Not Too Happy With the ‘Happiest Place’
Dear Sirs:
As someone who loves Disneyland and has been a visitor to the park since the earliest days of “The Happiest Place on Earth,” I have hesitated to write you to express my complaint. . . .
--1996 letter to Disneyland from Lou Carlson
of Anaheim Hills, who ruptured a disc on
the Indiana Jones ride
The letters are, without exception, humble and polite. Their tone is astonished more than angry. There are 10 or so in the court file, all from people who loved Disneyland, or who at least considered it benign until, as Lou Carlson, a counselor at an Orange County mortuary, now puts it, “Ka-Bam!”--they got hurt by one of the rides.
I never write to complain, esp. about any Disneyland product, apologizes a woman named Barbara Stocker in a letter about the wild ride that hurt her as well as Carlson. [But] I’m home now and I’m still in pain. . . .
Grace Cranston of Stayton, Ore., puts her experience in the form of a helpful suggestion: My husband was thrown against the side so bad he cut his arm. My son + daughter-in-law ran to the 1st aid room and got bandages. I strained a muscle in my lower back so bad that I have gone to the dr. 2 times + am still in terrible pain. I’m on muscle relaxers + pain pills + waiting for some relief. I think you should tone the ride down. We can’t be the only people that have been hurt.
Well, Grace, no. You aren’t the only people who’ve been hurt at Disneyland, on the Indiana Jones ride and others, but it’s deeply unlikely you’d have ever found that out on your own. If it weren’t for a voluminous personal injury lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, those letters--which took numerous attempts by lawyers to pry out of Disney--would not have seen the light of day.
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The suit, filed by a former USC research assistant named Zipora Jacob, is remarkable on a couple of fronts. For one, it claims that in 1995 Jacob was jerked around so violently by “Indy” that she suffered a brain hemorrhage. But it’s also dramatic because it offers an unheard-of peek at Disneyland’s injury claim log. The numbers--21 claims in one six-month period from simply the motion effects of one ride--would be public if they referred to, say, complaints against doctors. But since they involve rides, they’re private property.
As California learned for the umpteenth time last month when an 8-pound metal cleat flew off the park’s sailing ship Columbia, ripping off the lower half of a patron’s face and killing him, consumers have no access in this state to the safety records of theme parks. Why not? Well, for one thing, this state doesn’t regulate rides at parks like Disneyland, nor do we require them to provide the public with accountings of nonfatal accidents.
A bill sponsored by Antioch Assemblyman Tom Torlakson that would have required the filing of accident reports with the state was squashed like a bug before it made it out of committee last year. Torlakson’s staffers say Knott’s Berry Farm did the hard lobbying, while, as one put it, “the Mouse worked behind the scenes.”
A lot of Southern Californians besides Lou Carlson love Disneyland, but even loved ones can get on your nerves when they act as if they have something to hide. Since the Columbia incident on Christmas Eve, the new general manager of Knott’s Berry Farm has come out in favor of theme park inspections. By contrast, Disney’s spokesman, Ray Gomez, abruptly announced, “I’m not going to answer the question--the interview is concluded,” when asked last week about a couple of specific proposals for reporting and oversight. After which the line went dead.
OK, even the Happiest Place on Earth can be expected to display some rough edges when one of its customers has been killed. But something’s wrong when you have to pore through a seven-volume court file just to get the barest inkling of whether you’re putting your child on an amusement park ride on which people have been hurt.
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Inspection is hardly some arduous ritual. Disneyland’s restaurants get visited by county health inspectors three times a year; Anaheim code enforcement officers cruise its parking lots for unlicensed taxicabs. A consumer can find out whether its elevators are safe, whether its sprinklers are working, whether the paint it uses for its park benches is appropriately stored.
But we have to just take the theme parks’ word for it when it comes to the safety of the most important thing: the rides. And something is wrong when consumers are reduced to supplicants by the Magic Kingdom in the matter of a product that, as much as they love it, can cost them their lives.
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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. E-mail: shawn.hubler@latimes.com