Mary Benhart’s family gushed about Disney World’s willingness to accommodate people with disabilities in a company announcement last year.
“You can actually relax as a special needs family,” Benhart said, sitting next to her husband, who uses a wheelchair, and their two young children. “That’s all.”
But those same accommodations that made visits so magical no longer exist. Disney strengthened its Disability Access Service in April to exclude all conditions except developmental disorders such as autism, citing an unsustainable increase in applications for the program.
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Benhart and her husband once qualified for the service, which allows families to sit outside the line for the posted wait time for a ride before taking an express lane to the front. Now, neither.
The changes at the Florida and California parks have tarnished Disney’s reputation for disability inclusion. Its accommodations were once heralded as the best in the industry by people like Barbara Burgess-Lefebvre, a theme park researcher at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
A new Burgess-Lefebvre survey reveals that 90% of families who have used Disney’s Disability Access Service now report being much more anxious before and during park visits as they must repeatedly justify their need for accommodations. which were previously granted with few questions. asked. Thirty-five percent of the 300 people surveyed have decided to skip Disney altogether.
“We are listening to our guests and have taken steps to clarify how to use our many accommodation options,” a Disney spokesperson said.
Disney has a full list of lodging options on their website. The spokesperson said park employees are receiving “additional information to better assist our guests.” And those who qualify for the Disabled Access Service now have 240 days before they have to apply again. Previously, those deemed eligible for the service had to reapply every 120 days.
“They used to say, ‘Okay, how can we help you?’ We want this experience to be magical for you,’” Burgess-Lefebvre said. “There were certainly people who were cheating. But we can’t worry about the people who cheated. We have to take care of the people who need it.”
Was there widespread abuse of the system?
In the spring of this year, Disney had a problem: Its Lightning Lane service, which allows guests to skip the regular line for a fee, had become overcrowded, worsening long wait times for popular attractions.
The company’s generous Disability Access Service was part of the problem, said Len Testa, a Disney expert and founder of Touring Plans, which maps wait times at popular theme parks. Applications for the program have more than tripled in the last five years, according to Disney.
In fact, Lightning Lane has emptied since Disney limited who can use its more generous handicap accommodations. Testa’s conservative estimate is that Lightning Lane became 30% to 50% less crowded this summer.
To Testa, that’s evidence that people who didn’t really need the service were using it and clogging up the expedited line.
For visitors with disabilities and their advocates, there may be another story.
Influencers with disabilities like Sarah Todd Hammer, 23, of Atlanta, praised Disney’s inclusion ahead of the policy changes. Hammer believes there was strong brand loyalty among people with disabilities, which drove more people to make the trip.
“If Lightning Lane was 60% (people using the Disabled Access Service), that doesn’t mean people were abusing it,” he said. “It means that disabled people knew this system worked well.”
There’s also the reality that people with disabilities make up one of the largest minority groups in the world, Hammer said. In the United States, 1 in 4 people has a disability. The most common impairments affect cognition and mobility, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Tampa Bay Times interviewed three park guests who visited Disney World after losing eligibility for the Disabled Access Service. Each described humiliation, anxiety and inconsistent access to alternative accommodations.
“It feels like another loss.”
Cheyenne Steffen, 55, from Saskatchewan, Canada, struggled to return to Disney World after her husband died in 2017. They had gone to celebrate their first wedding anniversary and kept the tradition going for a decade. It is the place of his happiest memories, he said.
When Steffen mustered up the courage to return, he felt that joy again amid the sweet aromas of popcorn and cotton candy of Animal Kingdom. It encouraged her, even as her autoimmune condition deteriorated, often leaving her with about four hours of energy a day. At Disney, with its generous facilities, he felt unencumbered.
Steffen bought a house near Disney to spend half the year and an annual pass. This fall, he was denied the park’s handicap access service for the first time via a Zoom call. A Disney representative suggested he approach employees at each attraction and ask them about accommodations for which he has received blanket approval in the past: a return time that would allow him to use Lightning Lane after an attraction’s posted wait time.
Steffen approached his first ride, Frozen Ever After, on his mobility scooter with hesitation. He was denied handicap service at the park, told the cast member outside, and told to ask for a return time.
“What is your concern about being in line?” the park employee asked.
“What do you mean what is my concern?” Steffen remembers responding. “My concern is that I can’t be in line.”
Steffen knew that waiting in a 90-minute line would exhaust her and increase her risk of fainting. But she felt the gazes of other park visitors on her. Embarrassed, she did not want to reveal her medical history out loud.
Then she was rejected. He managed to get a return time for a ride that day.
The next day, he produced a card certifying his disability and needing accommodations. He said he needed frequent rest areas and might have to leave the lines quickly. A cast member even asked him to read the card out loud.
Not all attractions offer the same amenities to guests who don’t qualify for Disability Access, according to Disney’s accessibility page.
But Steffen didn’t know that. There is no list posted on Disney’s website detailing which attractions offer return times for people with disabilities. Instead, she felt stung again and again.
“I always have a lot of praise about Disney, and here they are being too hostile and defiant toward me,” Steffen said. “It feels like another loss. I’m here because I feel closer to my husband when I’m here. “Not having that Disney experience I feel like it’s the last part of my marriage that I’m losing.”
“Living a disabled life is already exhausting”
Benhart, a resident of Orlando, Florida, could see problems with every alternative accommodation he was offered when he was denied Disability Access Service.
I didn’t want to buy Lightning Lane passes, which can cost almost $40 per person each day. That service only allows guests to use the expedited line for a given trip once per day. But his family repeats the trips that are most accessible to them, he said.
She couldn’t just have her children wait in line for her and her husband before meeting them at the front. They are too young to have cell phones. And none of the adults in the family wanted to get into a standard line and risk having a medical emergency.
When Benhart approached his first assistant to ask her return time, she already felt tears coming to her eyes. Fortunately, the employee was friendly, he remembers. Other attractions, such as Kilimanjaro Safaris, already had special lanes for wheelchair users.
But it took just one pushback from a park employee for the magic to be ruined, Benhart said.
“You feel totally vulnerable because you’re baring your soul to these people you don’t know with no privacy,” Benhart said. “Now when we come in, we don’t know if we’ll be able to put things together.”
The family of annual passholders has reduced visits to once a week. And each visit is shorter. Sometimes the family doesn’t try to ride.
“Living a disabled life is already exhausting,” Benhart said. “The anxiety for us is through the roof.”
Appropriate accommodation
Hammer decided to document her September visit to Disney World’s Epcot with her mother after her Disability Access Service application was denied.
When she was denied, she and her mother could not get a refund for the full price of their stay in Orlando. Disney asks guests to request the service no more than 30 days after their visit to the park.
Hammer has a rare condition called acute flaccid myelitis that causes partial paralysis in his arms, impaired body temperature regulation, reduced lung function and an increased need to go to the bathroom, among other complications. He can walk short distances, but cannot push a wheelchair.
He requested accommodation at only one attraction in the park: Spaceship Earth. She was told that drop-off times were only offered to people who used wheelchairs and other mobility aids.
She spent the rest of her time snacking at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival and informing her thousands of followers with disabilities about her experience.
Even if more rides were generous in accommodating those who requested it, people with disabilities are still in a difficult situation, he said.
“I feel like even if they had appropriate, standardized accommodations at every attraction, it’s still not a solution to have the disabled person ask for their needs to be met at every attraction,” he said.
Chip Byers, who chairs the disability advisory board in Orange County, Florida, focuses particularly on the distinction between accommodations required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (often reduced to wheelchair ramps and anything else that a company deems necessary to ensure equal access). and “appropriate accommodations.”
Appropriate accommodations address the specific needs of each person with a disability, Byers said. They cannot be reduced to a list of qualifying conditions or a handful of generalized adaptations, as large corporations like Disney often offer.
The problem extends beyond theme parks like Disney, Byers said. He is working with lawmakers on a state bill that would require businesses to work with guests and employees to find suitable accommodations for each person. He hopes it will be considered in 2026.
“What I’m trying to do is give a person with a disability the right to determine what would be an appropriate accommodation for them,” he said. “Being a person with a disability is difficult…because of the way the world treats you. You have to constantly fight for yourself.”
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