Custodians at the
Walt Disney Co. theme parks in Orlando, Fla., and Anaheim, Calif., use code words to disguise the messier aspects of their work from visitors.
When a manager radios for a “Code V” cleanup, it means a patron has vomited. “Code U” signals urine.
No code is kept more under wraps at
Walt Disney World and Disneyland than the call for a “HEPA cleanup.” It means that, once again, a park guest has scattered the cremated ashes of a loved one somewhere in the park, and an ultrafine (or “HEPA”) vacuum cleaner is needed to suck them up.
Disney custodians say it happens about once a month.
“Anyone who knew my mom knew Disney was her happy place,” said Jodie Jackson Wells, a business coach in Boca Raton, Fla., who in 2009 smuggled a pill bottle containing her mother’s ashes into Walt Disney World.
Once inside, Ms. Wells helped spread ashes on the platform of It’s a Small World near a head-spinning bird, a moment in the ride that always made her mother laugh. Later in the day, overcome with grief, Ms. Wells hopped over the barricade surrounding the lawn outside Cinderella’s castle and ran across the grass, flinging them as she crossed.
“I had two fistfuls of the ashes and I literally leapt like I was a dancer,” she said.
Current and former custodians at Disney parks say identifying and vacuuming up human ashes is a signature and secret part of working at the
Happiest Place on Earth. It is grisly work for them, but a cathartic release for the bereaved, who say treating Disney parks as a final resting place is the ultimate tribute to ardent fans.
Human ashes have been spread in flower beds, on bushes and on Magic Kingdom lawns; outside the park gates and during fireworks displays; on Pirates of the Caribbean and in the moat underneath the flying elephants of the Dumbo ride. Most frequently of all, according to custodians and park workers, they’ve been dispersed throughout the Haunted Mansion, the 49-year-old attraction featuring an eerie old estate full of imaginary ghosts.
“The Haunted Mansion probably has so much human ashes in it that it’s not even funny,” said one Disneyland custodian.
A Disney spokeswoman said, “this type of behavior is strictly prohibited and unlawful. Guests who attempt to do so will be escorted off property.”
Disney does everything it can to keep morbid thoughts out of its parks. When Walt Disney World began installing personalized commemorative bricks in 1994, the company banned the words “In Memory Of,” worried they would remind guests of death.
Caryn Reker of Jacksonville, Fla., remembers her father growing emotional while watching the Wishes fireworks show outside the ice-cream parlor on Disney World’s Main Street. When time came for her to spread his ashes, in 2006, she opted to do it in numerous spots around the area.
“It’s a sweet way to giggle and remember—he’s here. . . and there. . . and a little over there. . . yep, there, too,” she wrote in an email. She returned to Disney World last week to spread the ashes of her brother, an Epcot enthusiast who died this year.
Alex Perone, an actor from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., described an emotional roller coaster when he took the ashes of his mother, Sandie Perone, to Walt Disney World this past June. Immediately after spreading them in a Magic Kingdom flower bed, he went on It’s a Small World.
Alex Perone and his mother, Sandie Perone, at Disney World. PHOTO: PERONE FAMILY
“I was still crying. That song is playing over and over again, and there are those happy little animatronic things,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘This is weird.’ ”
Among a select group of Disney obsessives, the parks are also places to propose, get married and celebrate birthdays. It is no surprise, then, that some want to spend eternity there.
Smugglers say getting the ashes past security is easy if they are transported in prescription-pill bottles or makeup compacts. Others hide Ziploc bags at the bottom of a purse or knapsack.
When ash residue is discovered on a ride, Disney workers tell guests they must shut down due to “technical difficulties.” Then, a manager rides alone through the attraction looking for any ash piles while colleagues may hand out “Fast Passes” to assuage guests who must leave before the custodians turn up with their high-powered vacuums.
One former Disney employee said she and others got in trouble after they coined their own term for the ash cleanup: “Code Grandma.”
There have been false alarms.
“One time it was funnel-cake powder,” the former employee said.
Sgt. Daron Wyatt, a spokesman for the Anaheim Police Department, said spreading ashes without permission is a misdemeanor. Officers “have responded on calls for service regarding ashes” at Disneyland, he added, but said the park’s on-site sergeant couldn’t recall any arrests being made.
Jodie Jackson Wells, holds some of her mother Bonnie Jackson's ashes in a bottle, which she took to Walt Disney World in 2009. Bonnie Jackson poses with Minnie Mouse during a visit to Disney World.PHOTOS: JACKSON WELLS FAMILY(2)
It’s likely many ashes never get spotted by park employees. None of the families interviewed by The Wall Street Journal believe workers noticed them in the act.
Shanon Himebrook, a 41-year-old state-government employee from Kansas City, Mo., grew up making summer trips to Disney World with her father, a worker at a plastic factory in Indiana.
At Disney, “he wasn’t my tired, graveyard-shift Dad,” she said. “He was, ‘Let’s get you the Mouse ears! Let’s get your name stitched in it!’ It’s like, ‘I love this dad! Can we stay forever?’ ”
Ms. Himebrook spread his ashes earlier this year near the park gates.
Bill Lurie poses for a photo with Mickey Mouse with a camera bag containing ashes of his partner, Robin Milnes, inside.
Marty Lurie, an
Amazon.com Inc. employee in San Bernardino, Calif., took the ashes of his father’s partner, Robin Milnes, to Disney World in eight baggies hidden at the bottom of a camera bag in 1996. His father, who had been in a depression following Mr. Milnes’s death from AIDS, came along but was reluctant to join in.
To cheer him up, Mr. Lurie had the group stop for photos with characters including Mickey Mouse and Goofy, posing with the camera bag containing Mr. Milnes’s ashes conspicuously center stage in each picture.
He even took the ashes on rides. “You want to go on this ride, Robin?” he’d ask the bag.
His father, who died in 2010, got in on the fun. “He wound up having the time of his life,” said Mr. Lurie.
Kym Pessolano DeBarth, a 47-year-old optometrist-office worker from Northfield, N.J., dumped a small amount of her mother’s ashes in the water underneath It’s a Small World. “I didn’t want to clog the filter,” she said.
In December, she’ll return to the park to commemorate the 15th anniversary of her mother’s death.
“Instead of going to a grave,” she said, “I go to Disney World.”
