Strangest Disney Stories of 2022
Every year, the world seems to get a bit odder. Remember back in 2016 when many famous celebrities died, and everyone said it was the weirdest year ever.
We would all give anything to go back to those heady days of January 2016. They were simpler times, especially for theme park fans.


Photo:visitorlando.com
Here are the strangest Disney stories of 2022.
The Magic Kingdom Brawl
When you’re at a theme park, you show courtesy to others, right?


Photo: FOX 35 Orlando
If someone has to leave for a second and then asks to rejoin their party in line, you let them, right?
Of course you do. We live in a society, and I’m happy to say that most people demonstrate basic decency.


Photo: FOX 35 Orlando
Alas, we sometimes notice the occasional exception. For example, there’s this:
Yes, for the first time in recent memory, Magic Kingdom suffered through a multi-family brawl.
The incident started when a member of one group left the line at Mickey’s PhilharMagic.


Photo: Disney
When she returned, she asked the people behind her family to allow her to rejoin them.
You can tell from the video how well that went. The other party treated her rudely. However, nothing happened then.


Photo: FOX 35 Orlando
Instead, both groups entered the attraction building and watched the show. At this point, the woman’s family members learned about the mistreatment.
After the show, one of them dressed down the people who had been rude. And things devolved from there.
We’re talking about the classic Jerry Springer type of brawl complete with sucker punches, curse words exchanged, people ripping off their shirts to show they mean business, and so forth.
Reportedly, members from both groups received lifetime bans from Disney theme parks. And none of this would have happened if they’d just said, “Sure, you can get back in line with your family!”


Photo: orlandoattractions.com
Was the Popcorn Bucket Filled with Gold?
I recently stood in line for 45 minutes for a Mr. Toad popcorn bucket and a Mr. Toad cupcake. I thought that was a long time.
Remarkably, if I’d said that out loud in the wrong company, I might have gotten slugged.
Many Disney fans had recently waited MUCH longer than that for another themed popcorn bucket.
During the 2022 EPCOT International Festival of the Arts, Disney sold a limited-edition Figment popcorn bucket.
This gorgeous-looking creation highlighted Figment’s remarkable color scheme straight down to his colored toes claws.
Once images of the popcorn bucket appeared online, Disney fans collectively decided that they had to have this rare piece of Figment merchandise.
So, they stood in line, and I mean they stood there for a long time. At various points, guests reported that they had waited for eight hours.
Meanwhile, the price of the Figment popcorn bucket soared on eBay as enterprising individuals realized that people would happily pay money to avoid that line.
As MickeyBlog reported at the time, one Figment popcorn bucket sold for $275 plus $20 shipping!
Within days, Disney developed an entirely new virtual queue system simply for popcorn buckets and similarly exclusive merchandise.
The Figment craze forced Disney to change its sales policies on the fly!
The Rude French Person Cliché
Here, watch this video:
Cast members are the greatest, and I’ll thumb-wrestle anyone who says otherwise. Still, sometimes, mistakes are made.
This one appears to be intentional. Here’s the context. A man planned to propose to his longtime girlfriend in the most magical of settings.


Photo:Disneyland Paris
He would drop to one knee and pop the question in front of the fairytale castle at Disneyland Paris.
The guest politely asked for permission beforehand and then worked up the courage to ask for his girlfriend’s hand in marriage.


Photo: Newsweek
At this point, a Disney villain disguised as a cast member swooped in and stopped the ceremony.
Nobody knows why this employee suddenly decided to interfere with one of the most important moments in these two people’s lives.


Photo: Newsweek
However, reports afterward suggested that Disney did everything possible to make it right with the newly engaged couple.
Meanwhile, that cast member either experienced re-training, suffered a suspension, or no longer works for the company, depending on which report you believe.


Credit: Disney
My speculation here is that the worker decided to be a jerk in the moment, not recognizing how quickly and permanently he’d go viral. And he regrets it. He’s forever famous…and not in the good way.
The Latest Stupid Criminal
During the pandemic, Disney faced more security incidents than I can ever recall.


Photo: Disney
Specifically, several parties tried to bring weapons into the parks. Thankfully, Disney’s security catches everything. So, guests are always safe.
Still, one bozo deserves special attention for his strange, ill-considered attempt at Disney Springs.
This dude takes a fully loaded weapon and multiple ammo cartridges with him. Oh, and he has a knife, too.
When the idiot reaches Disney Springs, he suddenly realizes that there are security gates everywhere.


Photo: Disney
Not coincidentally, the knife sets off the alarm. At this point, a security guard asks him to open his bag.
This is when I do my semi-annual reminder that most criminals are morons.
The heavily armed person asks to leave the security area because he’s just remembered he has something in his bag that he needs to take back to his car.
I honestly wish I could have seen the security guard’s face when he heard this request. In a shocking twist, he didn’t honor it.
Instead, the kindly police officer decided to take this clown to jail for trying to bring weapons and ammo into Disney Springs.

The Worst Lost Luggage Claim Ever
How much do you love Disney? Is the answer so much that you want to be buried there?
I wouldn’t be surprised if you answered that way. After all, Disney cast members have a special code for ash disposal at the parks.


Photo: Disney Parks Blog
Some dedicated Haunted Mansion enthusiasts ask their loved ones to bury them on the ride so that they can become Happy Haunts.
Important reminder: No, that doesn’t work.


Photo: Disney
Anyway, one recently widowed English woman came up with a lovely, albeit alarming, way to honor her late husband.
She packed his ashes in her luggage and planned to leave them at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, his favorite.


Photo: Amazon
You can probably guess where this is going.
Yup, the airline lost her luggage, the bags that held the remains of her late husband.
To the widow’s credit, she didn’t sound that surprised. She later confessed that she knew she couldn’t take ashes on an airplane.


Credit: Breeze Airways
So, she’d only packed some of what remained of her husband but left most of him in a pot in their home garden.
This story also has a kind of happy ending, I guess. The airline found her bag and returned it to her once she came back from Disney. Yay?


Photo: TripAdvisor
The Three-Year Extension that Lasted Five Months
This story will obviously show up repeatedly during our end-of-year Disney recap because it touches on so many parts of the Mickey Mouse empire.
Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the curiosity of the Bob Chapek story here.


Photo: CNBC
In June, Chapek suddenly fired Peter Rice, a respected executive who apparently proved too much of a threat.
Chapek knew he was struggling in the role of CEO and made a move to eliminate a potential replacement.


Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
We’ll never know for sure, but I suspect this move proved effective. That same month, Disney signed Chapek to a three-year contract extension.
In contract terms, that might be the worst business decision Disney made in a year where Strange World lost more than $100 million.


Photo: skillastics.com
As part of Chapek’s new contract, he gained new stock options and job security…or so he thought.
You know how this story ends. Less than five months later, Disney’s Board of Directors fired Chapek and replaced him with his old boss, Bob Iger.


(Photo by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Vox Media)
As a reminder, Iger was still working at Disney on New Year’s Eve 2021. Life comes at you fast, and Chapek learned that the hard way.
Still, the strangest part is that Disney will pay him for another two and a half years despite the fact that he won’t be there.


Source: CNBC.com
Disney decided that they’d rather pay Bob Chapek to do nothing rather than literally anything company-related.
Even the Weather Hated Disney This Year
On December 15th, Walt Disney World found itself under a tornado watch. Somehow, that was only the fourth-strangest weather incident of the year.


Photo: CNN
During an impossibly strange 12 months, even the weather turned against your favorite theme park.
There’s nothing funny about either of the hurricanes that swept through Florida during the second half of the year.
Of course, that’s a standard part of living in Florida these days. Hurricane season has even increased in length due to the turbulent storms.
Still, we experienced something profoundly rare in mid-September. Scud clouds formed near the parks.


Photo: NOAA
People who had never seen a scud cloud before feared for their lives. They believed a tornado was sweeping through EPCOT and had the pictures to prove it!
To the untrained eye, scud clouds look like tornados, which made the one pictured behind Spaceship Earth seem terrifyingly deadly.
Thankfully, scud clouds aren’t dangerous. They did lead to some remarkable EPCOT pictures that day, though.


Photo: MickeyBlog