Outage Isn’t a Turnoff

Lights are supposed to go out in haunted houses, so New Zealander Des Callahan thought it was all part of the act when a power outage stranded him inside Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion on Thursday.

He didn’t know that about 13,000 people in Anaheim weren’t enjoying the blackout quite as much.

“It added by plenty” to the ride’s suspense, said Callahan, visiting from Christchurch with his wife, Rae. “It appeared to me to be quite natural. If it was an act of providence, it was well done. God was on Disney’s side.

“Oh--it was the Haunted Mansion, so it would have been Satan.”

A failure at an Anaheim Public Utilities substation about 2:50 p.m. caused the outage, which affected the south-central area of the city, said Dale Tarkington, the utility’s assistant general manager of electric services.

The power failure stranded 135 kids ages 5 to 13 from the Reseda Day Camp inside the Haunted Mansion, on Splash Mountain, in the Pirates of the Caribbean and on Big Thunder Mountain.

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“I had a kid stuck on the top ridge of Splash Mountain,” said camp director Stephanie Franklin. “They thought it was a gas.”

The Fire Department reported no injuries and no more serious predicaments than a few people stranded in elevators, said department spokeswoman Tabby Cato.

Utility crews took about 30 minutes to reroute electricity to the affected areas, but they still must determine why the 12,000-volt main conductor burned out, Tarkington said.

Backup generators kicked in almost immediately at Disneyland, quickly restoring rides in Fantasyland such as Peter Pan, It’s a Small World and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, said park spokesman John McClintock.

But other, more complex rides took longer for workers to check and restart, he said. The last was the Indiana Jones Adventure, which began moving again about 4:15 p.m.

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Power outages at the park are “not that unusual,” McClintock said, and workers are trained to lead customers off rides if it happens.

“There are walkways along even the thrill rides,” McClintock said.

That was the best part for some of the Reseda day campers, Franklin said.

“Some of them were jazzed to see the backs of the rides,” she said.

But not all of them were so cavalier about having to hike down the Matterhorn.

“Unfortunately, the kids who were nervous about getting on the ride in the first place were the ones who got stopped,” Franklin said. “Everybody else said, ‘Yeah--the adventure.’ ”

The kids stuck on Pirates of the Caribbean were content singing camp songs and the theme to “Gilligan’s Island” until the emergency lights came on and spoiled the illusion.

“You could see where the doors were and everything,” said 11-year-old Melody Mandegar of Reseda. And Andrew Bonvehi, 12, of Van Nuys, added, “We would have liked it better if the lights had stayed off.”