A Long Island mom is suing Disney for $2 million, claiming she was permanently scarred by a “mammoth” wave at the resort’s Typhoon Lagoon.
Kimberly Panetta’s annual family trip to the happiest place on Earth turned into a horror show after she was “pummeled” by the wave as she grabbed her 3-year-old daughter from a water slide in the children’s area of Disney’s Magic Kingdom
The 45-year-old mom was “violently struck by a sudden and forceful wave,” according to her Brooklyn Federal Court lawsuit.
“It was so powerful it was actually dragging us under the water for several feet,” Panetta told The Post of the April 2022 incident. “I just thank God I had the sense to push her above as I was getting dragged. I knew if she was the one getting dragged she would have been cut all over.”
The wave “hit her from the side with such force, it pummeled her and her body skidded across the cement or gunite, causing serious ‘road rash’ or scrapes that were severe and deep,” according to court papers.
“I felt pain immediately and I looked down and there was blood,” she recalled. “You think you’re in the happiest place on Earth and the safest place but it’s like being dragged on concrete — it’s very rough.”
It left her two kids, then ages 3 and 7, in shock, she added.
“They were mortified they just could not believe my legs and of course, when they see blood pouring out of their mother, their eyes were like saucers.”
Both Panetta and her lawyer husband Frank said their young daughter could have been seriously injured if not for Kimberly’s quick thinking.
“She would have definitely been hurt had my wife not held her up and taken the brunt of the injury,” said Frank Panetta, who noted Kimberly skidding across the concrete “for 15 or 20 feet.”
Before the trip, Panetta was “a young svelte woman, [who] had no scars or marks on her legs.”
But the Dix Hills woman is now “scarred and self-conscious” and “keeps her legs covered and must tolerate being hot and uncomfortable as a result,” the litigation claims.
Disney should not have let such “powerful waves . . . infiltrate the kiddie area,” Panetta contended.
Her family’s vacation was a nightmare after she was hurt.
The trip “was ruined and she was stuck limping around applying bandages, salves and creams and was forced to avoid swimming and enjoying planned visits to the parks,” she said in the legal filing.
The bloody wounds made walking difficult and left her leg “throbbing” in the middle of the night while ruining the rest of the family’s annual Disney trip.
“We had all these plans and we had to cancel everything. I couldn’t even go in the pool where we were staying, I had to stay inside. Everything was completely ruined,” the homemaker said.
Disney offered nothing but a measly $250 credit, Frank Panetta said.
It’s not the first time Disney fans have claimed injury at Typhoon Lagoon — one of two water parks at Disney World in Florida featuring nearly a dozen different attractions.
A Florida woman lost consciousness and was coughing up blood after riding the Humunga Kowabunga slide at the water park in May, she alleged in a lawsuit.
The slide sends riders plunging 214 feet at a near vertical drop.
Laura Reyes-Merino, then 25, was found unconscious at the bottom of the water slide by her fiancé and mom, and no lifeguards were on duty, she claimed.
Another woman claimed she was hurt on the same slide in 2019, when the force of the water created a painful wedgie and for “water to be violently forced inside of her,” according to reports.