MADISON MEEKS
Editor-in-Chief
mvm7037@psu.edu

ORLANDO, FL. – Shocking videos and reports on Tuesday scared Disney fans as they watched the 189-foot castle in Magic Kingdom, one of the famous Disney World parks, in flames after a reported fire. 

According to The U.S. Sun, a newspaper, the horrifying clip was nothing more than a hoax that was created using AI. The social media video platform TikTok has struck again. Videos of the castle on fire spread like wildfire on social media after being released on TikTok. This comes weeks after the hoax “Did Disney buy the Bible” started trending after a TikTok claiming that the hoax was true was released. The viral videos even resulted in some news outlets reporting that the incident was real. “Disney World Castle Fire” started to trend on social media after the hoax started to gain some attention. The video has been viewed over 24 million times and has been shared 195,000 times, according to The U.S. Sun. The video was captioned, “We aren’t crying, you are… okay, we are too.”

Viewers of the video seemed to believe the hoax after seeing it because it was realistic, but they seemed to miss the signs that TikTok was fake. In the description of the video, there are hashtags like #aigenerated and #ai that point to the viral video being fake. 

The hoax was started by Mouse Trap News, who stated that the famous castle caught fire on February 23 and was destroyed. According to Sportskeeda, the fake news site posted on Instagram an article about the fire along with the viral video. Sportskeeta stated that “Mouse Trap News touts itself as a “satire news” website, which is what sites like Times Now have claimed while tracking all the facts and stories.” Both the article and video left fans of the park uneasy, and many people believed that the castle had burned down. 

It has since been revealed that Mouse Trap News was responsible for reporting the fake story but meant for the post to be playful. They claimed the story was a narrative that Disney wanted to move the castle, so fans lit it on fire and replaced it with Spirit Halloween or Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated. The site claims in its bio that it is the world’s best parody site. The site also claims, “We write fake stories about Disney Park 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 is fun.” The satirical site uploaded the same story to their website and made it more believable by saying that it took an hour for first responders to get to the scene. Several people have come forward to debunk the rumors. These people included people on social media and Disney workers who pointed out that the site was unreliable, and the story was fake.