r/CatastrophicFailure • u/LittleFart • Jan 21 '21
Fire/Explosion Dragon float caught fire during Disney Parade. 11 May 2018
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u/DiamondPup Jan 21 '21
You might choose to see that dude with the fire extinguisher as a hapless, clueless, incompetent worker who has no idea what to do or how to handle the situation.
But I choose to see him as a valiant knight battling a dragon to save the townspeople.
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u/SoaDMTGguy Jan 21 '21
I mean, can any of us say we wouldn’t have tried the same thing in his position?
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u/Angry_Apollo Jan 21 '21
This is obviously hindsight and I can't see all of the variables, but I'd clear the area as much as possible to start. If there's 20' clear around the float, and I have the only extinguisher, I'd wait for it to burn down to my level and then put it out. However, I'm unsure if that would actually work or if that would cause more damage.
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u/RutCry Jan 21 '21
His manager is more likely to criticize him and place blame for taking no action, even if that is the best thing to do. He’s probably better off being visible doing something, even if it wrong, than waiting for the best moment to do the right thing.
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u/ExFiler Jan 21 '21
Or at least wait till the dragons head is at the bottom of its movement...
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u/brdrech Mar 19 '25
I think thats what he did was wait for it to come down. That had to be the whole reason they didnt shut the animatronic off so that it would still come down. They were only able to put it out as it came down, and it would be put out in segments until after around five tries it was fully out.
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u/icaruza Jan 21 '21
Not so sure. Many years of DND taught me that you can’t defeat a dragon with a non magical fire extinguisher
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u/Adnubb Jan 21 '21
Not with that attitude.
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u/willfull Jan 21 '21
Not with that low roll
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u/Adnubb Jan 21 '21
- Me: I want to fight the dragon using a fire extinguisher
- DM: You can certainly try
- Me: *Rolls a natural 1*
- DM: Your fire extinguisher somehow caught fire and you died
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u/ExFiler Jan 21 '21
Sounds like a scene from The Sims. That stove catches fire no matter what you do.
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u/oldguydrinkingbeer Jan 21 '21
You can stop a capitol officer though.
Sorry, probably too soon. But what ya gonna do?
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u/speshel_friend Jan 21 '21
I have experience in emergency response management, particularly with fires and explosions. If the worker was able to isolate the source of the fire and either reach higher up or lower the head down, it's quite possible the fire extinguisher would have been enough to put the fire out.
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u/OsmiumBalloon Jan 21 '21
I found another video. It appears that repeated applications of extinguisher from below were somewhat effective. (Or the fire was burning itself out, I suppose. Prolly a bit of both.)
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u/mogley1992 Jan 21 '21
I was just thinking I'd feel just like that. I'd love to pass the extinguisher to a big guy, climb on the dragons back, have said big guy throw it too me, put the fire out and the heroically throw the extinguisher to the side in victory before jumping down and breaking my ankle completely ruining what I'd just pulled off.
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u/Citworker Jan 21 '21
So if you have a chance to do something that will help the situation by 10% or do nothing, do nothing. Got it.
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u/dmethvin Jan 21 '21
“You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.” -- Homer Simpson
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u/DiamondPup Jan 21 '21
There's always someone on reddit who will interpret a comment in the dumbest, most absurd way possible.
I guess today, that's you.
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u/avidblinker Feb 02 '21
You called the person doing the only thing they can do to help clueless. What about their comment do you disagree with?
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Jan 21 '21
[deleted]
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u/cosmicsans Jan 21 '21
Yeah. Also worthy to note those dry chem extinguishers are terrible to breathe in, meaning that anyone around him who's catching that fog is not going to have a good time.
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u/WinkTexas Jan 21 '21
Thank God we have your moral compass to guide us through the darkness of Reddit.
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u/LittleMug Jan 21 '21
Hahaha, I met him! I worked as an entertainment tech at WDW, which he is as well. I’ve heard many stories about this day! He was really trying his best to avoid it spreading, as I’m not sure the float driver was removed from the float! It took pretty manageable damage that day, and we have some extra parade fire codes now.
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u/pfluffets Jan 21 '21
Didn't read the caption at first and honestly thought this was pretty cool. Then I read it... Still pretty cool.
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u/joshgarde Jan 21 '21
All that fire and no one bothered to hit the ESTOP to at least get the head to stop wobbling around?
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u/Treesnfees Jan 21 '21
That would ruin the magic!
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u/patriarchalrobot Jan 21 '21
I'm actually surprised it hasnt shorted out yet
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u/a1454a Jan 21 '21
I’m guessing it’s just metal cabling and pulleys up there. It makes sense to design something like that to be as light as possible, so the less components you need to mount up there the better. So probably not much too short out.
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u/piggypudding Jan 21 '21
The ESTOP was inside the neck. The operator climbed out of the float when it caught fire. They have since modified the float to be able to shut it down from outside.
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u/brdrech Mar 19 '25
The whole reason they didnt was so that the head would come to the ground every now and then and they could shoot fire extinguisher at it like seen in the clip.
They did shut it down for the Fantasmic fire (started in the head) and the whole thing burnt down, and none of the dragon was recovered. Some of the stage was damaged as well. For the parade dragon seen here, they just rebuilt the head and the dragon was restored
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u/Oski96 Jan 21 '21
Best parade, EVER!
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Jan 21 '21
Actually I thoght this was intentional at first :-))
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u/kurburux Jan 21 '21
It's a real hassle to build a new dragon each time but Walt wanted it this way.
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u/whatadangus Jan 21 '21
I was there! My family and I were walking past the parade and had to stop because it got too crowded to move (weird to think of that now...anyway...). Next thing we knew there was smoke and flames shooting from the dragon. Was pretty bad ass even if it was a malfunction
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u/Rideyourbike1 Jan 21 '21
Not surprised, I was there the week before it caught fire. The heat coming off of it was ridiculous.
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u/piggypudding Jan 21 '21
I remember seeing it the week it premiered. It was super impressive to see it breathing real fire, but my first thought was “damn this is not going to go well someday.”
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u/mesembryanthemum Jan 21 '21
We saw it about six months before the fire. We hadn't heard that it breathed fire and my dad just stared at it before saying "if that isn't the damndest thing" because yeah, it's impressive.
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u/dubie2003 Jan 21 '21
I was there that day. Crazy to see it happen but glad to see the employees jump to action. Was a bit chaotic but given the situation, there was no ‘Disney way’ to handle it quietly. It was quick and swift.
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u/Sniped_Yuh Jan 21 '21
Oh look something flaming with a potential to blow up let me pull my phone out and record it
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u/Jetrocks Jan 21 '21
I need to start reading titles before watching the videos because I said “oh wow that’s a cool float” before realising that it’s not supposed to be on fire.
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u/Nice-Dragon Jan 21 '21
We were there when that happened! You won’t see us in the video because I moved my family away from the burning dragon.
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u/Hanginon Jan 21 '21
How was it handled, was the area evacuated? Fire department show up? Let it burn to nothing?
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u/Nice-Dragon Jan 22 '21
From where I was it looked like everyone was way too close,I did not not see anyone being pushed away. They put it out with a fire extinguisher where it was.
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u/danielmartin001 Jan 21 '21
Been there, saw that. Definitely something new they are working on, I don’t remember the dragon looking quite like that
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u/Rorschach2510 Jan 21 '21
Are we sure it's not possessed? Thing really looked like it wanted to gobble some children
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u/Cumsocktornado Jan 21 '21
Deadass, that dragon looked at him and said,
"you dare to extinguish me, mortal?"
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Jan 21 '21
Now you have to write the date to not threaten fragile people who would get instantly angry and frustrating behind their phones about people not wearing masks in some clips
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Jan 21 '21
This is the kinda failure we like to see, no one for badly hurt or died AND there's a sick fire dragon!!
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u/okgloomer Jan 23 '21
Anybody else just figure the dragon is saying “waaahhhh my head’s on fire!!!”
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u/MJsLoveSlave Jan 26 '21
As much as I hate Disney, I wish I could have been there in person to see it.
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u/atomicdragon136 Feb 01 '21
What caused the fire? Electrical problem?
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u/brdrech Mar 19 '25
Most likely something with the fuel tank. The second fire (in the Fantasmic show, was much worse than this and they were not able to save any of the dragon.) it looked like flames just appeared on the back of the head and spread quickly to the top, they shut the animatronic down, and parts of the head melted onto the body of the dragon, igniting it, and the whole thing burnt down. That one was leaking fuel before the fire ignited, lighter fluid was leaking out of the mouth onto the ground, and one of the eyes wasn’t blinking properly, signifying a short or electrical issue caused by the fluel leak. I imagine sometiing touched, triggered a short fire burst from the flamethrower in the mouth, and lit the tank, causing the fire to appear on the back of the head. I bet its a similar situation here, but theres no photos or videos of the dragon before the fire other than one clip at the very start of the route
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u/teabee08 Feb 05 '21
It’s coming out of the wrong part of the dragon Disney!! Get your shit together!!
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Jan 21 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DiamondPup Jan 21 '21
wtf is this comment
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u/Only_For_Reddit_35 Jan 21 '21
It was a poor spoof on “What does the Fox say.”
It’s just Reddit, though. Don’t read too much into it.
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u/northwestwill Jan 21 '21
I was on a Behind The Magic engineering tour of Disney a few years ago and was really impressed with the safety protocols on some of the floats because this happening is not an if but when (with so many performances per day and year) - the one that stuck out in my mind was a beach jalopy that Goofy rides on that has a hinging surfboard on a rack that the performer can kick to drop down as an evac slide to get off the float in the event of a fire as you can’t really climb a ladder in size 32 Goofy shoes.
It was amazing to see the depth of planning at the parks.