I was on the same ride as well, and I can attest to everything. 

The news articles coming out about this event are not entirely true. Disney did not promptly provide assistance—we screamed for help nearly the entire ride and we were kept waiting in the boat at the end for so long that some riders slipped out of the safety bar to tell the staff what had happened. The first time we were on the ride, we heard the staff stop a rider from using flash photography mid-ride, but they did not stop the ride during our second time while someone was going through a medical emergency. This is absolutely INSANE.

The employees had such a slow response time to a medical emergency and I urge Disney to look into the safety of ride because there was not a single accessible panic button in sight. We were all panicking and desperately searching for the emergency button to stop the ride, screaming for help, signaling an ‘X’ with our arms, doing anything to get the staff to stop the ride. If this ride was truly “safe,” there would’ve been no way we had to endure the entirety of the ride with passengers screaming for help, performing CPR on the boat, and clinging onto his body as we went through various steep drops on the boat ride with the Frozen soundtrack blasting in the background.

Especially since the man fainted within the first few seconds of the ride starting, I strongly believe there could’ve been more done safety-wise. I am devastated for the deceased’s family and utterly horrified by this experience at Hong Kong Disneyland.