Some guests visiting Walt Disney World’s “It’s a Small World” ride wound up being trapped on the attraction.
“We were stuck for over an hour, the torture,” one guest posted to TikTok, along with a video of the boats at a standstill. “This boat said it is NOT a small world.”
The ride, designed by Disney animator Mary Blair for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, typically takes anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes. A fellow animator, Marc Davis, and his wife Alice Davis designed and created the robotic child puppets that sing the three-minute long song at guests, translated into several languages, as they float down its river.
ANOTHER FAMILY SPARKS CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST SESAME PLACE
“[Park staff] didn’t realise for like 45 mins, everyone was stuck on a boat so we sat there for about an hour stuck with the song on repeat!!” TikTok user HazeysMom22 commented on her own video.
The song was written by brothers Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960s. At the time, the ride was called “Children of the World,” but park founder Walt Disney loved the Shermans’ song so much he renamed the ride after their song, “It’s a Small World.” The Sherman brothers are known for their Oscar-winning movie score of Mary Poppins.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
On the ride’s 50th anniversary, a third verse was written for the tune, but it was not incorporated into the ride. A 1964 recording of the song by the Disneyland Boys Choir was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in April. Other recording artists’ songs, including that of Alicia Keys, Journey, and Ricky Martin, were added “as audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage,” according to the library’s website.
