Disneyland Guest Breaks Excalibur Out of the Sword in the Stone

An overzealous guest at Disneyland apparently broke Excalibur while trying to remove the legendary sword from the stone, according to The Orange County Register. There are plenty of jokes there about the fact that this “burly” park goer named Sam is apparently the once and future kind of Fantasyland — but those jokes all take a backseat to the fact that he apparently badly damaged the sword, forcing park employees to tape down the anvil and make the sword itself disappear for a while in order to make sure other guests did not hurt themselves on the sharp edges. So…there’s that.

The report says that the sword went missing briefly on January 12 and that shortly after that, it was returned along with a story: a large man had brute-forced the prop sword out of an anvil, but rather than coming out as a sword and earning him a prize, it snapped (possibly because it was a prop and not actually a full sword to begin with).

“He literally ripped it out,” an eyewitness is quoted as saying in the report. “It was his first time at Disney and he’s a pretty buff dude. I told him if he pulled it out he’d win a prize, and he just used brute force I guess.”

Another witness explained, “At first it seemed as if he had pulled it out, but a (cast member) quickly came over (because) he had in fact broken it.”

At least it happened while fans were mostly otherwise preoccupied as crowds swarmed the latest Star Wars attraction in the last couple of weeks.

Disney parks are always crowded, but the hordes waiting for Rise of the Resistance are something else entirely. Some people were waiting in line for the park to open as early as 3am, more than three hours before the gates were even ready to open. Folks were let in to the park itself around 6:30am, though they couldn’t do much but get breakfast on Main Street until the rides started working at 8am. Even the lines for Starbucks have been wrapped around the building.

Unlike most other Disney rides, Rise of the Resistance doesn’t just keep people waiting in a line to get in. You have to go to the ride’s entrance as early as possible and get a grouping number, then return to the ride later in the day when your number is close.