We’ve all probably been to Disney World and fallen in love with a particular attraction that you never wanted to leave. Many of us would probably also love to get a closer look at our favorite rides. To have a chance to see something like an animatronic up close is an opportunity that most theme park guests never have. One person apparently decided they needed that so much that they just jumped off of Epcot’s Spaceship Earth
That’s about all I can figure out that would have led to this moment, caught on video, that shows somebody that has jumped out of their ride vehicle in the middle of Spaceship Earth and sat down with the animatronics. It looks like they just sort of hung out, which is a little weird to say the least. But another guest riding by grabbed the incident on video and posted it to Twitter.
pic.twitter.com/Phe8fmPMjJNovember 15, 2022
Unfortunately., this isn’t a rare occurrence. Any ride that doesn’t have a cast member managing a ride vehicle, that is missing a lap bar or any other sort of restraint, is likely to see this happen now and then. Spaceship Earth is a slow moving dark ride that doesn’t make any sudden movements, so there’s no real need for any sort of restraint.
Epcot itself had this problem not that long ago when a guest jumped off Living with the Land several times in order to sample the vegetables that were being grown in the greenhouse. This is why we can’t have nice things.
It’s unclear exactly what happened to this random person but there are cameras on Spaceship Earth and so it’s likely that even if this person was able to jump into an empty ride vehicle rather than having to simply walk out of the ride, they were met by security at the exit. My guess would be that they were escorted out of Epcot, and probably asked not to return for some time. They were possibly asked not to return ever.
Certainly people have been banned from Walt Disney World for less, so it makes one wonder why people are willing to do such things. If you paid to enter Epcot one assumes it’s a place you want to be, a place you might want to return to at some point in the future. And yet, we continue to see people do stuff like this which seemingly has no purpose. It’s not like this person was even filming themselves and doing it to show off.
Spaceship Earth was supposed to undergo a major refurbishment and thematic redesign but that plan was indefinitely suspended due to the global pandemic. At this point it’s unclear if it will ever happen. But if it does, we could see changes made to the ride vehicles to prevent guests from easily being able to get out. This one incident probably won’t cause any major changes, but if it continues we could see things change, assuming change is on the way.
