Looks like Mother Gothel forgot to warn Rapunzel about one of the more bizarre perils of daring to go outside: Getting eaten by hungry crows!
Recent guests at Tokyo DisneySea theme park were presumably horrified when crows began to attack the long, golden hair atop the head of the Rapunzel animatronic that sits in the tower window on the otherwise peaceful Rapunzel’s Lantern Festival ride.
In a viral video of the incident making the rounds on social media, two large, black crows can be seen pecking at and tearing large bundles of blonde hair from Rapunzel’s head as the animatronic continues to sway and sing from her tower window. Watch below.
I can only assume the crows were taking such generous tufts of precious Disney Princess hair to build their nest with, which is kind of sweet if you can ignore the otherwise gory scene involving Rapunzel essentially getting scalped by birds. I’m not even sure the Brothers Grimm could come up with such twisted stuff. (Just kidding—I know what really happens to the Ugly Stepsisters in Grimm’s 1812 version of the Cinderella fairytale, and those birds are way worse.)
The animatronic is part of Rapunzel’s Lantern Festival, a Tangled-inspired ride located in the Fantasy Springs land at Tokyo DisneySea. The romantic boat ride, which opened in June 2024, celebrates the love story between Rapunzel and Flynn Ryder, and takes guests through the story of Tangled.
READ MORE: The Craziest Disneyland Incidents Ever
In terms of design, movement, fluidity, and audience engagement, Disney has truly upped the wow factor with their more recent, advanced audio-animatronics—poor Rapunzel here included. However, Rapunzel’s, erm, bad hair day is just one in a recent string of animatronic malfunctions.
Though much less violent in spectacle, Frozen’s Olaf quite recently died in front of a crowd.
The impressive new walking, talking audio-animatronic was greeting guests at Disneyland Paris when it abruptly stopped functioning, seemingly powered down, and fell straight back onto the ground as if it had suddenly developed rigor mortis. His little carrot nose even popped off, too. And, of course, it all went very viral.
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Gallery Credit: Erica Russell