13-Year-Old Exits Moving Ride at Top of 50-Foot Drop at Disneyland, Hospitalized with Minor Injuries

What Happened

At approximately 6 p.m. on Sunday, June 21, a 13-year-old boy exited his ride vehicle at the top of the final 50-foot drop on Tiana's Bayou Adventure at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. He went over the drop on his own.

A park cast member immediately stopped the ride. The boy was transported to a local hospital for precautionary evaluation and later released, according to a Disneyland spokesperson. His injuries were described as minor.

Video of the incident circulated online. Witnesses on Reddit offered on-the-ground accounts. "He attempted to exit the ride vehicle at the top of the final drop," one Reddit user wrote. Another described the ride's stop mechanism as failing to engage, or having already passed the threshold for the vehicle to enter free fall, though that account is unverified witness speculation, not a regulatory finding.

Safety Review

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health's Amusement Ride & Tramway Unit evaluated the incident and did NOT find any operational issues with the attraction, according to the Daily Wire. The ride was closed for the remainder of June 21 and reopened June 22.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure does not currently have seat belts or lap bars. That detail will likely draw scrutiny. Water log-style rides have historically operated without traditional restraints. The ride vehicle's enclosed trough and low center of gravity are the primary containment design. But a 13-year-old clearing a vehicle at the top of a major drop raises a fair question about whether that design assumption holds when a rider actively chooses to exit.

The Restraint Question

The strongest safety concern is straightforward: if a rider can physically exit a vehicle at the peak of a 50-foot drop and there is no mechanical restraint to prevent it, the ride's safety architecture depends entirely on rider compliance. Park safety advocates will press that concern. Water rides have long resisted lap bars and belts because soaking riders makes restraints awkward and the loading process slower. That operational convenience argument gets harder to defend when footage of a teenager going over a waterfall unassisted is circulating on the internet.

California's regulatory unit reviewed the ride and found no operational defect. The agency's conclusion is that the ride worked as designed. The incident appears to have been caused by the rider's own actions, not a mechanical failure. A ride can function correctly and still have a design worth reconsidering.

About the Ride

Tiana's Bayou Adventure, which is based on the movie The Princess and the Frog, opened in 2024 as a replacement for Splash Mountain, which many critics argued echoed racist tropes. The Smithsonian magazine in 2024 called the original ride "a racist whitewashing of American history."

The Daily Wire's coverage spends several sentences on that backstory and the political argument surrounding Splash Mountain's retirement. That context is publicly documented, but it has no bearing on a 13-year-old's fall or the safety question now in front of regulators.

What Comes Next

Disneyland has not announced any changes to the ride's restraint design. The open question is whether California regulators will revisit their "no operational issues" finding in light of the absence of passenger restraints, or whether that assessment stands, leaving any redesign decision entirely to Disney's discretion.