![]() | This article appears to be slanted towards recent events.(October 2025) |
This is a summary of notable incidents that have taken place at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.
The term incidents refers to major accidents, injuries, deaths, and similar significant occurrences. While most of these incidents are required to be reported to regulatory authorities for investigation, attraction-related incidents usually fall into one of the following categories:
In 1985, Time magazine reported that nearly 100 lawsuits are filed against Disney each year for numerous incidents. [1]
On April 12, 1995, Disneyland became worldwide headlines following a foiled terrorism plot, which sent hundreds of federal agents through the theme park, and grabbed attention to then-President Bill Clinton. The emergency came shortly after the Disneyland Security Division received a letter from an unidentified address and a pre-recorded videocassette from the mail. After a Disney Security manager reviewed the tape, Disneyland Security officers made five additional copies of the tape before contacting the Anaheim Police Department, the Orange County Bomb Squad, and the FBI. The Disneyland videotape incident came one week before the Oklahoma City bombing. [142] It wasn't until a few days after Oklahoma City that the attack was declared a hoax. The plot according to authorities was thwarted when authorities at Los Angeles International Airport apprehended two Japanese members of Aum Shinrikyo with information in their possession about how to make a highly toxic nerve gas, by using the same ingredients used in the Tokyo subway sarin attack the previous month. President Clinton in an afternoon conference two days after the Oklahoma City bombing gave brief conversation on the Disneyland threat calling it "a quick and secret development of a major U.S. effort". [143]
The recording, which was taped earlier that week, begins with an off-air recording of a television show from a Spanish-language television station in the Los Angeles market, before cutting to home movie footage showing three other videocassette tapes spreading on a table. Lying on top of one of the tapes contain a newspaper article from the April 1, 1995, edition of the Orange County Register, that contained a March 30, 1995, incident where a 21-year-old man from Fullerton, California was arrested after spraying a noxious substance inside both Space Mountain and a gift shop, sickening 33 people, with camcorder text at the bottom reading "GOOD BOY!", before cutting to a shot of various vintage photos of people. This was followed by images of a man with rubber gloves picking out containers of nerve gas chemicals wrapped in foil, storing in a refrigerator, placing them in glass jars, and boiling them in a boiling pot. Camcorder texts reading "MADE EASY!", "NERVE GAS", and "DEAD GUEST" appeared on screen. A shot of a small calendar reading "April 14" and a clock reading 9:00 PM, the scheduled time for that evening's Main Street Electrical Parade, before cutting to a final view of a motel parking lot facing the intersection of West Katella Avenue and South Harbor Road, located across the street from the theme park's then-parking lot. The tape immediately ends with more Spanish off-air recording from the same station, before cutting to black. [144] [145]
In 2019, a man from Portland, Oregon rediscovered one of the five copies of the Disneyland terror threat tape from a Goodwill store near Portland. The full tape, which had a label reading "JERRY HILL 199M NY 252958 - VHS COPY of PERTINENT SEGMENT", was uploaded on YouTube in July 2021. A few years later, the man gave the tape to a station investigator from CBS station WKMG-TV in Orlando, Florida. The name "Jerry Hill" was connected to a former FBI agent who had ties to Portland and had previously worked on terrorist cases as an agent. He had the exact copy of the tape until his death in 2017. [146]