TJ Walker discusses the alligator attack that killed 2-year-old Lane Graves at Walt Disney World in July 2016, examining the incident's fallout for Disney's reputation and likely corporate response including new signage and monitoring.
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Crisis for the Disney Corporation when a child is eaten and killed by an alligator. At Walt Disney World.
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Folks, this is indeed a sad story. Sad, sad story. Lane Graves was a 2 year old boy visiting Disney World with his family, staying at one of the resorts and he was along a lagoon. Now in Disney World there are a lot of man made lagoons and water bodies but they flow in to natural water bodies too. Because Florida, so much of Florida is basically a swamp and is right at the sea level or below sea level. So there's kind of water everywhere. The other thing about Florida is I remember this well from having lived there for almost a decade. Anywhere there's water in Florida, there can be an alligator. There are a million alligators, more than a million alligators throughout Florida. So at some point, if you're outside near water, there is a risk. So here's what happened. The two year old boy was with his parents, splashing around in the shallow waters of a lagoon. All of a sudden an alligator springs up, latches onto the boy, clamps its jaws down, pulls the boy into the lagoon. The father's chasing after it, trying to get his boy back was unsuccessful. The alligator pulled the boy into the water and it was a day, a day and a half or so before the body was found. Clearly a personal tragedy to the Grays family and our sympathies go out to them. But let's shift gears for a moment and talk about what does this actually mean to the Disney Corporation. More on that in a moment.
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So folks, I don't mean to belittle the or diminish the scope of this tragedy. Certainly to this family it's the ultimate of tragedies. But people are killed all over the world every single day. A million people are killed in car crashes around the world. For the most part, nobody pays any attention to that. This is different. This is an absolute media sensation. Google Alligator Kid, Disney and as of a couple of days after the incident, you're going to see millions of page views or page links from different websites. It is the number one story the day after this happened on the New York Times. It's not just tabloid journalism, it is mainstream journalism. This is a fascinating story in part because it's so visual. It is in many ways a parent's worst nightmare. Anyone's worst nightmare. You can visualize a cute little two year old playing in the water, an alligator grabbing it with its jaws, taking it away and the frantic you feel. I can well imagine the horror these parents must have felt. I could instantly Visualize my own 3 year old daughter playing around in the water and something like this happening. And it was. It's a harrowing thought. Here's the problem for Disney now. Disney's been around a long, long time. This is not going to destroy the Walt Disney Corporation or Disney World. But it is a crisis in the sense that this is going to damage the brand, hurt their reputation. I cannot imagine short term that this not result in a decrease in bookings to Disney World. I can just imagine the conversations going on between parents and, and children, husband and wife, all across the United States and around the world about, oh, we were thinking of going to Disney next year. Hmm, maybe it's too dangerous because of the alligators. I have to think that there are going to be some cancellations. So how does Disney handle this now? The initial response they had I think was perfectly fine. They did nothing but express sympathy for the family. And Disney and the whole Orlando area has had a tough, tough week because in the very Same week nearly 50 people were shot by the extremists in the nightclub there. So Orlando's had a lot of bad news. Disney World of course, being located right outside Orlando and they'd already pledged a million dollars for a fund to help the victims of that particular tragedy. I no doubt Disney will take care of this family quite adequately. Although nothing would replace the loss of a two year old child. But how does Disney deal with parental fears about alligators? Because I'm sure there are some bean counters and some smart people in Disney who want to put out the facts. And the facts are that being eaten by an alligator is frankly the least thing most people have to worry about. It's like getting killed by a shark. It attracts headlines because it is so rare. It's like the difference between people dying in a plane crash versus a car. A few hundred people a year die in plane crashes. A million people worldwide die in car crashes. But you ask most people, they're much more nervous about being in a plane than being in a car. Even though it's much more dangerous being in a car. At some level you can't argue with people's irrationality. It's like people feel safer with a gun even though all the statistics show they're actually much safer, or, excuse me, much more at risk of being killed if there's a gun in their own home. So I think the Disney people are smart enough not to try to debate people on the facts. And of course, the facts are you're in much greater danger from the taxi ride from the Orlando airport to Disney World. You're much more at risk eating bad food at a restaurant than you are from alligators. But this is not an argument you're going to win with rationality, with facts. What I suspect Disney will do is put up bigger signs that you need to be very careful and stay away from the water, that you need to, in fact, realize that alligators have been here for a long, long time. And there are more than a million alligators in Florida. I suspect they will also beef up some of their security and monitoring throughout all their parks and hotels and related properties so they can spot something even faster. Although it's hard to imagine how this would have helped, because alligators lurk with just their eyes showing a few feet offshore quite often and are not really visible, certainly wouldn't be visible to a security camera 50 or 100 yards away. And then typically, they avoid human beings. But if they see something small, a small dog or a small child splashing around in the water, attracting attention, they will go and eat it and think it's dinner. And that is, unfortunately, it's a rare occurrence. But it, it does happen. It happens in Florida. It happens in other places. So I suspect the only thing that Disney World can do is to try to make people feel better by putting up more fences, more signs, talking about how they're monitoring things closer. But short of filling in all their lagoons and all their water and all their beaches with land, they really can't eliminate the risk 100%. So will they take a hit short term? Yeah, I do think you're going to see some bookings go down for Disney World, but it will be short term. People will forget. Disney will ride out the storm, and I think they're going to continue to be quite prosperous. Very same week, they've announced their. Their new facility going live in Shanghai. They continue to expand worldwide. Some people hate Disney. Some people love it. I would say I'm slightly positive and I'm not in either one of those camps. At some point, will I take my own child to Disney World? Yes. I'm not going to let this alligator situation scare us off. Although once I was playing in a golf tournament, this is 30 years ago, I was playing in a golf tournament at Disney World. And on the green was an alligator that we were hitting. And I stayed away from it. I didn't want to taunt the alligator. It did shuffle off into the water. No one in our party was eaten. But reminder folks, the alligators were there first. I don't mean to say they have the right to eat human beings or little children anytime, but if you're going to go to Florida, beware folks. There are alligators there. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.
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