Disney is accused of denying special theme park tickets to disabled children. The company is cracking down on show-offs who abuse the tickets to jump the queue at rides and attractions without paying extra, a report says.
Paula Roland, a Florida woman, said she and her husband took their 8-year-old son, Noah, to Walt Disney World in Orlando on June 5.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the family was trying to get a Disability Access Service (DAS) card for Noah, a non-speaking autistic child diagnosed with sensory processing disorder.
With a DAS pass, Noah, who can hardly stand to wait in line for more than 15 minutes, would have to wait less time at the attraction entrance.
But Disney officials at Magic Kingdom rejected Noah’s request for the DAS pass, according to the Times.
According to Roland, after her son entered the amusement park without a pass, he suffered from sensory overload and had a nervous breakdown.
She told the Times that she spent most of the day trying to calm him down in the gift shop.
“It’s hard to get back on your feet from that point,” Roland told the Times. “We had the worst day ever there.”
Rosie Keiser, a resident of the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, told the Times she was “crying and shaking” when she was asked “deeply personal” questions by a Disneyland employee in Anaheim during a July 14 visit to the theme park.
Keiser said she eventually managed to get the DAS pass, but she was “one of the lucky ones.”
“You have to beg for this service,” Keiser, who became permanently disabled in 2009 and has had difficulty leaving her home since then, told the Times.
The DAS passport system was developed by Disney in 2013.
Passholders can use it to skip lines and gain free access to the Lightning Lane service, where non-passholders pay up to $35 and wait between five and 25 minutes to enter an attraction.
A Disney spokesman told the Times that the company had been forced to make changes to how the passes were issued due to excessive use.
Earlier this year, both Disneyland and Disney World restricted eligibility for DAS passes, which were made available only to a “small percentage of guests who are unable to wait in line at a convention for an extended period of time due to a developmental disability such as autism or similar,” according to updated company policies.
Under the old rule, park visitors were eligible if they “have difficulty enduring extended wait times in a convention queue due to a disability.”
Disney said the number of DAS Pass users has tripled since 2019, but declined to comment on whether the company felt the system was being abused.
Several park visitors have reported that able-bodied visitors exploited the system to avoid Lightning Lane fees by claiming a disability.
In 2013, NBC News conducted an undercover investigation that found that holders of DAS disability passes were selling them on the black market to able-bodied park visitors who wanted to skip the lines.
Shannon McEvoy, a travel agent in Florida, told the Times that prospective clients have asked her if they can apply for a DAS pass even though they are not disabled.
“Healthy people have been contacting me and asking how they can get a DAS service pass,” McEvoy told the Times.
The Post has asked Disney for comment.
