Mike Bartenhagen said:
In my opinion I think this was a good idea. I have a 3 year old son that uses a wheelchair and I am not sure why that would give him the right to go to the front of the line. Like his 2 sisters he can wait in line with everyone else but there are times when his chair won't fit through the regular line and from my experience Disney has done a very good job with the GAC to make sure he can get through every line.
As Sue said we don't want any special accomidations for him just some help to make sure we can get him around the park.
Mike
A little history lesson to go along with your good comments.
We have been coming to WDW since 1986. We started coming with a wheelchair in 1988.
At that point on time, there were much fewer lines that were totally wheelchair accessible and wheelchair users were often pulled out of line and put on the ride right away.
It wasn't a priviledge.
it wasn't a special "perK".
It wasn't so we wouldn't have to wait.
It
was because there was something about that ride that was not accessible, so we
could not board in the usual way.
in many cases, the queue started out wide enough to drive a wheelchair thru, but as the line progressed, it got narrower and narrower to force people into single file for easier/faster boarding. And once you got to the boarding area, there was a space big enough to walk thru, but it led to narrow gates that (you guessed it) were wide enough for people to stand single file for boarding. Some people who could walk thru those narrow areas, but had other reasons that the narrow lines didn't work for them.
Or, the regular line led to an area with steps. Wheelchairs don't do steps (or very steep ramps, either). Some people have disabilities that mean they don't do steps well either.
Many rides boarded in one place and ended in another place. Very efficient (keeps the boarding crowds away from the exit crowds), unless you are using a wheelchair and you are at the exit and your wheelchair is at the entrance.
How they handled that was to take people with wheelchairs out of the line at some point, have them board at the exit, which in most cases was the only place they physically were able to board. Sometimes, you couldn't board at the exit and you had to board at the entrance - but only if they had enough staff at the time you came to bring the wheelchair to the exit to be waiting for you to get off.
Or, maybe the moving walkways were not something you could do. The only way to stop them for boarding was/is at the exit.
Sometimes that meant they took you to board right away, while they had staff to help. Sometimes, it meant they told you to come back at a certain time, when they
would have better staff and
could accomidate you.
Everything was very efficient, at least for people who fit thru the line and could do stairs, and didn't have problems with the narrow queues and didn't have any special needs.
People who saw you looked, but it was mostly nice looks - with an attitude of "I'm glad WDW is doing something to make sure this family can enjoy their stay at WDW the same way my family is." Any comments made were along that same line -"You look like you are having fun."
A few people looked with pity or "I'm glad we don't have any wheelchair users in our family." Some of those people made comments too. They didn't feel so good, but at least the feeling behind them was not hostile.
Some of the people using a wheelchair or special accomidation felt "funny" about it. They could understand why this special "handling" was necessary - without the special handling, they could not ride at all.
But it was embarrassing at times and they wished they could just ride like everyone else. They knew a few other people were looking at them with pity, some with envy, but whatever it was, it didn't feel good when it happened.
There were very few wheelchair users or people with obvious special needs in the parks - we could go all day sometimes without seeing another person using a wheelchair if the parks were not busy.
Word got out that WDW
could and
would accomidate people with special needs. This was refreshing, since if you asked for accomidations at other places, you would often hear "NO. We can't do anything. Wheelchair users don't (fill in the blank with whatever you asked to do)."
We actually went to a local park, got in the line (driving a wheelchair past a CM who was standing at the entrance to the line - she waved to my DD as we entered the line), and got to a point where the line got too narrow for my DD's narrow pediatric wheelchair. Was there a way out without going thru the narrow point (and a turnstile at the end of it)? No, of course not. Wheelchair users were just supposed to know they couldn't ride it. No way out meant we had to back out of the line (which meant people had to back out of the line who had been behind us) until we got to a point where there was enough space to get past people without making them move and finally get out. We heard some comments as we left - some were pity at my child's need for a wheelchair. Some were pity at my "stupidity" for thinking my little girl might be able to ride.
So, it's no wonder that word got out that WDW was a good place to go if you had special needs.
As time went on, more people with special needs started going to WDW.
A few (those envious ones from before) heard there was "special treatment" and they wanted it too, even if they didn't have special needs.
Some people saw that and thought when they saw more people with special needs, that meant that more people were pretending to have special needs.
In the 1990s, they were mostly polite enough to just think that. As time went on, some felt a right to say it too (in the hearing of anyone they thought was pretending).
Laws changed (in the early 1990s) to make accessibility be built into things so that people with disabilities could use the same access as everyone else.
And, as time went on, rides and queues became Mainstream (which meant they were accessible to everyone, as much as possible). The Disney MGM Studio and AK were build with Mainstream Access. Rides that were renovated or added after the Studio opened were mainstreamed.
A lot of people were not aware of that and thought that anyone with special needs was getting special treatment at almost every attraction. Some remembered going with a grandma in a wheelchair in the early 1990s and getting into some rides thru the exit. Some think that's how all rides were (not just the ones they went on or the ones they remember). Some think that's how things still are - well, they aren't. The world (WDW, that is) changed.
So, some people spend their time in the parks judging who "should' be getting special "priviledges" and who shouldn't.
But, most special treatment is no longer there, the people who were using it never asked for or wanted it in the first place. It wasn't a priviledge; It was the only way that certain things were accessible.
As Mike said, "we don't want any special accomidations .... just some help to make sure we can get ... around the park."
.