"It could have happened to anyone." Mom shares photos of son in spot where gator killed

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96. It was a family resort with a manmade lake and an inviting manmade white sand beach

running right up to the water's edge, with bench swings and beach chairs near the water. Families were encouraged to bring their little kids down to the beach at night, during gator feeding hours, for "Beach Night" showings of kids' movies:[/font]


[font color = "blue"][font size = "+1"]***The blue circle in this picture shows where the movie screen is placed: [/font][/font]





[font color = "blue"][font size = "+1"]***Many kids were playing on the beach and wading in the water, not prevented from doing so by the staff, without parents being warned that they could be attacked by alligators that close to the water. Naturally the out of state parents would assume that WDW would not set up such a situation if it were not safe.:[/font][/font]

[font color = "blue"][font size = "+1"]***Bench swings and beach chairs were placed near the water's edge (the picture can't be embedded--you have to follow the link to the web page): [/font][/font]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/us/alligator-child-florida-orlando-disney.html#modal-lightbox

In myriad ways the resort essentially set these kids up to play by the water, without warning the parents that the lake could harbor alligators, so of course most parents would assume that Disney had made the lake safe for kiddie play, even though it is not suitable for swimming.

Even if the parents know how common alligators are in Florida, most out of staters probably assume, if not told otherwise, that an expensive resort at WDW would have a way to keep them out of the manmade lake and off the manmade beach where the kids play. They wouldn't realize that it is impossible to keep them out. Heck, I am relatively well read on the matter, but I didn't realize that they can climb fences, nor did I realize that they are all over the place in Disney's manmade resort lakes. If I had gone to WDW and had not been specifically told that the resort lakes were full of gators, I would not have expected them to be (though I would have avoided the water just because I know such lakes are dirty).

Just because Floridians know, that doesn't mean that people unfamiliar with gator behavior would know. Furthermore, most people are not so well versed in the minutiae of gator feeding behavior to know that they will lunge out of the water and grab prey, even from several feet away from the water's edge, or that gators are incredibly fast on land, not slow and sluggish.

Nor do most people know that gators have extremely sensitive snouts so the best way to drive them off or get them to drop something they have grabbed is to pound on the top of their snout. The father wrestled the gator to try to save his son, but I am sure he didn't realize that a gator's jaw exerts about 3,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, so it would be absolutely impossible to force the jaws open to save the child. IOW, he needed to pound the gator's snout to get him to maybe drop his prey--sometimes they will actually do that if their snouts are pounded, which is how two kids saved their brother when a gator snatched him some years ago.

But most people who do not live in Florida, even if they know there are a lot of gators there, assume they are in the Everglades or natural lakes, rivers, and canals, not in a manmade lake in an expensive WDW resort, with a lovely white sand beach that seems so obviously intended for kids to play on.