Slashdot Mirror
Disney Bans Selfie Sticks
New submitter albimaturityr writes with a story from the Orlando Sentinel that Disney is banning selfie sticks from its parks, starting with Disney World (as of Tuesday) but continuing with its other parks in California, Paris, and Hong Kong. Says the report: The issue has been building at Disney. Previously, the sticks were prohibited from its rides, and "no selfie-sticks" signs were at select rides, such as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Magic Kingdom. Cast members have given verbal warnings to rule breakers.
Several incidents preceded the change, but officials have been discussing the rules for some time, Disney said. This week at Disney California Adventure park, a roller coaster was halted after a passenger pulled out a selfie-stick. The ride was closed for an hour.
What are us narcissists supposed to do now?
...Slough that matters.
The new rule doesn't apply to selfie drones!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I imagine that there are parts of a given ride where you can safely deploy a 'selfie stick'; but what kind of idiot waves a pole around when moving at nontrivial speed near walls, beams, etc. that the pole can catch on? Roller coasters are designed not to subject you to unsafe levels of acceleration or deceleration; but that does not include sticking to speeds that are safe it a modestly rigid pole abruptly couples your moving, and squishy, body to an immobile structural element.
If you are lucky, you bought a cheap crap stick, and it will snap(and not send a sharp end into anyone's eye) before some part of your body does; but that's not really a gamble you want to take just for a lousy picture of yourself.
The little racket of selling pictures of the riders, taken by fixed cameras installed at strategic points, probably helped contribute to this decision, doing well by doing good and all that; but what a stupid idea.
Do people also take care to wear ponytails and/or ties when near rotating equipment? And dangle loose clothing over any exposed gears and belts they find? Or do we have people who've never met a machine more dangerous than an iPad or a minivan and just don't think?
Starting seeing these "selfie sticks" popping up the last couple of vacations. These things are pretty obnoxious. What's so hard about asking someone to take your picture? Why have cameras been around for decades but only now these "selfie sticks" are being used? Just another step in the continuing anti-social trends of our society.
Selfie sticks are, at best, narcissistic nonsense, but the person who whipped one out on a rollercoaster was risking injury to himself and his fellow riders. How much of a grip can you have on a stick with a weight on the end while hurtling through twists and turns? And if you lose your grip, the best case scenario is that your phone falls and shatters below. Worst case scenario is it hits into someone and injures them. All because he "needed" to get a photo of himself.
Great work on Disney's part shuttig down the ride until that selfie stick was confiscated.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I was unable to watch the video as an ad started playing first. Then, a second advertisement video overlayed that video and started playing, too, covering the entire screen.
I'm going to assume the reason is nasty teens are trying to shove the sticks up the Mickey Mouse costume guy's rear end?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Are you going to "take a selfie" there? No? Then leave the sex toy at home.
I appreciate the right of people to look like idiots walking around talking to their camera. Documenting their journey for no one who cares to see.
Why they think that they are what is worth filming is beyond me. Or that talking while filming is a good choice.
My wife and I love to sail, and watch sailing videos on you-tube. The good ones take pictures of things AROUND them, things I actually want to see. They also either do voiceovers post-production, or use a separate microphone to eliminate wind noise.
The rest are mostly just crap, only of value to the people that shot them. Not really worth sharing to the public.
In our motorcycle group, I've witnessed people just vomit their pictures up to the web, with no care taken to edit or even select only the few that are worth posting. No pride in what they have taken, just a regurgitation of what's in their camera.
Selfie sticks are just more of the same. I'll admit they have some valid uses.
Too bad most people appear to be ignorant of what those uses are.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
since Disney did the IT workers dirty, I have lost all respect for this POS company. But hey they made record profits....
I think Disney will clarify their statement -- "You can still use a selfie stick, as long as it's bought from a country overseas at a cheaper price."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i bet they will have photographers all over the park asking you to take family photos and sell them back at $15 each
It is reasonable to ban them from roller coaster rides. But the whole park? What gives?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
selfie sticks were something they sold at Ann Summers shops.
They already do. https://mydisneyphotopass.disn... Yes, the price is actually $15 per photo, or $200 for unlimited photos.
However, those same people will also take your photos with your own camera as well if you ask them. As will any other employee at the park you interact with.
You do realize they reversed that decision, right? http://www.nasdaq.com/article/disney-reverses-a-stupid-hr-decision-cm490866
How many obsessive, self-absorbed people will fatally impale themselves with a selfie stick on a ride this year?
When I was at Disneyland in April selfie sticks were selling like hotcakes at all of the shops pedaling official Disney merchandise. Flooding the market prior to banning an item seems a bit Machiavellian even for Disney. Perhaps this ban only applies to their Floridian properties?
Problem is that these photographers are still stuck in the 20th century, and will give you a printout. They may sell you a CD if you pay more. That's my biggest turn-off: I don't keep photo albums any more, and don't want a folder cover for a slaughtered tree photo. I have my tablets, laptops, phones, and can even get an electronic photoframe if I wish where I can store any number of photos w/o taking up more space.
I don't mind paying for the ride photo services if they take electronic photos and then deliver it to us in a way of our choosing - either email, WhatsApp, iMessage or any other medium of our choosing, not theirs.
Some people are saying that they're only doing this to boost sales of their overpriced ride photos, but that's not the case. I was there last summer and brought a GoPro with me. I had it [securely] strapped on for every non-dark ride that we went on in plain view of the ride operators and not a single one of them said a word to me about it. That got me on-ride video of practically every ride that we went on, and they didn't care in the least. Most theme parks won't let you take a GoPro on the rides no matter how securely it's attached to you, period - including Universal Orlando, which is just a few miles away from Disney. Granted, we also bought their photo package last year, which cost $149 at the time and got us digital copies of every photo that was taken on rides and by the park photographers for the entire time we were there. Compared to the astronomical prices you'd pay for an individual photo, that works out to be a really good deal. Obviously, the ride operators had no way of telling that I had purchased that package, so that wouldn't have been why they let the GoPro slide. Personally, I'm glad they're banning selfie sticks. They tried to accommodate them by only prohibiting them on the rides at first, but people chose to be idiots, so now they're not allowed at all. It's definitely a safety issue. I've never used a selfie stick, so I don't know how securely the mechanism is that holds onto the phone, but when you're talking forces exerted on a roller coaster, would that prevent the phone from flying off? I don't know for sure, but there's a good chance it won't. Now you've got a projectile flying at non-trivial speeds. They tried, and people proved that stupidity will prevail, so now they're not allowed at all. Good riddance.
>> Its not always practical to get some third person to take a photo of us.
On a rollercoaster, I'd bet that's damned near impossible. XD
how about banning narcissistic people that need to document every second of their lives with pictures.
Taking "selfies" is just stupid! Only narcissistic idiots (or iDiots) do such things. I had never even heard of "selfie sticks" before reading the summary, and then I had to look them up to see what they were. Taking "selfies" on amusement park rides is an unsafe practice at best, and you could lose your phone/camera and a hand or arm. These "selfie sticks" are a way to multiply the number of people possibly injured, maybe even killed. After all, at the speeds some roller coasters get up to, part of a broken "selfie stick" could easily be driven through someoneâ(TM)s chest, neck, or other parts of the human body that are best left un-punctured!
I can easily understand why Disney, Six Flags, etc...would want to completely ban these silly things from being brought into their parks.
People were okay with them having a Gay Pride Day years ago and celebrating homosexuality in an environment largely dominated by children, and they're only now worth fucking because they dared fire American workers
Might be because these things are only comparable if you've got the intellectual capacity of a moth.
like i want to risk someone dropping my $700 phone
"a Gay Pride Day years ago and celebrating homosexuality in an environment largely dominated by children"
Even worse, they have 364 days per year celebrating heterosexuality in an environment largely dominated by children!
Just because your politics are normative does not mean you don't have any politics.
"like i want to risk someone dropping my $700 phone"
The subject is people waiving their $700 phones around at the end of a stick. The risk of dropping has already been discounted.
The person/s who coined the phrase "Selfie" and "foodie" should be beaten over the head repeatedly with a "selfie stick". Language is becoming the perview of morons and lowbrow hollywood talking heads.
It's like the people naming things are getting all their ideas from 5 year olds. doggie the dog, catty the cat, shoey the shoe and another one... "scalions" derp!? what's that! ok well call them "green onions" now because scalions is just too hard to remember!!!!
Now I will board the ride in one seat, and my friend will board the ride in the seat in front of me. I'll hand him my camera, and during the ride he will turn around and take a photo of me!
I would have thought that attempting to take a selfie, stick or not, on a rollercoaster was a damfool thing to do. Chances are the phone (and the arm holding it) will be subject to some serious forces, with a good chance of said phone becoming a projectile.
I don't care if the phone gets destroyed (serve them right), but I do care about the innocent bystander / employee who might get struck by the projectile.
Roller coasters
When they tell someone with a walking stick they can't have it anymore either.
Guessing Disney forgot that you can buy walking sticks with camera mounts (no endorsement intended on the link - just the first returned result for "walking stick with camera mount")
Hi We here at /. are dumb. We have a slow news day, and we havent published stoopid crap today.. /. MUST REPORT!!!!!!!!!!
So with out further adue, may I introduce this pile of steamy, hot, crap for your edification..
We here at slashdot, with the power and might of our new overlords, we see to find the most ridiculous hyperbole we can fill your empty cranium's with..
today's example is of a slow day, we have nothing, and are unable to identify somethign of true interest..
That being said, on to why Disney is banning Selfie stix. Such a world shattering revelation..
thank you for your time and attention, or rather lack thereof,
Evil mega corp taking my rights away! This is why we need socialism