A mom of two says she suffered blowtorch burns to the face while eating dinner at a Disneyland Paris restaurant. Erica Osbourne, a 37-year-old British woman, claims it happened when a clumsy chef tried finishing off her crème brûlée at the park’s Newport Bay Club Hotel. His brûlée-ing got a little out of hand, and according to Osbourne, “a massive fireball came across the counter towards me” as soon as the flames hit the sugar on top. She lost part of her hair and eyebrows, and a not-inconsiderable portion of her face was maimed with second-degree burns. (The U.K. wire service Press Association took several detailed pictures, for the morbidly curious.) The sweater she was wearing also caught fire.
Osbourne says her daughter was off getting ice cream when the accident occurred, but returned in time to witness her mom screaming, “Help me! I’m on fire.” Employees reportedly leaped over the counter and extinguished the flames by “rolling” Osbourne around on the ground. “I opened my eyes to see everybody staring at me and there were all of these children screaming.”
The disaster happened in February, but Osbourne has now filed a lawsuit against Disney, alleging the park didn’t respond appropriately to the near melt-off of her face. She says one manager suggested it was “no different [than] falling off a bike,” while another park employee told her she was probably wearing too much flammable perfume. She just wants two things from the lawsuit: “a written apology and for them to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Disney isn’t commenting on the case, citing the fact that it’s an “ongoing legal issue which is in the process of being resolved.” It did add, though, “Incidents of this type are extremely rare.”
