What happens when things actually do sort-of, kind-of go horribly wrong at a Disney theme park

Jim Hill

15 years ago

At the D23 EXPO back in September, I noted – with some amusement – that the new attractions that are now in the works for Hong Kong Disneyland follow the tried-and-true WDI formula. In that the critical event, the thing that sets everything in motion (Be it Albert the monkey opening an enchanted music box at Mystic Manor ….

… or a back-scratching bear. Who accidentally sends your train hurtling down this collapsing mineshaft on Big Grizzly Mountain coaster) …

… is that SOMETHING GOES HORRIBLY WRONG !?

Imagineering has used “ … SOMETHING GOES HORRIBLY WRONG !?” so many times as the event that kick-starts the storyline of a new ride or show that – a while back – one of WDI’s rivals (And – no – I’m not going to tell you the name of the theme park design company that actually came up with this killer concept) wanted to create an attraction that parodied this over-used Disney conceit.

This proposed simulator ride – which was to have been built around the characters from “Futurama” – was to have been a “Star Tours” –like simulator attraction. In fact, this “Futurama” ride was to have been so closely modeled after “Star Tours” that – when the blast shield came down – Fry was to have turned around, noticed the audience seated behind him and then suddenly said: “Wait a minute. I know this ride ! I've been on this ride!? We’re about to blast off into space! And then something will go HORRIBLY WRONG !?”

And then – from there – the beauty of this proposed “Futurama” simulator attraction was that Fry, Leela and Bender would go on a typical Planet Express delivery run. But at each step of the way (i.e. When their spaceship stops for fuel at a decrepit old space station; when the crew lands on some dark, forbidding planet to deliver their package to this huge, scaly alien, etc.), Fry would then turn around & address the audience by saying “And this is the part where SOMETHING GOES HORRIBLY WRONG!?” And then nothing would happen.

And this was supposed to go on for 3 & 1/2 minutes of “Futurama” ‘s 4 minute-long ride film. With the comic tension just building & building & building until …. Well, I’m not going to blow the ending of this proposed attraction (Why For? Because I still hope to see it built someday). But let’s just say — by the time this ride reached its climax — you were to have experienced the Mother of all Somethings that go HORRIBLY WRONG?!

"How bad are we talking here?," you ask. To the point that – when you exited this "Futurama" ride – you weren't going to walk through a door. You were supposed to climb out through a gaping hole in the side of your Planet Express spaceship. And as you headed down to the gift shop, you were to have passed this animatronic Fry who was still pinned under the wreckage. Who — upon seeing you — was supposed to have said: "See! I told you that something was going to go horribly wrong!"

Anyway … I bring this up today because … Well, this past Sunday, JHM contributor Richard Murphy was out at Disneyland. And as he and his family were enjoying a ride on The Jungle Cruise, something did really-for-real go … Well, not horribly wrong. But still wrong. And I thought it might interest you folks to know how Disneyland’s repair crew actually handle events like this.

Here’s Richard’s report:

Around 12:30 in the afternoon on Super Bowl Sunday, a Jungle Cruise boat at Disneyland detached from its guide track and crashed into some rockwork at the edge of the river.

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I happened to be in the forward most starboard seat, right next to the skipper. It occurred on a right-turn curve of the river between the Lost Safari (“they’ll get the point in the end”) and the hippo pool. We struck ‘rock’ on the left side of the river.

Back at the dock, I had just missed getting on the previous boat and was first in line when the Amazon Belle pulled up to the dock. A decision was made to only half-load the boat. I don’t know why, but it may have been because the ‘return’ boats were stacking up and they just wanted to get more boats out on the river. We departed with guests in the front of the boat and at the back of the boat, but with nobody in the middle.

The trip proceeded normally, except that Skipper Chris (Irvine, CA) was rushing his spiel a bit, causing some his jokes to fall flat. We passed the African Veldt scene and the Safari scene and then the river makes a sharp right turn to head for the hippo pool. When the boat makes a sharp turn, it lists toward the outside of the turn. This is usually played for fun a little bit at the first encounter at Schweitzer Falls. It happened here, too, but not — it seemed to me — to an unusual degree. But this time there was a sound from under the boat. I can’t remember what it sounded like but I know there was one. It wasn’t an alarming sound.

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I was looking forward and realized that we didn’t seem to be making the turn. And I was really startled when I realized we were heading into the shoreline. I’m not sure when Skipper Chris was aware of it; there are many places on the ride where the Skipper is facing his passengers instead of looking down river and I can’t recall which way he was facing. He was looking as we ran up on the rockwork. At this spot on the river there is some ledge-like rock on the left side of the river. There was a scraping sound beneath the bow and the boat lurched to a stop. The sudden stop bent people forward, but no one was thrown out of their seat. The boat drifted backward off the rocks and the boat settled back into the river.

Our skipper immediately picked up the revolver that is usually fired while passing through the hippo pool. He nervously loaded five more rounds into it and then fired six shots. He then accessed a two-way radio below the ship’s wheel and called out “We have a six-shot on the C-curve.” A few seconds after that we heard someone on the ride P.A. announce “All boats please hold your position.” Our boat was afloat, and I was relieved to see that there was no sign of any leaks. We’d hit the rocks hard and wasn’t sure what the damage might have been to the bow.

Everything was stable at this point so we all had a moment to collect ourselves. Skipper Chris apologized and pointed out the obvious: we weren’t going anywhere for a bit. He joked “I guess this time the hippo’s won!” Most of us quickly realized that, rather than a disaster, we were all going to leave Disneyland with a great story to tell our families and friends.

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I had expected that we would shortly see the next boat behind us on the river, but we didn’t. The P.A. announcer called for the boats behind us to back up and return to the dock and for the boats in front of us to come in.

Finally, someone on the boat called out “Rescue!” and pointed.Through the jungle, we could see another cruise boat with blue-uniformed maintenance people backing down the river. They came into sight as they backed through the hippo pool and eventually made their way to us. They had a costumed skipper at the helm with the maintenance folk at the back.

The maintenance men asked our skipper for his rope. There is a tall box between the Skipper and the middle bench of the boat. He flipped open the lid and pulled out a thick, black mooring rope with loops at each end. They secured the front cleat on our boat to the back cleat of the rescue boat. We guessed that they were just going to tow us in. But what they did was pull the two boats together so that a maintenance guy could transfer to our boat. A silver-haired man with what I guessed was a German accent came into our boat while another maintenance man leaned over the stern of the rescue boat.

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The man on our boat looked inside the tall box the rope came from. With a front-row seat, I learned a little about the mechanics of the boat. The tall box conceals a hollow pin the side of a pipe that engages with the submerged track beneath the boat. The goal now was simple: to reposition the box precisely over the track so that the pin could be dropped in place, thus reattaching the boat to the track.

Simple does not mean easy. Trying to position a drifting boat over a fixed point while your only point of leverage is another drifting boat is a significant challenge. There were numerous attempts and it required coordinating with rescue boat’s skipper to move a touch forward or a touch back. But after several minutes of struggle the pin dropped into place with a satisfying thud. Our skipper tested his throttle and our boat moved forward on the track. Our maintenance man transferred back to the rescue boat and they departed.

Skipper Chris resumed our journey. He tried to finish as much of the spiel as he could, but it wasn’t easy with the ride audio and animation switched off. The hippos didn’t move, the tribal dancers didn’t dance, and the ambush party didn’t ambush. Fortunately, the backside of water just kept flowing. No piranha, but the Trader Sam jokes are amazingly reliable.

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We returned to an empty dock alongside an empty queue. As we exited, park personnel issued each of us two Fast Passes for rides of our choice.

I guess that’s why they call it ‘Adventureland.’

Isn’t that a cool story? More importantly, isn't it reassuring to learn that Disneyland actually already has a procedure in place so that — in the events that something like this does occur — the Park's maintenance staff can then move quickly to make repairs right there on the spot. With little or no real impact on the Guest experience.

The only time that every happened to me that was even remotely like what Richard just experienced was … Well, it was back on January 2, 1996. And I was at Epcot, trying to be one of the very last civilians to experience World of Motion before this Future World show building was gutted to make way for Test Track. But right before my Omnimover reached the first show scene, World of Motion stopped moving. Its ride system — for some inexplicable reason — suddenly broke down. Which is why — rather being one of the very last non-Cast Members to ride through this late, great Epcot attraction — I wound up being walked down that exterior load ramp by a Cast Member. Who first had to manually open my Omnimover.

But what about you folks? Have any of you ever had an experience like Richard and I? Where you were enjoying a ride, show or attraction at a Disney theme park and then … Well, something didn’t go horribly wrong. But things certainly didn’t work the way that they were supposed to.

Sooo … You got any stories to share?