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One time when she was in the hospital Disney paid for a special room for my grand daughter with a large TV, a kitchen and bathroom so her Mom and Dad could stay with her. They even sent Minnie Mouse dressed as a nurse to visit her. Couldn't believe most of the facts in this book. My son's insurance would never have covered this. Disney is very good to their employees and go out of their way for special needs children through donations and special programs for them. Having a daughter-in-law employed by Disney We see things in a different light. Her daughter (my grand-daughter) was a special needs child as was given such special attention when she attended Disney.
Everyone should know of the horrors Disney has been covering up for years.These facts aren't gained from one source, nor are they a product of the author's imagination. You and your children may be at serious physical and emotional risk. It isn't only for Conservatives or "right-wingers".
The pending lawsuits from deaths or serious injury are cheaper to deal with than the cost of repairing the dangers. If you go to Disney World and get hurt, don't sign anything. It's all about profit and greed.If only half of this book is true it's a frightful read.
Forget the political propaganda some posters are trying to attach to this book. He includes dozens of documents that Disney tried to hide - documents that expose the child molesters Disney hired to entertain your children.Though Disney knows about unsafe conditions in their amusement park they do nothing to correct them. Don't let the older kids wander off by themselves, not even for a second.Read the book and judge for yourself the presented facts.
Truth has no political ties. Schweizer dug deeply into Disney's hidden secrets, talking with a ton of employees, many who weren't afraid to be named.
No one is really surprised anymore that big corporations deal in this sort of excess, even if they are organizations founded on providing family entertainment. With that in mind I did my best to give "Disney: The Mouse Betrayed" a thorough, unbiased and fair reading. There's nothing less attractive than a grown adult stubbornly refusing to leave the world of childhood fantasy. I was bitter and cynical for a long time after my experiences and would have written a book similar in (initial) intent as the Schweizers, had I not grown up.
Hardly surprising since the foundation of many a Christian's religious belief system is based on this process. I bought this as an impulse buy, confusing it for Stewart's "Disney War." It took me about a page and a half to figure out it was actually right-wing propaganda written with the intent of furthering a Christian-based agenda to tear down the Disney empire for having had the audacity to get "too big."I worked at the Disney studios of the 90's as well as the theme park of the 80's. However, I find it interesting to note that Disney is still doing fairly well for all of that (and for better or worse) and that the Schweizers' book has faded into obscurity (it can be had for a buck twenty-five on this very page). It's interesting to read about the things they criticize from a different perspective. Would the Schweizers be happier if everything stopped while stretchers were paraded through the park every time something happened.Of course much of the book is concerned with perversion, much of it centering on the "obvious" shared traits of pedophiles and the "gay mafia" that had a stronger presence in the Disney corporation than it currently holds. And the presentation--there's even a warning at the beginning of one of the chapters--is done in that "can you BELIEVE this." style that makes Michael Moore's films so inflammatory.
It is just a business after all.The Schweizers will try to convince you that Disney is "bad," using a bar for measuring badness that they assume their readers share. I was like many a mystified "Disnoid," having been raised to believe that if you wish upon a star you could get anything you wanted, and that you were always the star of the movie. I know at least two of the people quoted in the book and their comments were not solicited; they were taken from public resources and quoted completely out of context. I MUST know for MYSELF." Of course, in the Schweizer world the worst thing you can possibly do is be a man who loves other men. I found these chapters almost enjoyable on a salacious level--the Schweizers seem to take great glee in discussing the grittier, "naughty" topics, presenting just enough detail to entice the reader but withholding as much to make the reader curious, a good advertisement for the very thing they would condemn: "Just how bad ARE Larry Clark's movies/photos. The ideas the Schweizers are trying to sell--something along the lines of if you go to Disneyland you're likely to be sodomized--would be disturbing if they weren't so ridiculous (quote: "some cross-dressers even tried to hold their OWN parade down Main Street, but it never got fully organized," ha ha). There are sections that are well researched and present indisputable truths; ten years on the world has become more than aware that there was a lot of money-grubbing, greed, and deceit involved in the "Eisner" years of Disney. Their would-be poisonous diatribe against The Mighty Goliath failed; the antidote, much like the cure for the obsessions of Christian fantaticism in general, was education and rationality.
Working at the parks deconstructed my concept of a world of "magic" and working for the studio instructed me on the ways and means of big corporations. An example--I had an accident while working at the park in the 80's and was amazed at the efficient way the company handled it. I know very few Christians who have slogged through the bible, even less who have taken the time and energy to research the meaning behind the book. Growth usually comes with pain but it's necessary. To quote the film "Victor/Victoria": "Kill him but mustn't kiss him."There's rampant misinformation as the Schweizers bend facts to further their agenda, making these authors the ultimate hypocrites since the point of their book is to point out that this is what the Disney Corporation is doing. They whisked me away to a hospital and compensated me fairly, one time, for something that should not have happened but was, after all, an accident. Reading this book actually made me re-examine my bitterness and take the side of the Disney corporation. As a guest I would not have wanted to see someone stumbling around with a bloody head waiting for an ambulance, nor did I have any right to sue, as might have happened today.
If anything, I feel more comfortable now knowing exactly how much care they put into the safety of their guests. For those who take a dim view of Disney's morals, perhaps it's because unsafe rides lead to accidents, which in turn lead to expensive, high-profile lawsuits.This book, or at least that topic, which was all I could stomach reading, was full of half-truths, misleading statements, and occasionally outright falsehoods. I was looking through a friend's copy, and I've gotta say, the section I read on Disney's supposedly lax safety practices disgusted me. There will be the occasional instance of human error or guest idiocy, but they do a superb job of minimizing them. I personally feel insulted, because I've now been unfairly deemed part of the profit-hungry scum of the earth. I work for the Mouse at Disneyland, and NEVER have I EVER in my backstage experience been given a reason to question my safety when I attend Disney as a guest. Far more damaging was my job in fast food to my desire to eat McDonalds.
Hence comparison of raw data can be misleading and once more the inron-clad evidence of the "Evil Disney" lacks the credibility that would convert the cynics.Over all the book fails to deliever the material expected in a definative and unemotional manner. The problem is that there are no qualifications of the raw data - consider for example that over a year a hotel staff caring for a hotel that averages a 75% occupancy is unliekly to have as many injuries as a hotel running near 100% occupany as many Disney hotels are. Clearly the more stressed the staff the greater the odds are of injury. This volume sets a lofty goal of being a definative work about the failures of Walt Disney Corperation, but in spite of heart-felt emotive writing, the account left, at least this reader with little more clarification of disney practices than I had before reading it.Some of the allegations seem credible and well backed by named sources and these should concern everybody especially the section of ride and guest safety, but the account breaks down in the credibility department when all the supposed sins of the various subsiduary companies are laid squarely at Disney's feet. Disney may indeed be a mouse betrayed, but it nearly impossible to draw that conclusion based upon the data supplied (or not supplied) here, at least if one is to be intellectually honest The statistical section was very disappointing in that they used raw numbers without qualification. I am not saying the company is inocent,just stating the fact that the book fails to make a very good case for castigating the parent company.Too often first person disgruntalled employee accounts are treated as facts - which they may or may not be. For example: The number of Disney injuries per employee in hotels compared to the average.
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