Theme Parks are designed to be fun for the whole family, but there can be a problem with that when a member of your family is too short to go on some of the rides. A family visiting Universal Orlando Resort’s Islands of Adventure recently posted a video on TikTok of them packing their kid’s shoes and putting her hair up in order to make her look taller to try to get her on The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, but that video is now gone after receiving significant backlash.
The original video on Hartig Family TikTok indicated that the young daughter really wanted to go on the Spider-Man ride, at Universal Orlando, and so they found a way to boost her a bit so she would appear to make the minimum height requirement, which is 40 inches tall. The Universal Team Member asked the family to undo the hair, because she appeared too small and would not let the girl ride unless her height was verified, which the family did not appreciate.
The video is now gone, without any sort of response, after several others on TikTok pointed out that no matter how much the kid wanted to go on the ride, the rules are there for safety reasons, and that the Team Member was only doing his job. As this video points out, people have died on attractions recently. It’s actually happened a lot recently, and this would have been tragic had it become something like that.
@blackwidowmili ♬ Home - Edith Whiskers
We know this is something people do. Chris Hemsworth has said he put candy cars in his kid’s shoes to get her on the Tower of Terror. But this is extreme. This isn’t boosting a kid a fraction of an inch.
As somebody who has been short his entire life, I can appreciate the frustration that comes with being too short to go on theme park rides. Even trying something like this is just a set up for frustration because if you do this to try and get your kid on the ride, and you fail, as happened here, you only end up upsetting the kid that much more than if you had just told them you’ll have to wait until the next trip.
It’s unclear what the point of the original post was. If the family had been successful in getting their kid into the queue, posting the video would have been bad enough, but it seems the goal here was to get people angry at Universal Orlando or this one Team Member, and clearly that’s not appropriate. You can just not post stuff.
Hopefully, the lesson we can all take from this is to just follow the rules at theme parks. Also, there’s a Spider-Man attraction at Disney California Adventure that has no height requirement, so if you really want to see Spider-Man, there’s that.
