Disney Declassified: Tales of Real Life Disney Scandals, Sex, Accidents and Deaths (16 page)

 The crew from Shirley, New York ranging in age from fourteen to twenty (four siblings and a girlfriend to the oldest brother) weren’t happy enough assaulting innocent park-goers; they took it up a notch and assaulted an Orange County Deputy Sheriff.

After many complaints by guests around Space Mountain, Disney security gathered the group, and escorted them down to the Disney security office. When the sheriff entered the office, nineteen-year-old Brian became belligerent and started to make threats to Disney security. The deputy intervened and the four other kids pounced on the officer.

As the deputy noted in his report after the incident,  "I was punched in the face with closed fists several times by all the defendants. I defended myself by throwing counter punches in their faces and bodies in an attempt to break free. The suspects surrounded me and intermittently attacked me as I turned.” The deputy eventually used his stun gun on a seventeen-year-old girl after she continued to throw punches. Once the stun gun was used, the crew retreated and all five were arrested on charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence.

You can probably add this family to the list of people who are currently banned from Walt Disney World. As the decades progress, it’s apparent Disneyland and Walt Disney World don’t have quite enough pixie dust to sprinkle on everyone who passes through their gates.

The Disney theme parks are no different than any other large public place where a very small percentage of people can’t play well with others. Most often, things go off without a hitch, but here and there some people prefer their Disney a bit more violent with a sprinkle of attitude and violence rather than pixie dust.

Disney Debauchery

In 2012, Disney cut ties with three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton after she was exposed as a high-priced Las Vegas escort. Favor Hamilton was a featured speaker at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s marathons.

There is an old saying in the world: sex sells. This notion is applied daily to advertising, news reporting, and entertainment. There is another thing that sells almost as well, and that is Disney. The two subjects couldn’t be more antagonistic but here and there these two topics intersect, and usually not in a good way. Disney tries their best to avoid anything salacious, be it on the big screen or in their theme parks; yet sometimes things of a sexual nature occur that they can’t sweep under Aladdin’s magic carpet.

Since ancient times, sex has been a deviant motivator for people from all socioeconomic backgrounds and professions; today it’s no different. By nature, the subject finds its way into everything we do, either consciously or subconsciously. Sex and sexuality are primeval acts and traits; they transcend and unify. Unfortunately, they often corrupt and harm many in a perverse and twisted way. As society has revealed, people can force their will upon others in an unscrupulous and damaging way, especially onto those weaker or younger.

Then there is the vast majority that like to dabble in sex and sexuality be it for occupation, novelty, thrill, or harmless fun. All of these aspects have worked their way into Disney in one form or another. Most notably it has been in an unacceptable and illicit way at their theme parks involving children; however, a few frisky, or shall we say consenting adults, do make Disney their adult playground. Welcome to the chapter of Disney debauchery.

Before Splash Mountain opened at Walt Disney World in 1992 and gained its nickname “flash mountain” (a nod to the ladies who lift their shirts as they take the plunge down the mountain and have their “screams” captured, wink, wink, by Disney’s cameras), men could get a different kind of thrill ride a few miles away.

In October of 1982, as Disney was putting the final touches on EPCOT, an influx of prostitutes started to descend upon Disney from as far away as New York and Philadelphia. The ladies of the night came into town looking to capitalize on the large crowds expected for EPCOT’s grand opening. During the first twelve days of October 1982, sheriff’s deputies arrested forty-two women on prostitution charges. An average month usually sees twenty-five arrests in thirty days. This increase was no coincidence or speculation; it was the truth. After the arrests were made, the ladies flat out said they were there to “commemorate the opening of EPCOT.”

Not to worry, ladies; all the extra-curricular Disney excitement wasn’t just exclusive to men. In April of 1999, a man claimed he was abducted from a Hilton Hotel at Walt Disney World across from Downtown Disney, and was held captive as a sex slave. In all seriousness, at the time, forty-year-old Anthony, of Sausalito, California told police his story was 100% accurate and he had no reason to make it up. Anthony was a telecommunications salesman visiting Orlando for a business conference in September of 1998. When he didn’t check out of his room, board his flight back home, or contact his sixty-five-year-old wife back in California, she called police and reported him missing. Six months later, he turned up in Georgia and told police he was kidnapped and held as a sex slave.

Anthony said he was abducted by a group of Middle Eastern men and held prisoner in a dark dirt-filled room where he spent every day naked and tied to a cot. His kidnappers, at least three men and two women, abused him daily. They always wore masks so he was never able to see their faces. Only one spoke to him in English; everyone else conversed in a language Anthony couldn’t understand.

During the course of his captivity, the women would taunt him and the men would abuse him. He claimed he was injected daily with a drug that paralyzed him physically, so they could have their way with him, but the drug kept his thoughts clear. If he was unable to “perform” he was injected with something else to restore his vigor. In his own words from the police report, Anthony said he was the group's “love toy.” Despite their abuse, they fed him well. He ate sandwiches and stews that were filled with curry.

Eventually, his captors freed him in April of 1999. They left him with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, two bottles of water, two packs of Marlboro cigarettes, a lighter, and a five-dollar bill and dropped him in the woods. Anthony eventually made his way to police and was examined at a hospital in Augusta, Georgia. He showed no signs of drug abuse, needle injections, or rape. He was in good health and apparently weighed the same 185 pounds as he did before his kidnapping. 

 State investigators as well as the FBI were skeptical of Anthony’s story. When he was found in the woods, he claimed he couldn’t recall his date of birth, home address, or other personal information but managed to remember he was abducted on September 25
^th
. He also claimed he had to wander around the woods for a day and a half before he could get out of the woods, something police also found hard to believe, as a half a day walk in any direction would get him out of there.

In today’s voyeuristic society with borderline obsessive behavior for some folks when it pertains to reality television and social media, many people feel the need to chronicle every act, thought, or compulsion and share for the world to see. Even their intimate times are leaked out in sex tapes and nude photos. Over in Disneyland Paris, a few of everyone’s favorite Disney characters had their own exploitations and fornications caught on camera; albeit simulated.

Minutes before costumed characters set out to entertain the masses, they had a little fun of their own backstage, in what was dubbed the “Disney Orgy” and released on the Internet. The video showed the costumed crew in some compromising situations. Mickey had a gay tryst with a snowman, Goofy grabbed Minnie’s breasts, and then had a ménage à trois with Chip n’ Dale. The faux orgy was recorded by another cast member and eventually hit the internet in October of 2006. When reached for comment Disney said, "The behavior shown on the video is unacceptable and inexcusable. The video was taken in the backstage area not accessible to guests. Appropriate action has been taken to deal with the cast members involved."

While the cast members at Paris Disneyland may have been acting out their fantasies, their depraved acts with Disney characters are nothing novel. Ward Kimball, a cornerstone of animation at the Walt Disney studio beginning in 1934, also spoke of some perverted Disney antics over the years. Ward was a colorful and eccentric man, and one of the few employees Walt socialized with outside of his studio, for they both shared a love of trains. What they didn’t share a love for were crude, crass, sexualized depictions of Disney characters. As Ward explained in the book from 1975,
You Must Remember This,
Ward talked about how, at times, cartooning can be monotonous and boring:

“So to relieve the monotony, we’d do things like, well, on
Snow White,
we’d draw porno things. That happened all the time. Here is this beautiful, saccharine sweet girl in the story and after making so many drawings of her during the day, our impulse was to draw her naked with one of the dwarfs standing there with a giant erection. A lot of these drawings found their way out of the studio. During the war, I think every guy on the assembly line at Lockheed had a copy of a booklet somebody put together. It was called
Snow White and the Seven Truck Drivers
. Snow White is sitting on a little chair with her dress up, and the dwarfs are all standing in line with their cocks out. The cocks of the dwarfs varied in size. Old Grumpy had one that looked about three feet long.

I’ve seen drawings of Dumbo flying through the air dropping elephant turds on everybody with Mickey Mouse in the foreground with a week’s stubble of beard giving himself a fix or jerking off. There was one with Goofy buffing Minnie Mouse. So far as I know, Walt never saw any of those drawings. He was a funny guy. His humor was quite different than that of the man in the street. You could never tell Walt a dirty joke. The word got around quickly to new employees not to try and ingratiate yourself with Walt by telling him an off-color story. He thought dirty jokes were terrible, and he was embarrassed by them.”

If watching Disney characters fornicate isn’t your thing, then perhaps you would like to do
it
yourself, in the mouse’s house. Many people over the years have sought out the thrill of having sex in and around Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Cast members on both coasts have been witness to just about everything you can imagine. From naughty time at Tom Sawyer's Island to quickies at The Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean, apparently, nothing is off limits for some people. Need some suggestions on a safe place, turn to the internet; there are numerous websites and blogs that provide sights for Disney “safe-sex.”

All kidding aside, adults and children visit Disneyland and Walt Disney World to have fun. Their parks are the most visible family entertainment places in the world. Families from around the globe come to them in droves, and Disney attracts all kinds. Young and old, rich and poor, and 99.9% of them are at Disney with honest ambitions of seeing Mickey, but there is that infinitesimally small percentage of deceitful, calculating predators who rob children and adults of their innocence and disrupt an otherwise happy vacation and life.

Regrettably, this chapter discusses these disturbing tales. Unfortunately, I wish this chapter was non-existent, or even much smaller with an isolated incident or two, but that is not the case. The Disney parks have been the place for some heinous sex crimes involving both guests and cast members; unfortunately, there have also been quite a few sex crimes perpetrated away from Disney property by some miscreants on the Disney payroll.

We know Disney is family-centric and therefore most people let their guard down when visiting and rightfully so. During a three-year spat with one of their unions Unite Here Local 11, representing Disneyland’s hotel workers, reminded guests of what may be lurking in the shadows. The union handed out flyers at Disneyland in 2010 that read “Keep Your Children Close! Places Like Disneyland Are Magnets For Pedophiles.”

The possibility of pedophiles visiting a Disney park puts Disney in a situation that requires them to be more diligent and proactive. Disney certainly tries to keep the parks safe and free from sexual predators, but sometimes their best isn’t good enough or someone or something slips by them. Beginning in October of 1998, newly hired employees started to undergo background checks as part of their hiring process. Previously, only cast members receiving background checks were those dealing directly with cash or overseeing children.

In 2013, some of Disney’s background checks were extended to their guests at Walt Disney World. A local news station in Orlando ran a story indicating Disney actually started to screen potential guests against a sex offender database. Walt Disney World was already doing this each year for their employees, since at least 2007.

As the story goes, guests, many of them annual pass holders, went to enter the park and were denied. When they swiped their cards to enter, they were pulled aside and told they were not allowed in. They were then issued a trespass warning, effectively banning them from Disney property for life. The news station did additional research with the Orange County Sheriff’s office and noted over the previous six months, more than seventy-five trespass warnings were given to guests looking to enter the park; all of them were registered sex offenders.

Despite these proactive efforts, situations still happen, even from some unlikely people. A quick glance at the cast members at any Disney park shows a cross section of the world. Folks just starting out in the working world to others recently retired and working at Disney part time during their golden years, and everyone has a story to tell. Some stories are better than others and a handful can be absolutely dreadful. 

In June of 2002, sixty-three-year-old Hugh was working as a greeter at Walt Disney World’s Ticket and Transportation Center. He worked there for nearly two years and had a spotless employee file. His life before working at the Happiest Place On Earth was vastly different. Hugh was a prominent priest from Missouri. He worked as the editor of the official newspaper of the dioceses of Jefferson City, Missouri, The Catholic Missourian. He was also the chaplain to death row inmates and the Missouri Legislature, and even star of his own television show.