A mother has shared her experience at Disneyland, where her daughter was stopped from hugging a Winnie-the-Pooh character.
In a recent TikTok video, Dani Reeves, @iamdanireeves, could be seen filming her daughter, as she’s running over to a someone dressed as Winnie-the-Pooh. When she was going to give Pooh a hug, another Disneyland worker stopped her from doing so.
“You can’t hug,” Reeves told her daughter off camera.
The mom then apologised to the Disneyland worker, saying: “Sorry, I didn’t know she was going to run up on him.”
As Winne-the-Pooh started to walk away and wave, the little girl blew a kiss from a distance.
In the caption, Reeves noted how her daughter was disappointed that she couldn’t hug Pooh.
“Covid sucks!” the mom wrote. “My daughter was so embarrassed and upset after this.”
As of 28 February, the video has received over 2.9m views, with TikTok users in the comments empathising with the mother and expressing how heartbreaking it is that kids can’t get too close to their favourite characters anymore.
“This broke my heart,” one wrote. “We can watch fireworks and parades, shoulder to shoulder, but still can’t give Pooh bear a hug.”
“This is so sad, especially because Pooh was... wearing his mask,” one person said, referencing the Disney employee’s costume.
On the opposite side of the coin, other viewers claimed that Reeves should have told her child about the no-hugging rule before going to the park.
“Mom’s fault,” one wrote. “You know the rules. Should’ve told her and stopped her. You made the cast member the bad guy.”
“You should definitely have warned your babygirl prior to visiting so she wouldn’t be disappointed,” another comment reads.”
Response to that comment, Reeves said: “She just turned 4. Kids don’t fully understand what we are all going through, conversation prior or not.”
In a follow-up video, Reeves detailed how she received a lot of comments from people “mom-shaming” her, one of which said that “a responsible parent will have a talk with their child prior to attending the amusement park.”
Reeves said that she not only had a talk with a child, but her daughter also had many other interactions with the characters at the park and “obeyed all of the rules.”
As many commenters claimed that Reeves was “a bad parent,” she knew that this wasn’t true. She also said that the people in the comments shouldn’t have been so quick to assume anything about anyone’s child.
According to Disneyland’s website, some experiences have been changed due to COVID-19, including character greetings. And although “character meet-and-greets are temporarily unavailable,” they are still in the parks “in new ways to entertain and delight” guests.
Speaking to The Independent, Reeves said that she and her daughter had a wonderful trip to Disney, overall. “We could never let an incident like this ruin an entire stay,” she explained “Instead, we moved on and got ice cream!”
She recalled how they had many character interactions, but as Pooh was leaving his photo area, this was the first time Reeve’s daughter noticed a character “walking around ‘in the wild.’” Since the child loves Pooh so much, she “couldn’t help herself and took off running” for a hug. As seen in her video, the cast member stopped the embrace, but Reeves wasn’t sure if this was due to covid or not.
“After posting the video, I have heard from several mothers in the comments that their kids have had similar experiences,” she added. “If it is covid related, it seems to contradict its policies when the park is at total capacity, has no mask mandates, and the rides are packed full.”
The Independent has reached out to Disneyland for comment.
