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Drone Reported Above Disney's California Adventure Park

drone.jpg
Drone illustration (Photo by L Barnwell via Shutterstock)

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An employee of the Disney Resort said that a group of employees spotted a small drone hovering above Disney's California Adventure Park last week.The anonymous employee told Lake Forest Patch that a group of employees saw the 3-foot-long craft with propellers floating about 40 feet overhead. Some employees waved at it, because they assumed there was a camera on board. It had a flashing blue light, and the employee said, "It looked like a flying spider."

It reportedly happened around 7:30 a.m. last Friday, just a half-hour before the park opens to the public.

There isn't any official record of the drone sighting. An Anaheim police spokesman said he hadn't heard about any sightings. Disney disputes the claim that there was a drone. Disney spokeswoman Suzi Brown told Patch, "I was at work Friday ... [so] I would have known about it." She said Disney's security chief hadn't heard anything about it. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies declined to comment. The FAA wouldn't comment about whether it gave clearance to any craft to fly through the no-fly zone above Disneyland.

It's not clear what happened exactly, but there might not even be an official explanation. Plenty of amateurs have been getting into the business of spying using quadcopters to take videos from above. We'll be keeping our eye on YouTube and bestquadcopter.com for Disney footage.

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