When a Miami private investigator surveils a subject at Disney World, will magic prevail?
My kids were all grown and out of the house, but here I was heading up the Florida Turnpike, to the Magic Kingdom. By myself.
If you think that sounds weird, let me take you back to the meeting at the law office that started this investigative odyssey. The attorney represented a client being sued for injuries in an accident.
“Our guy works at Disney World,” the attorney said. “He helps set up the parades.”
This plaintiff claimed he could barely walk without a cane, and we needed to see if this was really the case.
“The last investigators we hired,” the attorney said, “couldn’t get into the park. Whatever scheme they used didn’t work.”
At that moment, I hatched a flawless plan in my mind to infiltrate the Kingdom.
First, I headed to the plaintiff’s home, about a half hour’s drive from the park entrance, to see if his car was there. We had no clue what his working hours were, so I went to his place in the early afternoon, fully prepared to miss him entirely, then miss him at Disney and have to take a hotel room for the night to try again in the morning. But his car was there at the house. I watched for about a half hour before he came out, a wooden cane hanging on his arm. He got in his car, headed down the highway, and stopped for gas. A man in his early 60s, he walked without even the slightest limp into the station market, bought a coffee, finished pumping gas, and got back on the road. I never saw the cane touch the ground.
I followed him until I saw signs that the entrance to the park was ahead. He took an exit on a small road marked “Disney/Epcot employees only.” There I “lost” him, kind of. At least I knew where he would be — somewhere within the surrounding 107 acres, among anywhere from 85,000 to 100,000 guests and 6-10,000 employees. Piece of cake, huh?
Task one was to get into the park. The former agency failed to ruse their way in? I used the “scheme” I knew would have 100% success: I bought a ticket.
What a concept. Retainers are nice.
Walking into Disney alone with nothing more than a camera bag was almost disorienting. I’d heard all about Disney’s legendary security apparatus; I imagined a secret underground bunker with a throng of security personnel watching hundreds upon hundreds of cameras. How long would it take before they noticed this middle-aged, lone guy roaming around the park, not going on any rides or spending any money?
I expected security to close in at any moment. I might not have much time.
So, where to start? I snagged a guidebook to peruse the parade schedule — the next parade was starting at Frontierland at 3pm, by Splash Mountain. I was about an hour early, so I headed over there, leaned against a fence, and waited. If this didn’t work, this was going to be one those “needle in the haystack” situations.
The ropes for the parade were already up, and after about twenty minutes, a few employees started trickling out of one of those service paths that are off limits to the public. I watched carefully, but there was no sign of my guy. What if they re-assigned him, and he was no longer part of the parade setup team? Then I’d be doing some serious walking and searching.
But lo and behold, here he came, walking briskly, his cane dangling from his arm and in no danger of touching the pavement. He stopped to talk to a guest and then headed past me, moving at such a clip that I had to almost trot to keep up. The footage gets a little shaky at this point, as I hurried along behind the plaintiff with my little Panasonic HC-V270 camcorder, dutifully gathering damning imagery of my cane-less prey.
But that security detail I expected to turn up and challenge me? Did. Not. Appear. Because what’s remarkable about following someone in this environment (and what I had not considered) is that no one notices you are filming with your camcorder — everyone is too distracted by photographing their own amped-up kids to pay attention to what you are doing.
“What’s remarkable about following someone in this environment … is that no one notices you are filming with your camcorder.”
I followed him to a spot by the Liberty Tree Tavern, where he and another employee worked together to tape off areas of pavement where people could or could not sit, etc. This task required him to duck under several lines and walk back and forth, which he did with the exuberance and agility of a teenager. As he taped off those areas, he laid his cane down — the only time it ever made contact with the deck. Then he strode to the next spot — lickety-split, mind you — the cane swinging from his elbow without purpose.
I observed all this from across the street in front of a gift shop, not thirty feet away. I barely had to use the camcorder’s zoom. As the parade started, I would every so often wave to my invisible family behind him, in the unlikely event that he spotted me and got suspicious.
All in all, it was by far the easiest surveillance I have ever done, and one of the most fruitful. I called my wife to tell her I didn’t have to stay over, and that I would be heading home soon.
“Aren’t you going to go on a ride or two?” she asked.
I informed her that “It’s a Small World” wasn’t exactly on my bucket list, especially without her and the kids. I kept looking for Disney security as I headed toward the exit. I imagine that if I had hopped on “Small World” or “Pirates of the Caribbean,” then maybe I would have gotten their attention.
I was almost disappointed. They should be more cognizant of oddballs like me. But I shouldn’t complain: that would have been the only glitch to a seemingly flawless surveillance. And how often, in an investigator’s lifetime, do those ever happen? Things never go from start to finish without a hitch, a hiccup, or an unexpected foul-up or two. But amazingly, they did. The “magic” in Magic Kingdom had prevailed.
Without even buying a fudge bar at my favorite place on Main Street, I headed out of the park, hopped on the tram to Goofy 42, and got back on the turnpike, homeward bound.
About the author:
Ramesh Nyberg spent 27 years in Florida law enforcement, 22 as a homicide investigator. He’s written articles on police issues for Police and Security News; Police, Law and Order; Law Enforcement Technology; Crimebeat; Real Crime Book Digest; and Writer’s Digest. Ramesh also wrote a column called “Rap Sheet” in the Miami Herald. After retiring from the force in 2006, he founded Nyberg Security and Investigations in Miami. He also teaches regional training courses for law enforcement through Training Force USA.
In 2021, Ramesh published “The Ten Must-Haves to be a Great Investigator” on Amazon and launched a podcast on investigations called “Nothing But The Truth.” He’s currently working on a memoir.
Ramesh and his wife live in Miami and have six children and two grandchildren.