Short Stuff: Theme Park Cremations

There’s a little-discussed trend you might run into at your favorite theme park – people scattering the ashes of a loved one on rides. Here's hoping you don't literally run into it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
Chuck's here, and Jerry's here, and we're all here, and
this is short stuff with even more talk on cremins.
You thought we were done with talking cremains. We're not
done talking cremains. Don't you remember cremains is offensive to
the funeral directors. It's cremated remains. Oh did they say that? Yeah,

(00:26):
we said that because people wrote in and told us that. No.
I think we found it in our research atually. Yeah,
I think we talked about it on one of our many,
many episodes where we've talked about human remains. All right, well,
I apologize then to start off this short stuff. That's okay.
It's really tough not to say. It's everywhere too. It's

(00:46):
just so catchy. But apparently what the basis of it
is that what you're talking about is needs more dignity
than a jargony catchphrase like cremaine. I'm with you, it's
not a it's not a McDonald's product. It's not me
saying that. No, you're thinking of mc ashes. So what

(01:10):
we're talking about is what people do with cremated remains.
It's so hard not to say it now, and a
lot of things. You know, sometimes people keep it in
a vase in their home or in a box or
something like that. But it seems like more and more
the thing to do, and what I would like done
as well, is is to scatter those cremated remains somewhere

(01:32):
meaningful for for that person, whether it be a place
they went camping or their favorite uh rooftop pool at
a high end hotel or huh are you speaking about
something specific or just pulling stuff out of your cuffs.
Out of the cuffs? So okay, Wow, that was really

(01:54):
nice and random. I love it. Um or you know
someone's favorite restaurant you name it, like the man Chuck
really love the steakhouse. So we're gonna sneak some cremated
remains in here and put a couple of spoonfuls in
the palm plant by the front door. Yeah, and maybe
sprinkle a little bit in the bottle of tomorrow. Yeah
why not? Yeah, That's what you just described is what's

(02:15):
called wildcat scattering, where you know that there are rules
in place, and there are plenty of rules in place
about scattering cremated remains, but you're just flouting it. You say,
I don't care. Chuck wouldn't care. Chuck would want me
to spread them all over this steak joint, and that's
what we're going to do. Yeah, so that's called wildcat scattering.

(02:36):
What's interesting about the term wildcat scattering is I'm not
sure if our friends at house stuff Works made that
up or not. Yeah, this is from Nathan Chandler from
houstuffworks dot com. Do you think they made that up?
I don't know what it might be triggering a different memory.
When I was learning to drive, the woman who taught

(02:56):
me to drive, like the like I went to an
actual driving school, she said, you know when you when
you're in a snarl of people on the highway and
you have to kind of wiggle your way out and
speed up, call them wolf packs. Oh okay, And I
thought that that's what they were called. And I remember
saying that to a friend within the next year and
they were like, that's not what that's called, and they said.

(03:18):
It was such confidence that I realized that that woman
had made it up and was basically trying to spread
it around as if it were real, to make it real.
So I saw wildcat maybe a triggered wolf pack who knows.
You don't think it could have been a regionalism. I don't.
I've never heard anybody else call it a wolf pack.

(03:39):
Well we'll find out if someone writes in and they
were like, oh yeah, and Treboygan we call them wolfpacks,
right for somebody writing and be like that's so high O.
Wolf pack is one place that if you if you're
interested in scattering remains in a meaningful place, one place
that you can do so in the wild, legal with

(04:01):
permission is at a national park. Yeah, you got to
have to get a special permit for those. You can
also put them in bodies of water as well, public
body of water, but again it's their regulations and a
lot of times you need to get permission or a
permit and then they say like, hey, listen, you can
do that, but you can't do it, you know, fifteen

(04:22):
feet from the shore because no one wants to swim
up on that stuff. Like, get out there one hundred
feet or whatever the rule is and notify us and
then you're good to go. Well, from what I saw,
you need to be out three nautical miles to scatter
somebody's ashes legally. Is that's in an ocean clearly. Yeah,
but what about in your favorite like municipal lake. I

(04:45):
don't know, man, I do not know what the rule
is on that because it probably depends on the place.
The whole thing that they're trying to do is get
around people getting open up against the cremated remains that
are not floating in your lake. You know, um, no
matter how you feel about it, you probably don't want
to kayak through a like a puddle of or not

(05:06):
a slick. A slick of cremated remains is kind of
floating there. That wouldn't bother me. Okay, So I'm wondering
about this because a lot of people might. But all
over the internet there are some people who are like, oh, yeah,
you don't want to do that, and other people are like,
that's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. And it's like,
you're not like throwing body parts into the lake. I mean,

(05:28):
these are cremated remains. This is ashes, pulverized ash. And
what's more, the temperatures that the corpse is exposed to
are on the order of about fifteen hundred degrees f
eight hundred and fifteen degrees celsis. There it's considered sterile
ashes are sterile um, But I think it's just the
association with the fact that it used to be a

(05:50):
body that that's what really bothers people, right, I guess so,
and everyone is different. I'm not yucking a yum or
yemming a yuck, but I see it if I had
done that, if I, like canoe through something that turned
out to be remains, I would see that as like, Wow,
that's kind of like an honor, almost like getting upgraded

(06:11):
by a whale exactly. But the thing is okay, So yes,
I understand that. But what if when you got out
of the lake and you put your behind your trailer
and it was just smeared on your canoe. Wouldn't you
feel bad about toting the person's remains with you, you know,
putting them in your garage, on your canoe, or even worse,

(06:32):
hosing them off at home. Sure, that's I think one
of the other problems. People who aren't grossed out by
it don't want the responsibility of, yeah, somebody's cremated remains
like on their shoe and not knowing what to do
about that. Yeah, that's true. All right, I'm gonna think
hard about this while we take our break and we'll
be right back, okay, just like stars so much so

(07:14):
we talked about places to do it legally in there.
There are plenty of places. The key seems to be
asking permission ahead of time, right. There are places where
if you ask permission ahead of time, they'll say no, no,
and don't you dare do it anyway. Right. One of
those places, that's one of the most popular places to
engage in wildcats scattering sometimes if you do it as

(07:37):
a group, that's a wolfpack wildcat scattering is disney World
in Disneyland. Yeah, theme parks, and of course Disney is
going to be the big daddy. That place means a
lot to a lot of people. And you know people
that go there. We know people that go there many
many times every year of their life and just it's

(08:01):
a part of their fabric and they're like, I want
to be dumped in the Pirates of the Caribbean. That's
where I want to be. That's one of the big ones,
as Pirates of the Caribbean. And it's a small world,
I think. And then also the Haunted Mansion is another
big one, and you can kind of understands. Yes, they're
literally called dark rides, but the Pirates of the Caribbean

(08:26):
one and It's a Small World makes sense because you're
dumping the ashes into the water and it's really becoming
part of that ride. The Haunted Mansion in particular, is
a really bad choice because they're probably going to see
you do it. They're probably going to stop the entire ride,
evacuate everyone from the ride. Ye bring in a special

(08:50):
custodial team and vacuum up the ashes and dump them
in the trash. That's what's going to happen. That's where
Grandpa will end up because there's, like he said, there's
cameras everywhere, but people still take this risk. Although I mean,
didn't something in this article say that Disney said that
people don't do this. Yeah, so this article said that

(09:12):
Disney's official stance is that it does not happen. I
saw a twenty eighteen Wall Street Journal article. I should
say I saw a lot of reference to it. I'm
too cheap to spring for the subscription, but apparently in
that article they interviewed people who were with Disney saying like, yes,
this happens a lot, a lot, and here's what happens

(09:34):
when they do that, and Ultimately, the bottom line is,
even if you get away with it, even if you
don't get caught and escorted out of the park and
probably banned for life from any Disney attraction. Yeah, the
cremated remains are going to be swept up one way
or another and thrown in the trash. Your grandpa is
not going to forever be part of the Haunted Mansion,

(09:55):
right because they clean those rides thoroughly and frequently, and
he's not going to there anymore. He's going to end
up in the trash. And is that really where he
wanted to be? Yeah? Yeah, meaning now right, that's what
I saw is basically the bottom line to the whole thing. Yeah,
And like you said, you you're probably gonna get kicked out.

(10:15):
I don't even know if they have a public stance,
like official stance on that, because their public stance is like,
no one does that here, right, keep coming, keep coming
the Disney world. You're not when you drag your hand
in the water of the Pirate scribbean, And it's not
just literally full of cremated remains. Maybe a tooth bobbing
up and down here or there's now that would that

(10:38):
would gross me out? Sure? That would be very disturbing.
I still I do see the Pirates of the Caribbean
Rye being the smart one. Though. If you're gonna do
it anyway, if you're such a wildcat that you listen
to this episode and still do it, we guess that's
probably the best way to do it. I want to
be scattered at my camp. Oh yeah, I'm sure of that.
Unless something changes. That seems like a great, great place

(11:00):
to spend eternity. Yeah, way to go, man, it's a
great It's a great thing to settle on. You mean,
I are still trying to figure that one out. Well,
let me know. Maybe me doing it, Okay, I will
if you go. If you guys go down in a
hill of gunfire at a bank robbery or something, well,
if it's gonna be you doing it, then definitely Pirates
of the Caribbean. Right, want me banned from Disney World?

(11:25):
You got anything else? I got nothing else me either.
Wildcats scattering don't do it. Short. Stuff is out. Stuff
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