Disney ride founders under weight of obese passengers

Source: Independent

For 43 years, the happy smiley people at Disneyland have been telling us it's a small world after all. But now, finally, reality has set in.

In January, Southern California's signature theme park will be closing its most famous ride – the one where visitors pile into flat-bottomed boats and go on a shiny plastic water tour of Planet Earth to the strains of that supremely irritating song. The ride has to undergo some renovation.

The reason? Disneyland's visitors have been getting not smaller but bigger, wider and fatter, and the boats on the "It's a Small World" ride have developed an annoying habit of running aground under all the extra weight.

"The Cast Members operating the ride try their very best to eyeball the girth and size of the riders coming down the line and purposely leave a row or two empty on many boats," an assiduous Disney watcher called Al Lutz reported on his website this week. "Even those discreet tactics don't always work with today's riders."

Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3146414.ece

...for the past 27 years, all but 8 of those under the middle-class killing policies of Reagan and two Bushes. For all these years many "middle class" folks have used food as a way to scrimp and cut corners as they are trying to hang on AS middle class.

As people lose economic status in our no-longer-agrarian society , they turn more and more to cheaper processed foods which are more fattening and less healthy. This is why the poor are often the "fattest" socio-economic group. Corn curls and pasta from the Dollar Store are cheaper than organic fruits and vegetables from a good market. It's horrible.

I know in this latest round of $3.09 gas (heading for $ ??) I have hit the McDonalds $1 Menu more than I ever used to because for a single person that is the cheapest way to eat (sometimes the only way) even though I hate it and know it's bad for me. At least they have one salad on there; if you take it without their sickening dressing it might be OK.

:puke:

I would more attribute a poor diet to a Go! Go! Go! lifestyle where nobody of any economic situation has an abundance of time for food preparation or exercise. It doesn't matter if your working three minimum wage jobs or the whitest white collar job there are no two things easier to sqeeze out of your life when you pass 20 fast food resturants on your way home and when you get their your too exausted to do anything but fall asleep infront of the television.

I was in a Vice Presidents office several times yesterday and his breakfast, lunch and dinner appeared to have come out of a giant Costco sized bag of Doritos and a series of bottles of Iced Tea.

I was at the grocers (Safeway) with my usual acquisitions--lots of fresh fruit & veggies and nothing processed. I had three bags full at the cost of $45. The folk in front of me were apparently readying for a party. They had a cart stacked about 18" over the top with chips, cupcakes, cookies, and sodas. Their bill was $90.

For about double the money, I'd estimate that they were able to buy thirty times the calories, almost all courtesy of high fructose corn syrup.

When the choice comes to how many calories can you get in order to survive another day, issues like heart disease and diabetes take a back seat. Al least they did when I had less money.

BTW, I am trying to shake off my poverty hangover and will be doing so for the rest of my life--Nonetheless I am diabetic and have heart disease, and obese but losing weight for the last seven years.

so getting fat is too easy.

about what I can eat for the maximum benefit at the lowest cost. Whole grains combined with legumes or a sprinkle of nuts or cheese are very nutritous and cheap. By combining ingredients you have proteins that approach meat, eggs & dairy for completeness without the cost or fat.

Barley Salad

Cook 1 cup barley in 3 cups water for 45 minutes. 15 minures before the end add yellow lentils (I like color in my food)

Drain, cool & add diced red, yellow and or orange peppers from the salad bar. Serve with a few craisins or other dried fruit and a sprinkling of sesame seeds, almond or sunflower seeds. For dressing I like an Asian Vinagrette, it is soy based & slightly sweet with ginger. I use just enough to impart flavor. One cup of barley cooked is enough for me to eat lunch at work all week. Because it's a cold dish I don't have to microwave.

Optional you can add a can of garbanzos rather than lentils.

I also do breakfast barley with a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice added to the water. Quinoa or Amarath boosts the protein value on this one.

Me and my girlfriend have annual disney passes and though we both hate that ride with a passion, when they had it done up for this past Christmas curiousity got the better of us and on we went.

There was this family of FOUR that was just massive, each parent had to be 350-400 pounds and their young kids were each 200 plus and when they hit bottom it really got backed up and things sort of got out of hand when their pleas to please remain in the boat went ignored as people went looking for their own way out.

Disney did modifications to Splash Mountain to make it more friendly to the morbidly obese a few years ago.

I understand there are also weight problems with the Grizley Rapids rafts in California Adventure.

and the song is an earworm that will not go away.

Wow...

Guess we need to rewrite the song. Oh shoot, but all the writers are on strike, let me help.

It's a world of dinner
A world of fries
It's a world of shakes
And a world of pies
There's so much that we eat
That we never see our feet
It's smaller world after all

(drop that sandwich and sing along now everyone)

There is just one cake
And one cinnamon bun
And more frosting means
Weighing a metric ton
We're too fat for this ride
And our asses are wide
It's a smaller world after all

and welcome to DU! Well, you had me singing along and your words fit perfectly! Thanks for the early morning chuckle.

:rofl:

I hope you saved this one to your journal!

when I was a kid, there was a goofy character cutout in front of the rides: you had to be "this tall" to get on this ride. Maybe they should set up a couple of posts with a character saying you can't ride if you're this wide.

I don't blame people for obesity; when it comes to food, our brains are hard-wired for instant gratification. Instead I blame the greed that has propelled "food" manufacturers to produce and sell this shite as food, who even when they've seen that their sales indicate consumers are well, consuming in an unhealthy manner, they just keep on producing. The big FoodCo.s are as bad (or worse) than Big Mutant Tobacco.

If you like alternative video/lyrics, search for "I Want a Fat Babe" by the Snacktreat Boys.

Ok, I'll admit that's funny! Damn -- now I have that song in my head! EARWORM! AAAAAAAAGH!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Too funny bahahahahaha

Welcome to DU sss1977 :)

:toast: :yourock:

...and those are our "better" qualities.

But I wouldn't attribute it to anything but our own personal choices. It's like the news; if I want to be informed, I can be. But if I choose to be lazy and ignorant, I can watch TV news and tell myself that I'm still informed.

In truth, I don't think economics plays into it very much. I was at Naples Beach not too long ago, and was amazed at the number of truly obese kids on the beach. I had never seen such a thing before, with well over 70% being fat. These kids are all affluent. Then check out the local public middle school and high school pictures. Many of these kids are obese and at the other end of the economic spectrum.

It's more about marketing and laziness. We are bombarded with marketing at every turn, and food is something we need every day. But most folks these days are more concerned about convenience rather than quality.

Truth is, if you want to eat healthy and frugally, it isn't really that hard, unless you don't have a home. But it takes planning, time and effort.

Ya know, I'm starting to see the problem here...

I'm not saying obesity isn't a problem, but to claim this as a uniquely American phenomenon is assinine.

But beyond that, obesity is epidemic in the Middle-east.

UAE is the fattest country in the world... also one of the wealthiest per capita.

It's sedentary lifestyle + fast high fat food...

Certainly the government over here is taking the current growth in obesity (and it's implications for the NHS) very seriously.

But the reality is that obesity is primarily caused by corporations who make huge profits getting people addicted to processed junk foods. After hooking people on nutritionally-worthless food, a vicious circle effect kicks in. Weight gain is often accompanied by low energy and Type 2 diabetes, both of which make it far more difficult to lose weight in the future. After years of this self-reinforcing cycle, a person becomes permanently obese, never suspecting that it is anything but their own fault.

"Putting the fork down" is no more a realistic answer to obesity than the old "bootstraps" canard is an answer to poverty. Both are commonly spouted by the "blame-yourself-first" crowd which has been brainwashed into blindness and cannot see the real causes of social and economic problems.

I only have a vague impression of the dietary trend. I know what works for me is that I eat a lot of raw or cooked vegetables. I have a hunch that rice and potatos are great food even if they are mostly starch. As for macaroni from wheat--not so much.

If you read any of the fat threads on DU, you'll see what I mean. There are always many posts stating that the obese need to just to 'take responsiblity' or 'buy two airline seats' or whatever, follwed by at least one example by someone who lost 20 pounds by merely giving up beer for a couple of weeks. If only it were just that simple for most of us.

As someone who is large, I appreciate your take on this. There is much more involved than just 'putting down the fork' when it comes to losing weight or keeping it off in the first place.

That's the genius of it. Republicans understand that to achieve their goals, they have to implant their thinking in the whole society, across the board. That way, even if people reject Republican political ideas, conservative thinking will still operate in other areas of their lives and will always push them in a right-wing direction. The "personal responsibility" mantra that now permeates every area of American life is an example of this.

This is also why right-wingers are so hard to get rid of, even when their political policies are obvious failures. We keep wanting to give them another chance, because their ideas about society are impacting us in ways we aren't even aware of. We have this basic subconscious idea that slogans like "personal responsibility" are basically true, so whenever they are spouted by right-wingers, we respond like Pavlov's dogs.

people who think what works for them MUST work for everyone.....lord, they truly SUCK

"If I did it, you can do it, too. Stop whining and making excuses!"

Then comes the "bootstraps," "personal responsibility," and the whole tired routine.

I think it's simply a lack of empathy - difficult for some people to think outside their own experiences. Me, I've never been overweight but I can equate an obese person's struggles with my own addiction to nicotine.....I don't smoke now but it's always a struggle, especially when I am stressed *GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*

when I was a child. What was remarkable was how slender everyone was. I haven't been back since I was a young adult, but a friend was telling me how when she went there she was shocked at how many adults had to be wheeled around in chairs because they were too fat to walk. Something has definitely happened. It is amazing how large portions are in restaurants, and I guess fast food and subsidized high-fructose corn syrup and trans fats play a big role, also the fact that cars rule the neighborhoods and children don't get to run around outside as much because every other person is a child molester. My brother farmed out half his paper route to me, and we had lawns to mow. Now there are workers from other countries who drive cars to deliver the paper and arrive from other areas to mow and blow leaves from one yard to the next. With the high cost of gas, maybe kids will be back at work in their neighborhoods again.

there's so much that we eat, from our head to our feet..

it's a fat fuckin' world, after all.

because they could not get the safety bar down over their bellies far enough to lock them. I cannot even imagine how embarrassing something like that would be.

I've always thought Disney missed out on a good bet by not having a "Gilligan's Island" ride. One "C" ticket to get on -- FIFTY "E" tickets to get OFF. :evilgrin: