The investigation in to what went wrong on a popular Walt Disney World attraction has concluded. Authorities are blaming the malfunction on a “computer glitch.”
Last month, it was reported that Stitch, the main subject who gets teleported to Earth, had actually escaped the ride. The ride is located in the Tomorrowland area of Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom Park. The attraction features Stitch from the popular full-length animated feature Lilo & Stitch. In the attraction, his home planet conducts routine demonstrations of their interstellar teleportation technology. However, one demonstration went very wrong.
Witness statements indicated that during one of these demonstrations, Stitch managed to escape the sealed tube in which he arrived to Earth. He proceeded to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting audience. The damage was minor but it took an emotional toll on guests in the audience.
“It was frightening,” Linda Gully, park guest and eyewitness explained. “I’ve been on this attraction countless times. [Usually] Stitch gets teleported to Earth, he waves, and then he gets sent back to his planet. It’s really quite tame, but not this time.”
Gully went on to recount that Stitch somehow broke through the glass during a power failure and ended up running around the closed theater, causing mischief and destruction wherever he ran. Other eyewitnesses claimed Stitch jumped on their shoulder harness and even breathed down their neck. A few witness statements mentioned Stitch “burped” on them and that it smelled like a chili-cheese dog.
“None of our guests were in any real danger,” Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III, Vice President of Disney’s Fictional Character Control tells us. “Stitch is genuinely curious and playful with humans. The real danger was to our sensitive teleportation equipment. Stitch has a history of destroying computers and other technologically advanced electronics. Had he given the chance, he could have caused so much damage to the attraction that it would have been beyond repair.”
Geronimo also said that guests passing by the attraction were completely safe because the ride operators are instructed to lock all theater doors during the demonstration, out of an abundance of caution. When asked about the costs involved to build and maintain teleportation equipment, Geronimo wouldn’t give exact figures but said it was in the “million-billion-trillion” dollar range.
The investigation into what social media has dubbed “Stitch’s Great Escape” concluded this morning and the report lists a “computer glitch” as the main cause of the accident.
“When I glanced at the error log, I knew exactly what was wrong,” Grant Yu, Vice President of Disney’s Accident Investigations Involving Fictional Characters division said. “If the teleportation cool-down mode isn’t shut down in the proper sequence, the readout reads 000111010011 when it should always read 000110010011. Any idiot could see that this was the main cause.”
Yu went on to explain that the glitch has been corrected and new code was added as a fail safe to make sure this type of accident never happens again.
Were you there? Did you witness Stitch’s Great Escape? Leave comments below of your experience.
