Reader Submitted Story
Going Along with the Show — The Tom Sawyer Island Finger Accident

I bet most of you have heard of the accident at Tom Sawyer Island.

[Editor: a little girl badly injured her finger (losing a portion of it) while playing with a toy gun installed in Fort Wilderness.]

It was a Monday morning, and I get a call from Disney Scheduling.

"Hello Zero, this is Scheduling we have a shift for you today."

"Yawn, uh ok, my regular attraction right?", I questioned.

"Nope, you'll be doing guest control on Tom Sawyer Island."

They don't usually have guest control on Tom Sawyer Island, they have security to do that, I thought to myself, what's up?

"Um... OK... that's odd, but whatever.", I replied.

The story of the finger incident didn't hit the news until the following Wednesday, so I didn't even know about it until I got there. I arrived on TSI (Short for Tom Sawyer Island) with one other CM to do guest control.

All we were told was to keep people out of the fort and that it was undergoing some "refurbishment", little did I know that they were really doing.

The other CM and I would go on and off breaks about every other hour, there was no lead around to really say when we could go on breaks. So we took our own.

Anyway, On the first such break, I meet my friend in the Westside Diner (a cast cafeteria) under New Orleans Square.

"Hey Zero, What you doing on TSI??"

"Um, keeping people out of the fort, they are refurbishing."

"What? No they aren't, didn't you hear about the little girl??"

"Nope, explain."

My friend happened to be there on the day that it happened and saw everything, including all the people going back and forth from the island. He told me the details to the best that he knew them.

Fortunately, no guests so far in the day knew about the incident. However, others that were there the day before came later, and that is when it got interesting.

When I returned to the fort, My fellow CM was surprised about the story as I was.

Now, when guests came up, it got interesting.

"What's going on?"

Now, you are told in Disney University, to go along with the show. Such as, If something bad in It's a Small World happened, you could say some of the little animatronic kids got out. (and to some adults you could say "we have to re-staple their feet to the floor", as a joke). I had to think of something to go along with the Tom Sawyer theme, I was thinking all day, when it finally came to me.

"Oh, Um, a bear, yeah! That's right. A bear came in and tore up the inside of the fort, and scared all the Calvary guys away too. We got the bear and sent him back to California Adventure, but the Calvary guys are still scared, maybe by tomorrow they'll be back out and fix the place."

"Oh, um okay," the guest would reply in a confused voice and the guest would walk away.

However people who visited the day before returned, the guests who were there and knew what happened. They were very curious to hear what Disney had to say about yet another accident.

They'd ask "why is the fort down?"

"Oh, Refurbishment," then I'd continue with the bear story.

"Does this have anything to do with that girl I saw here yesterday??"

Doh! This guest knew, he must have been around yesterday. Ok, now what to say? I thought long and hard, how to tell the guest its none of his concern and still make him not get mad at me. I thought for a full 2 seconds and replied.

"Ok, this is what really happened, Tinker Bell and some of her fairy friends decided to decorate the fort in pixie dust and..."

The guest smirked at me and walked away.

That worked that time, but later in the day one curious guest asked about the fort, and another came in and said "oh a girl lost her finger..." and the guest would recite the whole story as a huge crowed gathered to hear.

When the guest was finished, I had a whole 15 people staring at me to hear if what he said was true. I couldn't say no, they knew. I also couldn't say yes, we are not allowed to comment about accidents.

"OK, There was this bear and it got into the fort and..."

The crowd knew then that I wasn't going to tell them anything and walked away.

— Zero