On Feb. 12, 2024, the Disney-focused blog Mouse Trap News published an article claiming that pop singer Taylor Swift and NFL tight end Travis Kelce had paid $3.5 million to rent out Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World for a day to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl win. The article began:
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Renting Out Disney World
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are renting out Disney World for a day. This is to celebrate the Chief's Super Bowl win. According to reports, it will cost them $3.5 million to rent the Magic Kingdom out for one day.
A source familiar with the matter shares that the two will invite 10 of their closest friends to enjoy an empty Magic Kingdom with them. We expect Mama Kelce, Jason Kelce, Patrick Mahomes, Ice Spice, and Andy Reid to be among their special guests.
The story was also shared on Mouse Trap News's TikTok page, where it gained more than 1 million views and 68,000 likes. We found many users commenting about what they perceived to be a relatively low price to rent the park and how they wished they had the money to do the same, suggesting they believed the story was real.
Unfortunately for readers who made that assumption, the story was not real. Mouse Trap News is a blog that describes all of its articles as fictitious and satirical in nature, and this article does not have any basis in reality. The site's about page explains more about the content it produces:
What is Mouse Trap News?
Mouse Trap News is the world's best satire and parody site. We write fake stories about Disney Parks stuff. From Disney Park announcements to Disney Hotel and resort news to made-up Disney partnerships, you can be assured that anything you read here is not true, real, or accurate, but it is fun. So technically our slogan The Moused Trusted Name in Disney News isn't true, but we thought it was creative and funny, so we are running with it.
Snopes also noticed the use of an AI-generated image in the article supposedly showing Kelce and Swift in front of the Cinderella Castle at the park. We identified the image as AI-generated first by gut instinct — the contrast between the blurred background and clear foreground was a bit unnatural, the color scheme of the photograph itself felt inaccurate and the man in the photo did not resemble Kelce. To confirm this, we reverse image searched the image on Google and TinEye, and found no public matches for the image from reliable sources. We felt that this was enough to conclude that the image was AI-generated.
Given the massive number of people following Swift and Kelce's relationship, the two have been subject to many false claims. For instance, this particular Mouse Trap News article also mentioned that Kelce and Swift are supposedly planning a Disney wedding (this claim was also satirical and originated from Mouse Trap News).
Snopes has fact-checked several other claims about the pair, including that they had announced they would leave the United States if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election or that chef and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay had "booted" the couple from his Hell's Kitchen Las Vegas restaurant.
For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.