Rich guests ’fed alligators while Disney World looked the other way’

A MAN claims he warned Disney an alligator had chased his son at the park last year but they looked the other way as rich guests enjoyed feeding them.

DISNEY World was warned about the alligator problem in its Seven Seas Lagoon but looked the other way because high-paying guests enjoyed feeding the creatures, a report has claimed.

Management had been warned by park staff that guests at the $2700-a-night waterfront Bora Bora Bungalows were feeding the alligators, but ignored requests to build protective fences, a park insider said, according to TheWrap.

“Disney has known about the problem of guests feeding the alligators well prior to the opening of the bungalows,” the insider told the news site.

“With the opening of the bungalows, it brought the guests that much closer to wildlife. Or, the wildlife that much closer to the guests.”

Opened in April 2015, the bungalows are adjacent to the Grand Floridian Hotel, where two-year-old Lane Graves was snatched into the lagoon and killed by an alligator earlier this week.

The bungalows. Picture: Chad Sparkes

Lane Grave was snatched by an alligator off the shore of a lake at a Disney resort.

A San Diego man told CBS News yesterday that managers dismissed him when he reported seeing a gator go after his five-year-old son at the park last year.

“The response, I couldn’t believe it,” David Hiden, a lawyer, told CBS. “It was, ‘Those are resident pets, and we’ve known about them for years. And they’re harmless, they’re not going to attack anybody’.”

Hiden and his family had been staying at Disney World’s Coronado Springs Resort, 5 kilometres from the Grand Floridian.

Also on Thursday, videos emerged on YouTube showing gators at Disney World, some just feet from parkgoers.

This story originally appeared on the NYPost.