Dearly departed – on Disneyland rides!
The 999 ghosts at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion have apparently found room for a few more residents, according to master mouse sleuth Al Lutz at MiceAge.
Disneyland visitors have routinely scattered cremated human remains throughout the haunted house ride since the late 1990s with the most recent incident occurring in the past month, MiceAge reported.
Haunted Mansion ride operators, trained to handle the delicate situation, have caught visitors via surveillance camera dumping ashes from the doom buggy vehicles but have virtually no authority to stop the bizarre ritual, Lutz said. Disneyland security and Anaheim police can do little beyond identify the powder trails as human remains. The offending mourners often slip out the ride exit and disappear into the park.
The macabre last rites force the closure of the ride for hours while custodians clean up the gritty ash and bone fragments with specially filtered vacuums. Oftentimes the last vestiges aren’t found until after the park closes and the lights are turned on inside the dark ride.
And the Haunted Mansion isn’t the only affected attraction. An impromptu funeral ceremony shut down Pirates of the Caribbean just last week while crews cleaned ashes from the Captain’s Quarters scene in the caverns section of the water ride, Lutz said.
Disneyland has yet to comment.
— Brady MacDonald / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Related L.A. Times stories:
From ashes to ashes, at Disneyland
[Photo: Disney]
14 Comments on “Dearly departed – on Disneyland rides!”
Leave a Comment
If you are under 13 years of age you may read this blog, but you may not participate. Here's the full legal spiel.
Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this blog until the author has approved them.
All fields are required
Advertisement
SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG
Click the logo below to subscribe to news from this blog:
Or add this feed to your favorite RSS reader:
more
Or add this feed to your favorite RSS reader:
more
Advertisement
November 13th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Over at MousePlanet, “Mouse Tales” author David Koenig reported a similar incident back in December 2002 involving the scattered remains of a 7-year-old fan of the Haunted Mansion ride.
Boing Boing and Digg have picked up on the original MiceAge story.
— Brady MacDonald / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 13th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Wow - I never thought of that. Too bad they have to vacuum up the cremains or I’d instruct my peeps to have a party for my departure at the Happiest Place on Earth. Just this past October, I was scheduled to celebrate my 50th at the park with family & friends, but had to cancel (we’re going in Feb). I love Disneyland. Is there any chance one can officially be laid to rest there? That would be soooooooo cool.
November 13th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
My good friend and colleague Kimi Yoshino just filed “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to… Disneyland” for Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times business section.
In her story, Kimi reports that Disneyland closed the Pirates of the Caribbean on Friday, Nov. 9 after a visitor sprinkled an unidentified substance from a boat inside the water ride.
A spokesman said that while visitors have asked to disperse ashes at the theme park in the past, Disneyland’s answer is always the same: no.
Kimi’s story: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disney14nov14,1,4121863.story?coll=la-headlines-business
– Brady MacDonald / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer + Theme Park Blogger
November 13th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Well there goes my plan to have this wish executed when I pass on!
Wonder if they’re as sticky on it over at Knott’s!
November 14th, 2007 at 8:28 am
I suppose a tiny bit of my ashes here and there at the park won’t be noticeable, right?
Thanks for the fantastic idea!
November 14th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Say, Brady, do you do anything other than copy-and-paste from Al Lutz’ posts? He is not the be-all end-all of Disney knowledge, and is more often *wrong* than right. For example, the nonsense about the “it’s a small world” renovation caused by “fat people”.
How about doing some actual research, maybe checking with some actual news sites?
November 15th, 2007 at 6:03 am
My mom wanted to be cremated. She left the disposal of cremains to my discretion. I filled a memorial urn with some of them and had it interred in a family vault. But over half the ashes didn’t fit in the urn. So I thought about her life and made a list of a dozen private and public places special to her around the US– places she lived, went to school, visited, a stadium of a favorite team whose games she attended for years, and so on. As I got near these places in normal travels, I’d visit, put my hand in a coat pocket and remove a handful or two of ashes from a plastic bag and surreptitiously scatter them in a lawn or garden area and say a prayer. It helped give me some closure. I knew it wasn’t legal and that some people would object if they knew what I was doing, so I didn’t ask first, but hey, she was worth the risk, and it became kind of a challenge to pull it off.
I didn’t get caught doing this anywhere, but the closest call came at a house we lived in for ten years that had a pool she loved. I tried sneaking back there on a dark, rainy night, and discovered a new four foot high chain link fence on the perimeter of the large backyard. I was considering climbing it when suddenly a guard dog appeared who made it quite clear that my presence there was most unwelcome– very fortunate for me that I had not crossed the fence. While he set up a huge racket in the backyard and probably drew the attention of the owners there, I crossed back around the front of the property and tossed a handful of ashes there.
I didn’t think of Disney. My mom never went to Disneyland, but she loved Disney World. The problem with scattering ashes at Disney parks is that everything is on camera, including the dark rides. Your risk of being spotted is significantly higher than at most places. I wouldn’t distribute a loved one’s ashes on a ride like Haunted Mansion, though, because they’ll surely get vacuumed away. But I could see that the lawn or garden there would make an excellent final resting place for a devoted Disney fan… if you could get away with it.
November 15th, 2007 at 8:37 am
I have personally witnessed the scattering of human remains (ashes) in the water around the castle. No cameras there!
November 15th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Mt. Snow. I’ve asked my wife to put my ashes in a bag, strap it to the back of her mountain bike, poke a hole in it, and then her and our friends can ride downhill, scattering the ashes all along the trail.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
This just made the news in Las Vegas on KVBC News 3.
— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel Deal Blogger
November 15th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Yes, Jen, this story has legs…
The local ABC and NBC TV outlets interviewed Al Lutz, and then placed the story out in the “shared feed” for other local stations in the same network.
Also, TMZ TV did a story on it as part of its Thursday, 11/15 show.
I think Brady and the LA Times, plus Kimi over at the traditional Paper version (Sorry, but I tend to use first names… a Disney culture thing) were first, but of course other papers and the AP and UPI also picked up on the story. Based on everything I have read, it is based on the original MiceAge article Al wrote, and then the additional research and comments that Kimi got in her article in the Business section of the LA Times.
As an insider (Brady has called me a “master mouse sleuth”) I can tell you that the spreading of ashes has happened multiple times at Disneyland (and I presume lots of other Theme/Amusement Parks, as they do have “good” memories), I know that they show up in the landscaping more often than Disney would want to admit, and it has been reported happening at the Haunted Mansion more than once by Cast Members (Employees) that work the attraction.
You know, it is kinda morbid, I checked Wikipedia and found out the average “ashes” weighs about 5 to 6 pounds. That is a lot of ashes, even though they are very dense. But it is a story that gets people’s attention.
November 19th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
DoomBuggies, a Haunted Mansion fan site, dug up an old story from its archives about a mother who reportedly scattered her son’s ashes on the Disneyland dark ride. Employees and visitors regularly claim to see the young boy crying inside the attraction near the exit ramp, according to DoomBuggies. (It’s the third item down on the Myths and Legends page.)
— Brady MacDonald / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer + Theme Park Blogger
April 12th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
My choice is off the bow of the Mark Twain on the far side of TS Island after dark.
The way the water circulation system at DL works, I’d get around to the castle moat and the Jungle Cruise on a regular basis!
Of course, thanks to Fantasmic! this is going to be difficult…
December 31st, 2008 at 10:33 am
To: Ron Schneider
The Mark Twain often runs at night when Fantasmic is not showing, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more…
Of course there are those pesky filters backstage that get back flushed on a regular basis. So I wouldn’t be so sure about making the rounds of the water features.