I must warn you never to ride anything where anyone has died:
* May 1964: Mark Maples, a 15-year-old Long Beach, CA, resident, was killed Matterhorn Bobsleds at
Disneyland.
* June 1966: Thomas Guy Cleveland, a 19-year-old Northridge, CA, resident, was killed when at Disneyland along the Monorail track.
* August 1967: Ricky Lee Yama, a 17-year-old Hawthorne, CA, resident, was killed when he exited his People Mover car as the ride was passing through a tunnel.
* June 1973: Bogden Delaurot, an 18-year-old Brooklyn resident, drowned trying to swim across the Rivers of America.
* 7 June 1980: Gerardo Gonzales, a recent San Diego high school graduate, was killed on the People Mover in an accident much like the one that had befallen Ricky Lee Yama thirteen years earlier.
* 4 June 1983: Philip Straughan, an 18-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, resident, also drowned in the Rivers of America in yet another Grad Nite incident.
* 3 January 1984: Dolly Regene Young, a 48-year-old Fremont, CA, resident, was killed on the Matterhorn in an incident remarkably similar to the first Disneyland guest death nearly twenty years earlier. About two-thirds of the way down the mountain Young was thrown from her seat into the path of an oncoming bobsled, her head and chest becoming pinned beneath its wheels.
* 24 December 1998: In a tragic Christmas Eve accident, one Disneyland cast member and two guests were injured (one fatally) when a rope used to secure the sailing ship Columbia as it docked on the Rivers of America tore loose the metal cleat to which it was attached. The cleat sailed through air and struck the heads of two guests who were waiting to board the ship, Luan Phi Dawson, 33, of Duvall, Washington, and his wife, Lieu Thuy Vuong, 43. Dawson was declared brain dead two days later and died when his life support system was disconnected.
* 5 September 2003: A 22-year-old man, Marcelo Torres of Gardena, California, died, and several other guests were injured, when a locomotive separated from its train along a tunnel section of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Torres bled to death after suffering blunt force trauma of the chest.
*A little more than a week after Disneyland's refurbished Carousel of Progress theater reopened as America Sings in 1974, an 18-year-old cast member was killed when she became caught between a rotating wall and a stationary one. On the evening of 8 July 1974, a 18-year-old woman from Santa Ana named Deborah Gail Stone was working the attraction as a hostess
*Four-year-old Linda Elaine Baker from Galveston, Texas, slumped over in her seat, unconscious, three minutes into riding the Body Wars attraction in EPCOT's Wonders of Life pavilion on 16 May 1995. A cast member monitoring the attraction stopped the ride and summoned paramedics while two nurses who were also riding Body Wars performed CPR, but Linda was pronounced dead after being airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center.
*In February 1999, a park custodian at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was killed when the skyway started up unexpectedly while he was cleaning one of its platforms. Raymond Barlow, 65, was sweeping off a narrow skyway platform inaccessible to park guests an hour after the park's 9:00 A.M. opening when other cast members, unaware of his presence, started up the ride. Barlow, startled by the approaching gondola, grabbed onto it and tried to climb inside; he fell 40 feet into a flower bed, hitting a tree on the way down, and died.
Not to mention the recent death on Mission:Space or the cardiac arrest of the teen on Tower of Terror.
Oh and don't plan on driving to the themeparks as there have been several highway deaths. Don't swim, take a bath, eat, walk, or climb as deaths can occur. Even sitting at home in your living room watching tv isn't always safe. Themeparks are much safer than driving to the mall. At least the rides are inspected and aren't reopened if they are unsafe. I wish we could do the same with unsafe drivers on I-4 but that is a rant for another day.
