After the Las Vegas massacre, Disney largely ignores security measures for its own hotels even after a terrorist threat level is raised

After the tragedy of Las Vegas, it's clear that Disney hotels remain glaring vulnerable 
soft targets to terrorists intent on creating havoc at the 'Happiest Place on Earth'
Update 10/16/17!

When we say, "Jump!" Disney security says, "How high?"

We've heard today, only three days after publishing this article, that Disney security will begin rolling out more security staffing positions inside their hotels, which is only the beginning of more security measures to be rolled out at the Disney Resort hotels in the U.S.

There will be more announcements to come as increased security measures inside the hotels are being planned and rolled out in the coming weeks, according to inside sources with knowledge of the move.


Previous article:

After the recent tragedy of the deadliest shooting incident in modern American history, we have learned that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has sent a memorandum out to the Walt Disney Company and local law enforcement agencies about the threat of possible terrorist attacks against popular U.S. tourist destinations, such as Disney theme parks, resorts, and hotels. (See documents below.)

We can safely assume by the memorandum that the DHS has raised the terror threat level on all resorts, theme parks, concert venues, sporting events and hotels from potential terrorist attacks within the U.S., especially in light of the upcoming tourist peak season of holiday seasons.


While hotels in Las Vegas are taking heed of the warning, implementing unprecedented levels of enhanced security measures (e.g., magnetometers, bag checks, x-ray machines, bomb-sniffing dogs, closed circuit cameras, more security officers, etc.) to ensure the safety of the public, hotel security for Disney's U.S. theme parks and resorts operations, however, is largely ignoring the call for enhanced security measures to prevent a similar attack as the one at Mandalay Bay just a couple of weeks ago.


Disney has none of these measures, with a few exceptions such as cameras in the lobby areas but not hallways, inside their hotels in their domestic U.S. theme parks and resorts.

One of several high vantage points overlooking Downtown Disney from a hotel
room balcony in Disney's Grand California Hotel where a potential terrorist could
reign bullets or bombs down on crowds with anonymity during a busy night
The reason for Disney's deafening silence and glaring lack of response to the public's call for more security in its remaining areas of vulnerability in its theme parks and resorts (i.e., their hotels) is because Disney officials are deeply worried any added security measures will either be an inconvenience to or frighten away potential visitors during its all-important holiday peak season from October to January.

In light of what happened in the tragic events of the Las Vagas shooting incident, it remains clear that Disney has really done nothing to harden its existing vulnerable areas on its resorts to security breaches and lapses inside its hotels.

There is no doubt that the hotels remain the one glaring area of security vulnerability that has largely been neglected in the theme parks' recent sweep to strengthen its security measures since 2015.


Even today, anyone who has the intent to cause mass casualties inside a Disney resort can do exactly what the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, did at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, by checking into a hotel room with a high vantage point overlooking busy areas of the resort where large crowds of visitors congregate while bringing in suitcases of weapons (e.g., grenades, improvised explosive devices, guns, etc.), to reign terror down on innocent crowds inside Disney's various shopping districts (e.g., Downtown Disney, the Boardwalk, Disney Springs, etc.), hotel pool areas, hotel lobby areas, and even theme parks (e.g., Disney California Adventure.)

One of several high vantage points overlooking the Boardwalk in Disney Springs from 
a hotel room balcony in Disney's Boardwalk Inn where a potential terrorist could
reign bullets or bombs down on crowds with anonymity during a busy night
The reason is because Disney does not check any of its registered hotel guests—with only the possible exception being the hotels inside the Disneyland Paris Resort—with any security measures at all (e.g., bag checks, metal detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs, etc.)

This fact raises great concerns because it raises the possibility that a potential terrorist can do exactly what the Mandalay Bay shooter did at a hotel in Disneyland or Disney World.

It should be noted that, even in Disney's recent efforts to enhance security in its parks and shopping districts, Disney officials only responded with reluctance—in fact, they were dragged kicking and screaming against such a move—to long-overdue demands for enhanced security inside its theme parks after the blog Disneyleaks publicly exposed a serious near-fatal mass weapons incident from a potential active shooter at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California which was foiled at the very last minute after that gunman snuck in a loaded gun with two ammunition clips before the theme park's nightly fireworks show during July of 2015.


What the blog exposed, in particular, about that alarming incident was how easily the gunman, Percival Agoncillo, got a load semi-automatic pistol and two fully-loaded ammunition clips past bag screeners without ever being noticed by Disney security or bag screeners.

ISIS-inspired terrorist, Omar Mateen, considered Walt Disney World as one of
three targets before choosing to go on a shooting rampage at his final 
target, the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando last year
This particular incident was not the only close call with a potential massacre that Disney narrowly escaped, although it was clearly the closest incident, by far, known from the public record.

In June of 2016, an ISIS-inspired terrorist, radicalized in the U.S. through ISIS propaganda on the internet, named Omar Mateen, committed what was at that time the worst modern-day shooting incident in U.S. history, killing 49 people in Orlando's Pulse Nightclub.

The reason Mateen's case is so concerning to Disney is because Disney Springs, Walt Disney World's shopping district which was formerly known as Downtown Disney, was extensively scoped by the killer as one of only three potential final targets the terrorist was considering to hit.


Instead of choosing Disney, Mateen selected a gay nightclub as his first target. He was subsequently gunned down by police before he had an opportunity to hit his second target, but not before killing 49 people and injuring 59 more in his deadly rampage. Thus, the threat of a terrorist attack on a Disney resort in the present time is very real.

What an attack scenario at Disneyland would look like

The upper floors of the Disneyland Hotel Adventure Tower provides a high vantage
point overlooking Downtown Disney on the east side (shown above from the Concierge
level) and the pool area on the west side where an active shooter could break out the
hotel room window to set up a sniper's nest or a launching pad for grenades or other IEDs
So what would a terrorist attack on a Disney resort look like?

We asked a Disneyland security employee out in Anaheim, who has knowledge on the matter, on what a terrorist attack might look like, and he told us how various potential scenarios might turn out on the condition we keep his identity anonymous.

First off, there is the question of whether the highly visible security presence at all the entry gates to the shopping district and the theme parks really work.

There are enough visible security deterrents against gunmen, suicide bombers, and/or vehicle-vehicle born terrorists at the main entrance and backstage entry security check points (e.g., security officers, police, bag checks, bomb-sniffing dogs, bollards, wedges, closed-circuit cameras, plain-clothes officers, etc.) to repel or limit the casualties from potential terrorist attacks, so this is not the place where a terrorist will likely start an attack on the resort, although there is no guarantee at this point that is a fact with the brazenness of some terrorists these days.


In other words, the presence of highly visible security measures will not mean it's necessarily a one-hundred percent guarantee to prevent those kind of attacks these days for someone who is bold enough to undertake such a brazen attack, but it may be just enough of a deterrent to make smarter terrorists look elsewhere on the resort where security is much more lax or non-existent as a starting point of attack.

A high vantage point overlooking Downtown Disney from one of the hotel room
balconies at the Grand Californian Hotel
We are told that the most vulnerable points for a major attack would likely begin at one or both of Disneyland's most vulnerable hotels, the Grand Californian Hotel and/or the Disneyland Hotel (particularly the Adventure Tower and possibly the Frontier and Fantasy Towers), but less likely the Paradise Pier Hotel because it is further out of range and distant from high value potential targets inside DTD or the theme parks.

Because of the proximity of the Grand Californian Hotel to crowds inside Downtown Disney (DTD) and Disney California Adventure (DCA), that would be the most likely and preferred starting point and/or base of operations for a coordinated or lone-wolf terrorist attack(s).

The layout and lack of any security measures inside the Grand Californian Hotel makes it the likely
starting point for a potential terrorist attack, according to security officers who work at Disneyland
In particular, rooms along the north face of the Grand with balconies overlooking DTD in wings one and four, rooms along the east face with balconies overlooking Grizzly Peak inside DCA in wings three and four, and rooms along the south face with balconies overlooking the World of Color water fountain show in Paradise Pier inside DCA in wings four and five have short, direct line of sights to large crowds that congregate at night for various attractions, shows, and concerts.

A high vantage point overlooking the World of Color viewing area inside
Paradise Pier in DCA from a hotel room balcony of the Grand Californian Hotel
Potential terrorists could set up sniper's nests for guns, or launching platforms for grenades and other improvised explosive devices, such as pipe bombs, from these high, unobstructed vantage points at night without being easily detected.

Similar strategic high vantages point platforms could also be set up in the east-facing hotels rooms of Adventure Tower of the Disneyland Hotel, or even inside the east stairwells of the Fantasy Tower of the Disneyland Hotel, if you break out the windows of the hotel rooms or widen holes in the grates in the stairwell landing looking out to DTD.

In addition, hotel rooms with balconies on the north face of Disney's Boardwalk Villas in Disney World, Florida presents similar high vantage platform points as that seen in the Grand Californian Hotel in Disneyland, California. There are certainly many other hotels in Disney World where similar strategic platforms could be set up.


The glaring security lapses inside all the Disneyland hotels are that, apart from a few closed circuit television cameras in the main lobbies and convention halls and randomly roving security officers who patrol the guest room halls, Disney does not have any other security measures to check on guests in any of their hotels. 

Is this the worst fear coming to fruition for tourists at a Disney theme park
this holiday season after what happened in Las Vegas?
There are no bag checks, metal detectors, x-ray machines, bomb-sniffing dogs, cameras in hotel room corridors or halls, and surprisingly, there are still no plans to implement any of these types of security measures inside any of the Disney hotels, even after what went down in the Mandalay Bay massacre.

That's because the Disney hotels value the privacy of their guests above their safety or welfare.

In addition, the lapses in security to the emergency exits mentioned before in the Grand Californian Hotel in our article on November 11, 2016 have only been partially addressed since that article was published.

Security has placed door alarms and cameras in response to our article to visibly deter people from using the emergency exits to go around the security entrance screening tents into DTD.

Thus, it would still take a minimum of several minutes before security could arrive to investigate a breach in the emergency exits.

If a person uses a mask or makes any effort to hide his/her face from the surveillance cameras to get into Downtown Disney or Disney California Adventure from these hotel emergency exit entry points, it would be very difficult—if not next to impossible—to identify and find that person(s) once they are well inside and have blended into the crowds of DTD or DCA, but by then, it would be too late to do anything about it.


More often than not, we are told that security officers, who are routinely called to the scene by Disneyland security central communications to investigate persons who have breached DTD or DCA through the emergency exits, cannot locate the intruders in question, so these sorts of security lapses often go on repeatedly by the same perpetrators who know how to play the system.

Disney theme parks and resorts continue to be a highly-prized soft targets for
terrorists to try to hit, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Thus, in a large, coordinated terrorist attack, like the one that hit the City of Paris in November of 2015, terrorists could launch all-out, simultaneous, multi-phase attacks from hotel room high vantage points, while at the same time, storming the Grand Californian Hotel's emergency exits with an arsenal of weapons to infiltrate large crowds inside DTD, DCA, and the pool areas to maximize casualties.

Unless Disney begins to address these glaring security lapses, it risks suffering a post-9/11 effect of decreased tourism from alarmed visitors, who may now already be very skittish about going to crowded high-value tourist traps over the holidays that are highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks, even after the Las Vegas shooting incident.

The tourism industry is a very fickle business where travelers often make very snap decisions on where they plan to take their vacations based on the most trifling issues, which can be based solely on just their level of comfort and sense of security at a particular place of lodging.


If tourists don't feel safe and secure among the crowds that congregate at Disneyland or Walt Disney World, then they may just as easily choose a more quieter, discrete and safer vacation destination to spend their holidays at, away from all the terrorism drama, such as in Hawaii, the Bahamas or even the mountains.

Local law enforcement agencies and Disneyland officials should step up to
make vistors feel more secure in Disneyland's hometown of Anaheim, which
in recent years has been earning a reputation of violence and crime
Less than a month ago, a man was shot in the head with a gun inside a Motel 6 in the Anaheim Resort District by an unknown assailant within walking distance of the Disneyland main entrance on Harbor Boulevard.

Local media and Anaheim Police dropped the ball by vastly under-reporting this serious incident, letting it go under the radar. Basically, Disneyland and the Anaheim Police Department decided they saw something and said nothing about the seriousness of the crime to the public.

But it is clear to us, by the seriousness of the incident, that an active shooter is still on the loose in the Disneyland area with not much as finger being lifted by local law enforcement agencies to try to find the perpetrator, who remains at large to this day.

It appears that there really is no urgency after the Las Vegas shooting around any of the Disney resorts to maintain any sense of safety and security for tourists.

Thus, it perplexes us why Disney is just sitting on its hands at this point after the Mandalay Bay attack, when even Las Vegas is stepping up its game to go out of its way to make visitors feel more safe and secure.


Is Disney just being penny-wise and dollar-foolish in failing to anticipate these kinds of potential security risks inside its hotels just before the all important end of the year holiday after the Mandalay Bay massacre?


Only time will tell.

Sources: 










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