The Disney in Panama Article Was An April Fool's Day Joke (El Siglo - "Gotcha")

By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - My friend Jerin Tate wrote and sent via email a gag article on April 1st, intended as an April Fool's day joke, talking about how Disney was going to come to Panama and spend millions of dollars to build a huge park here (here's a link to the original article that ran on April 1st.) Jerin sent me his article via email, and I ran it (as a gag) and included the link at the end of the article which instead of giving you "more information" actually took you to the page on Wikipedia about the history and tradition of April Fool's. Jerin was slick enough in his crafting of this gag article to use a tinyurl.com re-write of the link to the information on Wikipedia, because the actual link to that page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day, and if that had been included in the article, even the dumbest rock in the box would have figured it out. Many people bought this gag hook, line, and sinker, and I was still getting phone calls and emails several days later. It was both funny and effective particularly because this rumor about Disney coming to Panama has been running around for literally decades. Then over the weekend El Siglo ran a full-paged article about "Disnelandia" coming to Panama, which appeared in their newspaper yesterday, Sunday 5 April 2009, on page 22. The truly hilarious part of all this is that they quoted Jerin's bogus "article" basically word for word, and even included the "facts" about how much money was going to be spent, etc., as well as quoting the bogus "government sources." I guess they never got around to clicking the link at the end of the article. Oh well, live and learn (gotcha - wink). So much for checking your sources, eh? Anyway, happy April Fool's day everyone, even if it's a few days late. As usual, comments are welcomed.

Copyright 2009 by Don Winner for Panama-Guide.com. Go ahead and use whatever you like as long as you credit the source. Salud.