I am going to respond here as someone too familiar with severe burns. My son was burned in an accident 2 years ago and suffered 2nd-4th degree burns over 30% of his body. He needed grafting and through his injury, healing, recovery and those of many of his friends, I would like to weigh in.
First, one article says they are 2nd and third degree burns. Although I have only seen the one picture you all have, I will say that the 3rd degree burns is bull. There is no skin left to blister from a 3rd degree burn. You are at meaty muscle if you are lucky. Second, because the lips are soft tissue, a 3rd degree burn would have a high chance of removing most of the lip. You can see in his picture the blistering on the lip itself. Children have skin that is fragile so it is not impossible that a young child would blister easier than an adults, in that same thought process, it will also heal a ton quicker than an adults.
The article says the child is still seeking medical treatment 11 months later and I am wondering exactly what that is? He did not have grafting, so he would not wear a compression mask to hold a graft site in place. My son had grafts that encompass his entire lower left leg and after 6 months, was seeing a burn doc every few months for follow up on his graft site and donor site. They did not even look anymore at his hand which had 2nd degree burns and blistered because they were totally healed by then.
I can tell you that 2nd degree is beyond painful. You have not lost your nerve endings yet so they actually hurt worse than the 3rd or 4th many time because the deeper the burn, the more damage done, the less feeling you have.
There is no way in heck that this child did not scream bloody murder if he was burned that badly. He would have been screaming from the point of impact until he was given a sedative. I do not believe for one moment they could have walked from the the restaurant to the front of the park without one CM stalking them to find out what happened. I also know if they would have gotten care for him immediately at the First Aid Station, Disney would have called for an ambulance.
The burn easily could have been worse than needed without applying a cold compress immediately and ice. If they drove him to a local hospital and he had to wait to be seen, having no first aid on it, could have aided in the severity of the blistering. Cheese is thick. If hot it would stick to the surface of the skin and it would not move easily without wiping. Plausible the cheese did it but I too wonder how?
First off, was the kid standing on the chair and as he fell, placed his hand on the tray and it fell on him? Second, if he was sitting and wobbling (rocking) his chair side to side like I see kids do all the time, this too could have caused him to try and steady himself. A chair wobbly enough to dump a kid has never been experienced by myself at and Disney restaurant. If it were, I sure would not let my kid continue to sit in it.
Then there is the matter of trajectory. If cheese got volleyed into the air and spilled on the kid, like mentioned by previous posters, you would end up with a running blob if it had started to cool. Anyone ever try to dunk a french fry into cooling nacho cheese and get anything but a bigger blob than you want?
If it was scalding hot, like is being suggested, it would be runnier like ketchup. If I lobbed ketchup in a cup and it spilled as it hit you, there would be droplets everywhere due to the lack of density. Picture you are walking with a bucket. If it contains mayo and some spills out, it will leave blobs of mayo. If you walk with water and it spills out, because water is less dense, it would create more of a splash. Something falling quickly that hot and soupy, would splash.
My money is that the kid was trying to drink it, he burned the heck out of his mouth, and then in shock and pain, hit the tray and the stuff went sailing.
I feel sorry for the boy. Horrible accident. I just do not see how there was any malice on the part of Disney and because I do not believe the way the attorney is describing the severity of burns, I tend to doubt the rest of the story as well.
*** On a personal note. I am fuming that this attorney is trying to sell this child's injury as more severe than it was. It is a disgusting thing to do to people who are burned as badly as he is claiming he was, because this erroneous lawsuit hurts those like my son, who was severely burned at the negligence of others. It mocks the devastation families have to go through as they sit by their loved ones bedsides for weeks and months and the trauma burn survivors go through to heal from such horrific accidents. I wrote this and started to doubt my reaction and e-mailed a burn nurse I have remained good friends with and she looked at the article and she said the same thing as I did. It is like comparing a curling iron burn to an electrical burn where someone lost a limb. There are plenty of images out there that show the severity of burns and how they are defined. Where one starts and one stops and there is no way he had 3rd degree burns or even severe second degree.
I am sorry for the purge but maybe the parents should use what happened to their child to teach better safety guidelines on parenting. Just do not use a painful injury your child had, to deepen your pockets at the expense of others.
I am SO insanely annoyed about this lawsuit. In my opinion, these parents should be sued for being so stupid. Who in their right mind just gives a 4 year old a plate of food without making sure that it is cool enough for him/her in the first place?! Unbelievable! 
