I can ride It's a Small World at Disneyland and have that goddamn song stuck in my head for days. I can simply pass Small World and have that goddamn song stuck in my head for days. I can hear a snippet of the Small World theme on the teevee and have that goddamn song stuck in my head for days. So I can imagine the hell Jose Martinez endured when he got stuck inside the ride for a half hour–and that goddamn song stuck in his head for lord knows how long.
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Martinez, who is disabled and confined to a wheelchair, received $8,000 from The Mouse after a court concluded the theme park did not do enough to free him from the infernal ride after it broke down in 2009, the Associated Press reports.
David Geffen, Martinez's lawyer, is quoted in the report saying his client suffers from panic attacks and high blood pressure, conditions that were no doubt compounded by the fact the trapped man also had to piss like a race horse. And then there was having to hear “It's a world of hopes, it's a world of fear . . .” over and over again for 30 minutes.
Speaking of pain and suffering, having to endure both accounted for half of Martinez's award, the other half being a penalty for violations of disability laws. Disney spokeswoman Suzy Brown reportedly told the AP that the company was disappointed with the ruling, believing everything that could be done was done for Martinez. But she is said to have added the park has since corrected the disability law problems. Hmmmm . . .
You'd suspect the real pain and suffering, worse even than having that goddamn song stuck in your head, would be looking at what's left of an $8,000 check after the lawyer gets his cut.
Mouseketeers are just lucky someone wasn't forced to hear the Main Street Electrical Parade theme over and over and over and over and over. Having gone through that as a cast member assigned to the parking lot (back when the park had a parking lot), I can see going Dorner over that.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.