Originally Posted By magnet So, throughout the past week I've visited several shows where I've had water and scents blown in my face. I have to say, I'm really starting to get tired of it. I'm also beginning to wonder how safe it really is to have that water squirted in your face. Muppets 3D: water sprayed in your face Tough to be a bug: water in your face and stink smell Philharmagic: water in your face Stitch: chili dog burp Honey I shrunk the audience: water in your face With all these shows spraying water in your face, I can't help but wonder -- are all those water lines really clean? I mean, each time that sprays you send bacteria in the air which everyone breathes and gets on their hands which is then also taken out of the theater. Where is that water coming from, is it purified? What happens when someone who's sick sits in my seat before me, wipes their hands all over the spray nozzle, and then bam the next time it sprays then I'm infected. How sterile are these mechanisms after the show has run for five or ten years. What cleaning procedure does Disney have? I'd really like to know.
Originally Posted By Mr X ***What happens when someone who's sick sits in my seat before me, wipes their hands all over the spray nozzle*** And how often is this likely to happen? Geez, have you ever sat on a public toilet, held onto a safety railing on a bus, or eaten at a restaurant? If so, odds are you've either sat on a dirty toilet, touched a handrail that a sick person touched after wiping his nose with his hand, or eaten food that has been sneezed upon by a chef with a bad cold. I think you'd better go live in a bubble dude.
Originally Posted By magnet Wow, I conjured X up from World Events! Maybe that wand I tossed in the other cutback thread DID have a little magic left in it!
Originally Posted By jkayjs Most illnesses are transmitted hand to face. ie- someone touches their face(runny nose, cough in hand,etc), touches any surface(door knob, "handrail" as Mr X said, the arm of a chair,etc), you touch any of those surfaces, you touch your face(eyes, nose, mouth) and voil`a you are exposed. In other words you are more likely to get sick from the arms of the chair you choose @ these shows than from the special effects. Now whether or not you get ill is up to your body. The better your immune system the less likely you'll get ill. As far as I know anything that dispenses water that touches humans is under the jurisdiction of the Public Health Dept, which is required to do regular inspections/testing. Of course anything can & will happen(haven't you ever seen "House")so yes a spray in the face might do it. However I can tell you for a fact that if you take care of yourself & your immune system & practice "good handwashing", you will get ill less and less ill when you do.
Originally Posted By brotherdave I would imagine that the water comes from the same public sources as restrooms and food service locations. I wouldn't necessarily worry about that (it would be near impossible to recycle that water). However, the water used in water rides like Splash Mountain, Kali River Rapids, and Pirates of the Caribbean might be more questionable since that water is recycled. I have no idea what kind of purifying system those type of rides use (if any), though I do know that some other parks clorinate the water used in water rides (like log flumes and rapids rides) similar to public swimming pools. That may have to do with local health regulations.
Originally Posted By jkayjs BTW I didn't mean to make it sound like you can't get ill from something blown in your face. There are absolutely air borne illnesses that's why you should cover a cough. What I was driving @ is that even those illness can be passed from carrier to victim by the hand.
Originally Posted By magnet I think the comparison between the water that's sprayed into your face at these shows and the arm of your chair, the flush lever on a toilet, or a handrail is not really accurate. If I practice poor hygiene and go around touching stuff and then rubbing my face, well then that's one thing, but when I go into one of these shows I get water sprayed directly into my face. It gets in your eyes, nose, mouth and all over. Now I may touch a handrail or a toilet flush, but I don't commonly stick my head in the toilet bowl or lick the toilet seat. In a bathroom, I can also wash my hands afterwards and sanitize. However, there's not much left to do if I dip a cup of water from the toilet and drink it or pour it over my face. (Wow, this is turning out to be great thread -- is anyone eating right now?) Now, I'm not saying that the water coming out of those sprayers is dirty, but I'd like to know what keeps them clean. Also, many times bacteria on a dry surface will not survive very long, though some can. However, a water environment extends those lifetimes, so it is more dangerous even if just slightly so. Also, by spraying the junk into the air, you are more likely to breathe it in, which also makes this more of a concern than just touching things. I'm typically not concerned about drinking from a water fountain since I usually don't let that get into my eyes, and unless I have a sore or cut in my mouth, the digestive system is not one of the easier ways for a cold to get into your system. Plus the fountain doesn't spray a mist in my face that I can breathe in. Also, I don't really care for other water squirting effects whether they're the spitting camels in adventureland, a spitting Stitch at DTD, or a dinosaur in Universe of Energy. However, I'm less concerned about these because they are out of public reach. You can't sneeze on the nozzle or spill your concealed water bottle you've been sipping from all over it.
Originally Posted By brerroadrunner WE always take hand sanitizer when we visit the parks and use it often. All those kids with their hands everywhere and then all over the handrails and everything else. Gross. I really make a consious effort to not hold the handrails and to keep my hands off my face. I too have often wondered about the water in the rides and sprayers. With the strict health and safety controls, I would think this would be monitored. Anyone notice the awful stench in the Splaxh Mountain logs? How often do these get cleaned?
Originally Posted By NikkiLOVESMickey You don't actually get that much water sprayed in your face. It's not like you're getting drenched; you might get a drop or two. magnet, have you ever gotten sick from any of these effects?
Originally Posted By magnet I think it's a very good idea to take hand sanitizer with you when visiting the parks and to use it often. >>>magnet, have you ever gotten sick from any of these effects?<<< I have gotten sick while I've been at WDW in the past. Obviously, I can't claim that it had anything to do with these spraying things, and at the time I never really suspected them. As has been said before already in this thread, it's much more likely that you have a lapse of judgment and infect yourself by rubbing your eyes for example after touching something infected. Nonetheless, the point I'm trying to drill down to here is whether Disney is just counting on the odds of something like this spreading germs just being low or do they actively do something to sanitize the system? Everybody takes risks, else we'd have to live in a bubble like Mr. X said, but we shouldn't heap presumption on top of those risks.
Originally Posted By NikkiLOVESMickey Since they're shooting water on people, I assume there is some sort of purification system.
Originally Posted By magnet Well, that would be one important component. However, it would be nice to know if they also periodically ran some kind of sanitizer through the system so that the lines and nozzles were also clean.
Originally Posted By bobbelee9 Don't germs die relativily fast? Have you ever seen a child sitting in a grocery cart, sucking on the handle? Last winter my grocery store started offering sanitzing cloths near the carriages. Nasty.
Originally Posted By magnet ...depending on the surface I think, some do die quickly (as in minutes), but that's not always true - some can last hours.
Originally Posted By NikkiLOVESMickey My sister-in-law recently had a pretty gnarly eye infection. Her doc said she probably got it from an infected grocery cart handle.
Originally Posted By kennect OH bobbelee9, I love the mention of the grocery cart bit...I had a client tell me a story about taking her young, very twisted, daughter to a McDonalds...They went into the restroom at some point and while see was washing her hands her kid decided to start licking the floor...Talk about insane...The gal freaked out, ran her kid to a doctor...The kid was fine when all was and done...This has to be the strangest kids I have ever encountered...If she could do something out of the norm she would...
Originally Posted By barboy ///Don't germs die relativily fast?/// If someone were to leave HIV on an attraction(don't ask me how.... just go with it) that would be far less dangerous than if one with a messed up liver left hepatitis. I wouldn't worry about the water on these 4-D's--- it's safe.... now, if we were in the 3rd world we should be most concerned about water in the face.
Originally Posted By Socrates What about your own body mechanisms? I always thought your digestive juices, stomach acid, etc. could kill germs. Socrates "The unexamined life is not worth living."
Originally Posted By sharpc When I first read this, I was thinking that there might be some merit to this theory. I think X's analogy though, especially the one about bus rails/hand rails is very accurate. Person=touches hand rails=someone touched those before that had cold. You touch your face at all, whether it be to scratch an itch on your cheek, rub your nose, or make a funny sound with you mouth to entertain little kids, you have that germ. That's far more likely than the little airborne things to get you sick. Also, when you think about, what is the difference between the spray nozzles and the nice, humid, Florida air. Florida has a very nice humidity that would (by your points via airborne bacteria in a moist environment) facilitate bacterial growth. You therefore have as much chance getting sick from other people just sneezing in a general area and you walking through that exact same spot 5 minutes later, as you do of getting sick as a direct result of the spray nozzles. Of course there are regulations! They can't just pull the water out of the cesspit smelling thing around The Imagination Pavilion at EPCOT! Yeah... sorry about the last sentence of the 2nd to last paragraph. If you can understand what I'm trying to say there, you deserve a cookie!
Originally Posted By brerroadrunner What about all the water spouts that come out of the ground that all those little kids in their diapers run through, splash, and sit in? How sanitary is that?
