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Neat job. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I will tell you that I was at the parks on days people died or were maimed (their fault every single time, but it did happen). None of it got a lot of press outside of the local area, very few people knew about it, and very few people cared.

That's part of it, too, yeah.

You ever see a take you so violently disagree with that you know it's time for bed?

Oh, I got you, I was just correcting the record so people knew

That's awful. I'm really sorry.

The company also took park safety seriously because 1. People dying in your theme park is bad press and they want people to come back 2. They got sued for ridiculous stuff quite literally all the time. Y'all would not believe some of the stories I heard re: lawsuits.

Disney paid more than minimum wage. I left a minimum wage job to go work for them because I got paid $4 an hour more, and being union meant we got raises and some of the best health insurance I've ever had. I'm not going to cape for a corporation, but they didn't pay minimum wage.

I get that. I worked 14 hour shifts (park open to park close) during the holidays and busy summer season. Never been so tired in my life. Had a blast, though.

But I saw the impact of regulation first hand. We literally changed procedures and parts of the ride I worked on while I was there to improve safety. Nobody got hurt, more precautionary, but it was wild to watch it happen in real-time.

It is not just required regulations but they do make a big difference. The company also went above and beyond the requirements. Guys who worked Engineering Services and told me they would never ride attractions anywhere else because they saw what it took to maintain those rides and keep them safe.

It's probably other things than just that (nobody wants to get sued) but we also cycled the ride a few times before park open. Engineering Services would walk the track each night, etc. Ride safety is no joke no matter where you are, you know?

We used to have people beg us to sign forms absolving the company of responsibility if they were struck by lightning because they wanted to ride Splash Mountain in thunderstorms. It closed during storms for pretty obvious reasons. They really didn't like it when we told them "no."

I could probably still do GMR's opening and closing safety checklist in my sleep, honestly. It was serious business.

I can tell this has popped off because people are explaining safety regulations to me as though I didn't work there and bringing up completely different points. Never change, Bluesky. If y'all are lucky, I'll tell you the story of the guy who lost his fingers at Pirates one day.

One kid also got eaten by an alligator, though I think that may have been after I left. It was a decade ago.

I didn't miss it at all. Fun fact: nobody ever dies on Disney property. They're not pronounced dead until after they cross the property line. The company is extremely image conscious, but people died in the parks (medical conditions, not the attractions) when I worked there.

When you have to engineer everything around making the operators safe, it tends to translate to the ride track. Disney had an extremely good audit team and that helped, too.

I worked at the Florida parks

Hell yeah

Do you know why airlines are so safe? Because we regulate the ever-loving shit out of them. You don't have to like government regulations. They can be annoying. I promise they have saved your life. They happen when people get hurt or die. Every single one is written in blood.