Mysterious Floating Black Ring Over Disneyland Explained – HuffPost
Writer, Editor, HuffPost
When you visit any Disney park, you’re encouraged to suspend your normal beliefs about what’s possible and enter a world of fantasy, magic, and illusion.
So, it came as no real surprise when, at the end of April, while enjoying the sights and sounds of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Kyle Hawkins saw something odd in the early evening sky.
“No idea what this could be. Walking up Main Street at Disneyland, following the parade,” Hawkins wrote on his YouTube page. “Everyone around me starts looking up and pointing at this daunting black ring floating methodically above us.
“I half expected an alien portal to open up through this ring as we were gazing up in disbelief. I yanked my phone out to record as soon as I saw this thing, then immediately uploaded to YouTube. This is raw footage, apologize for shakiness.”
The following video is what Hawkins recorded above Disneyland.
Hawkins assumed “It was a windy night, couldn’t have been a smoke ring. Everyone watched it in fear/confusion. The strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
It’s not known why this took two months to grab any media attention, but that sometimes happens with dubious UFO stories.
According to The Daily Mail, the “bizarre black ring-shaped UFO” sparked theories of an “alien portal” — Hawkins’ alien portal reference wasn’t exactly a theory — and that “a conspiracy theorist said it would cause families to worry of an alien invasion.”
Really? It’s time for some clarification.
One commenter to the Daily Mail story wrote: “LOL. People are funny with their conspiracy theories. You’ll see that ring every night that Disney does the World of Color show.”
And this brings us closer to the truth.
A 2015 NBC News story examined many cases where identical black, hovering smoke rings resulted from the use of pyrotechnics.
“Creating smoke vortices generally requires a blast through a circular structure — perhaps from a factory smokestack, or a homemade trash-can smoke ring launcher, or a hippie-dippie apparatus specially designed for the job,” according to NBC.
To put the icing on the cake, here’s what we’re talking about:
Everybody knows how much pyrotechnics are a huge part of the magic of the Disney theme parks.
Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy buffs who might have hoped for portals to another dimension.
Not today, at least.
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