Disneyland is the “Happiest Place on Earth,” but getting lost can still be a scary experience for park-goers. One Swiss man learned that first-hand as he stumbled through the park on LSD for hours. The 32-year-old visitor took a trip to Disneyland Paris with his girlfriend before taking the drug and stumbling into a lake in the park’s Adventureland section. He entered near Captain Hook’s Pirate Ship and decided to keep swimming because everything probably seemed like a great idea at that time.
The evening came and there was no sign of the man, so his girlfriend was understandably frightened. The Washington Post reports that she approached park officials at around 8:30 pm to clue them in on the missing person wandering around the park. Employees had already started closing down the attractions for the night, but a search party was going to be necessary as the sun was quickly setting.
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10 divers, 10 policemen, 30 firefighters, and 80 Disneyland Paris employees, as well as some dogs and a helicopter with a thermal camera, headed out to find the wandering Swiss visitor. Le Parisien reports that the crew was at it for hours before a 44-year-old man, who asked to be identified as Benoit, got a bit of a surprise.
The man was driving home from work in a nearby town called Chessy when he came face to face with a completely naked man covered in scratches. As you might be able to guess, the lost man was wandering aimlessly in the middle of the road, just a mile away from Disneyland Paris. Benoit said to Le Parisien, “I stopped, got out of the car and went to meet him. I wanted to know what a naked man was doing 300 meters from my home.”
It sounds like a reasonable request from a person just trying to get home, but the naked man couldn’t remember how he got there or why he was sitting there in the buff. After telling Benoit about the acid, and a bet with his girlfriend to try the drugs which probably led to this naked swim. The good Samaritan dropped the lost man off back at the park with a fresh change of clothes and the rescuers found him around 1 a.m.
Both the formerly naked man and his girlfriend were taken in for use of narcotics. They managed to get off pretty lucky after all was said and done. The charge comes down to a “rappel a la loi” which is a light punishment across the pond. After all that commotion, the citation doesn’t even end up on a person’s criminal record. But, this only occurs when the prosecutor chooses not to press charges.
How unbothered was Disneyland Paris? Park officials told the paper that the long search for the man didn’t really interfere with their regular park operations that day. In fact, there was a 5k race going on near the scene of the search that evening, and nobody was any the wiser. A source told Le Parisien, “The visitors did not even realize that there was a problem.” That may be, but hopefully, people think twice before deciding to take a swim downstream at Disneyland next time.
