6 True Stories About Disneyland They Don't Want You to Know

The Happiest Place on Earth!

Go to Disneyland and you're bound to encounter some of the cheerful be-suited Disney characters wandering around, embracing children, dancing for your amusement and generally setting a friendly, whimsical tone for the park. You can shake hands with Goofy, play fetch with Pluto, waltz with Donald Duck and take precious photos with Mickey and Minnie, photos that you'll cherish forever.

Just like those pubic lice you just contracted.

Not So Happy:

Up until 2001, Disneyland workers weren't allowed to bring their own underwear when they were in character, because normal underwear tended to bunch up and become visible under the costume. Kind of like how some models don't wear panties on the runway, except less "exotic and sexy" and more "destructive of your innocence and everything the concept of childhood represents."

Instead, cast members were issued company jock straps, cycling shorts or tights, which they had to hand in at the end of every day to be washed with their costumes. Of all the perks you can get pre-faced by the word "company," "jock strap" really falls short--way below "company car" or "company jet," and registering somewhere between "company grave site" and "company lube."

The next day the workers would pick up a new set of briefs, silently curse the God that abandoned them long ago, slip on their shared underwear and spend the next eight hours humiliating themselves for the amusement of sunburnt children.

And in case you think we're embellishing the hellishness, just know that we weren't joking about the lice earlier: Over a period of two years, three different costumed actors caught scabies or pubic lice from their communist thongs.

Well, either that or Minnie was just a slut.

Not So Happy:

Splash Mountain gained some notoriety a few years ago for being the premier place (outside of New Orleans and Chatroulette) for wasted people to flash their junk. It got so severe that, in order to combat the trend, Disney created a position solely to search through the ride photos for rogue genitalia before displaying them on the video screens. Don't believe us (or just want to observe boobies in reduced gravity scenarios... you know, for science)? Well, luckily some employees started posting the photos online.

So, what's the problem? It sounds like Disney took the Happiest Place on Earth moniker a bit overboard in creating literally the best job on the entire planet, what possible downside is there?

Well, they cancelled it. In 2009, the Splash Mountain boobie hunters were reassigned, with Disney claiming that "actual inappropriate behaviors by guests [were] rare." That's right: For several years, some lucky sons of bitches punched the clock at 9AM, watched bouncing titties for eight hours, then went home with a paycheck for it--and last year they lost it all. We can only presume they all promptly committed suicide afterward, knowing full-well that the existential hell of cleaning up sawdust and vomit outside Space Mountain would be made all the worse by their time spent in Topless Valhalla.

Why are we assuming they're still working crap jobs for Disney, and not succeeding in other fields? How good do you think "1989-2009: Professional Boob-watcher" looks on a resume?

Not So Happy:

Apparently it's somewhat common for a person's dying wish be to have their ashes dumped on Disney rides, most popularly the Haunted Mansion.

Nobody really knows when it started, or who values their eternal remains so little that they'd ask to have them scattered in a place that's probably more child-urine than it is drywall , but it happens so often that security and custodial crews actually had to institute a procedure for handling it. Guards closely monitor the ride through surveillance cameras and even walk the length of the track after-hours to look for suspicious piles of ash and bone fragments, presumably just further deepening their regret at signing up for that Disney Internship they learned about from their high school drama teacher.

The Happiest Place on Earth!

As your children roam through a magical wonderland of fun and adventure, they're often greeted by their favorite Disney characters - characters that are recognized and beloved the world over for having netted the Disney Corporation millions in merchandising and copyright revenue, but mostly for being totally wuvvable and huggable ($5 per hug, limit four per customer).

Not So Happy:

Just don't hug any actual animals you see, or you'll end up going full-zombie on your family and being sent into a gibbering panic at the sight of drinking fountains... on account of the rabies.

See, Disneyland has a secret army of filthy and diseased stray cats that roam the park grounds every night. It all started in the early years of Disneyland when ride operators found themselves sweeping mice out of the attractions and restaurants by the plague-full (isn't that a pleasant idea?). The mouse problem went away when someone suggested letting around 50 cats loose to hunt down the remaining mice, who may or may not have sung beautifully orchestrated songs about hope and enchantment while being devoured.

Unfortunately, when you give a stray species a warm place to sleep at night, an endless food supply and free roam of a place with giant fences to keep out potential predators, they tend to stick around. And that's just what the cats did. Judging by their track record of remarkable foresight, Disney park officials are probably already implementing a stray dog strategy to hunt down the remaining cats, then a cougar strategy to counter the inexplicably rising dog problem, and so on until they'll have to change Disneyland's nickname to "the Grizzly Beariest place on Earth (And Also Some Wolves)."

Like everything else that's wrong with anything, you can blame this one on the hippies--back when they invaded the island in the 70s.

Not So Happy:

On the 6th of August, 1970, about 300 members of the Young International Party (Yippies) descended upon Disneyland to protest against stuff and junk or whatever (we literally could not give a shit long enough to look up the explanation). After taking over Castle Rock, the hippies hoisted the Viet Cong flag, marched down Main Street USA and harassed the marching band while sarcastically singing the theme to the Mickey Mouse Club. In response to this minor annoyance, Disneyland did what any sane, rational company would do in these circumstances: Call in the fucking riot cops.

Fights broke out between the Yippies and the police--one eyewitness account describes a girl with her "head split open, blood dripping all over her face"--as children everywhere were mentally scarred for life at the sight of Mickey Mouse passively watching an intense and violent beating... and then possibly physically scarred for life because their colorful T-shirt was just a little too close to tye-dye. It got so bad that, for the first time in park history, Disneyland closed the gates early. Despite the horror, the tragedy and the violence, that day is still remembered in history as the most fun anybody ever had on Tom Sawyer Island.

OK, hey, that's great too: Disneyland is about fun in its purest and simplest form, so of course it welcomes all comers. Attendees can gather as equals and... what's that again? There's a bunch of horrible discrimination and protests and even frequent death threats?

Not So Happy:

Gay Days is a week or so out of the year where the homosexual community comes together as a group at the Disneyland theme park. It's not sponsored by Disney or anything, they just gather there because no matter who you like to hump, everybody likes roller coasters. This is all anything but surprising. Quite frankly, if anybody is out of place at Disneyland, it's heterosexual adults. Somewhere between mincing about in the Enchanted Castle and doing the Running Man with a cartoon duck, you just lose the ability to be butch about anything. If there's anywhere homophobes have to concede to the presence of homosexuals, it's Disneyland.

But unfortunately, that is not the case.

Disney steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that Gay Days is a thing (despite tens of thousands of participants), but that doesn't stop them from being the target of mass protest, veiled threats and sometimes even implied violence by the religious right (for... failing to stop it, we guess?).

The American Family Association sends "undercover photographers" to every Gay Days celebration, attempting to photograph "sexual misconduct," (which is totally not just a convenient excuse for some fundamentalist to volunteer for the cameraman position at a gay orgy, you know, "for the cause.") The Christian Action Network has a long-standing 10 year boycott of all Disney products in response to Gay Days, even going so far as to protest in Washington D.C. Their official petition states that they are "shocked and outraged" that Disney has transformed this traditionally macho and totally Christian establishment where men dance about in tights and anthropomorphic animals practice magic into an anti-family values terror-pit, like unto "Sodom and Gomorrah."

And, like Sodom and Gomorrah, this immoral behavior is about to result in complete destruction. That's right: Pat Robertson has gone on record as officially stating that "[A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor."

This raises two troubling implications: First, that Robertson actually thinks Disneyland is a "nation," whose people are all wise-cracking cartoons ruled over by the iron-fist of Prime Minister Mickey. And second, that Pat Robertson does truly and literally believe that he has nature-based superpowers, and is shocked, shocked every single time he tries, and ultimately fails to summon natural disasters down on things he doesn't understand.

See more of JD Niemand at his webcomic, Stickman and Cube.

Danny Gallagher also writes for TVSquad.com, Spike.com and Asylum.com and can be found on the Web at www.dannygallagher.net.

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