Theme parks exempt from Florida law

ORLANDO, Fla. - If state inspectors who regulate Florida's thrill rides want to look into why a 4-year-old boy died this week after going on "Mission: Space" at Walt Disney World, they are going to need permission from the theme park.

Disney World and the state's other big theme parks are exempt from most Florida laws governing carnival and amusement park rides.

"We don't have the authority to close the park down or close the ride down," said Rob Jacobs, chief of the Bureau of Fair Rides Inspection.

Given the theme park industry's political clout in the state, there is little chance Florida's lawmakers will undo the 1989 law that protects it.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has been trying for years to end a 1981 loophole created for the nation's amusement park industry that lets the Consumer Product Safety Commission regulate rides at traveling carnivals but not at fixed theme parks.

Last month, Markey introduced a bill that would restore the federal agency's oversight of permanent rides.

"States are only responsible for their own jurisdictions, so rides get fixed only one state at a time even when there are similar rides in dozens of states," Markey said.

Eleven states do not regulate rides, and 13 states do not require public reporting of amusement park accidents, according to Saferparks, a California-based group that is pushing for greater ride safety.

The state's major theme parks are some of Florida's largest private employers and represent a major contributor to the state's $57 billion tourism industry.

In 1989, following a carnival ride death in his district, Geller pushed vigorously for state inspectors to examine thrill rides, but was met with fierce opposition from Disney officials who argued that only their inspectors had the expertise to evaluate the resort's sophisticated rides. A compromise was reached that exempted parks that had more than 1,000 employees and their own ride inspectors. That elite group now is made up of Disney World, Universal Orlando, Sea World and Busch Gardens.

As a result, the 15 inspectors at the Florida Bureau of Fair Ride Inspection can at any time enter smaller amusement parks and carnivals, inspect a ride and conduct tests. They cannot do so at the large parks.

Smaller theme parks and carnivals are required by Florida law to report to the bureau a death or serious accident within four hours. The larger parks are only required to make quarterly reports about such cases, and even that is voluntary, a result of an agreement reached in 2001.

Across the nation, states have a hodgepodge of regulations.

States that do not regulate rides include Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming. In Nevada, rides are regulated at the county or city level. In Delaware, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont, rides are inspected by the parks' insurance carriers.

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court made it easier to sue amusement parks for injuries by ruling that operators of amusement park rides must be held to the same safety standards that apply to buses, planes and other forms of transportation. The case arose from a 23-year-old woman who sued the Walt Disney Co. over a brain injury she suffered on a ride at Disneyland.

The ruling will hold ride operators more accountable, said theme park consultant Dennis Speigel in Cincinnati.

"With the nice little publicity it got on the heels of the death at Disney, it certainly will be looked" by other states, Speigel said. "Not a good week."