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Heard on the news that in 45 years this kind of thing has never happened there

Tragic story.

Been to that park quite a few times(only roamed the resorts once or twice). There isn't a body of water there that's not filled with food wrappers and other trash. Not something I'd imagine you'd want to wade around in.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Heard on the news that in 45 years this kind of thing has never happened there

Disney or Florida?

I assume Disney, because I honestly think you should have to sign a waver to cross in to Florida. "If I go near water, I expect to be eaten by a gator."

Yes. Disney has never had this happen in 45 years of being open.

Despite the amount of alligator infested water in Florida, attacks on humans are relatively rare. Here are the stats from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

http://myfwc.com/media/310203/Alligator-GatorBites.pdf

The average is about a dozen bites a year, with maybe one fatal attack.

To put this in perspective, you are significantly more likely to be attacked or killed by a dog in Florida.

http://www.floridahealth.gov/%5C/programs-and-services/prevention/dog-bite-prevention/index.html

Average 600 bites and two deaths.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Despite the amount of alligator infested water in Florida, attacks on humans are relatively rare. Here are the stats from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

http://myfwc.com/media/310203/Alligator-GatorBites.pdf

The average is about a dozen bites a year, with maybe one fatal attack.

To put this in perspective, you are significantly more likely to be attacked or killed by a dog in Florida.

http://www.floridahealth.gov/%5C/programs-and-services/prevention/dog-bite-prevention/index.html

Average 600 bites and two deaths.

you are more likely to be attacked by a shark then an Alligator, but more likely to die from the Alligator, Alligators are opportunistic killers, they will only attack those that they can overpower or are easy, unlike their nastier cousin the crocodile, also the Boy died of Drowning evidently the Alligator did not take a bite out of him.

Asterios wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Despite the amount of alligator infested water in Florida, attacks on humans are relatively rare. Here are the stats from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

http://myfwc.com/media/310203/Alligator-GatorBites.pdf

The average is about a dozen bites a year, with maybe one fatal attack.

To put this in perspective, you are significantly more likely to be attacked or killed by a dog in Florida.

http://www.floridahealth.gov/%5C/programs-and-services/prevention/dog-bite-prevention/index.html

Average 600 bites and two deaths.

you are more likely to be attacked by a shark then an Alligator, but more likely to die from the Alligator, Alligators are opportunistic killers, they will only attack those that they can overpower or are easy, unlike their nastier cousin the crocodile, also the Boy died of Drowning evidently the Alligator did not take a bite out of him.

That is how they kill. They take them underwater and because once they have you under, your chances of getting free are slim to none, you are going to drown.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Despite the amount of alligator infested water in Florida, attacks on humans are relatively rare. Here are the stats from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

http://myfwc.com/media/310203/Alligator-GatorBites.pdf

The average is about a dozen bites a year, with maybe one fatal attack.

To put this in perspective, you are significantly more likely to be attacked or killed by a dog in Florida.

http://www.floridahealth.gov/%5C/programs-and-services/prevention/dog-bite-prevention/index.html

Average 600 bites and two deaths.

you are more likely to be attacked by a shark then an Alligator, but more likely to die from the Alligator, Alligators are opportunistic killers, they will only attack those that they can overpower or are easy, unlike their nastier cousin the crocodile, also the Boy died of Drowning evidently the Alligator did not take a bite out of him.

That is how they kill. They take them underwater and because once they have you under, your chances of getting free are slim to none, you are going to drown.

yes they drown you then eat you, but the kid had no marks on him, the Alligator did not take a bite out of him.

 paulson games wrote:
This is a pretty small one fence climbing, the big ones have a much easier time.

Wow!
I never knew they could do that. Truly amazing and wonderful creatures. A pity they are so dangerous, otherwise I'd want one as a pet

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To put this in perspective, you are significantly more likely to be attacked or killed by a dog in Florida.

I don't think that's a very meaningful perspective. You're more likely to do most things than go paddling around where an alligator might get you. Seems a rather unfair comparison. Given the choice between swimming in alligator infested water, or dog infested water... I think I would choose dogs every time!

I like dogs as much as the next man but the reason there are so many dog attacks is because they are all over our cities and in our homes.

Conversely it's rather unusual to have to go swimming in alligator infested water.

Omfg, being a father of a two year old, soon to be three in 2 months...that just tears at my heart. The amount of distress I feel even thinking of my own son being taken by an alligator like that is deeper than i can describe, I feel for the parents right now, they paid a price worse than death.

But yet, at the same time, I wouldn't even allow my son into a kids pool or a bath tub without me within arms reach. I'm definitely a bit over protective. Relatively of course, I can trust him to be okay if I have to run downstairs, or to the bathroom.

Perhaps I'm judging wrongly because I'm too over protective, or perhaps they were just too negligent in watching their baby, but I feel like this should never have happened and it might have been easily avoidable.

 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Omfg, being a father of a two year old, soon to be three in 2 months...that just tears at my heart. The amount of distress I feel even thinking of my own son being taken by an alligator like that is deeper than i can describe, I feel for the parents right now, they paid a price worse than death.

But yet, at the same time, I wouldn't even allow my son into a kids pool or a bath tub without me within arms reach. I'm definitely a bit over protective. Relatively of course, I can trust him to be okay if I have to run downstairs, or to the bathroom.

Perhaps I'm judging wrongly because I'm too over protective, or perhaps they were just too negligent in watching their baby, but I feel like this should never have happened and it might have been easily avoidable.

I agree completely

I have a 3 month old and a 7 year old, and if we were at a resort, or in Florida at all (I have family there) I would have never let them near water without me literally being in arms reach. I know I'm overprotective, but this borders on downright stupidity on their part. It's tragic and I'm sorry that child had his life cut short, but it was preventable by good parenting which was clearly not shown.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Omfg, being a father of a two year old, soon to be three in 2 months...that just tears at my heart. The amount of distress I feel even thinking of my own son being taken by an alligator like that is deeper than i can describe, I feel for the parents right now, they paid a price worse than death.

But yet, at the same time, I wouldn't even allow my son into a kids pool or a bath tub without me within arms reach. I'm definitely a bit over protective. Relatively of course, I can trust him to be okay if I have to run downstairs, or to the bathroom.

Perhaps I'm judging wrongly because I'm too over protective, or perhaps they were just too negligent in watching their baby, but I feel like this should never have happened and it might have been easily avoidable.

I agree completely

I have a 3 month old and a 7 year old, and if we were at a resort, or in Florida at all (I have family there) I would have never let them near water without me literally being in arms reach. I know I'm overprotective, but this borders on downright stupidity on their part. It's tragic and I'm sorry that child had his life cut short, but it was preventable by good parenting which was clearly not shown.

as a father of 3 daughters, I agree with your sentiments, but based on what I have read, the father was close enough, to close in on, and engage the alligator. That means he was close. They (animals)don't linger with prey in mouth, asking to be stopped. Let the judgement stop, for now atleast. He hasn't even been able to get the funeral planned yet.

 redleger wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Omfg, being a father of a two year old, soon to be three in 2 months...that just tears at my heart. The amount of distress I feel even thinking of my own son being taken by an alligator like that is deeper than i can describe, I feel for the parents right now, they paid a price worse than death.

But yet, at the same time, I wouldn't even allow my son into a kids pool or a bath tub without me within arms reach. I'm definitely a bit over protective. Relatively of course, I can trust him to be okay if I have to run downstairs, or to the bathroom.

Perhaps I'm judging wrongly because I'm too over protective, or perhaps they were just too negligent in watching their baby, but I feel like this should never have happened and it might have been easily avoidable.

I agree completely

I have a 3 month old and a 7 year old, and if we were at a resort, or in Florida at all (I have family there) I would have never let them near water without me literally being in arms reach. I know I'm overprotective, but this borders on downright stupidity on their part. It's tragic and I'm sorry that child had his life cut short, but it was preventable by good parenting which was clearly not shown.

as a father of 3 daughters, I agree with your sentiments, but based on what I have read, the father was close enough, to close in on, and engage the alligator. That means he was close. They (animals)don't linger with prey in mouth, asking to be stopped. Let the judgement stop, for now atleast. He hasn't even been able to get the funeral planned yet.

I don't think it's so much as judgement as it is folks reassuring themselves they wouldn't have let such a terrifying encounter happen to their family. It comes across a little harsh at times, but no one wants to see a small child dragged away by a giant lizard.

For instance, I like to pretend I would grab that gator by his tail, drag him out of the water, and then King Kong his jaws open. Realistically, Probably wouldn't happen that way.

Apparently, after the recovery of the body and the info they know about the size of the gator, experts are saying that likely this gator had no intention of eating the child and was there begging for food as humans regularly feed the wildlife there. When the father aggressively approached, the gator panicked, grabbed what he could and fled.

This is why it is important not to feed the wildlife under any circumstances. It gives them mixed messages and when they think they are being cute trying to beg for food, someone else thinks they are being aggressive and then the wild animal becomes exposed and it attacks.

I have seen deer kick someone because it wanted food and they wouldn't give it to them.

I live here and because of my wife I have been across that lagoon hundreds of times on the ferry and monorail crawled to the bars on that track many times. Central FL is a swamp, every single body of water has alligators in it. Most of us know not to swim in lakes at night time. If I am shore fishing at night I am scanning the shoreline looking for red/orange eyes looking back at me. There were no swimming signs posted, I have seen hazard signs in the dock area which included alligators on it. Disney has an active alligator removal program as it is. Fish and Wildlife has already said Disney has done due diligence on controlling the alligator population.

For anyone who hasn't looked at a map, the world lagoon is a fairly large body of water with wooded islands, and a wooded shoreline along half of it with grassy swampy areas around the entire lake. Further it is connected to an entire network of lakes and canals, most of which have wooded shorelines and swamps around it. With the mass amount of swamps and water, much of which is little traveled, you will not be able to get rid of alligators in the Disney area. As soon as you remove a gator from the area, another one will move in and take the territory.

Most alligators will not bother humans. Smaller ones tend to be very curious about humans in the water. I have had small ones literally surface next to a swimmers circle in a snorkeling class I taught back in boy scouts. They wont attck, they just want to know what the commotion is about. Once they get a little older that curiosity seems to go away and they try to hide from people. Their primary feeding time is the evening time. So having a puppydog sized child playing in the water during primary feeding time is a no brainer. Surprised things like this haven't happened earlier.

That said, death at Disney isn't a new thing. People die every week "at Disney" although technically they die on the way or at the hospital. There are drownings, heat strokes and so forth every week. You just don't hear about it. Disney suppresses this info under the above mentioned technicality.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Wait... It is a manmade lake? How did alligators get in there? Do they walk over land to get to new areas? And if so, how did they know there was a lake there?
And also, if a lake on your theme park has alligators in it, doesn't it make a lot of sense to fence it off? Not doing that is just asking for this kind of tragedy to be repeated.
I also think they should probably hire some hunters and eliminate all alligators in the theme park. Dangerous man-eating animals really shouldn't be in a Disney park.

Gators are able to walk on land and relocate to any body of water they see fit. They can swim through sewer systems too. It's basically impossible to assume any body of water doesn't have a gator in it.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Wait... It is a manmade lake? How did alligators get in there? Do they walk over land to get to new areas? And if so, how did they know there was a lake there?
And also, if a lake on your theme park has alligators in it, doesn't it make a lot of sense to fence it off? Not doing that is just asking for this kind of tragedy to be repeated.
I also think they should probably hire some hunters and eliminate all alligators in the theme park. Dangerous man-eating animals really shouldn't be in a Disney park.

Gators are able to walk on land and relocate to any body of water they see fit. They can swim through sewer systems too. It's basically impossible to assume any body of water doesn't have a gator in it.

Ninja'd.

Yeah. They're amphibious.

Also, ELIMINATE the alligators? Yeah- no. Just cause one person gets eaten doesn't mean you go and wipe them out. You learn from the mistake and take steps to avoid it happening again. Alligators are a part of our world as much as we are theirs. Should only take a life if it's an immediate threat. This creature was doing what comes naturally.

It's tragic and I don't think there is much anything anyone could have done. An unlikely event happened in a space where the risk is actively managed to be kept low. By all accounts the child was being watched to a reasonable standard and all efforts were made to save him.

Something terrible happens and people always want a place to lay the blame. Something bad happened someone must have done something bad. There's a dead kid and nobody wants to blame a cosmic roll of the dice because you can't yell at misfortune and can't feel better when it gets fined or goes to jail.

Iron Captain, Anywhere where you have lots of bodies of water, alligators have been known to cross over a mile of land before looking for water. Back to scouting in the low country of GA, we were briefed on the possibility of encountering one and to be on guard even while deep in the woods, especially in the dry season.

The attack happened after dark, which is when they are most active and on the hunt. Articles are saying the child was about 25 ft away from the nearest light at the time of the attack so visibility would be really bad and makes me wonder what they were thinking with having young kids on a waterfront after dark.

As for the body not being immediately eaten that's also in line with their normal feeding behavior, gators don't really have the ability to chew they tend to swallow stuff whole. When they attack prey that's large in proportion to their body size they often don't have the strength to tear it apart immediately. They will drown their prey and drag it under water to store it for a few days until the body begins to break down and softens up enough that they can pull it apart in chunks. They will usually stash prey under logs or in the dens that they carve out underwater. Even with large gator attacks they are usually able to recover the bodies if they can locate them within a fairly short period, large gators can often remove an arm or part of a leg when they go into their death roll attack but in order to consume a body quickly they'd need to work as a group or let it break down for a bit. Because of this the bodies of gator attack victims are typically recovered largely intact compared to victims of wolves or bears which can leave very little behind.

Saltwater and Nile Crocs are much more powerful than American alligators and their teeth also have a different design to them that helps them tear apart food differently, they are also a lot larger and far more aggressive. While alligators are certainly dangerous in the right situation they aren't overly aggressive towards people and are usually pretty timid in their wild state. One of the problems that occurs is when people feed them, they then begin to associate people with food and start to lose their fear of people and can get aggressive if they feel that people are withholding food from them. Which is why all the state parks typically have signs up warning people against feeding them, yet people constantly ignore those no feeding signs and no swimming signs. Gator behavior is pretty predictable and most attacks happen because people did something wrong or incredibly stupid, like swimming alone at night. (possibly while drunk) Most attacks actually happen with locals because they get too friendly with the gators and drop their guard thinking that they are tame.

 Chongara wrote:
It's tragic and I don't think there is much anything anyone could have done. An unlikely event happened in a space where the risk is actively managed to be kept low. By all accounts the child was being watched to a reasonable standard and all efforts were made to save him.

Something terrible happens and people always want a place to lay the blame. Something bad happened someone must have done something bad. There's a dead kid and nobody wants to blame a cosmic roll of the dice because you can't yell at misfortune and can't feel better when it gets fined or goes to jail.

this.

Horrible tragedy. I feel sorry for the parents. To have to watch your child die like that, and even wrestle with the animal, only to lose...

i'm sure that they'll get a big fat settlement and that will make everything all better, right...
it's a shame to see things like this get turned in to a money grab.

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
i'm sure that they'll get a big fat settlement and that will make everything all better, right...
it's a shame to see things like this get turned in to a money grab.

If I lost my child in front of my eyes to a alligator attack the only thing a big fat settlement would do is facilitate me drinking myself to death.

 feeder wrote:

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
i'm sure that they'll get a big fat settlement and that will make everything all better, right...
it's a shame to see things like this get turned in to a money grab.

If I lost my child in front of my eyes to a alligator attack the only thing a big fat settlement would do is facilitate me drinking myself to death.

Also this, and I haven't had a drink in over a year.

 redleger wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
i'm sure that they'll get a big fat settlement and that will make everything all better, right...
it's a shame to see things like this get turned in to a money grab.

If I lost my child in front of my eyes to a alligator attack the only thing a big fat settlement would do is facilitate me drinking myself to death.

Also this, and I haven't had a drink in over a year.

This. I highly doubt this is a money grab. If anything, the only thing I'd want out of a lawsuit is to increase security, signage, etc. to limit the chances of this happening to another parent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
Horrible tragedy. I feel sorry for the parents. To have to watch your child die like that, and even wrestle with the animal, only to lose...

Well, unfortunately it sounds like the dad tried to pry open the jaws, which any nature documentary will say based on gator physiology is almost impossible. The dad might have had better luck trying to get it to let go by gouging at it's eyes or trying to wrestle it to shore.

Truly horrendous either way.

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
i'm sure that they'll get a big fat settlement and that will make everything all better, right...
it's a shame to see things like this get turned in to a money grab.

Yes, because it is a moneygrab to get compensation for your kids death.

Here's the thing, if the courts work and Disney didn't do anything wrong (such as not having signs or whatever), then they will not have to pay anything but maybe their legal costs.

Not to mention the amount of appeals disney will have. They could win, but they will never see a dime. and disney has so much good will, that it wont matter.