Americans Too Fat For “It’s A Small World” by in News / October 30th, 2007
Anaheim’s Disneyland ride “It’s a Small World” is being shut down for a year for upgrades. Not to add new features, not to change the godawful song… no, the ride is being upgraded because Americans are too fat to ride it.
However, the move is not simply kindness on Disney’s part: last month, a 37-year-old woman from Kentucky burst out of the car she was riding and fell on the tracks because she was “too large to stay inside”, according to a Disneyland spokesman. The woman herself was not harmed, but a group of Japanese tourists (who didn’t realize Tokyo Disneyland is actually more fun) were thrown into the attraction after their car collided with the Kentuckian, with 75-year-old Kazei Takamori being impaled on a Dutch windmill. Shortly thereafter, the ride was closed.
Initially, there were calls to ban Japanese citizens from Disneyland, but eventually cooler heads prevailed and plans were put into motion to make each individual car four times as wide and able to hold the weight of two-and-a-half elephants. Guard rails will also be installed along the route to prevent any more accidents, and Canadian donut company Tim Horton’s has been commissioned to provide a TimBit dispenser in the middle of each car, to entice occupants to stay put.
It is not clear what impact the closure will have on Disneyland’s revenue projections, but the American Psychiatric Association expects it will cut suicide rates by at least half in 2008.
