Tuesday Topic: DISNEYLAND DISABILITY ACCESS: MY ON-SITE REPORT

We Walked the Walk

Jonathan (28, DS), my daughter Becca and I went to Disneyland Friday. I want to keep this blog upbeat, as my blogs always are. So I’m not going to say “The new system stinks,” or, “The new system is a non-system,” (though of course I just did), but I’m going to give you some essential facts and a suggestion on how to use the system to your best advantage. And in the meantime, I advise you to keep signing petitions and doing whatever you can to force Disney to make adjustments to this new non-system (oops; did I just say that?). I’ll start with the most positive suggestion first:

Best the System

Here is my absolute bottom-line advice for you: Use the Disability Access Service in tandem with Fast Pass. 

There. That’s it. That’s the best you can do at the moment. You double-time the fast pass system essentially, because the new Disability Access Card is just a fast pass card with 10 minutes shaved off. So use the standard Fast Pass system along with the Disability card. Is that complicated? You bet it is. But it’s what we have to work with at the moment.

Disability Access Service Card

Benefit: you get to enter the fast pass lane 10 minutes before everyone else. So if everyone else has to wait 60 minutes to get in, you can zip right back in only 50 minutes! Whoa! What a deal. (Oops. Sarcasm.)

That’s it?

That’s it. Oh, and you don’t have to use the card right away; you can wait until later in the day. (I was actually told this by a cast member; but since you can’t use the card again until you’ve visited the first attraction, this would mean, what, two attractions in one day at Disneyland? Seriously, now…)

What This Looks Like in Reality

You’ve just joined the ranks of everyone else at D-land, except that, as I suggested, you can double-time the Fast Pass system by using both systems: Disability Access and Fast Pass. For this, you might want to appoint an adult in your party to be The Scheduler. Very complicated, trying to time a 50-minute or 60-minute return time with squeezing in another attraction in between. The other attraction either has to be (a) a not-so-popular attraction with a short wait time, or (b) an attraction you’ve already gotten a Fast Pass for and timed it exactly right.

This is obviously very complicated, and Jonathan, Becca, and I basically stumbled around a lot and saw fewer attractions because of this. Next time we go (in a year), if this non-system is still in place, we’ll know better how to work it.

How to Get the Card

As before with the Guest Assistance Pass, you go to City Hall, stand in line, and plead your case once you get inside. But now with the new system, they take your child’s picture and issue a card with that picture on it. They’ll ask you what attraction you want to visit first (you gotta know this before you go to City Hall) and will enter that attraction in your card along with a time to show up. Once you enter the attraction, they will cross it out , and after the ride, someone in your party has to go to a “Guest Relations” kiosk (there are 8 in Disneyland) and sign up for the next hopeful attraction. Your child does not need to go with that person; the photo card is enough.

Because this routine is so stressful, Disney passes out free margaritas to all parents of kids with disabilities at each kiosk…

Yeah, right.

One Bright Note

Jonathan and Becca in a Happy Disney Moment

I was perhaps a bit obnoxious at City Hall with the cast member there, saying I wanted to see her supervisor when I learned that Disneyland was closing at 7:00 that night because it was sold out to a private Halloween Party.The California Adventure Park would remain open. For us folks who don’t go to D-land that often, we don’t know about stuff like this: that on certain days in certain months, the Disneyland park closes early for special events. This means no Fantasmic performance (a favorite with Jonathan), etc. Advice: check out Disney’s site well in advance to see if there is something going on that you want to avoid, so you can make informed scheduling arrangements.

But then came a happy moment: since I was not taking this “park-closing-at-7” thing gracefully, on top of the new disability program, the staffer agreed to help us out with a “return” problem. Jonathan’s primary purpose in going to D-Land is to visit the Haunted Mansion. Twice. One ride right after the other, no stopping: out the exit and in the entrance. This doesn’t work with the new pass system. So the staffer called her manager and had him give us two freebies: two passes to the Haunted Mansion with no specific time listed. Open-ended. Jonathan rode the ride, walked out the exit and went right back in, one happy camper.

So that’s it…this should be all the essential information you need right now. And keep petitioning, etc. A good place to start with that is the petition still going on here at change.org.

Here’s hoping that one day soon Disneyland will once again be “the happiest place on earth” for our kids-