Disney Takes A Disability Stand

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Back in May I blogged about the new career path some people with disabilities were taking.  They were becoming tour guides at Walt Disney World or Disneyland.  Basically, they would get paid by “able” bodied people to get them in front of the lines.  Disgusting?  Yes, but very hard to stop…..until now.  Disney has come out with a new rule that “visitors with special needs will be issued tickets with a return time and a shorter wait similar to the FastPass system that’s offered to everyone.”  Now let’s hear some of the responses:

  • “I can’t stand for a long time,” said Hardstaff, of Australia, who visited the Anaheim, Calif. park Monday. “You can imagine the line. You wait 20, 30 minutes — I can’ do it.”  (Interesting, because they do have wheelchairs to use.  Hmmm.)
  • Some families of children with epilepsy and autism criticized the change, saying their kids’ disabilities make it too hard for them to wait in standard lines. Rebecca Goddard takes her sons, age 4 and 6, to Disneyland once a week. Her sons have autism and can’t stand in lines longer than a few minutes before they start pushing other people. “My boys don’t have the cognition to understand why it’s going to be a long wait,” Goddard told the Register. “There are so few things for my boys that bring them utter joy and happiness – to mess with it just makes me sad.” (I actually don’t know how to even respond to this).

I give Disney credit for responding to a situation that was getting out of control.  It’s hard not to be politically correct.  Our government would never be able to do this and so this is why we have such disability abuse.