Monday, May 17, 2004
Disney World Installs Car Bomb Barriers
It seems Disney has been taking the terror threats very seriously. After September 11th they started checking bags at the entrance to all their parks and have recently been considering using metal detectors. This is nothing new to the amusement park industry. Many parks (most of them in cities with high gang activity) had been using detectors and bag checks for years. I went to California in the summer of 2001 and Six Flags Magic Mountain had both.
Furthermore, while more parks added security measures after September 11th, some did nothing. Cedar Point, for instance, has no metal detectors and no bag checks. The risk of a terrorist ask at Cedar Point is much less than at a Disney park though.
So Disney has now installed steel barricades that are normally used at military bases and embassies in hostile countries to stop suicide bombers from getting close to their targets. Disney installed these at the service entrances to all four of their parks in Orlando. They shouldn't have any effect on the guests (unlike the bag checks and metal detectors) and they are being added to already established checkpoints.
Their biggest concern (I assume) is a bomber getting access to the Utilidor tunnels running underneath the Magic Kingdom. Constructed with the rest of the park in the 70s, I doubt they could take much of a blast. A collapse of the tunnels would bring a lot of the park crashing down.
