Safest Place on Earth? Parkgoers Undaunted
Amusement park enthusiasts love to rattle off the statistics. Like the one about how riding a roller coaster is safer than mowing your lawn. Or about how going to a theme park, like Disneyland, is safer than riding a horse or a skateboard, even than playing billiards.
On Sunday, two days after a 4-year-old boy was critically injured at Disneyland on Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, parkgoers remained confident of their safety--confident that statistics are on their side.
“I don’t worry about it,” said Sue Neary, 42, a park ranger from Lake Perris. Neary said she would take her children on the Roger Rabbit ride when it reopens.
“Life happens, I hate to say,” Neary said. “They seem to be really on the ball here. If something happens, it’s a freak [accident].”
Said Sunny Smith, 20, of Payson, Ariz.: “Hey, if it’s not safe, they get lawsuits. At $41 per person, this isn’t some cheap carnival. All of these people could be at home falling [down] their stairs.”
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, about 10,400 people were sent to the emergency room with injuries after visits to theme parks or amusement parks in 1999. Six deaths were reported at amusement parks in 1999, including that of a 12-year-old who fell 129 feet from the Drop Zone Stunt Tower ride at Paramount’s Great America in Santa Clara.
In theory, the Happiest Place on Earth has a pristine image of safety and caution. For it to survive, it seems, Disneyland’s customers must believe that the park is a sanctuary--and theme park accidents that send people to emergency rooms have more than doubled since 1994.
But that image is protected, Disneyland customers said on Sunday, by the sheer volume of people who strap themselves into twisting roller coasters and steep water rides every year. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, more than 270 million people visit American amusement parks each year.
“Think of how many people die on the highways every year,” said Shena Howell, 16, of Rancho Cucamonga, as she stepped off Splash Mountain with her 15-year-old sister, Kristin. “And then think about how many people die in theme parks. They don’t even come close.”
She’s right--according to the National Safety Council, 41,200 people died in the United States two years ago in motor-vehicle accidents. According to Edward Pribonic, an engineer in the theme park industry for 30 years and a former Disneyland manager, an average of two people per year have died on amusement park rides over the last 25 years.
Some at the park even chuckled at the notion that an accident should prompt them to question whether they are safe. Sylvia Beltran, 31, of Los Angeles, was waiting to ride the Indiana Jones Adventure, and noted that the knickknacks being sold out front--plastic skulls and rubber snakes--seemed to mock death.
“I mean, how wrong can it go?” she said.
Others said they believe that personal responsibility has much to do with safety at theme parks.
Experts within and outside the industry agree that mechanical failure causes less than 10% of amusement park injuries. The vast majority of accidents are caused by rider error, and Pribonic said it’s still entirely possible that the theme park is not to blame for this accident either.
“That ride is fairly tame,” he said.
“It’s very, very unlikely that a child would fly out. More often, the case is that the parents aren’t watching the kid. They’re having just as much fun as a kid, trying to be a kid again, and the kid slips out. It only takes a split second.”
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Staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
