A retired Epcot World Showcase double-decker bus was crashed into a tree by two kids on Monday at an auto museum in Volo, Illinois, causing damages to the antique vehicle that is valued at $450,000.
The two kids were not hurt, and museum officials say the bus was hit in the best place possible, causing minor damages. According to the director of the Volo Auto Museum, Brian Grams, “There couldn’t have been a better outcome to a bad situation. The bus hit the tree straight on at its sturdiest point. The damage would have been much greater had it been just a few inches to the left or right.”
The two kids wandered off into a restricted area where the bus was undergoing maintenance. The kids released the parking break, sending the bus rolling down 80 feet, eventually colliding with a tree, according to Grams. No keys were left in the vehicle, but the bus is old enough to lack the safety feature to require a key in order to shift gears.
The museum filed an insurance claim on the vehicle, which detailed that the steering wheel had been broken, the radiator shell was disfigured, and the front end of the vehicle was bent.
The bus was originally used to transport guests around World Showcase at EPCOT Center, beginning opening day on October 1, 1982. It was retired sometime in the early 2000s.
The Volo Auto Museum acquired and restored the double-decker bus in 2014, and has plans to use it in a future event to provide rides for guests. Grams says the vehicle will be ready for use by their planned date of August 11, but the cosmetic damage may linger on for a while after.
Credit: Chicago Tribune
These buses did not require any key to start; only know how to turn them on. Where do they get that $450,000.00 value on the Bus?? I guess the items I have from Walt Disney World are worth FAR MORE then I could imagine!
Yup! Unless they retrofitted this for a key, I recall it only took the push of a button on the dash to start the vehicle when I was an Omnibus cast member at Epcot in the early 90s!
I hate kids.