The missing monorail piece

Do you wear a hard hat when you walk through a Disney parking lot? Maybe you should. Also, Disney might want to put out some signs along the lines of "Danger! Falling Monorail Parts!”

Yes, the sad state of the Walt Disney World monorail system is a known by now. Guests lament that park officials have left the Mark VI fleet in operation for more than 30 years. It’s the equivalent of a 1989 Chevy Chevelle in the sky.

Even allowing for the cruelties of time, the monorail's in a bad way. I could provide a litany of examples, but the funniest one occurred in 2017. A guest walking through the Epcot parking lot saw something unusual. A sizeable connecting piece of the monorail broke off and fell to the ground.

Since the parking lot is what was below it, the monorail part narrowly missed an innocent customer who almost got smashed in the head by the combined forces of gravity and poor Disney leadership decisions.

The hanging Santa

Speaking of costumed cast members in peril, a 2018 holiday parade performance ended with a surprising outcome. Disneyland’s A Christmas Fantasy Parade features many of your favorite Disney characters plus an entire float dedicated to Santa Claus!

Sadly, Kris Kringle got stuck in a different kind of chimney during one show. Santa’s sleigh malfunctioned in unpredictable fashion, effectively collapsing from within. The odd torque from this bit of gravity led to a catapulting countermeasure. Poor Santa got hurled up and out of his sled and into the air.

The good news is that Disney plans for worst-case scenarios like this. The guy who gave you all your best Christmas gifts didn’t get hurt. A harness stabilized him and saved him from plummeting to the ground.

However, a bunch of kids gazed in confusion at Santa, who was flailing wildly in the air while dangling from said harness. Some of them probably wondered why he needed reindeer if he could already fly.

The engineer who quickly updated his resume

Finally, I’ll leave you with one more story about ridiculous but hilarious Disney incidents. Any fan of Walt Disney knows about the entrepreneur’s love of trains. He kept a functional model railroad at his home and couldn’t imagine the Happiest Place on Earth without a train.

Unfortunately, not everyone at Disneyland was ready on opening day. Murphy’s Law was in full effect as the park suffered through a debut that has lived on in infamy for 65 years after the fact. Anything that could have gone wrong at the park did on that day.

What gets talked about less is that several other incidents occurred during the first month. Nobody had a firm idea of how a theme park should operate, and so mistakes happened frequently.

One of them towers above the rest, as it struck too close to home. An inexperienced train engineer panicked at his new job, and something shocking happened.

Toward the end of Disneyland’s first week, this brakeman pulled a switch too early. All of the wheels weren’t on the right track yet. Yes, picture a train with some wheels on one track, and the others switched to a different track. You can guess what happened next.

This man caused a derailment of Walt Disney's prized railroad at Disneyland. The caboose crashed into a slab of concrete and severely damaged the train.

The mortified engineer knew that he’d screwed up big time. He took advantage of the chaotic scene to sneak out of the crash site. Then, the world’s worst brakeman left Disneyland and never showed back up for work again.

That's not a joke, nor is it hyperbole. This (former) cast member crashed Disneyland Railroad, ditched the scene of the accident, and quit his job, all in a matter of minutes. In his defense, if he had come back to work afterward, Walt Disney might have murdered him on the spot.