Here on cartoon conspiracy, we talk a lot about Disney. Or, at least I do.
Oops.
But there's good reason to talk about it! Cartoons just wouldn't be what
they are today if it weren't for Disney's contributions to the art of animation.
They made animation in film... magical, you know?
And with the success of Walt Disney films came a very special place where
fans can immerse themselves in this magic. Disneyland, and then eventually, Disney World.
You would imagine that these ever-popular vacation spots would
be as wholesome and happy and safe like their movies are, right? Well.. not quite.
And that's where our conspiracy comes in today. I'm Arielle with Channel Frederator
and today we're gonna talk about how the haven of animation, the land of your
childhood, the happiest place on earth.. It ain't so happy.
Hey, if you like cartoons, there is a high likelihood that you like Disney.
And if you love Disney, then you love the Disney parks.
Or, at least, you will when you eventually get there.
I hate to put on my villain hat..
*pfft* What am I talking about, I love it. I feel the need
to inform you that these places are home to some pretty creepy myths and legends.
Truths even! Yes, some of the legends are true.
So, when you get the chance to visit
and everyone in your party is having a good old time escaping from the real world,
you can be that guy.
Go to the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor and Tomorrowland, they'll give you a sticker for that.
I've got five creepy things to talk about today
and how we're going to do this is that I will give each one its own rating as we
go. Just to be fair 'cause they're going to vary on how credible they are.
Let's get rolling, shall we? Legend number one: the bellhop that haunts the Tower of Terror.
Starting off with a small one, let's talk about a haunting. Among all
the princesses and the fireworks and the songs about wishing upon stars and your
dreams coming true.. Every theme park needs a haunted house.
No, I'm not talking about the Haunted Mansion. Yet... How about a haunted hotel?
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Disney's Hollywood Studios is creepy
enough as it is. But legend tells that the ride is
actually haunted by a cast member who died on the ride. The story goes that on
Tower of Terror, there are four platforms: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta.
The cast members working on the ride are known as bellhops. Get it? It's a hotel!
One of the bellhops was loading guests onto Delta, or platform D, and he just
dropped dead. Right there, on the spot. Most of the sources say that he died on
the elevator but from personal experience, I know that the bellhops
usually stay nearby the door but that doesn't matter. What matters is that a
man died. People apparently don't know the cause of the death but most people
say that it was a heart attack. Now it's said that bellhop cast members refuse
to ride on platform D alone. If you are working one of the platforms at closing
time, it is your duty to ride through and make sure everything is working properly.
See if the effects are on cue, the lights are working, etc. Usually, you just need one
person to ride through and then there are others who are watching the cameras
and working the controls. But when it comes to platform D, there is an
agreement among cast members to never let anyone go on that elevator by
themselves. It always has to be two or more. This is because the Delta elevator
is now haunted. Lights will flicker or turn off altogether as someone who's
already scared of this ride..
Nope. So much nope.
Props will be moved out of place, the ride will freeze.. it's not exactly fun. I even read that two cast
members rode the ride when all the lights turned off and the people
watching in the cameras didn't see anything happen. It all seemed normal.
Some bellhops also say they'll sometimes see a shadowy figure lurking around in
the corner of their eye at night, around the boiler room where the guests are
loaded on or the background of the ride. And there has even been camera footage of
a maintenance man riding with a ghostly guest. YouTube removed it. Or maybe Disney
told YouTube to remove it. So, is this one true? Well it's pretty easy to find a
list of people who died in the Disney parks over the decades, both guests and
cast members. There is no record of a bellhop dying on the Tower of Terror.
I don't think anyone's died on it. I don't know where this rumor started. The only
first-hand account I found was on Wattpad.com under a writing simply
titled "Short Scary Stories!" by user TheErkenshires. It's probably the biggest
collection of information you can find on this legend but I also discovered
this comment the writer left saying that he found and collected short stories
around the internet for this compilation. This Tower of Terror one? From an unknown
source. So I'm leaning towards the conclusion that they themselves did not
work in Disney. The mystery where it all started remains unsolved. I think I'm
gonna give it one Mickey pretzel out of five. I completely believe that the Tower
of Terror is terrifying at night and I wouldn't want to ride it alone either.
But it just sounds like one of those 'scare the newbies' stories that has no meat to it.
Speaking of no meat, legend number two: the real skeletons on Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean.
You've probably heard of this one. The rumor has it that
the skeletons on the original Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland
California are actually real. Actual dead bodies sprawled across a Disneyland ride.
Sounds messed up, right? Well it's actually partially true. The story goes
that in the 1960s when the park was being built, the fake skeletons that they
are going to use for the ride looked way too fake. Their solution? Install real
skeletons on the ride instead. They're already made, right? Less work for us!
Where did they get them? The common speculation is that they contacted the
Medical Center at UCLA and had them send a few over. That must have been a weird
phone call. What's even creepier is that I hear that they were people from death
row who donated their bodies to science. Years later, Imagineers got better at
making realistic looking skeletons and the gruesome real ones got replaced...
or did they? People say that there are real skeletons on Pirates of the Caribbean to
this day. The only one that Disney cast members will confirm is the one above
the captain's bed. That one is 100% real and every Disneyland junkie knows this.
Some say that it was actually personally donated by one of the Imagineers who
worked on the ride. He wanted to be immortalized in his project, but people
wonder if there are others around the attraction besides that. In my research, I
came across an article by Earzup Podcast. The writers claimed that they
actually had an inside source working on the ride who actually held the skulls
and bones in their hands and got an up-close look at all the all too
intricate details. I'm talking the inside cavities of the nose.
Details that even a Disney artist wouldn't bother adding. They were
confident enough to officially confirm that there were three others still on
the ride and they even shared their up-close photos to prove it.
After you travel down the second drop in the beginning, you pass by an island on
your right with three skeletons. Apparently the one stabbed in his back
and lying on his belly next to the crab has a real human skull, and the skull and
the ribcage of the skeleton pinned to the wall is also real human remains.
The third skeleton is in the jail cell scene, he or she is crushed under a beam.
I do want to point out, though, that this article was written in 2013. I've been
looking at a lot of ride-through videos on YouTube and, interestingly enough, I
think the skull in the sand down by the crab was replaced recently. I actually
gagged and shocked when I discovered this. Videos dated before 2013 have a
creepier looking a skull that matches the articles photos but after that.. it's
a totally different skull. And comparatively, it looks fake!
Maybe Disney finally cracked down and got rid of that one? Did somebody get
in trouble? Did the article go too far exposing them? Well, I'm still gonna give
this one five Dole Whips out of five, since the skull over the bed is still
real. And they may or may not still be there now, but there were human remains
all over that ride sometime before. And that deserves a perfect scary score.
Legend number three: the person who hung themselves on It's a Small World.
What a title right?
So this one dates back to 1999. A family was visiting Disneyland in
California and they rode the famous It's a Small World attraction. Some people may
argue that this is the scariest ride of them all and, you know what? Fair.
Dolls and singing little children freak you out, that is totally fair. So this family
had a mom and dad, two sisters, and the older sister is the one that posted
about this online years later. They said that on their little Joyride, it suddenly
stopped. The lights turned on, the animatronics turned off, the announcement
was made and then the cast members emerged to escort the guests off the
ride. The mom who wanted to finish up the rest of the film on her disposable
camera decided to take pics of the ride on their way out of the building. There's
little animatronic children all over the room in every direction in this ride, so
it's understandable that she would point her camera up towards the ceiling and
take a photo there. When the film was developed, it revealed the disturbing
sight of a small person in red overalls hanging from the ceiling, so the family
concluded that the ride was shut down because the cast member hung themself.
Here's the thing. The original post specifically describes how the cast
members that came out to help them off the ride were also wearing red overalls.
Which is why they suspected it was someone who worked there. Small World
cast members don't wear red overalls. Never have. No one in fantasy land does.
Also this post says that ambulances and a police car were parked outside in the
main area when they left the building, Yeah, that's not how Disney works. This is
Disneyland, so there isn't a labyrinth of tunnels under the park like they have in
Florida. But they would absolutely not park ambulances and police cars inside
the park, smack dab in the middle of Fantasyland in front of all the guests.
That's not magical! Especially with how the park is laid out with Small World
all the way in the back. If there were emergency vehicles, I am positive that
they would be behind the ride. I want to end this myth here. Yes, it's a freaky
photo but it's a small person in a silly outfit on
Small World. It's probably just a poorly stored animatronic. There's no record of
this Disney death anywhere, either. This has zero turkey legs out of five, it's
just a rumor that's very, very, false.
Legend number four: Disney's original intentions for Club 33 and it's connection to the Illuminati.
Ohhh boy, okay.
First of all, what is Club 33? Club 33 is an exclusive, and I mean *exclusive* club
in Disneyland. I'm talking a 25,000 to 50,000 dollar initiation fee,
a 30,000 dollar annual fee just to keep the membership, and then a 10 to 15 year
waiting list just to get in. Yeah. It's pretty much just for the VIP big-time
celebrity businessmen, super-rich sort of guests. Kind of a safe haven for
superstars who need to escape the crowds and have a drink when Disneyland doesn't
serve alcohol to regular guests. Walt Disney died six-ish months before the
club officially opened, so he never got to have the experience. But people
believed he intended to use it for Illuminati meetings; hence, why it was so
exclusive and secretive. Why do people think that? It's because people think he
was a Freemason, which is another super secret organization and secrecy always
leads to Illuminati right? Oy.
So, I don't know much about the Illuminati?
The Internet's kind of made that a confusing one to figure out because it's basically
a meme now? But the most basic way to describe it is that it's a secretive
cult-y, otherworldly enlightened group that is out to establish a new world order, whatever that means.
The Freemasons are basically a fraternity that have been around for forever.
Like since the 14th century forever.
It started out as a guild for craftsmen and now it's a very
large group of men.. just men who are out to do some good in the world... I guess.
They, they work in a similar cult-y fashion so they're.. questionable.
*shrug*
They're very secretive, so people are suspicious of them. I am an animation
person, not a secret organized, like there's secrets, I-I don't know!
And so, once again, Illuminati. 33 is a number associated with Freemasons because even
though there are only three traditional degrees of Freemasonry, the ancient and
accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry has a 33 degree system. People believe
that Walt Disney was the highest degree of freemason, 33, and he started this club
for his freemason bros. Walt Disney was a member of DeMolay, which is another
fraternal organization sponsored by masonry, but is not masonry itself. this
was a misconception about Walt and his connection to Freemasonry. Many DeMolay
members become Freemasons but not all of them. And this is the misconception about
Walt, he never became one. So, there it is. Some people also tend to connect the
Illuminati to devil worshipping and radical types of those people might
accuse Walt of witchcraft, since his brand thrives on fantasy and Disney
magic. Therefore, if he wasn't a freemason, that would be the other reason why he
would hold Illuminati meetings, but..
*cartoon shake*
Look, if we're being honest, I think that a
club for the super-rich seems a lot more.. lucrative and therefore, more likely for
Walt Disney than having a super secret meeting place for the Freemasons/Illuminati.
Club 33 was intended to be a VIP lounge
and was designed for big spender guests. Illuminati members wouldn't want to go
there, the Illuminati probably drinks for free! This one is done. You guys gotta
chill. It's not really a debunked one, due to all the secrecy, so.. one LeFou's Brew
out of five One nice, chill LeFou's Brew. It's frozen apple juice with
marshmallow on top. Screw Club 33, go to Gaston's Tavern. And, lastly,
legend number five: cremated ashes are spreaded all over the parks. if you love Disney
enough, your final wishes might be to ask your family or friends to sprinkle your
ashes all over the Disney parks. Yeah, don't do that.
You might have heard of people tossing ashes into the Haunted Mansion, a ghostly
ride that openly offers you to make final arrangements to join the 999 happy
haunts in the building. Turns out, many people want to take them up on that offer.
It's not just the Haunted Mansion, even though that's the most popular spot.
The other hot spots are Pirates of the Caribbean and It's a Small World but
people have been spotted illegally sprinkling all over the park. The first
reported case was in 1990 and it's a trend
that's grown in popularity by the year ever since. It's so popular nowadays that
the Haunted Mansion gift shop now sells urns to encourage an alternative option to
- I don't know the landfill? Because the truth of the matter is if you're tossed
around Disney, cast members are trained to shut down the ride and vacuum you up
so you can go into the trash. Let me repeat that! Cast members are trained to
handle picking up the sprinklings of human remains because it's become that
common. There's even a codename for the situation, listen for someone calling out
white powder alert. It means that a burial was caught on camera and it's
time to get to work. Even if you aren't caught in the act, you know, they still
vacuum up the floors. I guess if you just toss them into the water at Pirates then
the ashes would just dissipate but, come on, guys, we get splashed by that water.
I don't want your dead grandma on my face! What I'm saying is that this one is
extremely true. it is a five Mickey bars out of five and, unfortunately, it's kind
of hard to clean up every speck of people powder once it's been tossed
around, so.. here's a friendly reminder letting you know that you are stepping
onto the final resting place of Disney lovers when you enter the parks.
*nervously imitating Walt Disney castle jingle with hands*
I think we might be running long now, so that's all we have for today.
Now all you animation lovers have 5 freaky, creepy, spoopy, little fun
conversation starters that you can bring along on your next or first adventure to
Disney, wherever that Park may be. Obviously, we don't need to discuss the
probability of these things being proven or disproven because we already covered
all that. What I said earlier, though, about how Disney World isn't as cheery
of a place as you first realized and all that junk? Nah.
Say what you want about the parks, but for an animation buff,
being surrounded by the art music and characters
that you grew up loving is enough to earn it its title as the
happiest place on earth. At least, for some of us. In the end, I
give it 5 fireworks out of 5. Would recommend. No, wait, this conspiracy is
about Disney isn't happy and I just gave it a perfect score because I got mushy,
it should be a 0 Jacob EDIT THAT OUT.
If you enjoyed these little ghost stories,
let us know in the comments below and we might get you a part two. There's plenty
more to talk about. So, in fact, I worked at Disney World a
few years ago through their college program. Made good friends with Mickey,
Minnie, Donald and Stitch was my bestie. I miss him. Be sure to subscribe
down below and click the Bell icon to become part of the notification squad.
That way, if you do, you will get notified every time that we post. Again, my name is
Arielle, also known as R2NinjaTurtle, I am all over the Internet, go find me.
Thanks so much, everyone, and good luck sleeping tonight after watching this.
To help ease your fears, just remember, Frederator loves you.
Boo!