Dark Kingdom: Death and Dismemberment at Disneyland
By Melissa Satterly
Beneath the fireworks and flawless parades runs another Disneyland—one built on logistics, liability, and the physics of failure. Dark Kingdom opens at the forgotten stage door of enchantment: the Disneyland Heliport, where two LA Airways crashes in the summer of 1968 scattered wreckage across Southern California neighborhoods and wrote tragedy into the park's orbit.
From there, Satterly follows the hidden supply lines of fantasy—maintenance schedules, legal binders, coroner's reports, and PR containment strategies—and the people caught where spectacle meets real-world risk. She reconstructs the early in-park fatalities, like the 1964 Matterhorn Bobsled death of Mark Maples, tracing how mid-century safety design and narrative control shaped the modern Disneyland story.
Drawing from NTSB records, OSHA filings, eyewitness statements, and contemporary journalism, Dark Kingdom separates lore from record, pins dates and places, and restores the names long buried under the park's mythology.
This is not voyeurism. It's a ledger: operations versus illusion, procedure versus memory. It's the story of how America's most carefully engineered happiness absorbs impact—and keeps the show on time.
Dark Kingdom is a meticulous, unflinching history of Disneyland's shadow ledger: where spectacle meets consequence.
Dark Kingdom: Death and Dismemberment at Disneyland
By Melissa Satterly
Beneath the fireworks and flawless parades runs another Disneyland—one built on logistics, liability, and the physics of failure. Dark Kingdom opens at the forgotten stage door of enchantment: the Disneyland Heliport, where two LA Airways crashes in the summer of 1968 scattered wreckage across Southern California neighborhoods and wrote tragedy into the park's orbit.
From there, Satterly follows the hidden supply lines of fantasy—maintenance schedules, legal binders, coroner's reports, and PR containment strategies—and the people caught where spectacle meets real-world risk. She reconstructs the early in-park fatalities, like the 1964 Matterhorn Bobsled death of Mark Maples, tracing how mid-century safety design and narrative control shaped the modern Disneyland story.
Drawing from NTSB records, OSHA filings, eyewitness statements, and contemporary journalism, Dark Kingdom separates lore from record, pins dates and places, and restores the names long buried under the park's mythology.
This is not voyeurism. It's a ledger: operations versus illusion, procedure versus memory. It's the story of how America's most carefully engineered happiness absorbs impact—and keeps the show on time.
Dark Kingdom is a meticulous, unflinching history of Disneyland's shadow ledger: where spectacle meets consequence.
Dark Kingdom: Death and Dismemberment at Disneyland
Dark Kingdom: Death and Dismemberment at Disneyland
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940182786102 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSYNC press |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2025 |
| Sold by: | Draft2Digital |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 16 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |