A worker at Walt Disney World is “recovering” after being injured by a 400-lb (180kg) runaway fake boulder prop in an incident that was caught on video, the Florida theme park confirmed.
The incident took place at the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! during a live recreation of a famous scene from the film.
Video shows the boulder rolling towards the audience as a staff member jumps into its path, preventing it from reaching the crowd.
Inb4 they’re fired because they’re supposed to keep audience from approaching the stage not the stage approaching the audience
This
The guy really tried doing his best in a split second but there is a good chance they’ll just fire his ass for this. The audience may think him a hero but HR?
bro is a legit hero for that move. as funny as the video looks, mad respect for that dude.
as funny as the video looks
What part was funny?
I thought it looked a little funny.
From the title you kind of expect the staff member to sprint to position, arms spread wide, brace for impact, and then the big collision.
Instead it is kind of like they did not expect the boulder to weigh that much, the boulder goes bonk, and he flops.
Injury is never funny, but the imagery is a little funny.
seriously. no one goes to a show to get hurt. poor guy’s gonna get called Indy the rest of his life too
They named him after the dog?
omg the worst fate. lol
I would wear that name with pride if I saved children from being hurt.
Bravo to that guy for putting himself in the way to protect the crowd. I hope Disney doesn’t fuck him over.
Dude, it’s Disney. Of course they will.
The boulder was found to have the same rights as the park goers and by halting its progress he violated the terms of his contract to allow for a “fun and inclusive” environment for the boulder.
Thus he was terminated without severance.
dude kept park attendees from being hurt. I’m not up on florida law, but to me it smells like it would be a slam dunk workman’s comp case if disney didn’t agree to foot the recovery bills and cover any lost wages. And honestly, if i were disney i’d toss in a little extra to encourage protecting park guests. The cost of the positive PR that’d come out of doing this is a rounding error on their balance sheet.
so they’ll probably fire him. sucks, right?
That’s not how businesses work. They will pretend he chose to hurt himself and that it was needless dramatics, there’s no proof the boulder would have hurt anyone if he hadn’t intervened. It could have miraculously disappeared if he gave it the chance.
In Florida?!? It’s probably legal to take him to small claims for the cost of damage to the boulder
400 fucking pounds?
I’ve been to Disney World. I’ve seen the Indiana Jones show. At one point a dude literally picks the boulder up with 1 hand cuz it’s just foam and the show was more about showing how they do stunts than just the stunts themselves.
Why do they have a 400 pound one now?
The way the dude’s body bounced off of it, it definitely looked like it was 400 pounds.
The audience was disappointed they weren’t seeing real terror
So that if it rolls out to the crowd to crush and kill a family Indy will look way cooler. And look, it worked. That guy and his compressed spine look cool as fuck.
the foam one probably didn’t bounce right
I bet they deny him sick leave.
Nah. I’m a former Cast Member and I’ve spent some time injured on Disney’s dime in a much lower stakes version of this. If they’re able to sit upright they’ll be given seated light duty tasks like putting hangers on clothing and gluing popsicle sticks on Olaf butts to make fans for the guests. It’s honestly the best workers comp experience I’ve ever had, they’ve got on property doctors who are actually pretty good and if you get injured after their office closes they’ve got a deal with an off property urgent care who sucked but I had zero paperwork to deal with. Also if I didn’t have a five star workers comp experience, the union would have had something to say about it - Cast Members are unionised.
Edit: not to say Disney doesn’t suck, I absolutely have horror stories and everyone who has worked for them does, but their workers comp process was actually pretty great.
If they’re able to sit upright they’ll be given seated light duty tasks like putting hangers on clothing and gluing popsicle sticks on Olaf butts to make fans for the guests. It’s honestly the best workers comp experience I’ve ever had,
I… Wha… Are you for real? It’s not “worker’s comp” if you still literally have to work. Holy shit, how did we get to the point where people think this is a good way for a corporation to treat employees?
This is literally “denying sick leave” like the comment you replied to said.
If you sprain your ankle, why wouldn’t you be able to work? Obviously the dude in the video will get time off, but if you have a foot injury, why would desk duty not be okay?
It’s Disney, so it will probably go like this:
“You’re okay, right? No need to file a workers comp claim, right? That would raise your insurance rates, you know, and you don’t want that. Just walk it off, and don’t talk about, and it will feel better fast. So, since this “didn’t happen,” I expect you to be on time for your next shift tomorrow. You can take it easy today though, maybe just stand at the exit and say Goodbye to guests, okay? I mean it, I don’t want to see a workers comp claim, got it?”
Wow. I hope that guy sues and has enough money to live a comfortable life without working.
I expect that won’t be necessary. Disney has the opportunity to get good PR out of this. All they need to do is sing this worker’s praises, parade their hero around a bit, compensate him appropriately, pay for all medical needs, etc. All together a small cost for some good press and a happy ending.
Disney should just pay him 10% of the expected total of the lawsuits if it had in fact rolled through the crowd. He’d be set for life for sure.
Sounds fair to me. He’d be a millionaire for sure.
Disney Lawyers are something else. I hear Satan wont even let them into hell because he fears them, they just stay in purgatory with the unbaptized babies.
Disney will settle out of court with a(n) NDA('s) for an undisclosed amount so we will never know.
About 5 years ago, during the worst week in Orlando history (including the Pulse Massacre, and the murder of Christina Grimmy), a toddler was snatched and killed by an alligator at Disney’s most exclusive hotel. Disney had a fake beach on their grounds, with an inviting sandy beach leading into a lake, and the kid was sitting it in the shallow water, playing. Disney KNEW there were gators in the water, but they didn’t want to darken anyone’s idea of it being anything but sunny and fun, so they didn’t restrict access to the water, or even put up signs warning of the MANY gators in the water. The resulting scenario was so predictable, that the only thing shocking about it was that it hadn’t happened much earlier.
It should have been one of the biggest lawsuits on history, but in a VERY short time, it was announced that they had come to a settlement with the toddler’s family.
We don’t know what they got, but Disney must have offered them a ridiculous amount to keep that from going to a public trial, so much that even the victims own lawyers said, “There’s no way you’ll get more at trial. Take it.”
I really don’t like the idea of a out of court settlement.
So, you do some criminal shit but then if you have enough money, and the other side agrees to settle, you get off scott-free? No crime happened? Wtf?
That’s an easy way to twist the crime statistics too. So, justice is like playing some board game?
I would agree with you if there was a criminal element to it, but Disney wasn’t determined by the police to have done anything criminal, just negligent. So that goes to Civil Court, where it’s only about money.
had a fake beach on their grounds, with an inviting sandy beach leading into a lake, and the kid was sitting it in the shallow water
that’s 100% an attractive nuisance and 100% on disney
Holy fuck, I never realized all of that happened within a single week.
And near the end of the week, the first case of Zika virus was found in Florida, which they thought might turn into a major thing (it didn’t).
I owned an ice cream store at the time, and it couldn’t have been timed worse. It happened in the very week when the summer tourism boom takes off each year, and cranks for the rest of the summer. It’s when a business like mine makes the biggest profit of the year, and it just…never happened.
By the end of the week, all my customers in the hotel business were saying that EVERY phone call was a cancellation, and their companies were telling them to lie, and say that everything was going great.
By the end of the season, my summer increase never happened. It was Orlando’s year without a summer.
It’s a workman’s comp claim.
But sue for… What? I can’t imagine Disney was negligent it anything. This show has run for decades and the cast member willingly put himself in danger.
lol. Dude is a hero and you just don’t want him cashing in.
Jesus, i friggin hate the whole “we must go all in on one direction else you go all in on the other direction” bullshit.
You’re not saying I’m wrong. You just don’t like that I’m right.
Np, you’re saying I’m right.
It’s coming right for us 😄
-That dad.
Oh hey! Businesses are lobbying to do away with OSHA rules that would cover this.
Why is recovering in quotes?
Because they’re indicating that is the exact word used in Disney’s statement.
My guess is because the amount of “recovery” needed is uncertain. Are they just being monitored for head trauma but otherwise have nothing beyond scrapes and bruises? Or do they have broken bones and a severe concussion?
Jeez, if it’s going to weigh that much, why not just get a real boulder?
An actual boulder of similar size could be 3-5 tons and would’ve resulted in the death of everyone involved
…so you’re saying it would be cheaper for Disney?
Calm down Satan
I’d be pissed if I was in that crowd. Imagine the compensation on that one if it hurt you.
Disney has a real racket paying people bargain basement wages and still has them caring about the job. Happiest place on earth, right?
I think this was less “caring about their job” and more “caring about people”. Yes, it sucks that he was injured on the job, and will likely end up spending a ton in medical bills, ongoing health issues, etc… But people don’t tend to jump in front of danger just because it’s their job.
I’ve done similarly stupid things on the clock to prevent people from getting injured. Not because I was worried about my employer, but because I didn’t want to see people get injured. If it was just gear getting damaged, I’d stand back and watch it go; the company has insurance for that. But it becomes a sort of trolley problem when you see someone (or a group of people) about to get injured, and decide to do nothing to stop it.
And based on the audio, the audience doesn’t seem to realize the boulder is off track.
That “it’s coming right for us” is way too upbeat to sense any danger.
I used to study acting in New York, they were always trying to recruit actors for a ‘role’ in their retail store in times square, while paying minimum wage and ignoring student schedules.
I think that is best referred to as an “ultralight performance boulder” rather than a “fake boulder”.
Hero material right there.
More like 40lbs
