The
Characters In Flight tethered balloon ride at
Downtown Disney West Side has at least temporarily ceased operations following an incident this past Thursday at a theme park in Hong Kong
. There, a similar operation apparently had a mishap in which the balloon sprang a leak and quickly lost altitude, injuring 4 passengers on board and another on the ground. Operations in Florida have been indefinitely suspended. In fact,
CIF is supposedly no longer even listed on the
WDW website!
We have this story from Hong Kong's daily newspaper,
The Standard.
You may recall that at the time
PI clubs were being shuttered,
CIF was touted by
Disney officials as one of the bold and new additions to
DTD although it was not on the Island and was coming anyway regardless of the clubs.
Never did get a chance to get on it... I guess there will be no more "Island Updates From The Sky", hugh? Thanks Bob for the info!
ReplyDeleteMadMan, the Blog's official "SkyCam" operated from the balloon so yes, this impacts us greatly!
ReplyDeleteMunchies, I was ok with it but every time I saw it, it reminded me of the closure of the clubs.
Unless there is some unforeseen safety issue with the balloon's construction, I would expect it to return.
King Bob, give us your "best guess" at what Pleasure Island will be in 2 years.
ReplyDeleteYikes! So no more Sky Cam photos for a while??? I'm sad about that. I understand your sadness in piering down on the closed clubs but the Sky Cam can also be useful for when things start ramping up again when they decide what in the world they want to do with that real estate. Maybe it will be up and running again soon!
ReplyDeletei agree kingbob, it reminded me of it too thats why i hate it lol. also same goes for paradisio37. i wont ever eat there...
ReplyDeleteYou could always tether your camera to a regular Mickey ear balloon and send it up---but bring your BB gun to get it back!!
ReplyDeleteGoogle satellite view FTW. Here's Mannequins
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bill. Very cool. Interesting patio stone pavement arrangement behind Sosa Cigars (incorrectly labeled as Pleasure Island Jazz) that is walled-off from use.
ReplyDeleteJeff-GNV, the Blog may soon need to deploy camera-equipped drone flights across the Island!