Disney Deaths: Tragedy in the Happiest Place on Earth

Written By Kaelyn Moore

You may have heard that “no one dies at disney” but is that really true? Let’s look into the deaths of Mark Maples, a 15 year old who died on the Matterhorn, Dollie Regina Young who died on the same ride, and Deborah Gail Stone, who was crushed on the America Sings Ride. 

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in 1995, a book titled Inside the mouse: work and play at disneyworld, wrote the following about the disney parks 

"if guests have the nerve to die, they wait, like unwanted calories, until they've crossed the line and can do so safely off the property"

The book is suggesting the common misconception that no one dies at disney. Legend has it that disney makes first responders wait until people are far away from the property to pronounce them dead so they can keep the reputation that no one has died at the park.

But that’s not true. People have died at disney, people have gotten horribly injured at disney, and these events are on record and deliberated publicly. Actually, in 1985 Time Magazine reported that there are 100 lawsuits for various incidents a year filed against disney.

It’s no surprise that Disney works hard to maintain their image as the happiest place on earth. I mean, they even meticulously map out where to put trash cans to make sure no one ever throws trash on the ground. But behind every facade, every shining shimmering splendid veneer, theres usually a dark underbelly. Something swept under the rug to not spoil the image as a whole.

Today we’re going to talk about some of those stories. Listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore. 

This is a community of people who follow their dark curiosity wherever it leads them, and we release episodes every thursday. If you’d like to get deeper into the community, you can follow on instagram and tik tok at heart starts pounding, or join our patreon called The Rogue Detecting society, where you’ll have access to some bonus content for just $3 a month. Shout out to everyone who is already there. Starting next week I’ll be thanking people by name in the episodes.

Today, we’re going to be talking about times tragedy struck at disney, but To start us off, I want to tell you about the most terrifying experience I had working in fast food

When I was 16, I’d work the closing shift at a fast food place near me. I’d get there right after school, and one by one I’d watch my coworkers clock out until it was just me, one person in the kitchen, and my manager, standing in a dimly lit and mostly empty restaurant late into night. 

The restaurant had a big walk in fridge,  stainless steel, the size of a bedroom with a low ceiling, and it was stocked with produce. I still remember the sterile, dim hospital lighting inside.  in the back right corner of the big fridge was a door that was latched shut, that was for the freezer. The fridge was creepy. The freezer was terrifying. 

The freezer was a tiny, even more dimly lit room the size of a closet and it was always set to between -4 and -9 degrees. Once you’d go in, you could feel the cold racing through your skin towards your bones. Your breath would fog in front of you and you’d just grab fries as fast as you could before your arms lost feeling.  It was miserable being in there, and I had heard a rumor that years prior that a woman accidentally locked herself in the freezer one day. It was 45 minutes before anyone realized she was missing, and this was in the middle of the day when they were fully staffed, tons of people to notice. By the time they found her, she was curled up in the corner trying to keep warm and had to be rushed to a hospital and treated for hypothermia. 

It seemed obvious to me that had happened. The door was janky at best. To prevent myself from freezing to death, I always kept the freezer door propped open with a bucket of lettuce when I was closing. I’d race in, grab the breakfast goods we’d need for the morning, and race out.

One night, it was just me and my manager closing. he was inside the office with the door closed, counting up the registers from the day. I passed his closed door and walked all the way down the long hall to the fridge entrance to do my final task of the night. There, I unlatched the freezer door, took a box of produce down off of a tower of other boxes, propped the door open and walked inside.

I’m trying to move as quickly as possible, But once inside i hear a creaking noise behind me. The weight of the freezer door had pushed the small box I placed down out of the way, and I turn around to the door slamming shut. And then, cherry on top, I heard the sound of the tower of boxes cascading down in front of the door. Uh oh. I pushed on the door, but the weight of the boxes pushed back.

Hey, Hello!! I yelled, hoping my manager would hear me, but there were two, heavy steel doors in between me and the outside world. And now I’m thinking to myself, maybe my manager wasn’t in the office counting registers, maybe he had actually gone home.

I pushed on the freezer door again, nope, it wasn’t giving an inch. Who the hell designed this door to not open inward in case something like this happened?! At this point, Im so scared i’m starting to tear up, and the wetness on my face is turning frosty. -4, the temperature read. 

I knew I had to get out of there. Oh god, dont let me die at my minimum wage job. One that, lets be real, I wasn’t that good at to begin with. I was going to be remembered as the girl who broke the ice cream machine, literally every day.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I went to the other side of the tiny freezer, and just started running, as fast as I could, at the door, hoping my body weight would be enough against the boxes of cheese and onions on the other side. And on the second try, i hit it hard enough to spill out. 

I ran to finish closing. I needed to warm up and i just wanted to get out there. as I was leaving, my manager came out of the back office

“What happened to you?” he asked, noticing my runny mascara and panicked look

“I just got locked in the back freezer” i whimpered

“Oh yea, i meant to tell you to be careful because someone almost died in there last year.”

I tell you this story, because I’m a big believer in social contracts agreements based on basic human decency,  and I get really mad when they’re broken. When you agree to work at a place, you’re signing up to show up on time and do a good job, and your employer is agreeing to pay you for that work, but also to make sure that you’ll be safe on the job. They’re agreeing that standard safety measures have been put in place and will be upheld
This idea extends into every area of our lives. When you buy a plane ticket, the airline is agreeing to take you to your destination safely, and you’re agreeing to not drink 5 whisky cokes and try to fight a flight attendant. And for the most part, this contract is upheld. 

But what about when this contract is broken? What are the consequences? Well, today I’m going to tell you about some, specifically at Disney, a place that hasn’t always been forthcoming with their role in breaking safety measures. Some of these stories are about people that embark on unsafe measures within the park, and some of them are about Disney not making sure that everyone will be safe. 

The first death to occur in a disney park happened in Disneyland, in 1964, 11 years after the park first opened. 

It was Grad night for Stanford Junior High school, and to celebrate, the school had rented out part of the park after it closed. This is a common thing for schools in southern california which still blows my mind. My grad night was in my cafeteria.   

Mark Maples was 15 years old, and that night it he mostly hanging out with his girlfriend and a few friends. At least one person remembered seeing him spinning around on the teacups

At one point in the night, Mark and his friends wanted to go on the matterhorn, a 147 foot alpine coaster in the center of the park. The matterhorn was originally a decoration in the park. When digging the land for Sleeping Beauty’s castle, the dirt from the dig was piled up and decorated with fake snow. But when Disney visited Switzerland in 1958, he fell in love with the real matterhorn mountain, and when he came back, he had the dirt pile removed and in it’s place he built a giant replica mountain covered in snow that a toboggan coaster running through the middle.

in 1964, this was still the only thrill ride in disney, so of course all of the kids were eager to line up for it. And on top of that, mark had just been grounded for a few weeks, so this was really his first night of freedom in a while.

The ride isn’t like a typical coaster with ups and downs, it slowly ascends to the top of the mountain and then releases, letting riders cascade down as if on a bobsled. Mark loaded into the matterhorn around midnight with two of his best friends on either side of him in the three person seat and they started ascending through the dark snowy mountain. 

the ride didn’t offer great lighting, so Mark’s friends didn’t see exactly what was happening as the coaster reached the top and started it’s quick descent. But at one point, marks friend can feel him bumping into him, in a way that’s not consistent with how the coaster is moving. So he looks over to mark, but all he can see is marks sweater hurdling over the side of the coaster.

When they reached the bottom, the boys were panicking and trying to get an attendant. They told someone working the coaster that their friend had fallen out, that he was still in the ride somewhere, but the attendant didn’t believe them. So it took a little while for emergency services to be called.

When EMT’s finally were able to summit the ride, they found mark laying on a ledge off to the side of the track, with a fractured skull and broken ribs. He was rushed to the hospital where he passed away a few days later due to blunt force trauma to the head.

Disney put out an official statement saying that Mark “unbuckled his safety restraint and stood up on the bobsled as it was entering the summit. He fell onto the tracks and died of internal injuries.” They belief was that upon standing, Mark hit his head on the inside of the tunnel and was thrown from the sled. 

But his classmates had other memories of what transpired that night. Some thought that Mark was trying to impress his girlfriend, other’s thought that one of his friends undid his seatbelt as a prank. The Chief Deputy said he had received calls claiming that this was a hazing incident  

In the end, his death was ruled purely accidental with the weight of the responsibility being put on Mark, not the ride. How a 15 year old boy could simply become unbuckled during the ride was never questioned, and the case was closed.

This story would be tragic if this were the only time this had happened on the matterhorn ride in disney. But it starts to verge on, suspicious, when you learn what happened exactly 20 years later on the same exact ride.

On January 3rd, 1984, Dolly Regina Young and four of her friends loaded onto the matterhorn ride at around 3pm. She had come in from Freemont, about an hour flight away in Northern California, where Dolly had been a well liked Avon representative.

As they loaded into the sled, Dolly sat by herself in the last seat all the way in the back. The ride climbed and made it’s initial descent, all without incident.

At the time, there was a large hole cut into the side of the mountain, where the Skyway gondola would carry guests across the park. The sides of the gondola were glass, so as people entered matterhorn mountain, they could see sleds scurrying down the tracks, even wave at riders.

On this day, a father and his two teenage daughters sat inside of the gondola as it entered the mountain. They were looking down at the bobsleds zooming full speed towards the exit, when all of a sudden, the 19-year-old daughter, helen. Screamed

From helens perspective, she watched as Dolly fell backwards out of the coaster onto the tracks. The impact must have hit her hard, because she wasn’t able to get herself up at first. Multiple cars ride down the mountain at the same time, but there is about a 30 second gap in between them. It took a few seconds, but it did look to helen like Dolly started stirring, and was attempting to get herself off of the tracks, when all of a sudden, she saw the another sled barreling towards Dolly. Helen didn’t see what happened next because her father screamed for her to cover her eyes. 

But the family from canada who was in the oncoming bobsled did see what followed. They reported that at first, they thought the body lying on the tracks was a prop. But they quickly realized they were wrong

The bobsled made impact with dolly, striking her on the chest and torso and causing the vessel to come to a screeching halt. The sensors went off indicating that a bobsled was stuck, causing all of the other sleds to stop in their tracks. A worker at the bottom of the ride immediately noticed that the ride had halted, and he could hear what sounded like sharp, panicked screams radiating out of the mountain. He abandoned his station and ran to the source, but was horrified at the site of what the car had done to Dolly’s body. When he came back down he saw other attendants trying to run up to help but he stopped them. Whatever you do, don’t look. He said. 

The police arrived to inspect the scene and noticed that in the seat that Dolly was sitting in, the seatbelt was in perfect condition but lay open on her seat. As if she had unbuckled herself mid ride. The detective claimed that either she stood up and her seat belt fell off, or she had been sitting on her seatbelt the whole time.

But disney thought the latter was impossible. They made sure that every guests seatbelt was checked twice, and denied any wrong doing in the death. So Dolly’s family fought back, hard. They took disney to court, claiming that the young male attendant was distracted by 2 pretty female passengers and didn’t inspect dolly’s seatbelt correctly. Dolly’s husband claimed that she was not frivolous or daring, and it was unlikely she tried to stand up in the ride or unbuckled her seat knowingly. Disney settled with her family for an undisclosed amount.

It is interesting to note that disney changed the seatbelts used on the ride shortly after Dolly’s death. They claimed that it had nothing to do with safety, it was simply because the other seat belt manufacturer had gone out of business. But the new design was completely different from the old buckles. 

The Matterhorn deaths were tragic, but not every disney related accident ends so horribly. 

Growing up, I noticed my father had a visceral aversion to the song, It’s a small world. I mean, I get it. That song is annoying. But i always got the feeling there was more to it with my father. If anyone around him even started humming it, he’d get this look on his face like he had a killer headache and would ask them to stop.

What I eventually found out, was when my dad was about 6 years old, his mother took him to the debut of the It’s a small world ride in  New York in 1964. They loaded the little boat, excited to drift down the lazy river into ride. Only, just as my dads boat entered the ride, it….got stuck. for the next two hours, a chorus of multi cultural animatronic children, scream sang It’s a small world after all at my father. Eventually, firemen came in to rescue the children and parents stuck on the ride. People remember seeing The kids emerging from the dark with glassy eyed stares, the choir from hell forever echoing in their minds.  I, too, would have PTSD from this.

And that’s not the only time that’s happened on that ride though. In 2009, Jose Martinez was on the It’s a Small world Ride in disneyland when all of a sudden the ride broke down. He was in the rides “goodbye room” which is the last room before you exit, when his boat came to a screeching halt. Ride attendants were quick to evacuate other guests, but Martinez was quadriplegic, and attendants weren’t able to remove him from the ride. Rather than call for assistance, attendants decided to let Martinez wait it out. But Martinez needed to use the bathroom, which while is a very annoying inconvenience to most people, but it can be a true emergency for people with spinal cord injuries, like Martinez. His blood pressure skyrocketed, and though he was only on the ride for 30 minutes, it took 3 hours for medical staff to be able to stabilize him. He won a settlement of $8000 for the event. 

We’ve heard about disaster striking guests within the park, but what about when it strikes employees. Because the truth is, 1 out of every 5 deaths that happens within the parks is of someone who is on their shift. 

Take for instance Javier Cruz, who in 2004 was a castmember playing pluto at Disneyworld when he was struck by a float

Javier was 38 at the time and had been working at the park for 8 years  He was very familiar with the “share a dream come true” parade that went through the park every afternoon, so we’re not really sure how this time went so wrong.

The part of the parade line that Javier was in was actually in an area that was mostly hidden from guests. It was almost the end of the parade, and he was walking in front of the Beauty and the Beast float, about to enter another populated area of guests. But before he got there, he tripped in front of the float. and then as he was trying to get out of the way, the float struck and killed him. For as horrible as that was, it is believed that no children witnessed the event

In the end, Osha fined the entertainment giant $6300 and issued a citation for having employees in restricted areas. And that was it. 

But the history of employees dying in the park is a long one, and spans 50 years. The first one being the tragic story of Deborah Gail Stone

Deborah was 18 years old in 1974 when she started working for the America sings ride at disneyland. She had just graduated high school, and the ride had just opened within the park.  The timing seemed, perfect. 

For those unfamiliar with the America sings ride,  was a  largely unliked and mostly forgotten ride in disneyland from the 70s and 80s. It actually wasn’t a ride so much as an experience. Guests would walk into a small, dark auditorium to watch animatronic bayou animals that sang songs about america. It sounds weird, and it was,  but it actually paved the way for a much more beloved ride, splash mountain. For most, America was a chance to get out of the sun and sit down for 20 minutes. 

Probably strangest of all were the actual mechanics of the ride. The whole thing composed of a series of walls, some stationary and some rotating. The audience would sit in a seating area that rotated around a stage that had 6 chambers.That seemed to be the gimmick, instead of the stage rotating to a new exhibit, the audience would rotate.  Each chamber featured a different set of, truly horrifying creatures that sang old timey patriotic songs, and the whole show was hosted by a creepy looking owl with an adult mans voice. Also it was in tomorrowland which was supposed to be futuristic, i dont know, The ride was really confusing. 

Deborah was the hostess for the ride, so she was in charge of greeting the guests and making sure they didn’t get out of their seats during the experience. She was stationed in the front left of the auditorium near a small microphone that she could speak into to make announcements.

Around where deborah needed to be stationed,  there was a gap in between the stage and the rotating room that the guests were in. a gap that, didn’t look all that wide or dangerous at first glance, but Deborah was 5’2 and slim. Next to her the gap appeared to be much bigger.

On July 9th, 1974, Deborah was hosting the last ride of the night, which started at about 10:30. The park was closing soon after everyone was set to exit the experience.

At 11pm, the ride finished, and all of the guests in Deborah's auditorium had exited the ride. After guests left, there was a 45 second reset that the ride would do, rolling the auditorium from the last chamber back to the first to start again. 

No one was in Deborah’s auditorium to witness what happened next, but there were people in the auditorium next to Deborahs that we’re still in the 5th chamber moving to the 6th that saw.

According to one witness, the saw a leg appear out of nowhere in the right corner of the auditorium, between the auditorium and stage, right in that gap i mentioned earlier. Another witness said that it looked like a child was being pulled in between the stage platform and right wall. Visual accounts differ, probably because it was dark and people couldn’t tell if what was happening was part of the ride or not. Everyone, however, heard the same gutteral scream.

Someone alerted another ride attendant who called emergency services, but it was too late for deborah. She had been crushed quickly inside the mechanism of the ride, and first responders needed to use torches to cut her out. 

After Deborah's tragedy, the ride was closed for two days and safety lights were added to the ride. The gap was not closed, but eventually, breakaway walls were places in between auditoriums to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again. In a public statement, Disney recognized that this was the first death of an employee in the park’s 19 year history. But as we know now, it definitely wasn’t the last. 

It’s easy to hear these stories and be scared for your safety, but at the end of the day the rides at disney are still incredibly safe. You have a much higher chance of getting hit by lightning than you do of dying on the matterhorn ride. In fact, 5 million people ride the matterhorn per year and there’s only been those two recorded deaths on it, ever. 

But we can still talk about these events because it’s important to remember when your judgment lapses is when tragedy can strike. When a ride that just opened doesn’t think to install safety measures, when someone tries to stand up on a ride, or conversely, when a ride isn’t making sure seatbelts are functioning and properly fastened.

When someone almost dies in a fast food freezer and no one thinks to i dont know, maybe look into it?

Disney has been quick to course correct after these accidents. They really can’t afford for their reputation as the happiest place on earth tarnished. But the next time you sign up for one of these contracts that put your safety in the hands of someone else. Really take a second to think. Is everyone holding up their end of the bargain?

This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Music by artist. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Email heartstartspounding@gmail.com

Until next time, stay curious. Woooooooooooooo

Kaelyn Moore
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