As phone camera technology continues to evolve, even the most basic, inexpensive smart phones now feature decent onboard cameras. The convenience and ease of use have driven an explosion in selfies, or photographs of the camera owner engaging in daily life. Naturally, people on a Disney vacation want to capture every moment of the fun, and Disney selfies are rampant. Increasingly, however, phone camera owners are not satisfied with taking an extreme close-up of themselves with one or two friends. Enter the selfie stick.
Designed to extend the reach of a camera or cell phone, the selfie stick is a collapsible, portable device that at first glance looks something like a tripod without the legs. It allows you to hold the camera further away, getting more people and more of the background into your photo. While the selfie stick is becoming all the rage in some places, at crowded theme parks like those at Walt Disney World, it could easily become a liability. Here are 5 reasons why Disney should ban the selfie stick.
1. Crowd levels
Disney parks are incredibly crowded places, packing people together in winding queues and areas with dim lighting. For parades and fireworks shows, not everyone can be in the front row. How is it possibly fair for someone to hold a camera 3 feet above his head, blocking the view of dozens of people behind him? How is it safe for someone to try to extend a selfie stick in the middle of a tightly packed queue? And how is it good for hourly counts and other operational ride concerns for someone to hold up the boarding process while she extends the stick, takes a selfie, and puts it away again?
2. Ride safety
“Please keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the ride vehicle at all times.” This is arguably one of the most constant refrains you will hear throughout a day in the parks. In a way, the selfie stick becomes an extension of your arm. What if you don’t know there’s a low head clearance area coming up, and your iPhone shatters on impact, or the entire selfie stick goes sailing out of your hands, landing on a guest behind or below you? As a former ride attendant, I personally collected dozens of cameras that guests had dropped from their hands, some intact and many broken. Extending that camera 3 feet from the body only increases the possible risks.
3. Weapon potential
While it’s not the happiest thing to think about, not everyone at Disney is there with good intentions. Even the calmest and most laid-back person’s nerves can be frayed by the heat, wait times, and close interactions with strangers. In this era of bag checks and an ever-evolving list of banned items, allowing guests to bring in long, metal sticks just seems to be asking for trouble.
4. Flash photography restrictions
If you have ever sat in the back of a Pirates of the Caribbean boat while someone in every row ahead of you took flash pictures throughout the ride (as happened to me yesterday), you know that the restrictions are there for a reason. While banning selfie sticks certainly wouldn’t solve the problem, allowing them just gives people one more reason to ignore the rules.
5. Liability concerns
From a business point of view, selfie sticks could potentially cause huge liability issues. If someone’s expensive cell phone or camera is broken, that person might try to hold Disney liable. While the success of that argument might be highly unlikely, what if an innocent bystander was hurt? Would that person be within her legal rights to go after Disney for damages, since the company decided to allow selfie sticks? What if the person was assaulted with the stick rather than accidentally injured by a flying camera? I am not a lawyer, and I can’t presume to know how a court case might go. But it seems that rather than testing a potential case in the legal system, it would be much simpler for Disney to simply head off trouble by banning the sticks, as football grounds across the United Kingdom have already done.
When you want a picture of your family at Disney, why not head over to the nearest Photo Pass photographer instead? These professionals know how to create an excellent shot, and are happy to do so on your personal camera or phone at no charge.
