One thing that defines Main Street USA at Disney World are the Mickey Balloons. As soon as you take a step inside the Magic Kingdom, you see cast members selling the balloons as well as many guests who have purchased balloons as an inexpensive but fun souvenir. Just when you thought these balloons were harmless, tragedy struck.
It’s common for guests to take a picture holding Mickey balloons. It makes for a cute photo. Essentially the cast member selling the balloons holds onto the end of the balloons out of the picture. The guest then holds the rest of the balloon while a Photopass cast member takes a picture of them to make it appear that they are holding all of the balloons.
Earlier today, a 7 year old boy was doing this fun photoshoot for his family. However, the wind started to pick up and lifted the boy off of the ground and he started to float away. According to a witness, there were screams coming from all over Main Street when the boy started flying away. They said the boy appeared to be terrified as soon as he was a few feet off the ground.
There were screams from the kid’s parents telling him to let go of the balloons. Apparently the boy was too afraid to let go, so he continued to hold on. The wind kept blowing and the boy was lifted over the top of the Main Street buildings. At this point, the screams had continued to get louder as concern washed over everyone on Main Street witnessing this horrific event.
The boy continued to float higher and further away towards towards Adventureland. Disney security and Police were notified immediately and started chasing after the boy backstage to follow him and find him when he landed. Orange County Sheriff’s Department even called in a police helicopter to search from above.
As of late this afternoon, there is no word yet from Disney or the local Florida police on the status of finding the boy who floated away holding onto Mickey Balloons. For those not familiar, the direction the boy was flying is forest and swamp. What makes this scary is the boy could have easily started coming down, as balloons often do when they start to fly away, and gotten stuck in a tree.
We reached out to a physics expert who said given the wind gusts during the day, estimated weight of the boy, and the number of balloons he was holding, they suggest that the boy may have traveled miles. That’s assuming he never let go of the balloons. What is scary is if the boy lost a grip, he could have fallen somewhere in the woods near Magic Kingdom. That area is potentially filled with alligators as well, making the situation more intense.
This is of course an extremely frightening event, especially for the parents of this young boy. No one knows how far away he flew with the balloons and if he is safe. Time will only tell. We expect Disney and Orange County police to do a full investigation on this situation to understand how it happened. We expect this will be the end of guests taking photos holding Mickey balloons, or at least guests under a certain age.
To stay up to date on more very real Disney news like this totally made up story, be sure to follow The Mouse Trap on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Please consider joining our email list below to get all of our stories sent directly to your inbox!
