State Blames Disneyland for Boy’s Injury

State investigators Friday blamed flawed ride design and operator error for a Sept. 22 accident at Disneyland that left a 4 1/2-year-old boy with severe brain damage.

Disneyland officials disagreed with the report, but said they would comply with its requirements and spend the next several months overhauling the ride. The attraction is expected to reopen next summer.

The report released Friday by the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health said that the preschooler, Brandon Zucker of Canyon Country in northern Los Angeles County, was seated in the wrong spot on the Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin and that it appeared ride operators had failed to lower a lap bar properly to keep him in place.

“Our conclusion was that they did not follow the loading order that they were trained to follow,” said Len Welsh, the agency’s special counsel. “Obviously, where the boy was sitting had something to do with how the accident happened.”

The investigation was among the first under a new state law regulating fixed amusement parks after several high-profile accidents that aroused public concern. The report was released in a week when Disneyland was forced to cut off ticket sales three times as swelling attendance put the park at capacity.

According to investigators, Brandon was sitting next to the cut-out entryway to the ride car, with his older brother and mother to his left, and most likely tumbled out through that opening. He then was pinned under the following car, in which his father and grandmother were riding. Welsh said investigators found no evidence that Brandon might have been misbehaving.

The state ordered Disneyland to add closures to the entryways and sensor-equipped guards around the bottoms of the vehicles before the ride can be reopened.

According to investigators, such a guard would both physically prevent people from getting caught under a vehicle and stop the ride almost instantly by sensing when a car has come into contact with an obstruction.

Brandon was dragged about 10 feet along the ride before it stopped automatically. The popular Toontown attraction features spinning, simulated taxicabs that take passengers in the dark through scenery based on the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

The boy’s 45-pound frame was trapped under a taxi for about 10 minutes and folded forward at the waist, with the weight of the vehicle on his back, before emergency workers could pull it off. He was without breath or pulse for several minutes and has never fully regained consciousness.

The state report says that after the accident, the park’s emergency responses were proper and that help arrived as soon as possible.

Brandon is in a long-term facility in Orange for children with brain injuries, and his family has moved to Irvine to be near him.

“It’s going to be a long haul. There’s a lot of pain and suffering for this child,” said Elinor Silverstein, a family friend.

Thomas Girardi, the Los Angeles attorney representing the Zuckers, called the state report “common sense,” but expressed anger that Disneyland refuses to agree that its operators failed to load passengers properly and put the seat restraints into position.

“The only bad part is that we have a little brain-damaged boy that can only recognize his mom during certain parts of the day and they’re saying it can’t happen,” he said. “Their whole attitude is one of denial.”

In interviews Friday, Disneyland officials disagreed with the report’s findings, saying they believe employees seated Brandon farthest from the entryway, with his 6-year-old brother next to him and their mother seated closest to the opening. Based on statements from their employees, they also believe the lap bar was fully lowered, they said.

They could not explain why the state found otherwise, and said they do not know what the family did after the ride started moving.

“The injury to Brandon was not the result of any negligence or wrongdoing on our part,” said Jeffrey Paule, general counsel for Disneyland Resort, the Anaheim complex’s parent authority.

In addition, Disneyland conducted its own investigation of the ride and found that a child Brandon’s size could not have fallen out the open entryway, even if the lap bar were up, said Rich Langhorst, director of resort engineering.

The park hired an independent biomechanical engineer, Thomas Szabo, who ran several tests using an adult female and two dummies the sizes of 3- and 6-year-old children. Szabo said they used a “worst-case scenario” and conducted tests with the lap bars up and the smallest child nearest the open entryway.

He concluded that the ride was “quite benign,” and that there were no forces that caused the dummies to move forward or toward the entryway.

“We felt all along that this was an inherently safe ride,” park spokesman Ray Gomez said. “It’s a very slow, gentle ride.”

The ride travels less than 3 mph, a walking pace. More than 21 million Disneyland guests have ridden Roger Rabbit safely, with the exception of one 13-year-old girl who jumped off the ride to retrieve a stuffed animal. She received minor injuries to a foot when it got stuck under a car.

Welsh, who reviewed Szabo’s study as part of the state investigation, said the test is problematic because dummies do not move and children do.

“The study doesn’t really say anything about what could happen” with a real child, Welsh said.

His agency has oversight of fixed amusement parks under a state law passed last year. That law was prompted by a fatal accident two years ago at Disneyland on the Columbia Sailing Ship ride.

Welsh said his agency lacks the authority to look at other Disneyland rides with similar open entryways--at least until regulations are adopted allowing for annual ride inspections. The state is still drawing up rules for enforcing the regulatory law.

“We would certainly hope that if there are rides with similar situations . . . that Disneyland would look very carefully into fixing those problems,” Welsh said.

Disneyland officials said they have no plans to make changes to other rides, but are focusing first on Roger Rabbit to comply with the state’s orders.

Friday’s report concludes the investigation. Disneyland is now under order to take corrective action before the ride can be reopened.

“What we’re trying to do as much as we can--now with the benefit of hindsight--is to prevent something like this from happening in the future,” Welsh said.

A Vow to Follow Rules

The requirements are:

* Install a skirt with sensors around the bottom of each ride car that will stop the ride instantly when it touches an obstruction.

* Provide closures on the cutout entryways.

* Review training manuals to make sure they clearly state such safety policies as those for seating passengers and closing the entrances.

Although ride operators are trained to load the child farthest from the entryway, that rule is not clearly stated in the written policies, the state report said.

Despite the areas of disagreement, “We plan to implement each and every one of the recommendations,” park spokesman Gomez said.

In addition, Disneyland officials are adding more signs to the ride area and to each taxicab warning passengers to keep their arms and legs inside. They are also adding a recorded audio warning.

Welsh said it did not appear that Disneyland was intentionally negligent, and that park operators have cooperated fully with the investigation.

“There didn’t appear to be any attempt to hide anything,” Welsh said. “They were very open and did appear genuinely to want to find out what happened. We appreciate it, even though we may disagree on some of the analysis of what happened.”

No fines were assessed, in part because regulations have not yet been adopted as part of the state law. State officials said they could not speculate on whether there would have been any fines in connection with the Roger Rabbit incident.

Cal-OSHA fined Disneyland $12,500, the maximum allowed, in the Columbia accident two years ago. In that incident, a Washington state tourist was killed and his wife and a park worker were seriously injured when a cleat tore loose from the ship and flew into a waiting crowd.

Although the state law regulating amusement parks had not been passed, the agency had jurisdiction in that case because it oversees employee injuries. Both Cal-OSHA and the newly created Division of Occupational Safety and Health are part of the state Department of Industrial Relations.

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Safety Steps

State investigators have ordered Disneyland to make changes to Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin ride after a September accident that critically injured a 4-year-old boy. The proposed alterations:

Source: California Division of Occupational Safety and Health; Disneyland

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times