LAKE BUENA VISTA -- News 13 has received word of a suspicious package on a Disney bus.
According to the Orange County Sheriff's Office, the package was found on a bus near Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.
The bus was in for routine maintenance at the maintenance facility.
That's when Disney workers found something suspicious attached to the bottom of the bus.
A bomb squad is on the scene right now to check out the package.
The maintenance facility has been evacuated as a precaution.
No Disney guests are being affected right now.
I'm watching local tv coverage now. So far they are calling it a "suspicious device" and Disney has halted ALL bus service while every bus gets a thorough inspection.
Joined: Jun 28, 2006 Posts: 366 Location: Celebration, FL
Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:07 pm Post subject:
Disney released the following statement:
"Safety of guest and cast members is top priority and Disney apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause their guest and they will address there concerns on a case by case basis."
about 280 buses are being inpsected. This is going to take a while...
Joined: Feb 21, 2006 Posts: 4196 Location: Sanford, Fl
Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 3:16 pm Post subject:
Unless it was a mess up by someone in maintenance, I think the "mess" was the point all along... Mass chaos... _________________ Up or Down North, South, East, or West An Adventurer's Life is Best!
Thousands of Walt Disney World visitors were stranded at the resort's theme parks, hotels and water attractions Thursday when the company's buses were removed from service after a suspicious object was found mounted on one, authorities said.
A bomb squad spent 3 ½ hours examining the device, which turned out to be harmless.
Nevertheless, Disney workers inspected the entire fleet of about 300 buses as a precaution. A line of buses waited for inspection at a maintenance building near Disney's Animal Kingdom. They were returned to service, one by one, as soon as they were deemed safe.
Several visitors to Downtown Disney said employees told them the buses would be out of commission for a while, but they didn't say why. A Disney mechanic reported the object to his supervisors about 3 p.m., and the Orange County Sheriff's Office was called.
Tonia and Rob Shea of Niagara Falls, Ontario, said they couldn't get a bus from Disney's Contemporary Resort to Downtown Disney, so a hotel employee got them and their two sons a cab at Disney expense.
"It was actually nice to take a cab and not have to stand on a bus," said Rob Shea, 32.
The situation didn't help some cabdrivers, though. Nathan Araya was one of half a dozen cabbies waiting for fares near Downtown Disney. He said the extra cabs actually cost regular drivers money by competing for business.
Besides, the bus downtime was only a few hours — not long enough to make a difference, he said.
"Three to four days? Maybe," Araya said. "But two hours? Man, you go from one place to one place in two hours."
Nobody interviewed seemed alarmed by the bomb scare. Several people said they weren't even aware of it.
As it turned out, the object found on the undercarriage of the bus was not explosive or otherwise hazardous, sheriff's spokesman Jim Solomons said. He would not describe what it looked like. The bomb squad removed the device and will try to determine who put it there and why, he said.
Terry and Vicky Clayton of London said they heard about the threat on television but didn't let it stop them from enjoying their vacation. They lived through the violence that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s between the Irish Republican Army and British security forces and aren't about to let a bomb threat scare them.
"I didn't pay all this money to sit inside the hotel room and not enjoy myself," said Terry Clayton, 36, an accountant.
Bryan Minor of Wheeling, W.Va., his wife, their four children and his mother were shopping at Disney's Animal Kingdom a little after 5 p.m. when an announcement notified them that the park would stay open later than usual.
Minor looked at the OrlandoSentinel.com Web site on his cell phone and found out what was happening. The Minors decided to take advantage of the extra hours and had the park virtually to themselves, he said.
Minor, 40, praised Disney for inspecting all the buses and for a message the director of guest services left at his hotel apologizing for the inconvenience. In the post-Sept. 11 world, he didn't mind waiting to make sure his family would be safe.
A bus was waiting for the Minors when they left Animal Kingdom at 7 p.m., and they had no trouble getting to Downtown Disney for dinner at Planet Hollywood by 8:30 p.m., he said
"I put on Facebook: 'I'm "stranded" at Disney,'" said Minor, smiling. "We had a great time."
The mysterious object found mounted on a Walt Disney World bus last week -- prompting the giant resort to temporarily shut down all bus service until the other vehicles were searched -- was an old tire-pressure monitor, Disney said Monday evening.
Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger said the device was a prototype that had been installed in 1998 on a single bus to monitor tire pressure with wireless technology. Tire pressure can affect the fuel efficiency of a vehicle.
Wow. That is embarrassing. A symptom of the paranoid times in which we live.
Unfortunately, Disney instills the "high security" mentality in guests from the moment they arrive at the parks with time-consuming, yet utterly ineffective, bag check stations. Disney should remove them from all parks immediately and adopt a more subtle approach to identifying potential security risks.
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