Disney is for spreading magic, not ashes.
On an episode of the “Las Culturistas” podcast, Ariana Grande revealed her mom’s wishes to have her ashes spread at Disney World — but her wish will likely never be fulfilled.
Grande, 31, was discussing landmark attractions at Disneyland and Disney World with hosts Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers when she shared that her mom, Joan, repeatedly tells her and her brother, Frankie Grande, have to spread her ashes in the Florida theme park.
“When it comes to Florida. When it comes to Disney in Florida…first of all, we get Cinderella’s Castle. Which is, you know, also a landmark,” Grande, who grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, said on the podcast.
“My mom tells us too often that she wants her ashes sprinkled over it. And I’m like, ‘Mom, it’s Christmas. Do we have to talk about this right now?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah. You have to make sure that happens.’”
“I’m like, ‘Mom, I don’t wanna make sure that that happens,’” Grande, who will be starring as Glinda in the upcoming “Wicked” movie, recalled.
The actress and singer also pointed out a potentially morbid issue that could come out of her mom’s wishes.
“I think there’s actors back there working. So you’re gonna be sprinkled on people’s heads who are like, dressed as Tinker Bell waiting for their cue,” she quipped.
Yang, 34, chimed in noting, “Totally. There’s like a hotel room in there,” referring to the Cinderella Castle Suite.
“I’ve been in there because I performed at the castle one time and I got to change in there, which was really cool,” Grande added. “It’s really beautiful and it feels very real.”
However, as beautiful as it is, the pop icon won’t be able to spread her 67-year-old mom’s ashes there since it’s illegal to do so.
According to a 2018 report from the Wall Street Journal, spreading ashes at the theme park “is strictly prohibited and unlawful. Guests who attempt to do so will be escorted off property.”
On top of Disney trying to do what it can to keep anything morbid out of its parks — including banning the words “In Memory Of” from their personalized commemorative bricks — custodians have to go into the rides to remove the tiny particles.
When residue of ashes is discovered on a ride, Disney workers shut down the ride for “technical difficulties” so a manager can ride the attraction alone and look for ash piles before custodians come with high-powered vacuums.
The call for the clean-up situation is actually named after those vacuums: “HEPA Cleanup” is the code between employees that means a park guest has scattered cremated ashes somewhere in the park.
Though one former Disney employee said she and others got in trouble for making up their own term for the clean-up: “Code Grandma.”
According to the outlet, the most popular places for guests to spread human ashes are flower beds and bushes, the Magic Kingdom lawn, outside the park gates, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and in the moat underneath the flying elephants of the Dumbo ride. But mostly, people like to spread ashes in the Haunted Mansion ride, taking it a little literally.
“The Haunted Mansion probably has so much human ashes in it that it’s not even funny,” one Disneyland custodian said at the time.
However, guests do often get away with it — including Whoopi Goldberg.
On an episode of “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on July 10, the 68-year-old talk show host revealed that she and her late brother, Clyde, spread her mother’s ashes inside the It’s a Small World ride shortly after she died in 2010.
“No one should do this. Don’t do it,” Goldberg warned. “She loved Small World. So, in the Small World ride, periodically, I’d scoop some of her up and I’d do this poof, and I said, ‘My God, this cold is getting worse and worse!’ And then we got over to the flowers where it says, ‘Disneyland’ and I was like, ‘Oh, look at that! Poof.’”
She did admit to the Disney park employees that she did it, though.
“I told them I did it. I wanted to make sure, actually, that I hadn’t done something that was dangerous, because it hadn’t occurred to me. But there’s a reason they don’t want ashes just floating around,” Goldberg admitted.
