U.S. to Investigate Disneyland Injury

For Disneyland romantics, Tom Sawyer Island has a special poignancy.

Disney lore has it that, against the advice of his so-called Imagineers, Walt Disney insisted that his Magic Kingdom have a spot for kids to scramble around and play out adventures. Typically, he would explain his idea and let the engineers make it happen. When they failed, Disney sketched what exactly Tom Sawyer Island would become, said Jamie O’Boyle, a Philadelphia-based cultural analyst who has studied visitor reaction for Disneyland.

As the investigation continues into how a 6-year-old girl’s finger was torn off Sunday atop the island’s fort, the no-tech 44-year-old attraction was suddenly in the spotlight.

“I happen to think Tom Sawyer Island was one of the most creative things Disney ever did at that park,” O’Boyle said. “I think he understood kids. There’s a certain age where kids are going to run, so he designed a place where they could run. It’s an island. It’s round. When parents get really beat and are tired of chasing their kids around, [they] can sit on a bench, knowing that they are going to come around every five minutes.

“Can a kid get hurt at Disneyland? Sure,” O’Boyle said, but added that anywhere people run around and climb poses risks. “Do people have a heightened expectation of safety at Disneyland? Yes. It’s the Yellowstone syndrome: People go into Yellowstone and because it’s a national park and somebody is in charge of it . . . they think nothing bad will happen to them.”

There have been few reported accidents on the island, which is covered with dirt, caves, a fort and swaying bridges.

Among the park’s earliest attractions, the island has changed little over its lifetime. But Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said safety measures have been added over the years.

“I know that the hand railings have been upgraded over the years all over the island,” he said late Wednesday. “We’ve been putting netting on handrails and guardrails, we have added increased safety signage on the island, we have added more lighting on some of the darker areas.

“We have been putting in non-slip surfaces throughout the island,” Gomez continued, “and then we’ve also on various places on the island made the walking slopes less steep, more gentle. We’ve added plant barriers to prevent people from wandering off trails.”

He thought that the rubbery ground surface many playgrounds have added might also be found on the island, but he was not certain.

“One thing I want to point out to you is the island is designed to feel like a part of nature. We’ve actually tried to preserve that environment while making safety improvements.”

The island is part of Disneyland’s Frontierland, an original area of the park that contains several of its more faded attractions. But the section of the park came under scrutiny more than two years ago when a Washington state man was fatally injured while waiting on the loading dock of the Columbia Sailing Ship, a slow-moving ship that plies the artificial river around the island. A cleat that tore loose from the ship struck the man in the head and also injured his wife and a park employee.

Disneyland spent about $100 million to redo Tomorrowland but has done little to modernize Frontierland aside from updating a Mexican restaurant.

At least one and possibly both of the island’s popular suspension and pontoon bridges have been closed for more than a year because of disrepair.

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Times staff writer E. Scott Reckard contributed to this report.