This video is a bit of a followup on the article shared in Thursday’s Disability Thinking Weekday, on recent changes to Disney’s “DAS Pass” for accommodating visitors with disabilities.
So it sounds like there are several strands in this tangle.
It’s helpful for me as a non-Disney person to understand that this is all specifically about not forcing people with disabilities and other medical conditions to wait in line, often in sweltering heat, to go on rides. It’s not about accessibility of the park at large or the rides. It’s all about the wait.
Disney is cracking down on non-disabled people who falsely use the DAS pass for purely selfish reasons — but in a way that will make necessary accommodations harder and more humiliating to get.
It’s going to use “trained cast members” to question requests for DAS passes. While the phrase “cast members” merely means staff in the Disney context, it still chills my blood to think of how badly it could turn out to “train” a handful of Disney employees and give them the job of deciding who *really* can and can’t tolerate waiting in those long lines.
It does seem like Disney’s concept of disability might be a little bit too skewed towards children, and / or towards people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their needs, with physical disabilities being neglected or misunderstood. This is a very delicate area. Lateral ableism and zero-sum competition between disability groups is a common and corrosive thing, not to be invoked or provoked lightly.
It is possible that most or all physically disabled people who got DAS passes before will get them still, by explaining their specific need for them. It might all work out.
On the other hand, I agree with Jem that it sets a potentially bad precedent for other businesses and public services — possibly leading to a day not far off when all of us with disabilities have to carry around credentialed certification of our needs in order to get any accommodation.
I don’t care for Disney at all. But it sure does seem to be an interesting test case for all sorts of social issues these days.
Have a restful weekend everyone!
You taught us to see both sides of the discussion, and Andrew and I tried to do it with this one. I imagine Disney is trying very hard to do the right thing and involving persons with disabilities to figure this out. Disney and so many other "service providers" deploy a variety of triage methods to vet someone's disability: are you disabled enough to qualify for this and that? It seems disabled people are constantly being "assessed and re-assessed.” Many of these assessments are demeaning, open memories, and force people to reveal information to "qualify" for something. These nearly constant assessments are partly due to people abusing the system, making it worse for all of us, especially those with legitimate needs, in many aspects of life. Moment 8:38 clearly shows us the importance of a Disney experience for many people.