The July 4^th earthquake

At Disneyland, the July 4^th holiday represents one of the ten most crowded park days for the entire year. And that’s why the timing of this story felt so brutal. On Independence Day 2019, the Happiest Place on Earth suffered an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale.

Bemused guests watched as tables shook, chairs tipped over, and trees swayed precipitously. Park officials shut down several rides to perform routine maintenance checks before realizing that Disneyland had avoided catastrophe.

The next few days wouldn't get any better, though. A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit Southern California the day after the 6.4 had closed the parks. This second quake required more serious attention due to its severity. However, the stunning factoid is that the area experienced more than 3,000 earthquakes over the course of a few days.

Mickey’s Fun Wheel evacuation

Ride evacuations are never fun at theme parks. But some situations are truly nightmarish. During 2019, the Disney Skyliner infamously broke down, stranding guests for almost three hours. What few people acknowledged at the time was that Disney had something similar happen just five years ago.

The current Pixar Pal-A-Round was known as Mickey’s Fun Wheel at the time. When guests boarded that advanced kind of Ferris wheel, they expected to rotate around a few times, study the sights of DCA from above, and then move on with the rest of their park day.

Sadly, that’s not what happened on October 2, 2014. The 150-foot tall structure faced technical difficulties and automatically powered down. This stranded 45 guests in mid-air for roughly 90 minutes. Having recently ridden a similarly tall Ferris wheel with some claustrophobic, acrophobic friends, I can only imagine how much panic ensued.

The situation’s resolution came with a bit of levity, though. Cast members and Disneyland’s emergency response team hand-cranked Mickey’s Fun Wheel to lower each gondola until they could safely evacuate the guests. By this point, riders might have been too angry to find the humor in the situation, though.

The Toontown ice bombs

In 2013, one of the strangest Disneyland stories unfolded. A pair of trash cans exploded, much to the confusion of park guests and cast members alike. Obviously, any explosion requires a great deal of investigation before civilians may safely return to the area.

Disney officials worked with Anaheim's police department to review footage of the incident. For a time, nobody was sure whether the event was an accident somehow caused by employees or customers or an act of terrorism.

In the wake of the explosion, people learned that the combination of dry ice compressed in a plastic bottle can cause a small explosion. In this case, the police determined that a 22-year-old cast member had intentionally left a potentially combustible bottle in the trash.

Thankfully, the goal wasn’t terrorism. The person merely wanted to pull a prank, not understanding the potential danger of the situation. Disney immediately terminated the employee, who pled guilty to a misdemeanor and faced 36 days of jail-time. The individual also fittingly received a lifetime ban from Disney theme parks.