Ride injury details left out
Critics: System lets theme parks downplay accidents
On Universal’s E.T. Adventure, an 11-year-old boy crushed his foot and leg as the ride pulled up into the exit platform last year.
The force of the impact sent the boy’s shoe flying, and he broke toes on his left foot and his tibia and fibula, according to the family’s attorney Ed Normand. The child lost so much blood that his uncle fainted, Normand said.
Universal reported the injury as “foot pain” to the state.
“You ain’t kidding this is foot pain,” Normand said. “This report is ridiculous.”
At Disney World, a 16-year-old “felt ill” after riding the plunging Tower of Terror several times in 2005, according to Disney’s disclosure to the state. The girl said she had a stroke, according to court documents filed with her lawsuit against Disney.
And a 38-year-old man with a heart condition died in December 2016 shortly after getting off a Universal ride without the incident being reported to the state at all. Universal wasn’t required to disclose his death but ethically should have, according to family attorney Lou Pendas.
The public doesn’t always learn how badly people get hurt in the most serious accidents at Florida’s major theme parks because of a self-reporting system that lacks government oversight. Critics say Universal, Disney and other parks can downplay what happens without facing consequences.
As part of a nearly 20-year-old agreement, Universal, Disney, Sea World, Busch Gardens and Legoland self-report visitors’ health problems on rides to the
Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services as long as they require at least 24 hours of hospitalization.
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But the state doesn’t verify parks’ accounts or punish them if they are inaccurate.
“We really are at the mercy of theme parks to self-report their interpretation ofwhat falls within the agreement,” Pendas said.
The theme parks say they report what they know in the moment.
“We have a longstanding commitment to regularly report ride incidents to the Florida Department of Agriculture, and we provide accurate information in those reports based on the information we receive at the time,” Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger said.
Added Universal spokesmanTom Sch rod er ,“We report what we observe or are told at the time of injury. Once our guest is transported to the hospital, we do not have access to medical records or diagnosis information due to privacy laws.”
How often Florida’s theme parks downplay visitors’ injuries is hard to know. Some can be gleaned from lawsuits, but even then, court documents can be filed confidentially and settlements reached out of court with non-disclosure agreement sealing the details.
Money and power
In California, a regulationstate, stricter laws require Universal, Disney and other theme parks to report all deaths and health issues that go beyond ordinary first aid.
But changing the self-reporting system in Florida won’t be easy, one government watchdog said.
“There has to be the political will to do it,” said Ben Wilcox of the nonprofit Integrity Florida. “In the past, that political will has just not been there. It’s been because of the hold that these industries have on our Legislature and state policymakers.”
This state election cycle alone Disney has spent at least $3.27 million, including about $602,000 on free hotel rooms and park tickets as well as food, drinks and venue space for politicians’ fundraising events. Universal and its parent company, Comcast Corp., have spent at least $1.77 million, including $328,000 for in-kind donations, state records show.
Most of the theme park donations go to Republicans, who control the Governor’s Office and both chambers of the Florida Legislature.
Schroder called Universal’s political contributions “minuscule when compared to the money and resources we devote to ride safety each year.”
“Like many organizations, we participate in the political process by making contributions on behalf of our company and our tens of thousands of team members. Those contributions are transparent and follow stringent guidelines,” Schroder said in a statement.
The theme-park companies do donate to Democrats, too, including Florida Department of Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, whose office releases the theme park injury report every three months.
Since Fried took office in 2019, her political committee has received $25,000 from Universal or its owners and a Universal park tour valued at $4,500. Walt Disney Co. has given Fried’s PAC nearly $45,000 worth of food and drinks for events and a $10,000 donation, according to state campaign disclosures.
Fried declined to be interviewed for this story, but her spokesman, Max Flugrath, said in a written statement, “Regarding any contributions to political committees, contributions have no impact on the Commissioner’ s duties, and to imply otherwise would be irresponsible.”
The Orlando Sentinel asked Fried what action she can take to make the parks’
injury reporting more accurate.
“Itwould be up to legislators to propose changes to [the] statute regarding injury reporting,” Flugrath said in a statement, adding Fried’s office also cannot unilaterally change the agreement. “Again, the expectation is that rides will be safe, and injuries will be reported accurately.”
A broken neck
The final day of James Bowen’s summer vacation last year turned tragic as he rode Punga Racers, which unknown to him, had a troubled history of causing injuries since it opened at Universal’s Volcano Bay.
Onthe final stretch, Bowen’s head snapped back violently as he went headfirst downthe slide into awall of water, according to his Orange Circuit Court lawsuit against Universal. He broke his neck and was paralyzed as his family and Universal lifeguards frantically rescued the 47-year-old, the lawsuit says. It took surgery and lengthy rehabilitation before the New York man slowly relearned to walk again.
A Universal employee showed up at the hospital shortly after Bowen arrived and watched as he received treatment in the ER, surrounded by numerous doctors and nurses, said David Buckner, Bowen’s attorney.
But when Universal reported the incident to the state, none of those details was mentioned.
“Numbness,” was how Universal disclosed the injury to the state.
“I thinkmy first reaction, it appeared to be such an obvious attempt to conceal the reality of what had happened to Mr. Bowen,” said Buckner when he saw the state injury report. “It’s so blatant.”
Universal attorney Justin Kreindel disputed Buckner’s take.
“We don’t believe we have misstated anything in our report to the state,” Kreindel told a judge in May. “Obviously, it happened on our property, and he was transported. But we provided as much detail as wewere able to.”
It wasn’t the first time a state injury report didn’t reveal the full account.
A trip down another Volcano Bay slide caused a litany of injuries for a 45-year-old South Florida man after he hit the bottom of the pool in2017. Universal called it “back pain.”
However, in a deposition, the man described how he not only hurt his back but that he traumatically tore an abdominal muscle and experienced a groin injury that made his penis and scrotum bruise and swell painfully. The man said he developed erectile dysfunction and eventually had to receive a penile implant.
A 38-year-old Guatemalan tourist with a prior heart condition collapsed shortly after he got off Skull Island: Reign of Kong at Universal’s Islands of Adventure in 2016. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, dying from a massive heart attack.
His death wasn’t mentioned in the state’s theme park injury report released every three months. Jose Calderón Arana’s fate only became public knowledge after his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in
2018, which was later settled confidentially this summer, according to online court records.
Under pressure
The history of Florida theme parks self-reporting injuries goes back two decades to a time when no reporting rules existed.
What helped fuel a national concern for theme park safety was a tragedy at Disneyland in California on Christmas Eve 1998. A 33-year-oldmandied froma brain hemorrhage and skull fracture after he was struck in the head by a piece of metal that tore loose froma sailing ship called the Columbia.
Police who were investigating waited in a conference room while Disney cleaned up the bloody scene at the dock first, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Then inAugust 1999, four people died on roller coaster accidents in one week across the country.
The high-profile deaths led to a bill in Congress to give a federal commission power to investigate incidents at theme parks, but it failed as Disney and the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions fought against it.
Instead, California legislators took action and a new lawwent into effect in 2000 that required state safety inspections on all amusement rides. The law also created stricter injury disclosures, so for the first time, Disneyland, Universal Hollywood, SeaWorld San Diego and other California parks were required to report deaths and injuries that went beyond basic first aid.
Around the time, Disney World also was facing pressure and bad publicity.
In 1998, a 29-year-old man raising his arm going down SpaceMountain got a
finger snagged on a screw, which cost him the digit. In 2000, a 37-year-old man died after he climbed out of a boat on Splash Mountain andwas crushed by another vessel.
Disney assured the news media the theme parks were safe and such tragic events were rare. But how could the public know for certain?
The Florida parks didn’t publicly disclose visitors’ injuries, and state lawmade theme parks exempt from state inspections because they employed more than 1,000 people.
The state and the parks reached a “memorandumof understanding” in 2000 to consult with each other and for the state to get safety walkthroughs of the parks.
For the first time, the parks began voluntarily disclosing visitors’ injuries to the state. The earliest state injury report came out in late 2001: a woman broke her arm on a Universal carousel and a man felt neck pain from a pre-existing
bulging disc at a SeaWorld water ride.
“This is cooperation we haven’t had before,” a state agriculture employee told the Sentinel in 2002. “In the past couple of years the big theme parks began calling us for consultation, but they would never put their reports in writing that could be considered a public record.”
By 2007, the agriculture department and theme parks agreed to an addendum to their 2000 agreement that said the parks would report serious injuries or deaths on the rides within two weeks after every calendar quarter’s end.
Under the pact, the parks self-report the injuries “with reasonable diligence” where people were hospitalized for at least 24 hours for more than medical observation. The agreement did not list any consequences if injuries weren’t accurate and said the agriculture department would not receive injured visitors’ names or contact information,
making independent followup impossible.
In some instances, the state’s theme park injury reports do provide some specifics.
For instance, Aquatica Orlando, a water park at SeaWorld, self-disclosed when a man died on a riverstyle ride in 2017 andDisney self-reported that a man was seriously hurt when his arm got caught in a conveyor belt at aTyphoon Lagoon water ride in 2018.
Last year, Legoland Florida said a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy felt radiating pain after riding an attraction.
But reports also are full of vague accounts of “pain” or visitors with unspecified pre-existing conditions.
“It ’s bugged me for years,” said Normand, the Orlando attorney. “They do such dishonesty in this reporting system.”