There’s trouble in Disneyland where the popular boat ride “It’s a Small World” is the latest victim of America’s obesity crisis. For 41 years the rather nauseating, but endlessly popular, ride has ferried passengers past mini-tableaux of animatronic South Sea Island hula girls, French cancan dancers and the like, each singing the special Small World song.

Recently, however, it has been having problems. At certain spots, specifically by the Canadian Mounties and along the S-curve representing Scandinavia, the boats have been getting stuck. It seems that today’s tourists have become so fat that they are jamming the ride.

Initially, staff tried discreetly leaving empty seats alongside rounder guests. But that didn’t work, and the flat-bottomed boats continued to run aground. When this happens, tourists have to be removed from the ride – an occurrence now so common that a special platform has been built by the Mounties tableau to allow fatties to disembark.

Adult men and women are about 25lb heavier than they were in the Sixties, and 65 per cent of them are considered overweight according to the US National Center for Health Statistics. Other rides, including the Pirates of the Caribbean, Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland, are also said to be having obesity-related issues.

The parks is to shut “It’s a Small World” in January to allow workers to dig a deeper water channel and to increase the buoyancy of the boats, but denies that overweight tourists are the reason behind renovations. In the words of the song, “It’s a small world after all”. Shame the same cannot be said of its passengers.

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