Disney Employee Killed in Monorail Crash
July 5, 2009 by Stephen Kersey
Filed under Business
A Disney employee was killed on Sunday when a pair of monorail trains collided. The collision took place in Walt Disney World Resort at the Magic Kingdom area.
The killed Disney employee has been identified as Austin Wuennenberg, who was operating one of the monorails that collided. He was 21 years old and went to school at Stetson University. In addition to his death, six other people were treated — including the operator of the other monorail.
Right now, Disney isn’t saying what caused the crash. There is an investigation on the matter currently taking place.
Walt Disney World Resort is the largest resort of its kind in the world. It’s also the most visited. It opened in 1971. The Magic Kingdom area alone is estimated to have around 15 million annual visitors.
Due to the accident, Disney had to shut down the monorail system for much of the day. Other means of transportation were utilized more often than usual in response.
Disney Monorail (Image: Flickr)
This is a tragic accident. I hope that Disney will take the necessary precautions to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.
Why would you have two monorails on the same track and let them collide? It seem utterly bizarre. It seems inconceivable that someone would have let this happen.