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

[tblue37]

102. Same here. I can't stop thinking about it. It is so sad and so horrifyingly awful.

I am enraged that Disney probably made the same cost-benefit calculations that Ford did when it decided that it would be cheaper in the long run to pay off the families of people who died when the Pinto exploded into a raging inferno than to fix the problem with the cars.

WDW wanted to maintain the illusion of the happiest place in the world, the Magic Kingdom fantasy. They worried that signs warning about alligators in the serene lake at their expensive resort might scare off some people, slightly reducing their profits, and they figured that since gator attacks had been rare there, they could refrain from posting warnings--just as they decided that annoying affluent guests paying $2000/night by forcing them to stop amusing themselves by feeding the alligators might cost them money.

No doubt there was a certain complacency on the part of those who ran the resort, too. They are accustomed to the ubiquitous alligators in Florida, so they just didn't think about the ignorance of the out-of-staters who would not be. There have been an incredible number of astonishing posts on DU blaming the parents for not knowing that alligators must be assumed to be in all fresh or brackish waters, or that they can lurk unseen and then lunge out of the water at incredible speed to snatch a child or a pet even if their target is anywhere near the water, not actually in it. Just because those DU posters themselves know that alligators are likely to be a real threat in a WDW resort lake, they assume that everyone from anywhere in the world must also know all about that threat.

If it were not for the power of social media, which has ensured that this whole thing cannot be quickly hushed up before too many people know about it, Disney would probably have been able to pay a big settlement to the family, contingent on their signing a strict nondisclosure clause, and then buried the incident before too many people learned about it, trusting to the black hole of public memory in this country.

My deep, deep sympathy for the family and for that poor little boy who had to be terrified and in pain for his last few moments alive is matched by my rage at what sure seem to be Disney's callous cost/benefit calculations and my disgust at smug people who criticize the parents for not knowing everything that the critics themselves know about alligators in Florida.