A forty-nine-year-old German woman died yesterday after going on the Mission: SPACE ride at Disney World. The ride was reopened today after the park's engineers found that it was working properly. A sad story, but one that I think is very interesting, due to the media coverage the incident received.
The headlines of articles about the woman's death mostly read like the above-linked Reuters article. A sampling:
"Woman Dies After Riding Disney "Rocket" --Reuters
"Woman dies after ride at Disney World" --Chicago Tribune
"Woman Dies After Riding Epcot Ride" --Houston Chronicle
"Disney Mission: SPACE rider dies after falling ill" --St. Petersburg Times
And then there's the headline on the official Disney World site:
"Mission: SPACE even more exciting than we thought before!"
Which seems just a little callous, although I suppose it's a pretty effective marketing approach.
