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Credit: Inside the MagicIn the wake of Hurricane Milton landing in Central Florida, stories began to spread on social media that Walt Disney World was flooded entirely and that characters had to save children at the Magic Kingdom. Guests on the ground quickly countered that misinformation, seeing no such damage at Disney World and telling the world so on social media.
However, these conspiracy theories about Disney World persist online despite the evidence that they are false. They have been viewed millions of times, with some people believing them. What has made matters worse is that some people even thought of the misleading visuals and commented that Disney “got what they deserved.”
While the conspiracy theories about Disney World and Hurricane Milton seem relatively harmless, they represent a pattern of disinformation about The Walt Disney Company and its parks that has been allowed to spread virtually unchecked on social media platforms.
This leads to the question of why people are spreading this disinformation about Disney and what could happen as a result.
Social Media Platforms Disinformation
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter (now X), conspiracy theories and disinformation have run rampant, and that’s not an accident. When Musk took over the company, he fired most of the people who were responsible for monitoring content for misinformation, false claims, and hate speech.
As a result of those firings, the platform is now ripe with false information and targeted hate speech, and this has real-world consequences. When former President Donald Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs, that information started on social media.
An elderly woman lost her cat and accused her Haitian neighbor of having eaten it. The reality was her cat was trapped in her basement, and she found it a few days later.
After Trump made that false claim, schools and hospitals in Springfield received bomb threats and were forced to shut down. White supremacy groups have targeted Haitians in the city and began to hold rallies there.
That false claim had real-world consequences that directly impacted thousands of people and hurt an entire city that did not ask to be dragged into the national spotlight. It makes people creating false images of a flooded Disney World seem quaint, but there is so much more online about Disney.
The Disney Conspiracy Theories
Plenty of misinformation about The Walt Disney Company online has helped make it a target for trolls. A flooded Walt Disney World Resort was just the beginning.
This is Walt Disney World in Orlando now Water World.
Florida Strong, we will get up stronger than ever. 💪🙏🏽❤️ pic.twitter.com/WTRUaA1hu5— Eve🌹 (@EvelynS45238640) October 10, 2024
There is also similar misinformation claiming that Disney uses the theme park industry to help abduct children for unknown purposes. These conspiracy theories started around the time that Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested and have taken off since his death.
The false claim was that Disney was abducting children from its theme parks to send to Epstein Island and that one of the stops of the Walt Disney Cruiseline was that notorious island.
All of those claims are entirely false, but they helped fuel a narrative that if you brought your children to Disney World or Disneyland, something horrible could happen to them.
Is this how they make your kids disappear at Disneyworld pic.twitter.com/yWDjqMAIRh
— Timberlarkfern 🐸🐸🐸🍿🕳️🐇🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@VKfern1960) October 12, 2024
As a result of these conspiracy theories being allowed to fester online, some trolls built on them and used the fake flooding at Disney World to claim that the company had a secret underground system of stealing children.
Of course, the Magic Kingdom has a secret underground system of tunnels to move cast members, merchandise, and trash, but not children. However, this did not stop some people from believing this fake news.
One social media video viewed more than 550,000 times claims that Disney uses the entrance to hotel rooms to drag children to its secret underground lair. The vast majority of the comments argued that Disney should be investigated for what it is doing.
One commenter said that Disney World does not track the number of missing children at its parks, but Disney said that two to three children go missing every day. Never mind the contradictory nature of that statement, the number of children that go missing at Walt Disney World is to be expected.
Remember this story from last year?
This snippet is all I could find of it..they scrubbed it b/c I can’t find it anymore..
Reportedly the parent saw a was a floor like this in a bathroom at Disneyland in Anaheim.. pic.twitter.com/JoXg481VqC— SuZuQ (@SuZuQ17) October 13, 2024
Tens of thousands of children are on Disney property every day. Sometimes, they walk away from their parents. When a cast member is made aware of a missing child, they must report it.
Even if that child is reunited with its parents after a few minutes, they are still considered “missing” for a short time. So, perhaps nearly 1,000 children go “missing” every year at Disney World, but that does not mean they are not reunited with their parents after a few moments.
Although these misleading videos and posts are easily disprovable, thousands still believe they are factually accurate. But why?
Why Disney?
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for President, he wanted to run on his record in the state. Part of that record was taking on the “woke” The Walt Disney Company.
At a campaign stop in Iowa, DeSantis claimed that he fought Disney because the company was “grooming” and “sexualizing” children. It’s no coincidence that the misinformation about Disney ramped up after DeSantis made these claims.
The reality was that DeSantis and Disney started feuding over the state’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which critics dumped the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Disney stopped its political donations to DeSantis, and the Florida governor picked a fight with the state’s biggest employer.
It is also not coincidental that these false claims on social media platforms started right around the time that Disney began to feature LBGTQ+ characters in its television shows and movies. At the same time, Disney was accused of having gone “woke” and moved away from Walt’s original vision.
It is also not a coincidence that it was around this time that white supremacist groups started protesting in front of the entrance to Walt Disney World, waving DeSantis and Trump flags alongside Nazi flags.
The Consequences
There are no consequences for people who put false information on social media platforms. Still, there can be real consequences for people who have nothing to do with these conspiracy theories.
After the 2016 election Pizzagate conspiracy theory, a man from North Carolina shot up the pizza restaurant that was allegedly a front for a Democratic pedophile ring. None of that was true.
Beyond just the business concerns for Disney, some people are willing to take the lives of anyone associated with the company. And that is the scary part.
Online disinformation can have real victims. Just ask the people of Springfield, Ohio, or the pizza restaurant in Washington that has since been firebombed.
Truth matters, and in the United States, we should value it. Not liking Disney is fine, but there is no need to spread patently false information about the company that could get an innocent cast member killed.
We should at least have enough sense to take these conspiracy theories and false information and put them in the garbage where they and the people who spread them belong.