Did Disney announce that urinals would be added to all women's restrooms in their theme parks to provide "a safer and more inclusive atmosphere for everyone"? No, that's not true: This claim appeared in an article in Mouse Trap News, a website that proclaims it is "the world's best satire and parody site" and that everything on the site is not true. A Disney communications manager confirmed to Lead Stories, "That story is inaccurate."
The article (archived here) published by Mouse Trap News on February 8, 2024, is titled "Disney Adding Urinals to All Women's Restrooms." It opened:
Disney World is Adding Urinals to all Women's Restrooms. This is an effort by Disney to be more inclusive. They want to ensure that people are more comfortable in their bathrooms.
This is how the article appeared at the time of writing:
(Image source: Mousetrapnews.com screenshot taken on Mon Feb 26 17:06:33 2024 UTC)
The article continued:
According to an official spokesperson, "Adding urinals to the women's restroom provides a safer and more inclusive atmosphere for everyone." However, many people see potential problems with this. In fact, many are wondering who will actually be using these new urinals.
Meanwhile, many women are complaining that replacing stalls with urinals allows for less capacity. This increases the already long lines inside the women's restrooms. This is the newest development in Disney removing all genders from their bathrooms.
This narrative is not true. On the "about" page of MouseTrapNews.com is this disclaimer:
Mouse Trap News is the world's best satire and parody site. We write fake stories about Disney Parks stuff. From Disney Park announcements to Disney Hotel and resort news to made-up Disney partnerships, you can be assured that anything you read here is not true, real, or accurate, but it is fun.
Lead Stories reached out by email to the press contact for Disney Parks regarding the article. The senior manager of External Communications, Betsy Villalobos, replied on February 26, 2024:
That story is inaccurate.
A video version of this Mouse Trap News story was posted on Instagram on February 25, 2024. The comments (pictured below) express indignation on the part of the social media audience. Miss_mack11 writes:
Yet another reason to BOYCOTT DISNEY🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
(Image source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Feb 26 20:09:41 2024 UTC)
The Lead Stories website has a page with Our Satire Policy, It explains some of the circumstances when a satire article may be fact checked:
When do we fact check satire?
Of course we won't fact check every satirical story that crosses our desk. We will generally only do it if it seems there are enough people believing it is real. We often look at the comments and if there are several that appear to be coming from people taking the story at face value we may opt to fact check it. But if a story is just too ridiculously obvious we usually won't bother.
Lead Stories has published several fact check articles on claims originating from Mouse Trap News here.
