The Happiest Place on Earth?

So now that I live in Irvine, my parents seem to think that I know everything that's happening in the Magic Kingdom.  Needless to say I've been in rehearsals for the last seven weeks so I haven't been to disney since I first got down there.  They said some ride was going to be shut down for the next year, and I didn't know what it was (it's a small world), so I figured I needed to do a little investigating and this is what I came across.

Dearly Departed - On Disneyland Rides!

The 999 ghosts at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion have apparently found room for a few more residents, according to master mouse sleuth Al Lutz at MiceAge.

Disneyland visitors have routinely scattered cremated human remains throughout the haunted house ride since the late 1990s with the most recent incident occurring in the past month, MiceAge reported.

Haunted Mansion ride operators, trained to handle the delicate situation, have caught visitors via surveillance camera dumping ashes from the doom buggy vehicles but have virtually no authority to stop the bizarre ritual, Lutz said. Disneyland security and Anaheim police can do little beyond identify the powder trails as human remains. The offending mourners often slip out the ride exit and disappear into the park.

The macabre last rites force the closure of the ride for hours while custodians clean up the gritty ash and bone fragments with specially filtered vacuums. Oftentimes the last vestiges aren’t found until after the park closes and the lights are turned on inside the dark ride.

I was joking to myself while reading thinking that if I was going to be scattered anywhere in Disneyland it would be in Pirates of the Caribbean.  I thought that was pretty funny, but then...

And the Haunted Mansion isn’t the only affected attraction. An impromptu funeral ceremony shut down Pirates of the Caribbean just last week while crews cleaned ashes from the Captain’s Quarters scene in the caverns section of the water ride, Lutz said.

Disneyland has yet to comment.
— Brady MacDonald / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

(http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/?p=999)

Woo hoo.  Now I'm never going to think about the Haunted Mansion the same way again, and I'm going to be watching out for ash clouds and bone fragments.

-Leah