Using a Wheelchair at the Disney Parks

In this week's episode, Jared shares with us his experience renting and using a wheelchair in the Disney parks. 

Transcript

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In this week's episode of A Dryer Dose of Disney, Jared shares with us his experience renting and using a wheelchair in the Disney Parks. Intro Music Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared dryer. And today we are going to be continuing an old series about disabilities DAS and the park. And we're going to be talking about. Navigating the parks with a wheelchair versus a scooter. And I know that this is an important topic to a lot of people. Some people. I may be mobility impaired and may already be in a wheelchair, but there are a lot of people that go to the parks on a day to day basis that need to use a chair to just survive the day at the park. So we're going to talk about our experience doing exactly just that and what we saw in the two different parks that we went to during that week. So we've got a really fun episode for you guys today to talk and highlight some of the differences that you're going to notice if you ever do need to use a chair. But we're going to tell you what our experience was like. Before we dive into it, though, I want to ask wherever you're watching this, or if you're listening to us on the podcast. Go ahead and find that pause button and find this subscribe button. So that way you're going to get this content delivered into your inbox each and every single week as we continue to upload episodes. Now, currently we're not doing them every single week because we've got 90 episodes out there now with tons of tips and tricks. But as we continue to upload new episodes, you're going to want to be alerted to those when they come out. So you're definitely going to want to find that subscribe button. Second, if there are any tips or tricks that are saving you time or money, we do ask, find us over at Patreon and support the show. That's in the links in the description down below. So go ahead and find us down there. And by supporting the show, you're keeping us going and keeping these tips and tricks flowing into your inbox or wherever you're consuming this information. And I have to say with over 90 episodes, we've got some pretty cool tips or tricks that are out there. So you're definitely going to want to find all those and support the show. And at Patrion. We also had our highest tier have our biggest ever Disney tip or trick. And that's available. Like I said, only at the highest tier. And we wanted to keep that out of the general public. So if you're supporting the show at that level, you're going to get access to our absolute best Disney temper trick. That's going to help you skip the lines at any of the Disney parks. So check that out. And then we've got our, I can do this all day. Tip of the day gear. And it's a cool logo with obviously captain America's shield on there and then the Disney emblem in the middle. So go ahead and check that out at Etsy. And that's also in the links below. But let's dive into it. So we have the opportunity this past summer to be out in Orlando at our dryer dose of Disney condo, which you can also rent. On your next Disney vacation. So you just find that as well. And the links below for VRBO or Airbnb. Whichever is your preferred platform. We're on both sites there and it's less expensive than the hotels. You're going to have a lot more room. We have three bedrooms. So our daughter obviously has her own space in her own room. My wife and I have our own room and bathroom, so it's really nice to stay at the condo. And we're only two exits from Disney. So it's really quick. Does zip in and out of that, but go check that out. But while staying there the summer. We had my mother-in-law come and visit us for a period of about a week and it was great having her out in Orlando. It was her first time at the parks. And we definitely loved seeing all the sites with her and getting her to try all the food and taking her on all the rides. And in fact, the two parks that we went to were magic kingdom and Epcot. So she had a chance to write Tron and guardians of the galaxy cosmic rewind. And she said, how much she absolutely loved. The bigger rollercoasters and how much fun she thought that they were. And she started asking us for bigger rides. So we know next time she comes to visit, we are going to be taking her to universal and islands of adventure, specifically to get on the Velocicoaster. And if it's next summer, who knows, maybe epic universe will be open. So we're really excited about that. And there's so many cool things coming with epic universe. So you're definitely gonna wanna stay tuned in our podcast. We'll be giving out updates as we learn more about epic universe and the cool things that are happening over there. Like I said that we took my mother-in-law to the parks for two days. She's in decent health. She's obviously worked full grown adults with a 13 year old child and she's older than us. So you can only imagine. Kind of what age range and bracket she's in there. But we knew that since we're very used to going to the parks, this is something we do all the time and we're very fast at the parts, meaning we're there for rope drop. We walk very quickly between rides. We want to minimize our wait times as best that we can and get through the parts as fast as we can. Meaning we ride a lot of rides usually before one or two in the afternoon. And because we have annual passes, we may knock out an entire park in the early afternoon and get back to our condo and go relax at the hot tub or the pool and just. Chill for the rest of the evening. So we move very quickly through the parks. So we knew that this would be a challenge for her to keep up with us. And of course she doesn't know exactly where we're going. When we say, go here, go there. So we thought it's a good opportunity for her to relax just a little bit and to get her either a wheelchair or motorized cart. So we knew we had the two options. We checked it out. You can rent these at any of the parks, including Disney Springs, and that makes it super easy to get through the Disney locations. Now, again, like I said, we would love to take her to universal. We did not go to universal this time, so I can't speak to that. Maybe that'll be on a future episode. And we can give you an update of what it was like over at universal. So I'm speaking today to just Disney. So the two options are you have a push wheelchair. This is your normal manual wheelchair. Those run about $12 a day. So not too expensive and you do get it for the whole day. They do ask that you do turn that back into them at the front of the parks at the conclusion of your day. So please do so that they don't have to go chase them all down. Or your second option is a motorized cart, which is over $80 a day. And I was shocked at the price difference between the two there. And knowing what I've seen in the parks. Most people end up running the motorized carts. That actually surprised me. I would've thought the price would have been a little bit more reasonable knowing how many carts I do see in the park, but obviously big difference there. So our podcasts, we highly recommend doing the push version of the wheelchair. It's not difficult to push with the big wheels. It's very easy to maneuver through the parks. And it's obviously much, much cheaper. And because like I said before, she'd never been. And we move very quickly. We thought. It'll be a lot easier if we're the ones pushing her through the park and that way we can drive her the way that we want to go versus her trying to motorize a cart that may not be moving as quickly as we are and her trying to figure out exactly where we wanted to go. So we figured it would be a lot easier to do that. Push chair. And in all honesty, it was, there were numerous times that we would be moving through the park very quickly, trying to get to a ride at a certain point in time. And when we would do we would see other people, motorized carts going as quickly as they could and we'd be passing them. We definitely recommend the push wheelchair. It is obviously more work, but if you've got some able adults in your party that can push a chair, then it's going to be a lot easier to do than waiting for them on the motorized cart. So we were able to move fast. We maneuvered the cart crowds and it worked out really well. Additionally though. Like having a stroller. So if you listen to our episode early on in the podcast, we talked about the top 10 things to bring with you to the parks. One of those is a stroller. If you have little kids. And the reason is you can pack that stroller full of things. It's very easy. The store, all your bags, all your ponchos, our rain jackets there. If you have snacks or water bottles, it's easier to use a stroller versus carrying a backpack all day, especially in the Florida heat. And we found that when we were using the wheelchair, it was the same kind of story. So we brought a backpack and we would just put the backpack over the two bars in the back that you hold onto the two handles and let it just hang there all day. Instead of hanging on our back. And because, like I said, it's the middle of summer out in Florida in July. It was very hot. It's very humid. You're always sweaty all day. Not carrying that backpack full of the ponchos, rain, jackets, water bottles, things like that definitely made our day easier. Now it is a, trade-off not carrying the backpack versus pushing the wheelchair. But I'll say to make it easy on her and the convenience of all that doing the wheelchair with the backpack hanging on the back worked out really well for us. Now. I know a lot of people like I said, have struggled with either mobility or other physical issues and we did have a big change to DAS. So the disability accessibility service. At Disney this year. So if you listen to our prior episode we had some friends on that struggled with diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, and they could not wait in lines for the extended periods of time. And may have an issue with the blood sugar or things like that happening. So we talked about how DAS worked on those episodes and how you use DAS. And they've since changed the rule. So the new rules are the only people that qualify for DAS now are people that have like an autism or a sensory type issue where they're just not able to wait in line or it'll cause a reaction. For people that have mobility issues now. So if you're dealing with somebody that either has a hurt leg, broken leg, something like that, maybe they recently had surgery or even in cases where people just can't walk that far due to their physical condition or their weight. Disney has decided you no longer qualify for DAS. And I know that's highly controversial. There's a lot of people very upset about that, but I will say having used a wheelchair for two days in the parks and navigating the parks. I actually like this better. I think that people were using DAS in excess, meaning that there were tons of people coming through the lightning lane. With DAS that could have, like we did. Waited in the traditional queues, just by sitting in a wheelchair. So yeah, if their leg was broken or something like that, and they rode in a wheelchair for the day They're physically capable of waiting. The 20 minutes for the ride or however long that queue may be. Versus giving them the opportunity to check in go do another ride, come back 20 minutes later and go right to the front of the line. So I do feel that people were taking advantage of the DAS system. I think that it was slowing down the general queues. I will say the summer when we were out there because of the changes, it felt like the general queues were moving a little bit quicker than they typically did. And the wait times were shorter. And that made our days a lot more pleasant. Definitely. So if you're using a wheelchair, you don't qualify for DAS anymore. And like I said, I know people are really disappointed about that, but let me reassure you that it wasn't bad at all. We were able to navigate any of the queues that we needed to with the wheelchair and my mother-in-law in it. They're obviously all wide enough for that and easy enough to maneuver for that. And throughout the parks, there's a very few Hills actually. So when we, like I said, the two parks, we went to our magic kingdom and Epcot. Over at magic kingdom, you've got a pretty good hill and ramp going up to Tron, but once you're up top, it's easy to navigate the rest of the ride. With the wheelchair and you wait in the general queue, you go all the way up to the front. And then when you're going to board, they pull you off to the side and they just ask you a simple question as to whether you are comfortable riding in the motorcycle fashion, or if you want one of these standards set up seats in the back of the rollercoaster. And for her, she said, she'd feel more comfortable sitting up straight. So we waited for one car to go through. And the next car that came, had that seat in the back, and she was able to ride there with my daughter and I wrote in the row right in front of them. And it was a great time and she really enjoyed the right. So like I said, they did very well at accommodating, her and making it easy for her to maneuver the park. So back to the Hills though, like I would say over at Tron, you've got a hill over there. You've got a little bit of a slight incline going over by Tiana's to get over that bridge towards Tiana's. And splash mountain, but for the most part through the rest of the park there aren't many ramps. There aren't many Hills or inclines over at magic kingdom. So it was very easy to navigate. We did pirates of the Caribbean. We did the haunted mansion in fact, because we were there and like our logo says, I can do this all day. We were there from morning till night. We stayed for the fireworks. We rode every ride in the park. We saw every show in the park. We had a great time in the park and it was super easy to navigate all day with the wheelchair. So I definitely recommend it now over at Epcot. Again, you do have a little bit more Hills. Going into some of the different lands or areas. So going into the land pavilion itself, where Soarin and living with the land is you do have to go up quite a bit of a hill to get into there. There's also another one when you're going from the England land over to Paris. So getting up over that bridge, you do have to go up a hill there and there's a couple other little ones throughout the park, but again, Nothing too difficult. We were able to maneuver it and manage it just fine. And it was a very easy day for us. So we really enjoyed that. And I'll say she enjoyed it. She is able to get up and move and that's one thing we'll talk about here is how the cast members interact with you. She is able to get up and move just fine. She just can't stay on her feet and walk that far in any given day. And we're doing anywhere from our highest day Evers. Up in the 20,000 step range. Most days we're in the 12 to 16, 17,000 step range. And she's just not used to that. She can't do that. She can't go from rope drop first thing in the morning at magic kingdom to staying all the way through the firework show and then navigating your way out of the parking onto the monorail and back over to the parking lot. She's not able to do that and stay on her feet all day. So that's why we did the wheelchair now. Back to the rides and the queuing. We were able to get through every single queue and go just any other person would. Through the standard queue there were only a couple of call-outs that were a little bit different over at Epcot spaceship earth. When we went to go get on spaceship earth, they actually took our names and similar to DAS they scanned our park passes or our watches. And said, you can come back in about 10 minutes and go to the exit and they'll bring you on through the exit. So we ended up doing that. So that one was very much like the old DAS system. Over at magic kingdom. The only different one was it's a small world and they brought you in through the exit. And if you've been in there that there's ramps all the way down. We just came in through the exit side so they can ask us properly if she could if she was accessible and able to get onto the boat and transfer herself, or if she needed the special boat where you wheel her on. So they do have that option over at it's a small world. So if you do have somebody who is unable to transfer and get out of their device or their chair, then you are able to ride in a specific boat at it's a small world, but since she's able to transfer, we told them she could transfer. Transfer and they got us on the next available boat and we were able to move on from there. They were, the cast members were great. It was awesome to work with them on this. And I will say the cast members are very attentive. Meaning, they saw us coming. So as we're approaching a queue and driving her wheelchair towards the queue, you could see the cast member, they would make eye contact with you. And they would ask you before you even got in, are you able to transfer? So for example, if you're getting onto Peter Pan's flight, you know that this is a moving conveyor belt in Orlando, and you're going to have to step into the ship to take the ride to Neverland and do all that. So they asked, are you able to transfer? And of course she said, Yes. So they said, come on in this way. And they got us all situated. So they were great about making sure that they were proactive. Directing us in the right direction and asking us. If she was able to do this ride or not. So it was great. We absolutely loved it and she loved it. She said that everyone was really polite to her. Know that the one question you're going to get the most, if you're in a wheelchair mobility device, is, are you able to transfer? Because a lot of the rides do require that you get out of the chair to get onto the ride. So that you're able to go in and enjoy that. For our, I can do this all day tip of the day. I'm going to stand by one of our recent episodes where we said in order to make your day magical, if you have a stroller or a wheelchair, Please, whatever you don't take them into the stores because they have a tendency though. They fit they're very tight and they have a tendency to clog up walkways and lanes that people are using. And that if you're in the store, you've got people going in every direction. Then all of a sudden you have a traffic jam and nobody can get out of there. We said that in that episode, I'm going to stand by that today and say, that is my recommendation is if you do have somebody who is accessible and they're able to transfer and get out of the chair and they're able to maneuver, anytime you're looking to go into a store, have them get out of the chair, have them walk themselves through the store. If you need to, you can fold up the chair. That works really easily. And then you can just push it out and send it over to the side, like where the other strollers are. But that made our time in the stores much more enjoyable. And the reason I say that is that there's a handful of times and you guys know, and are probably familiar with that. When you come off a ride. Sometimes they will dump you into a store. And so there were a handful of times that we would come off a ride, she'd get back in her chair and we would wheel her out. And now all of a sudden we're in a store. I will say those were the most frustrating parts of my day. Pushing her and it's just because people don't see you, they're not watching. And they just, they clog up aisles. They stand in front of you and there's no way to get around them. So if you've got a, whether it's a shopping rack with some clothes on it over here, or a display thing over to your other side, there's nowhere else to go. You have to go through the middle. And if someone's standing there looking at stuff, you have to wait for them to move, to get by. You. Can't just sneak by. And they, like I said, most people didn't notice you, so you'd have to wait a minute and maybe say, excuse me, And eventually they'd noticed you maybe move to the side and then you could get out. But this would happen multiple times in the same store, trying to get out of one store. So it definitely made it much more difficult for us to get out. And like I said, we would prefer to just not even have the wheelchair in there. So when we would go into a store. And want to go shopping. We would leave the wheelchair off to the side as much as we could and just walk through the store just to make it easy and able to get around and maneuver through the other people. So that is our tip. We recommend definitely try not to take them in the store if at all possible, but we know that's not a hundred percent feasible, especially if you're coming off a ride. Do your best navigate just be patient with other people and hopefully you're able to get around them. But with that, we wish you a magical week as you're planning your next trip. And if somebody in your family has an accessibility issue, do know that there are wheelchairs available for you. And they're a great tool to use. We've talked about other people in our family that may just get really tired and it may be something that's great for them to rent as well. So with that, we'll talk to you guys next time. Bye. Bye. Exit Music