Seriously, guys. James Worley was not banned from the Magic Kingdom or told to “hit the road”. A guest complained that Worley, wearing a shirt and jeans, was being playful with children and telling them he was Santa. People were lining up to take pictures like they would Mickey Mouse. Park managers took Mr Worley aside and explained the situation and asked him to stop telling kids he was Santa. He complied and left the park on his own later in the day.
There are one of two things you should be annoyed about if you really must. The first would be the guest who complained in the first place. Maybe the guest was just concerned about Worley being playful with the children, I don’t know. But what really bakes my noodle is how this became worldwide news in the first place. The stories over the past 3 days have just become more and more obtuse, and they can all be traced back to WTVT-13, the FOX affiliate in Tampa, FL (Worley lives in Spring Hill, FL). They interviewed Worley and ran a fairly innocent story on Friday about the incident. It’s titled Santa lookalike gets grief on Disney visit and covers the same facts in my first paragraph. How Worley and WTVT came together I won’t speculate here; I like to think it was a friend-of-a-friend and not Worley grabbing for attention. The next day, Fox News picked up the affiliate’s story and ran a national story.
Here is where it got interesting. Hannah Sentenac has some real talent, as she managed to turn an interesting chuckle piece into a ominous evil corporation piece. Out of nowhere we have juicy bits intended to entice like “Lookalike Told to Hit the Road” and “They told us that Santa was considered a Disney character”. I’ll grant that perhaps this was from the filmed interview that didn’t make it to the WTVT aired piece, though it was certainly Worley poorly paraphrasing being told that the park has a meet & greet Santa already. I could even expand that to say we are very strict about having the same character in two places at once (there is a very cool software program Entertainment uses that coordinates this, but I digress). The WTVT piece ended with “He still loves Disney” and the Fox News piece ended with “I’m still angry with Disney, I’m still hurt.”
Of course, once that national story hit the feeds, local news agencies everywhere were latching onto the tale. CNN even ran the original WTVT piece with the title Disney kicks out Santa?!. Something that wasn’t implied in the piece at all. Most people seem to be linking the BBC story linked above, which actually borrows some info from the original piece, but mostly goes for the ominous angle of the Fox News piece.
Sigh. It just really makes me sad to see irrational knee-jerk reactions like this when people don’t realize what’s actually happened. Some have even attributed this to the “War on Christmas”, marking it ironic. Seriously? It should be noted that Disney Parks have been telling the nativity story as part of the Candlelight Processional since 1958.
