The Happiest Place on Earth isn’t just a marketing catchphrase. It’s the prevailing belief that many theme park tourists hold about Disneyland. Still, mishaps happen on occasion, some of which are quite memorable. Here are the worst Disneyland incidents of the 2010s.
Aladdin’s unintended magic carpet ride
When Aladdin and Jasmine soar through the sky during Aladdin, it’s a magical dose of cinematic escapism, one that Disneyland has attempted to recreate at the park.
Unfortunately, life didn’t quite imitate art back in 2011. During a performance of “Disney’s Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular,” the cast members playing Aladdin and Jasmine received quite the shock.
As the duo sang along to A Whole New World, their magic carpet FLIPPED! Thankfully, the Disney employees wore harnesses. So, they didn’t get thrown to the ground by this odd turn of events. Instead, they dangled in mid-air helplessly for a time.
Their co-workers evacuated the building and eventually got them down from the clouds. Everyone was okay, and the people in the crowd have one of the most exciting park anecdotes ever.
The California Screamin’ rescue
Disney roller coasters employ a series of routine maintenance checks, almost all of which are automated. Whenever the system detects something on the tracks, the ride shuts down instantly. That way, no coaster can run over an object and get derailed.
The system works brilliantly, but it does lead to some odd outcomes. For example, back in 2011, a rider failed to secure their backpack on the roller coaster. It fell onto the tracks and triggered a shutdown notification. That wasn’t great news for the passengers in other carts, as they found themselves stuck on one of the highest points of the track.
The fire department had to evacuate this coaster cart, which contained 23 people. Disney California Adventure (DCA) actually experienced three different shutdowns along these lines, the other two involving a purse and a selfie stick. However, only this one involved the fire department.
Also, I don’t want to jinx anything here, but The Incredicoaster has suffered none of these significant shutdowns to date.
The flying Santa
This one’s brief but funny. Each year during November and December, Disneyland hosts several holiday-related events. One of the most recognizable presentations is A Christmas Fantasy Parade.
While Mickey Mouse stars in all major Disney exhibitions, Santa Claus gets his due during this parade. Alas, something strange happened in December of 2018. During one fateful show, Santa’s float suddenly collapsed in the front. The sudden shift in weight dislodged its passenger.
Yes, as countless children watched in awe and horror, Santa Claus went flying sans a sleigh. An attached safety harness prevented him from hitting the ground. Santa just dangled there awkwardly while kids wondered why the flying man even needed any reindeer.
This story would be a lot less funny without the harness, though. It might have given kids Christmas trauma for life.
The great Measles outbreak of 2014
Back in 2014, 52 different guests fell victim to a measles outbreak…at Disneyland! Yes, the park became ground zero for an outbreak of the disease. Wired published a fascinating post-game article about the incident, and some other sites covered it as well.
To the best of anyone’s knowledge, an unvaccinated international traveler carried Measles to the Happiest Place on Earth. As the Wired writer comments, the disease is “crazy contagious.” The person speculates that 90% of unvaccinated people who come into contact with it in the tight quarters of a theme park will contract Measles.
However, the vaccinated aren’t totally safe, either. When administered correctly, the two shots are 97 percent effective. So, some Disneyland guests who had been vaccinated still got Measles, which I’m sure came as a total shock to them.
This incident gained such notoriety that the state of California passed a law requiring schoolchildren to get vaccinated.
The July 4th earthquake
At Disneyland, the July 4th holiday represents one of the ten most crowded park days for the entire year. And that’s why the timing of this story felt so brutal. On Independence Day 2019, the Happiest Place on Earth suffered an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale.
Bemused guests watched as tables shook, chairs tipped over, and trees swayed precipitously. Park officials shut down several rides to perform routine maintenance checks before realizing that Disneyland had avoided catastrophe.
The next few days wouldn’t get any better, though. A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit Southern California the day after the 6.4 had closed the parks. This second quake required more serious attention due to its severity. However, the stunning factoid is that the area experienced more than 3,000 earthquakes over the course of a few days.
Mickey’s Fun Wheel evacuation
Ride evacuations are never fun at theme parks. But some situations are truly nightmarish. During 2019, the Disney Skyliner infamously broke down, stranding guests for almost three hours. What few people acknowledged at the time was that Disney had something similar happen just five years ago.
The current Pixar Pal-A-Round was known as Mickey’s Fun Wheel at the time. When guests boarded that advanced kind of Ferris wheel, they expected to rotate around a few times, study the sights of DCA from above, and then move on with the rest of their park day.
Sadly, that’s not what happened on October 2, 2014. The 150-foot tall structure faced technical difficulties and automatically powered down. This stranded 45 guests in mid-air for roughly 90 minutes. Having recently ridden a similarly tall Ferris wheel with some claustrophobic, acrophobic friends, I can only imagine how much panic ensued.
The situation’s resolution came with a bit of levity, though. Cast members and Disneyland’s emergency response team hand-cranked Mickey’s Fun Wheel to lower each gondola until they could safely evacuate the guests. By this point, riders might have been too angry to find the humor in the situation, though.
The Toontown ice bombs
In 2013, one of the strangest Disneyland stories unfolded. A pair of trash cans exploded, much to the confusion of park guests and cast members alike. Obviously, any explosion requires a great deal of investigation before civilians may safely return to the area.
Disney officials worked with Anaheim’s police department to review footage of the incident. For a time, nobody was sure whether the event was an accident somehow caused by employees or customers or an act of terrorism.
In the wake of the explosion, people learned that the combination of dry ice compressed in a plastic bottle can cause a small explosion. In this case, the police determined that a 22-year-old cast member had intentionally left a potentially combustible bottle in the trash.
Thankfully, the goal wasn’t terrorism. The person merely wanted to pull a prank, not understanding the potential danger of the situation. Disney immediately terminated the employee, who pled guilty to a misdemeanor and faced 36 days of jail-time. The individual also fittingly received a lifetime ban from Disney theme parks.
