Those damn Disney adults, always going to the parks and acting entitled when something doesn’t go their way. Did you see that one headline about a woman’s frivolous $50k lawsuit over getting a wedgie at Typhoon Lagoon? A wedgie!
Except … it wasn’t a wedgie, it was an extremely serious injury, and it’s not remotely a frivolous lawsuit. Disney lawyers sure are good at pulling the wool over people’s eyes, huh? News outlets are talking about “wedgies” as if all that happened was discomfort and embarrassment.
What actually happened was: a woman named Emma McGuinness visited the Florida park in October 2019 and went on the “Humunga Kowabunga” water slide. Disney describes this ride on their website as “a near-vertical, 5-story drop” where “you won’t know what’s coming as you zoom 214 feet downhill in the dark and spray your way to a surprise ending.” Does this sound a bit dangerous? Well, for McGuinness, that’s exactly what it was. She suffered life-changing injuries at the “surprise ending” of the slide.
The serious nature of the incident
The website Law and Crime has details of exactly what McGuinness suffered and it’s shocking. According to the lawsuit:
“As Ms. McGuinness neared the end of The Slide, her body lifted up, she became airborne, and she was slammed downward against The Slide—which increased the likelihood of her legs becoming uncrossed or otherwise exposing herself to injury in using The Slide. The impact of The Slide and her impact into the standing water at the bottom of The Slide caused Ms. McGuinness’ clothing to be painfully forced between her legs and for water to be violently forced inside her. She experienced immediate and severe pain internally and, as she stood up, blood began rushing from between her legs.”
That sure doesn’t sound like a normal “wedgie” does it? But lots of people took the bait, it seems—just look at the replies to the tweets embedded in this article—and mocked McGuinness for wanting very reasonable compensation. McGuinness’s lawsuit also states that she assumed the correct position to ride the water slide but the ride operators at Typhoon Lagoon failed to warn her about what could happen if her legs became uncrossed. From the lawsuit:
Whether ankles are crossed or not, riding down The Slide carries with it specific risks about which Disney knew or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known. Specifically, when a rider of The Slide reached the bottom of the ride and traveled into the pool of water designed to stop further travel, the force of the water can push loose garments into a person’s anatomy – an event known as a ‘wedgie.’ Because of a woman’s anatomy, the risk of a painful ‘wedgie’ is more common and more serious than it is for a man. […] Disney does not warn women of their increased risk of injury while using The Slide, and Ms. McGuinness was not warned that she was at an increased risk of injury because of her gender or the clothes that she wore,”
So that’s where the “wedgie” part came from. But like I said, no one in their right mind would call an incident where someone suffered, to quote the lawsuit, “a full thickness laceration causing Plaintiff’s bowel to protrude through her abdominal wall, and damage to her internal organs,” simply a “wedgie.” That word evokes a totally different image.
Some posters on X/Twitter are, like me, appalled that this is the way Disney (who, lest we forget, can hand over $50k like it’s nothing) and media outlets seem to be spinning this awful incident.
This may remind you of the infamous ‘Hot Coffee’ incident
If you’re not familiar with the “Hot Coffee” case, you need to be, because it’s a chilling example of how easily a corporation can turn people against one of their victims. Back in 1994, a 79-year-old woman named Stella Liebeck accidentally spilled some Mcdonald’s coffee on herself and it caused horrific third-degree burns, because Mcdonald’s was serving their coffee at ridiculously hot temperatures and they knew perfectly well it was capable of causing very serious injury. And yet for years, the narrative was, “Some stupid woman didn’t know coffee is supposed to be hot!” A columnist named Randy Cassingham even set up a website called “The Stella Awards” to make fun of “wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits.” All this while Liebeck herself had, according to her daughter, no quality of life in her final years.
Luckily, people tend to be a little more alert now to the ways in which corporate lawyers can victim-blame, and hopefully Emma McGuinness will get the justice she seeks. But this whole water slide incident demonstrates that despite Disney claiming to be “the happiest place on Earth,” you won’t actually find many friends there.
(featured image: Pexels/Juan Mendez)
