Theme Park Machinery Churns Out Sense of Infallibility

A funny thing happened some years back in the midst of a trip to Disneyland. We were in the “It’s a Small World” attraction when all the cars lurched to a halt without warning. For 20 minutes, we just sat there, surrounded by great banks of dolls doing that little can-can dance.

Twenty minutes. If I never hear that tinkly little “It’s-a-world-of-laughter” song again in my adult life, it’ll be too soon. But the image of those dolls was indelible. As they kicked their scary little doll legs and turned their scary little doll heads, they made this scary little noise. “What’s that clicking?” one of the kids asked. We actually had to think a minute.

“It’s gears, sweetie.” The “Small World” was a big machine, after all.

A funny thing happens to most people when they walk into theme parks. They forget that the magic is mechanized. Forgetting is the point, of course. Who’d pay $41 a head for an afternoon full of reminders that, say, roller coasters are chunks of metal hurtling at high velocity along steel precipices? Pay no attention to the hydraulics behind the curtain, the corporate marketers tacitly tell the public, and the public is glad to oblige.

It is only when something goes dramatically wrong--say, a 20-minute breakdown in full view of a crowd of riders, or, unthinkably, a 4-year-old trapped in a Roger Rabbit ride and left comatose--that there is no choice but to acknowledge the machinery. And there’s a funny thing about that, too: People resent the acknowledgment. Two days after the grotesque Toontown incident, Disneyland patrons were asked whether it had left them sobered.

“Think of how many people die on the highways every year, and then think about how many people die in theme parks,” a teenager trilled, stepping off Splash Mountain.

“Life happens,” another patron, a mother, scoffed.

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In fact, accidents at theme parks don’t just “happen.” For every injury on a theme park ride--and ride-related injuries were up 12% last year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission--there is usually an entire trajectory of trade-offs and calculated risks. Some are made by the people who design the rides, some by the people who run them, some by the people who visit the parks.

Should the cars on the rides have little doors (which might smash little fingers) or open sides (from which children might leap in excitement)?

If one side is open, should a parent riding with two children sit in the middle (thus leaving one kid in the doorway) or at the opening (thus increasing the odds that the kids, thrust together, will fight)?

Are lap bars sufficient? If not, will some other restraint work better--or just engender another risk of injury (and lawsuits)? What if a lap bar is all there is, and your child has her heart set? Do you give in to the child, or to the worst-case scenario?

The jury will be out for a long time on the trajectory of the latest theme park tragedy, which has left 4-year-old Brandon Zucker fighting for his life. But it’s a decent bet that the investigation will remind that these rides are big, lethal hunks of equipment. Not that anyone will find it fun to keep that scary fact in mind.

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“Anyone,” by the way, includes the theme park people. One byproduct of the vast sums the big parks spend on safety--and the sluggishness with which a new accident reporting law has been implemented--is that patrons have a false sense of security. Yes, riders need to be responsible. But remembering to worry isn’t easy in the Magic Kingdom, in part because the nice people at Disney aren’t sure they want it to be.

For example, the Roger Rabbit ride had only a metal lap bar to secure the Zucker child, his big brother and his mom. The ride has one open side, and the littlest kid reportedly was placed there--contrary to Disneyland’s “informal” seating policy, the park’s P.R. man says.

But this ride is in the least adult-oriented section of the most detail-oriented entertainment conglomerate on the planet, no? What adult would not assume it was childproofed? Who wouldn’t give Disney the benefit of the doubt, despite the absence of seat belts? Who would think to ask why there wasn’t a “formal” policy on the loading of moving vehicles with excitable kids?

This a company whose chief executive micromanaged everything from the hotel wallpaper to the slope of the raft ride at the soon-to-open California Adventure. What reason would there be to assume Toontown wouldn’t be safe?

Funny, the magic people expect from the all-too-human machinery of corporations. Scary, how hard it is to un-suspend disbelief.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.