“These are sedentary individuals, usually at their homes,” Granada said. “And then now they take a vacation and they’re all of a sudden gonna like walk five miles in a day and not drink enough water to sustain that. Most often, the calls were for patients who passed out. Granada said when he worked at the firehouse closest to the theme parks, they would have to go at least once a shift. That does not include Disney – which has its own ambulance service not included in that count. Through a public records request, we do know the fire departments in Orlando and Orange County were called Universal Studios, Sea World and Aquatica about 150 times in 2019. “Oh yeah, everybody knew that you’re going to eventually go to the parks for something like that because it happened all the time,” said former Orlando paramedic Josh Granada. Honestly, we don’t know how many people fail the Disney stress test. The pandemic dropped those figures by 53 percent, but early indications are that tourism is rebounding. But in a statement, Disney said people have heart problems on vacation all over the world – Disney just happens to get a lot of visitors.Ī record 75 million tourists visited Orlando in 2019 before COVID-19.
“He explained like, it was not uncommon for people to come in with heart issues who happened to have been in the park,” Fine said.ĭisney declined an on-tape interview for this story. A nurse told Larry he had “failed the Disney stress test.” In local medical circles, there’s a slang term for what happened to him. “They were trying to decide whether they had to like run the sirens and call ahead to get me into surgery immediately,” Fine said. He went to an emergency department near Disney and ultimately needed open-heart surgery: a quadruple bypass. The ambulance ride to the downtown Orlando campus was the most stressful. He was lying in a pirate-themed hotel bed trying to take a nap, and his heart would not stop racing. “So if we’d stayed in the park, and were running around, I might not have noticed that my heart was attacking me,” Fine said.
After a close family vote, Fine and his family decided to go back to the hotel for a rest. He had a big brunch, and watched The Muppets Present … Great Moments in American History show.
It was March 2017, and Larry Fine was on a Disney vacation in Orlando when his heart attacked him.
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