Fights, deaths, suicides: How Disney keeps the tragic out of the Magic Kingdom
An 83-year-old veteran named Joseph Masters had a fatal heart attack and died while visiting Disney World with his family on Sept. 25, but the incident didn’t make the news until weeks later. That’s when local journalists obtained a report released by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, containing one important detail — Masters didn’t die at Disney World at all.
Instead, the report stated, medics tried to revive the Palm Coast man en route to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:04 p.m. that day, about 30 minutes after collapsing on a tram ride.
Disney parks expend an extraordinary effort to make their Magic Kingdoms magical, but the real world has a funny way of creeping into the Happiest Place on Earth. The company’s history is full of stories of sick or misbehaving customers being swiftly ushered backstage, or guests falling gravely ill on the premises and not being pronounced dead until offsite.
“[Back in the day] Walt Disney World [had] its own fire and emergency equipment, so if somebody died there or was fatally hurt and there were no signs of life, there was this rule that they were supposed to continue heroic efforts until their emergency vehicle left the property,” Jim Hill of the “Disney Dish” podcast told The Post.
The book “Inside the Mouse,” published in the 1990s, recounted a situation where a man who committed suicide — putting a gun to his own head in the middle of Epcot — wasn’t pronounced dead until much later.
“The medic told me that they are not allowed to let them die there,” a cast member told the team of authors at the time. “Keep them alive by artificial means until they’re off Disney property, like there’s an imaginary line in the road, and they go, ‘He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s dead.'”
In reality, there have been numerous documented deaths at Disney World, Disneyland and other parks, from a flaming plane that plummeted into the parking lot at Epcot in 1984, to a horrific, heartbreaking tragedy in 2016, when a two-year-old child was attacked and dragged away by a hulking alligator. There have also been non-lethal but ugly incidents, such as a brutal 2019 family fight in Anaheim where a woman spit on her brother and then was attacked by him.
“On a busy day in the summer the Magic Kingdom might have 70,000 people all by itself. Multiply that by four theme parks, 32 hotels, and you have the population of a fairly large city out there in the swamps of Florida,” said Hill. “And like with any majority city, densely populated, there are going to be fights, there are going to be stabbings.”
One of the ways Disney deals with reality is to simply pay local law enforcement to always be near or onsite, or plainclothes security — known as “foxes” — to keep an extra eye on brewing trouble. John Gregory, editor of Theme Park Tribune, told The Post that because of this, fights typically get broken up and swiftly swept out of public appearance. (Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how it handles deaths and fights in the parks.)
“Once the police officers are involved and there’s not an open melee anymore, they get the people backstage as quickly as possible,” he said, referring to the vast network of underground rooms, utility tunnels — one of the world’s largest networks — and above-ground backlot spaces accessible via hiding-in-plain-sight doorways and passageways in quiet corners, sometimes marked “Cast Members Only.”
But, Hill notes, in the smartphone era, it’s hard for Mickey to sweep everything under the rug quickly enough. “We’ve have seen videos of family brawls in the middle of the park, people punching each other out,” he said. “Disney can’t control things the way they once could.”
One effective tool Disney isn’t afraid to use is to ban anyone guilty of any kind of misconduct from the parks entirely — a practice known as “being trespassed,” according to Gregory.
He noted an incident early in the pandemic where a man took off his mask at Disney World, even though they were required at the time.
“He started ranting about China owning Disney, things like that, and pretty quickly got — as he filmed himself — taken backstage and trespassed,” Gregory said.
Another issue is suicide, which Hill said happens with surprising frequency — not that you’d know.
“There’s this weird phenomenon where people who are severely depressed but want to have that one last good happy family memory will go to Walt Disney World. They’ll deliberately book a room at the Contemporary Resort, which is 14 stories tall. And after that happy family time they will throw themselves off the building,” Hill said.
One suicide at the iconic hotel made the news in early 2020, but details proved difficult to come by.
“Disney actually has a canopy setup so they can fairly quickly cover the body,” said Hill. “They try very hard to shield folks from tragedy.”
There are, of course, incidents when the park is to blame for a person’s injury or legal gripe — but once again, you’ll likely not hear about them, Floridian attorney Justin Ziegler told The Post.
“It’s extremely difficult to find settlements [online] about Disney,” Ziegler, who has done extensive research into the park’s legal strategy, said, adding that by his own “law of deduction,” it must mean that Disney is lavishly striking deals with injured parties with “no disparagement” clauses to speak ill of the big mouse.
“Look up settlements for State Farm, Allstate, Progressive and you’re going to find countless,” he said. “Trying looking up the same for Disney … there’s so few.”
That suggests that Mickey is paying some aggrieved parties handsomely to keep quiet and not go to court.
“If the amounts were so terrible,” he said, “more plaintiff’s attorneys would take the case to trial.”
