10 Scandals Disney REALLY Wants You To Forget
4. When They (Probably) Roasted Ducks At Disneyland
One of Disneyland’s longest-running and most popular shows,
Fantasmic! takes place on the park’s Rivers of America feature and today in its
current form includes uber-modern elements like state-of-the-art projection
mapping and a dubstep version of Dumbo’s Pink Elephants on Parade.
Back in 1992 when the show made its debut, however, it’s rumoured the park encountered a rather grim teething problem. You see, at one point in the show a 45-foot-tall model of the dragon Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty breathes a massive gust of fire onto the river below and this reportedly had the unfortunate effect of roasting the ducks that liked to hang about on the artificial waterway.
To their credit Disney put a stop to its accidental barbecue by adapting the show to include a bubbling water effect that scared the ducks away before Maleficent’s fire-breathing shtick but not before a few innocent descendants of Donald Duck met a grisly (but probably very tasty) end.