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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.
For safety.. because honestly, that's totally unsafe. The potential savings from preventing injury is worth more than the earnings from the photos.
Having worked at one of these parks, I can speculate as to what happened:
A worker monitoring the cameras on the ride saw the rider with the selfie stick and did as they were instructed, to hit the emergency shut off. This stops the ride, and halts all the cars/trains at their next safety stop point. Once that happens, the only way to get the ride going again is to reset it and do your opening procedures over again. The computer for the ride won't allow the ride to operate unless those checks have been performed and passed. Sometimes it might even require one of the engineers from the park to give their sign-off as well.
But to even begin, you have to evacuate everyone that is currently on the ride. So you have to go out on the track to where they are, release them from the ride, and escort them back to the exit. If there is anyone with mobility issues in any of the cars, that could become a very complicated task. IMO, an hour is very quick to do all of that.
Agreed. Any Disney Park employee will take your photo for you with your own camera, if you just ask them. Even the people they litter around the parks who are paid solely to take your photo so they can sell it to you later for $15 each.
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.