TikTok Family Apologizes After Backlash for Helping Son Cheat Disney World's Ride Height Guidelines
@the.kelly.fam/instagram Ty and Haley Kelly
A TikTok influencer family is getting backlash for what they felt was a playful video about visiting Disney World.
Ty and Haley Kelly share scenes from their family's lives on Instagram and TikTok as The.Kelly.Fam, recently posting a video that showed the family of five visiting Disney World.
In the clip, the parents put their 3-year-old son Kannon in padded shoes so he can meet the height requirement of some rides at the theme park that he's just shy of himself. IKannon wears the shoes to get on two rides — Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, a motion simulator, and Slinky Dog Dash, a "family-friendly" roller coaster.
The couple was surprised at the backlash to the video, which has since been deleted from all of their social media channels after commenters slammed the parents for being irresponsible and possibly endangering their son.
Ty and Haley addressed the matter in a follow-up video, explaining their decision to delete all content related to the trip and the ensuing controversy.
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"Hey everyone, so we'd like to address this Disney shoe situation one more time. So what started off as us trying to make an entertaining video for our audience that we thought you'd enjoy quickly turned into us realizing that what we put out on our platform has more consequences than we initially thought. As we realized this, we also realized we have more influence than we initially thought and that influence, if presented in a negative way, can have a ripple effect that could potentially cause harm or danger to someone else."
Noting that Kannon was "unharmed and completely okay," the couple said they "now understand that that may not be the case for some other kid. And the last thing that we want to happen from something that we put out on our social media is someone getting hurt."
"We hope you'll give us the opportunity to prove that we love our children, we love y'all, and we love each other," Haley said after noting they took down the content. "With influence comes responsibility, and we take that seriously."
Ty added, "We want to assure you that moving forward, we're going to be more mindful of our actions and what we put out on our social media. This is a privilege. It's a responsibility to set a good example for the people that follow us."
They doubled down on these feelings in the video's caption, writing, "With influence comes responsibility, and we take that seriously. It's a privilege to have the platforms we do, and we'd NEVER want someone else to get hurt from an idea from one of our videos."
"With that being said, we've decided to take anything down related to the Disney shoe video. We hope that in time, you'll see that we are serious about the content we put out for the public to see, and we're committed to being more careful and intentional with our posts moving forward. We want our platforms to feel like home, and a safe place for you to come and unwind, be uplifted, inspired and hopefully entertained. We love you all. #thekellyfam."
