Disney Small World ride a casualty of the obesity epidemic
MD and I just spent a couple of days with the grandkids at Disneyland. They’re here visiting for a couple of weeks, so we decided to bite the bullet and take them on the front end and get it over with instead of waiting until the end, as we usually do, and dreading it the entire time. It was brutal but it is now over.
I loathe Disneyland and refer to it as the biggest people trap ever built by a mouse. Which isn’t an original, but I’ve been saying it for so long that I’ve forgotten where I heard it years ago.
This year I at least was able to avoid the Small World ride. Our 7-year-old grandson informed us that it was ‘lame.’ I couldn’t have agreed more. I wasn’t so lucky a couple of years ago, however. We took the kids then and did end up going on the Small World ride, which experience the grandkid remembered when he referred to the ride as being lame.
For those of you lucky enough to have escaped the Disneyland experience, the Small World ride is easily the most inane amusement park ride ever conceived by the mind of man. You get in these little fiberglass flat-bottomed boats and cruise through this serpentine canal that wends its way around tableaus of little dolls of various nationalities (as in photo above) doing their mechanical dances to what is easily the most nauseating piece of music ever written. Unlike most Disneyland rides that you wait an hour to get on and are then over in about 45 seconds, the Small World ride is interminable. It goes on and on and on. Which is, I suppose, its only virtue because at least it is dark and air conditioned, a welcome change from the heat radiating up from the vast concrete underpinnings of the park. (The downside is that you’ve been exposed to the nauseating song for so long that it has wedged itself into your brain and you can’t get it out for the rest of the day.)
When I last rode the ride, it had just reopened after having been closed for almost a year for renovations. I asked one of the attendants what had changed, hoping for an de-inane-ation of the ride. The guy told me it hadn’t changed at all; they had just made the boats a little bigger and deepened the channel. Then he told me it was because the guests of the park had become so much larger than when the ride went in in the 60s and were causing the boats to bottom out.
The park was so crowded and hot when we went two years ago that I kind of went brain dead. All I wanted to do was slog through and get it behind me. This time the weather was better and, thanks to the recession, the park wasn’t as crowded. And I wasn’t so miserable, so I had a chance to look around a little more.
If Disneyland is any indication, there is no question we’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. I tried to make some kind of semi-accurate estimate by doing little statistical analyses when was waiting around for rides. It looked to me that about 40 percent of adults were out and out obese, some morbidly so. And I would estimate that of the folks who weren’t actually obese, at least 85 percent of them were overweight. A normal weight adult at Disneyland was a rarity.
What really surprised me was the state of obesity of the Disneyland staff. When I was in college I got a job at Disneyland (which in part accounts for my loathing of the place). I was a conductor on the train that circumnavigates the park. It was one of the worst jobs I ever had. But it did have its perks. At that time, all the employees were college students or college dropouts who were the full time workers. In keeping with the Disney image at the time, just about all the young employees selected were clean cut and nice looking. As a consequence, the place was kind of a meat market. Employee parties were legendary. That part I enjoyed, but my enjoyment was somewhat tempered by the fact that I had a steady girlfriend at the time who also worked at Disneyland.
Now, the young employees are a reflection of the population in general. At least half of them are obese, some almost morbidly so. I don’t know if this represents the student body of the local college or what, but it certainly has changed over the past few decades.
Despite my kind of flippant tone in this post, I don’t find the large numbers of obese guests (as the Disneyland staff refers to the people paying to go there) and staff amusing in the slightest. I think it is tragic. As I’ve said many times before, we have all been the unwitting subjects of a long experiment, the hypothesis of which is that since fat is bad and carbs are good, we should all eat low-fat, high-carb diets. If so, says this hypothesis, obesity will go away. Well, it hasn’t. It has gotten much, much worse. And the sad, sad thing is that this hypothesis was never validated scientifically before we were all enrolled in the experiment. When I see dozens and dozens of young people looking like the one pictured above, it makes my blood boil. Most of the people who inflicted this nonsense on us are still around and still pushing the carbs and still blaming the fat in the diet. Tar and feathers spring to mind.
When I thought I was going to have to subject myself to the Small World again before my grandson got me out of it by not wanting to go himself, I remembered what the attendant had told me previously about the ride being renovated because of the increase in obesity. I wondered if it were an urban legend or if it were really true. When I got back to a computer, I checked it out.
There are a number of investigative reports on the idea, and the consensus seems to be that the renovation was due to the boats bottoming out due to the increased weight of the passengers. Based on what I saw, I suspect that’s the case because just taking the average weight gain over the last 40 years means the boats are carrying 200 extra pounds more than they were designed for.. Disney officials are staying mum, however.
During my own investigation on the issue, I ran across an interesting article on Snopes.com. A new twist has been added to many of the rides at Disneyland, especially the ones that hurtle you along in the dark. Cameras are placed in strategic locations and take photos as the ride comes through. After you get off, you can go see a photo of yourself and your entire boat or log or train car or whatever conveyance dropping over a precipice projected on a screen near the exit. Most people are pictured screaming and holding on for dear life.
One of the rides – Splash Mountain – has achieved some notoriety because it has become common for female riders to pull up (or down) their tops as they approach the cameras. This flashing has become so common that the ride has become known as Flash Mountain. All of the photos are looked at by park officials before being put up on the screens for all to see. Here is the Snopes link to the article – a little (very little, actually) navigating will get those with a prurient bent to a page of these photos. I, of course, had to look as part of my investigation for this blog post.
The Disney officials are good at weeding out these bawdy photos and they are very good at feeding the hordes of overweight people exactly what they want. Disneyland is carb heaven. That’s just about all you can find. There are sweetened cold drinks, a variety of ice cream products, cotton candy, gummy sweets, funnel cakes and other high-carb junk of every stripe. It is almost impossible to avoid carbs there. It can be done, but it is difficult and requires a lot of effort. The vast majority of the people I saw weren’t making the effort.
If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to avoid the Magic Kingdom for at least another couple of years. When I do get dragged there again, I’ll stumble along as I normally do, putting one tired foot in front of the other counting the hours until it’s over. But, admittedly, I will approach Splash Mountain with a little more exuberance than I have in the past.
“agree with Angelyne. I noticed the same thing in Brazil and Europe. The whole world is following the lowfat high carb nonsense. Yet, the obesity problem is heavily concentrated in the US. Why?”
Forgive me for sounding a bit peeved, but what you are BOTH saying is total nonsense.
The metabolic disorders epidemic (which includes obesity) is a worldwide phenomenon. Just because you happened not to see it once in an affluent part of Ottawa is totally meaningless.
Here are some stats:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/prbpubs/prb0511-e.htm
“In 2004, approximately 6.8 million Canadian adults ages 20 to 64 were overweight, and an additional 4.5 million were obese.(1) ”
Let’s not even talk about UK. OK, let’s talk about the UK:
http://www.iotf.org/oonet/uk.htm
“Latest obesity rates (2001 figures) show 21% of men and 23.5% of women over 16 years have a Body Mass Index of 30 or more in England. These figures compare with 13/2% of men and 16.4% of women in 1993 and just 6% among men and 8% among women just 20 years ago.”
Australia:
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/INTGUIDE/sp/obesity.htm
* overall 32.6% of adults were reported as overweight in 2004–05
* 40.5% of males and 24.9% of females were overweight
* overall 16.4% of adults were reported as obese in 2004–05
* 17.8% of males and 15.1% of females were obese.
I rest my case.
THIS IS NOT A US PHENOMENON, so get off your high horse and face facts.
Regarding sweetness of desserts, clearly you’ve never been to France or Greece, where desserts are intensely sweet. The thing is, portions are tiny and dessert is not an everyday thing but something you indulge in on special occasions.
More on obesity rates worldwide:
Brazil:
“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/world/americas/13iht-brazil.html
“Yet a controversial government study released late last month confirms it: Brazil is experiencing an epidemic of obesity.”
Huzzah, the article mentions sugar & carbs as culprits.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890260,00.html
This being Time it contains the usual journalistic claptrap:
”
Greece:
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/oby2009188a.html
“The presented population-based data revealed that the prevalence of overweight and obesity among 8- to 9-year-old Greek children is alarmingly elevated, with the overweight rates rising continuously.”
Sophia,
I did not say obesity was a US phenomenon. What I said was that most foreign countries do not have an incidence of obesity as high as the US. This is not a new observation. I’ve read it in every other diet book published in the US in the last five years.
The NY Times article about Brazilian obesity (whose link is in your post) states that: “40 percent of Brazil’s adult population is overweight. Over all, 1 adult in 10, or more than 10 million people, are obese…”. Let’s do the math. The NY Times article is saying that 60% of Brazilian adults are not overweight and only 10% are obese.
American incidence of obesity is a lot higher. According to a recent report “adult obesity rates in the US now surpass 25 percent in 31 states and exceed 20 percent in 49 states and Washington, D.C.”
I’ve lived a few years in the US as a graduate student. I noticed that most Americans are more athletic than Brazilians. I was very impressed with the way American college girls volunteered to play soccer. Brazilian women won’t do it even if we beg. I had the impression that most Americans try hard to stay in shape. So there’s got to be a reason for the higher incidence of obesity in the US.
I am inclined to agree with Mary’s observation. HFCS, being so sweet, might have “desensitized your taste buds thus calling for ever more sweetness just to stay even, like a drug addiction”. I noticed that Dr. Eades is very interested in HFCS. I hope he will include a chapter about it in one of his books.
A also think Amina has a point. Foreigners don’t take the lowfat teology as seriously as the Americans. But, unfortunately, most countries are trying to follow the American steps. This afternoon, when I went to the supermarket to buy cottage cheese, I noticed that two of the three brands had 0% fat. I hate lowfat food; but I belong to a shrinking minority in my country.
Petronio
“I did not say obesity was a US phenomenon. What I said was that most foreign countries do not have an incidence of obesity as high as the US. This is not a new observation. I’ve read it in every other diet book published in the US in the last five years.”
Petronio, the comment you made is still listed. What you said was:
“Yet, the obesity problem is heavily concentrated in the US. Why?”
That is what I disagreed with, because you are wrong, as in: wrong, flat out, mistaken, wrong.
The obesity problem is NOT heavily concentrated in the US. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. It’s a disease of so-called civilization.
You can’t make a statement and then say you didn’t make the statement when what you said is recorded in black and white.
I mentioned the obesity epidemic hitting Brazil because someone mentioned Brazil. Of course Brazilians aren’t yet as fat as Americans. But they will be. And the pattern is exactly the same as the US: heavily concentrated in the poorer segments of the population, and correlated with race.
“I noticed that most Americans are more athletic than Brazilians. I was very impressed with the way American college girls volunteered to play soccer. Brazilian women won’t do it even if we beg. I had the impression that most Americans try hard to stay in shape. So there’s got to be a reason for the higher incidence of obesity in the US.”
Look, I don’t have the time to point out all the illogic in this paragraph and the faulty reasoning based on limited data.
As a grad student, you are observing a tiny privileged subset of Americans. The American college girls who volunteer to play soccer are an elite group. They are already thin. Most Americans do not try hard to stay in shape but in any case exercise is mostly irrelevant to the obesity epidemic, which is caused by insulin resistance, which is caused by lifelong overconsumption of refined carbs, and eating too little fat and protein.
For Petronio, “overweight” and “obese” are two separate terms. When using body mass index, for instance, the “overweight” category is a BMI of 25 – 29.9, “obese” is a BMI of 30 – 34.9, and “exrtremely obese” is a BMI above 35.
What’s interesting is that some longevity studies have shown that being in a normal BMI range of 18.8 – 24.9 may not be the healthiest place to be; if you are “overweight”, you have a 17% reduced risk of death, and even being “obese” is statistically insignificant from being “normal”. This may have more to do with the limitations of the BMI as a gauge of health, but it is interesting (I link the studies at http://www.lowcarbage.com/?p=89).
For Sophia: You don’t have to sound so peeved. All my three posts were humble, good-humored and highly speculative I was not defending a thesis or anything.
I used the verb concentrate to mean “make thicker or stronger”. I should have used a different verb. English is not my native language. My intention was saying that most foreign countries do not have an incidence of obesity as high as the US. Please let me be the interpreter of my own words. If you read my first post in this discussion, you will see my point.
For Frank Hagan: I see your point. But my interpretation of the data was correct. I’ve read the original IBGE research, which is written in Portuguese. The overweight category includes obese citizens. The site address is http://www.ibge.gov.br.
Petronio
I have to disagree with the negativity. Obesity should have nothing to do with Disney.
I remember going to Disney World when I was 10 and my brother was 6. It was his birthday present. I was so excited and I happened to enjoy it’s a smal world and went on it several times.
I am exciteldy looking forward to my next trip there in April with my 7 year old son. I have been to theme park in Ontario, PEI and the states and after being to wonderland and busch gardens lineups i expect them to be the norm because the parks are popular and magical for children. If you don’t like waiting in lines and crowds then obviously these are not the palces for you to be. Let’s think about the children and how much fun it is for them. It is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, but is not for everybody apparently.