Man had heart attack waiting for Disney World go carts, here’s what happened next
Picture this: You have a cool summer job helping people into the go carts at Disney World’s “Speedway” ride. The on one especially hot day, an old man collapses. He busts his face open on the concrete and, as far as you and a doctor waiting in line can tell, is completely dead. Yet Disney’s emergency services arrive with a stretcher and insist on resuscitating him the entire way out of the park. Why? It’s only afterward that your manager explains what was actually going on.
This is the story according to TikTok user Tom Cruz. Cruz claims it took 15 minutes for Disney’s emergency services to reach the man with a stretcher and carry him out of the park. He tagged along, but thought to himself, Man, this guy’s dead, why are they still trying to bring him back?
His manager finally explained the rule, “No one dies at Disney World.” Obviously, health disasters happen. But according to Cruz, Disney will attempt to resuscitate everyone until they’re fully off the property. Only outside the borders of Disney World will they allow the guest to be declared dead. It makes for a pretty compelling urban legend. But the only problem is that it isn’t true.
First and foremost, you can read Cruz’s story below:
“Here I am in the summer, working at Speedway at Magic Kingdom in Orlando. It’s super hot. I distinctly remember this day, we were helping people into the Go Kart ride and there was a family and they had an older gentleman with them. It was super hot on this day, the guy collapses, boom, on his face and busts his face up, it was ugly.
“Of course, there was a doctor in line, he came over to help, we called emergency services. This entire time my man was not breathing. They’re doing CPR on him, trying to revive him, no luck. It’s 15 minutes before they finally got through the park to try to help him out. They stretchered him out and kept resuscitating him all the way until the end.
“I was like, ‘man, this guy’s dead, why are they still trying to bring him back?’ and the manager’s like ‘no one dies at Disney World, everyone is resuscitated or attempted into resuscitation until they’re off the property, then they’re formally declared dead.” Tom Cruz, via TikTok.
Cruz isn’t the first person to talk about the “No one dies at Disney World” myth. But if you think about it of a second, it makes no sense. The park opened in 1971 and gets 58 million visitors a year. It’s a statistical impossibility that no one has died–and been declared dead–inside the park boundaries in the past five decades.
The truth is that books such as Inside the Mouse confirm Cruz’s rumor about a park-wide policy to continue resuscitation attempts until guests are off the property. But that might just be a good standard operating procedure: often when EMTs begin lifesaving measures such as CPR, they will continue them until the patient arrives at the hospital and is declared dead by a doctor. So has anyone been declared dead at Disney World? Absolutely.
One famous example occurred in 1984, when a plane crashed into the EPCOT parking lot. Here is what the news said, “A man was pronounced dead at the scene. A woman and a 2-year-old child died after being taken to a hospitals. The two survivors, a 3-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, were listed in critical condition at Orlando Regional Medical Center.”
So there you have it, someone was declared dead while “at” Disney World. It can hardly be considered the park’s fault if a non-guest crashes their plane into the parking lot. But there isn’t some “No one has ever died at Disney World” streak to protect.
