A jury deliberated for just a few hours and found Victoria Walker guilty on a the lesser charge of battery. She now faces up to a year in prison for her violent actions taken at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom while boarding the Mad Hatter Tea Cup attraction.
Walker could have faced up to 16 years in prison if convicted of the original charge of aggravated battery. She was also found not guilty of assaulting the child of the victim.
I hope Disney was watching this trial. They key moment for me came when the cast member said he didn’t see the scuffle. That tells me there needs to either be additional training on spotting and dealing with conflict before it erupts or the attraction needs an additional host to deal with larger crowds.
Read more at the Orlando Sentinel.
I’m responding to your comment regarding the need for either additional training or additional hosts to deal with larger crowds. We just returned from a week at WDW and were shocked to discover ourselves in the middle of a very dangerous crowd situation while waiting for a parade and then again while waiting for the evening fireworks. The situation was scary… and more so because we were trying to protect our small child at the same time. The cast members we encountered told us that Disney was taken off guard by the larger than normal crowd and that they were in fact under staffed for the events.
My question is how Disney could be taken off guard and how they could allow a crowd to gather in the park beyond their staffed capacity. There was a lot of shoving going on in that crowd and it appeared that the streets “crowd control” staff consisted of a handful of college age students who would not have been able to do anything to control the crowd had an actual incident taken place. I can’t even say that an incident did not take place.. who knows. Certainly if there had been a medical emergency, there would have been no way for anyone to help a person in need… there simply was not a way to get through the grid lock of people, scooters and strollers. The crowd had to exceed safety and fire codes.
After the experience we had at the Magic Kingdom it was pretty clear to us that Disney could have closed the gates when the crowd exceeded its staffed capacity… but they didn’t. It is all about making more and more money. We even commented that among the crowd… the street vendors were still out in force.. still out there selling and attempting to make more money, while the guests of the park were trapped with no place to go in a potentially dangerous situation.
This is really strange – I just got back from WDW and had the same experience as the first commenter. I only came across this story after witnessing a near fight in the “It’s a Small World” line (can you say “irony”??) and I was curious to see how often something like this happens. As the confrontation I saw escalated, I was really surprised that security took a good 10 minutes to respond. One sanitation person did intervene to talk both of the people down, but a uniformed security person took a long time to arrive, and even then she was physically unprepared to address the situation had it become a real fight. So the first issue is “what the hell is wrong with people that getting into a fight at an amusement park is even an option?” and the second issue is “what is WDW going to do about it?” They obviously aren’t doing enough currently.
It was obvious the defendant was lying during her tesitimony. She should have hired a better (more costly) lawyer who was more proficient at instructing his clients how to commit perjury.
Oh my, I love Disney, and that is just awful. I will admit I am one of those people that get tired of pushed aside, or people cut in line in front of my kids. You know, we shouldn’t always have to back down. I am not saying I would every start a fight or anything, but its ridiculous how some people get. There is no compassion and people just aren’t decent anymore.
Its a sad day when people pick fights at Disney..its even sadder, because I can just imagine what poor Walt would be thinking.
GB
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