me. I hope it comes back. But part of me also hopes it doesn’t. Wouldn’t that mean I will have lost some of my humanity, to so callously forget what transpired here? The grieving process seems to have overtaken me, too, despite being completely ancillary and auxiliary to the event. In yet another novel way, Disney’s theme parks have become a microcosm of the rest of society and life. At the end of the day, “escapism” is revealed to be an illusion after all (was there ever really any doubt?), and the true nature of the human condition shines through.
My thoughts and prayers are with the family. |