ORLANDO, Fla. — Jerry Bellino was just 4 years old when his family took him to Disney World for his first trip to the Magic Kingdom on Sept. 11, 2001.
He remembers the excitement of being at the happiest place on Earth. But he also remembers seeing something that didn’t fit.
“My dad started noticing everyone’s happy, everyone’s having a good time, but there were a couple people he would notice were on the phone crying,” Bellino said. “There was this weird juxtaposition where you have people who were really happy in Disney having the time of their lives and then there’s people there on the phones. He thought it was weird.”
Bellino’s parents soon realized one of the twin towers had been hit.
As the parks began evacuating, the family left and returned to their hotel.
“It’s just one of those things that got burned into my head was sitting watching, I guess it was cartoons and hearing my parents talking about what they were going to do,” Bellino said.
Years later, Bellino said he began to understand the significance of what happened that day and how it shaped his connection to Disney.
“It does make me more interested and connected to learning about it, understanding it more, and sympathize with the event in a lot of ways,” he said. “But it also makes me more to Disney in some weird way, because such a big thing happened there and ever since I got to experience it in new ways.”
During the uncertainty, Bellino said Disney cast members worked to keep guests, especially children, entertained.
“There are pictures of me with Chip and Dale from that instance,” he said. “There are pictures I know somewhere in my archive of like Goofy and other characters in the hotel lobby. So they tried to give the kids and I guess the adults the best experience they could under terrible circumstances.”
The attacks also led to changes across the theme park industry.
Disney, Universal and SeaWorld closed and evacuated their parks following the attacks. Disney also heightened its security measures.
In 2003, Congress passed legislation granting a “no-fly” zone over both Disney properties in the U.S.
Disney remains the only U.S. theme park with those flight restrictions.
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