Guests Call 911 From Disney Ride During Breakdown While Stuck in Water - Inside the Magic

Comments for Guests Call 911 From Disney Ride During Breakdown While Stuck in Water

small-world

Credit: Kerry S.

27 Comments

  1. Scott

    Great now there’s going to be lap bars on It’s a Small World.

    1. Kitty

      No. This ride is decades old. They’d have to redesign whole new boats that Disney is not gonna use their money for. And their removal process has probably been the same since.

    2. KDC

      I am so sorry for those people, including your family who got stuck on this ride, and the snotty, dont-give-a-🤬 response… I hope this will be looked into, there could be an actual concern, especially regarding children. Lap bars would seem like a false imprisonment in regards to this song.

  2. H. Kat

    A cell signal jammer in the building might be a good idea, to prevent future misuse of the emergency dispatch system

    1. Kitty

      That would be cool, but legit, police ask the parks if there’s an evacuation first and then decide if it’s an emergency. Police are literally gonna tell the caller that people from the ride are gonna help and ignore having to respond to the non-emergency.

    2. Lillen Bishop

      I Loved Disney World up until they revamped and refurbished and tore down to update. It’s no longer the park we made memories in .
      They have a park I don’t recognize anymore and after being there in opening having season passes for years..raising my kids,my grandkids and recently my Great Grand…I’m done. I miss what they were and the wonderful feeling when I walked in. It’s all gone. I won’t be going back again.

      1. Mary

        Sad to say but that’s how I feel too. I’ve gone many times in past and loved it all. Now, with breakdowns, high prices, fights, new attractions I’m not interested in, I have no desire to go. Goodbye WDW!!

  3. Rob

    We were on the same boat as the person that sent in the pictures and short narrative and some important information was left out. First, with the exception of 1 cast member that came through counting people on the ride when they first announced we would be getting taken off, about 15 minutes in, and briefly mentioned a cast member would be getting in the water to push the boats back to where everyone could step off, we never saw another one and were given no other info except for the canned PA announcement that the ride had broken and someone would be by to assist us for almost another hour. Also during that hour, we saw exactly 1 boat get unloaded about 5 or 6 boats ahead of us (the one in the very zoomed in picture in the article) and then no apparent evacuation activity for another 30 minutes or so, at which point other boats behind us started to move themselves backward by pulling on the guide rails to get to the location they were unloading from, that’s right no cast member came to push anyone back or to give any update on how the evacuation would be proceeding or how much longer it may be or anything, all the boats had to try to figure out what was going on and do it themselves. After pulling our boat back about 3 or 4 boat lengths, we finally got to where we could see another cast member, who despite being right next to the platform to step off onto, would not give any info about what was going on but would only tell people to stay seated in a very snotty tone. This is the point where another party on the boat called 911, because we were an hour into the breakdown, were being given no information and could see very little going on to actually get anyone off, it literally felt like we were prisoners. We finally got to see another boat get unloaded, which involved about 4 cast members coming up and walking the single boat of people all the way out before coming back for the next one. A few minutes later the cast member in the water in the pictures waded up to us and nicely explained (huge difference in tone from the other one or any of the ones that came to walk us out) how they would be unloading the boat and we finally got pushed back the final boat length and were allowed to get off, nearly an hour and a half after it all started. For this huge inconvenience and waste of our time we were given a fast pass for the next day that wasn’t even usable on any rides you would actually want or need to use one on, so essentially nothing. Keep in mind also, that we finally got out of the building at 11pm, we were fortunate enough to be staying at a Disney resort and were able to hang around for the extended hours that night and still had additional days left in our trip but for others, the entire last hour and a half of at least the day, if not their trip was wasted due to Disney’s insufficient planning, training or both on how to efficiently evacuate a ride and they were offered something that they couldn’t even use in return. Further, this whole thing gives me grave concerns to whether they could or would be able to actually quickly evacuate the ride in the case of an actual emergency such as a fire, this type of evacuation should be treated no different and used essentially as a fire drill, not done in the lackadaisical manner it was, we were on the ride with our 5 year old and 7 month old, the 5 year old was nearly in tears because he had to pee so bad and the 7 month ended up with a diaper rash because we couldn’t get back to our stroller to get stuff to change him and I’m sure there were others with similar situations, so even though there wasn’t a life or death situation facing us this time, timely evacuation should still have been the absolute goal. Communication directly from cast members to the riders should also have been a high priority and could have alleviated a lot of the animosity that continously built throughout the ordeal, the recorded PA announcements were not proper communication and should never be played like they were ever again, they did nothing but show a lack of concern and make everyone madder at the situation. And for God sakes, turn that music off the second the ride has to stop, 20+ minutes of it continuing to play while we were stopped was absolute torture, there is a reason everyone clapped when it was finally stopped. Further, better preventative maintenance is needed throughout the parks, I understand that anything mechanical can and will break at some point, but the extent of breakdowns we saw last week was absolutely ridiculous, for example the same day as this breakdown, the monorail resort loop was broken and the boats so far behind that it took an hour and a half to even get to the park, the day we were at Animal Kingdom, which doesn’t have a lot of rides in general, Kilamnjaro Safaris was closed all day and Kali River Rapids was closed all but maybe an hour of it and we also saw shorter closures of Expedition Everest and Dinosaur, another day while at Magic Kingdom Mine Train and Space Mountain were both down for several hours at the same time and Splash Mountain and Haunted Mansion also were having intermittent problems, at Hollywood Studios Rockin Rollercoaster, Tower of Terror, Runaway Railway and Rise of the Resistance all were having problems and it rare to see them all working at the same time, Epcot also had issues, mostly on Test Track, Frozen and Spaceship Earth but also Living with the Land and the Skyliner as well. Between the seeming lack of care from some cast members, things that still are not open, almost inability to get sit down dining other than at the initial 60 day reservation window and extensive breakdowns, guests are really not getting the experience they are paying for.

    1. Holly Joy Jericiau

      AND THIS COMMENT IS WHY WE DONT GO BACK. WE LIVE IN FLORIDA AND I WONT WASTE MY MONEY. ITS NOT LIKE IT USED TO BE YEARS AHO AND CUSTOMER SERVICE IS AWFUL

    2. Bill

      Karen alert

    3. Kitty

      The ride takes this long to evacuate because of the sheer amount of people they have to remove in such an enclosed space. Plus they have to prepare safety equipment.

    4. KK

      Deb, that’s hilarious!

    5. KDC

      I am so sorry for those people, including your family who got stuck on this ride, and the snotty, dont-give-a-🤬 response… I hope this will be looked into, there could be an actual concern, especially regarding children.

  4. Sherry

    In one day, stuck on Spaceship Earth, 1/2 hr, Haunted Mansion 20 min, Frozen about 15 minutes, they drained water & we walked off & were lead down the back of the ride. No big deal, no one complained, we all laughed. Disney did great with announcing each step of how they’d get us off. Also got fadtpass to return.

    1. Rob

      Exactly how it should have been handled but far from how this was. We also were on Remy’s one night last week when it got shutdown for about 15 minutes, they immediately had the canned announcement about a being temporarily stopped and they paused the soundtrack, a couple minutes later they made an announcement that they were looking for a pair of dropped glasses and we would be restarting as soon as they were found, a few minutes later they announced we would be restarting and we finished our ride. When we got off there was a cast member holding open the door back into the front of the que and offering rerides for anyone that wanted to go again due to the stoppage. That was a very well communicated and handled situation, the one on It’s a Small World was anything but.

    2. Thank you for the info. But wouldn’t this prove to Disney that the crowd levels are too high. Only so many people can fit in a plane, train, cruise, restaurant, movie theater.

      1. Aellana

        My son and I were on this ride. We were thr second boat to get evacuated.

  5. Gm M

    Next time get stuck on it’s a small world. Your story may be different.

  6. yoyo

    911?? what are they suppose to do?

  7. Kiitie

    I don’t know if it is the same at Disney World (probably) as at Disneyland but the people you reach by calling 911 on your cell will not be dispatched usually. They may contact the on property station depending on the situation but most times it’s like calling the cops for the wrong city. There are cops on property with a station hidden from normal guests to deal with most situations that arise.

  8. Trish

    My mother and I were in one of the boats stuck on IASW as well, and she and all the rest of the parties on my boat were handicapped as were the parties in the boat behind ours. We were thankful for them turning the music off and agree the canned announcements should have stopped in favor of live announcements giving us better updates, but beyond that I feel the evacuation was handled as well as it could have been. When they got to the two boats of handicapped parties, which included one person on a motorized scooter, they were very cautious and there were four cast members making sure we were safe. It took extra time to bring the wheelchairs and scooters from the loading area to the backstage area where we were waiting. It was a little over an hour total and a very disappointing end to the night, but in my opinion there was no reason to call 911. We never saw any guests moving their own boats and most boats, including ours, were too far away from the sides to have been able to reach over and move them anyway.

  9. Holly Joy Jericiau

    AND THIS COMMENT IS WHY WE DONT GO BACK. WE LIVE IN FLORIDA AND I WONT WASTE MY MONEY. ITS NOT LIKE IT USED TO BE YEARS AHO AND CUSTOMER SERVICE IS AWFUL

    1. Liliana

      So you’re not going back because the cast members have to be careful with the handicapped during an evac? Okay…

  10. Justin

    My wife lost her glasses at this exact spot, maybe the boat got stuck up by them.

  11. Lillen Bishop

    I Loved Disney World up until they revamped and refurbished and tore down to update. It’s no longer the park we made memories in .
    They have a park I don’t recognize anymore and after being there in opening having season passes for years..raising my kids,my grandkids and recently my Great Grand…I’m done. I miss what they were and the wonderful feeling when I walked in. It’s all gone. I won’t be going back again.

  12. I lean

    Our party was also stuck on 5/7/22 being a an amputee that walked on the boat we were pushed past an emergency exit and we’re told cast members behind would get us off. Guess what..not a CM in sight only the fire dept. after another long wait. I was grateful for their assistance but what a waste of resources! I walked on I could have walked off if theCMs didn’t pass the buck. It also took them about 20 minutes to get my personal wheelchair from the ride. Disney needs better training on guest relations

  13. I feel very badly for everyone that has had such miserable experiences! I guess that I would feel exactly the same way. I hear a lot of people saying that Disney is not the same place that they made their memories in. Of course it isn’t. Things were different then. Nobody likes change. I know that I do not like change! But, since my Husband and I don’t have any children, we have a different time than those that do have them. We go when and where we want. We only have to please ourselves. I can’t imagine trying to calm a child or baby when an attraction goes down! My respect goes out to all of you who do. We don’t spend much time at all at TMK. EPCOT is our park of choice. We also like checking out the different resorts and their restaurants. I hope you all have much better days.

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