Though a clumsy and unlucky person, I have thankfully managed to keep all of the limbs I was born with. Had I had the misfortune to lose one and be fitted with a prosthetic, I can not imagine leaving it behind at a theme park.
I understand their explanation that sometimes prosthetic limbs are lost on rides, and that they are “usually” claimed by their owners, but what about the ones that aren’t? Seems like park employees would be willing to retrieve it for me if it had, say, fallen off on a roller coaster. The idea of thinking, “Oh, well. It’s gone for good now,” seems strange to me. Aren’t prosthetics expensive? If you plan just to get another, wouldn’t explaining how you lost it to your insurance company be difficult?
I was wondering the same thing. I suppose I can understand losing your cane, since some people can manage to get around without it. But crutches? Wheelchairs? I’ve heard of crutches being left behind at miraculous shrines, but have never heard of any curative powers that Disney World posesses. What gives?
Well, not everybody who is issued crutches or a wheelchair really needs to use them. What springs to mind is somebody who has been told and told and told to stay off the knee, post-surgery, but who in the middle of the amusement park decides that he’s not going to let doctors push him around anymore, so he conveniently “forgets” the crutches by a park bench and strides off without them.
Ditto the wheelchair.
“But–where’s the wheelchair!?” his family gasps as they all meet by the ticket counter on their way out.
“Dunno,” he shrugs, and climbs into the car. They look at each other in bafflement. It’s late, so they decide to go home and deal with it tomorrow, and they just never get around to calling the amusement park.
Many years ago on the old David letterman “Late Night” show on NBC, a representitive of the New York Transit Authority came on and showed some of the items in lost and found. One was a prostetic leg. The audience roared. Who would lose such a thing?
I would say the two culprits would be alcohol and mental illness.
My daughter walks with crutches and under no circumstances could she lose one. I suppose she might leave them behind someplace… say, at the loading station of a ride or something. But, once we got to the other end it would be, "Oh shit! We left her crutches at the beginning of the Pirates of the Carribbean! And we’d all be sitting there waiting until a park employee went and fetched them for her. Frankly, I can’t imagine that happening though – she keeps a pretty close eye on her crutches. Another thing that might happen is a little kid might wander off with one – believe it or not, crutches (especially bright purple crutches) are real kid-magnets. Same thing as the first example, though – Doe keeps tabs on her crutches and, if a little kid is playing with one, she keeps tabs on the little kid…
Of course, Doe walks with crutches because she really needs them – if you take them away she falls right over (not that I’d ever actually do that ). However, there are people at theme parks who use crutches and wheelchairs in order to get “head of the line” privileges they aren’t actually entitled to. When we were last at Disneyland we saw several kids racing from ride to ride pushing an empty wheelchair. Once at the ride, one of the kids would hop into the 'chair and they’d scoot to the head of the line… My guess is that most of these abandoned or lost wheelchairs or crutches were being used in such scams. Cheapie wheelchairs and crutches or canes are easily found at garage sales and such.
I don’t know what to say about the prosthetic limbs or glass eyes, though! I suppose someone might be embarrassed to claim a pair of lost dentures, but prosthetic body parts are expensive – even the plastic braces my daughter used to wear were over $1000 a set! and insurance companies aren’t super-lax about paying for them either… Of course, the article did stipulate that “most” of the body parts were claimed, but still! Can you imagine? “Grandpa! We dropped Granny’s leg into Space Mountain!”
“Never mind. She can hop back to Kansas and we’ll buy her a new one when we get there.”
And there’s the never-ending parade of crutches, wheelchairs and canes left behind. “We don’t know how these people get home,” says [lost and found employee] Lauver, shaking her head.
Not as unlikely as you might think. Check out this site for stuff found on London Transport.
This part got me as well. I guess I can understand saying, “Aw, to hell with it. We’ll get another,” when it comes to disposable cameras, but if I paid more than $25 for the thing, I’m gonna put at least a little effort into finding it.
They mention other valuable articles like jewlery and cell phones that are never claimed. It astonishes me that we can so easily shrug off the loss of a posession, whose worth is probably more than a lot of people in third-world countries make in a year, that we wouldn’t even bother to make a phone call to see if it’s been turned in to the lost and found department. This has to be a purely American phenomenon.
Dude, if I had a stuffed eagle and I wanted to not have a stuffed eagle, I can’t think of a better way to recycle it than to give it away to a mysterious stranger along with a terrific story.
). However, there are people at theme parks who use crutches and wheelchairs in order to get “head of the line” privileges they aren’t actually entitled to. When we were last at Disneyland we saw several kids racing from ride to ride pushing an empty wheelchair. Once at the ride, one of the kids would hop into the 'chair and they’d scoot to the head of the line… My guess is that most of these abandoned or lost wheelchairs or crutches were being used in such scams. Cheapie wheelchairs and crutches or canes are easily found at garage sales and such.