Disney cut back accommodations. What’s it like to attend while disabled?

By Shauna Muckle, Tampa Bay Times (TNS)

Mary Benhart’s family gushed about Disney World’s willingness to accommodate people with disabilities in an ad for the company last year.

“You can actually relax as a special-needs family,” Benhart said, perched beside her husband, who uses a wheelchair, and their two young sons. “It’s everything.”

But those same accommodations that made visits so magical are now gone. Disney tightened its disability access service in April to exclude all conditions but developmental disorders like autism, citing an unsustainable increase in requests for the program.

Benhart and her husband once both qualified for the service, which allows families to sit outside the line for the duration of a ride’s listed wait time before taking an express lane to the front. Now, neither do.

The changes at Florida and California parks have marred Disney’s reputation for disability inclusiveness. Its accommodations were once heralded as the best in the industry by people like Barbara Burgess-Lefebvre, a theme parks researcher at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

A new survey by Burgess-Lefebvre reveals that 90% of families who have used Disney’s disability access service now report being much more anxious before and during visits to the parks, as they must repeatedly justify their need for accommodations that 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 accommodation options on its website. The spokesperson said park employees are receiving “additional information to better assist our guests.” And those that qualify for the disability access service now have 240 days before they need to reapply. Previously, those deemed eligible for the service had to reapply every 120 days.

“They used to say, ‘OK, how can we help you? We want this experience to be magical for you,’” Burgess-Lefebvre said. “Certainly there were people that were cheating. But we can’t worry about the people that were cheating. We have to take care of the people that need it.”

Was there widespread abuse of the system?

By spring this year, Disney had a problem: its lightning lane service, which allows parkgoers to bypass the regular line for a fee, had become overcrowded, worsening long wait times for popular rides.

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. Requests for the program had more than tripled in the past five years, according to Disney.

The lightning lane has in fact emptied since Disney limited who can use its most generous disability accommodation. Testa’s conservative estimate is that the lightning lane became 30% to 50% less crowded by this summer.

To Testa, that’s evidence that people who didn’t really need the service were using it and clogging the expedited line.

To disabled parkgoers and advocates, there may be another story.

Disabled influencers like Sarah Todd Hammer, 23, from Atlanta raved about Disney’s inclusiveness before the policy changes. Hammer thinks there was strong brand loyalty among people with disabilities, spurring more of them to make the trip.

“If 60% of the lightning lane was (people using the disability access service), that doesn’t mean people were abusing it,” she said. “It means disabled people knew this system worked well.”

There’s also the reality that people with disabilities constitute one of the largest minority groups in the world, Hammer said. In the United States, 1 in 4 people are disabled. The most common impairments affect cognition and mobility, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Tampa Bay Times interviewed three parkgoers who have visited Disney World after losing eligibility for the disability access service. Each described humiliation, anxiety and inconsistent access to alternative accommodations.

“It feels like another loss”

Cheyenne Steffen, 55, of Saskatchewan, Canada, had to work her way up to returning to Disney World after her husband died in 2017. They had gone for their first wedding anniversary and maintained the tradition for a decade. It’s the site of their happiest memories, she said.

When Steffen summoned the courage to return, she felt that joy again amid Animal Kingdom’s sweet scents of popcorn and cotton candy. It buoyed her, even as her autoimmune condition deteriorated, often leaving her with around four hours of energy per day. At Disney, with its generous accommodations, she felt unencumbered.

Steffen bought a house near Disney to spend half her year and an annual pass. This fall, she was denied the park’s disability access service for the first time via Zoom call. A Disney representative suggested she approach employees at each ride and ask for the accommodation she received blanket approval for in the past: a return time that would allow her to use the lightning lane after a ride’s posted wait time.

Steffen approached her first ride, Frozen Ever After, in her mobility scooter with hesitation. She was denied the park’s disability service, she told the cast member standing out front, and had been told to ask for a return time.

“What is your concern with being in the line?” the park employee asked.

“What do you mean, what’s my concern?” Steffen remembers replying. “My concern is I can’t be in the line.”

Steffen knew waiting in a 90-minute line would exhaust her, heightening her risk of fainting. But she felt other parkgoers’ eyes on her. Ashamed, she didn’t want to divulge her medical history out loud.

So she was turned away. She managed to get a return time for one ride that day.

The next day, she pulled out a card certifying her disability and needed accommodations. It said she needed frequent rest areas and may need to leave lines quickly. A cast member still asked her to read the card out loud.

Not all rides offer the same accommodations to guests who don’t qualify for the disability access service, according to Disney’s accessibility page.

But Steffen didn’t know that. There isn’t a list published on Disney’s website detailing which rides offer return times for people with disabilities. Instead, she felt stung over and over again.

“I always rave so much about Disney, and here they are being overly kind of hostile and challenging to me,” Steffen said. “It feels like another loss. I’m here because I feel closer to my husband when I’m here. To not have that Disney experience feels like that’s the last part of my marriage that I’m losing.”

“Living a disabled life is exhausting as it is”

Benhart, an Orlando resident, could see problems with every alternative accommodation offered to her when she was denied the disability access service.

She didn’t want to buy lightning lane passes, which can cost nearly $40 per person each day. That service only allows guests to use any given ride’s expedited line once per day. But her family repeats rides that are most accessible for them, she said.

She couldn’t just have her kids wait in the line for her and her husband before rejoining them at the front. They’re too young to have cellphones. And neither adult in the family wanted to enter a standard line and risk having a medical emergency.

By the time Benhart approached her first ride attendant to ask for a return time, she already felt tears coming. Fortunately, the employee was kind, she remembers. Other rides, like Kilimanjaro Safaris, had special lanes for wheelchair users already.

But it took just one rejection from a park employee for the magic to sour, 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 go in, we don’t know if we get to ride things.”

The family of annual passholders has cut back on once-weekly visits. And each visit is shorter. Sometimes the family doesn’t attempt rides.

“Living a disabled life is exhausting as it is,” Benhart said. “The anxiety for us is through the roof.”

Appropriate accommodations

Hammer decided to document her September visit to Disney World’s Epcot with her mom after her request for the disability access service was denied.

By the time she was denied, she and her mom couldn’t get the full price of their stay in Orlando refunded. Disney asks guests to apply for the service no more than 30 days out from their park visit.

Hammer has a rare condition called acute flaccid myelitis that causes partial paralysis in her arms, impaired body temperature regulation, reduced lung function and an increased need for bathroom breaks, among other complications. She can walk short distances, but she can’t push a wheelchair.

She asked for accommodations at just one ride at the park: Spaceship Earth. Return times were only offered to people using wheelchairs and other mobility tools, she was told.

She spent the rest of her time snacking at Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival and informing her thousands of disabled followers about her experience.

Even if more rides were generous with accommodating those who asked, people with disabilities are still put in a tough spot, she said.

“I feel like even if they had appropriate accommodations that were standardized throughout each attraction, it’s still not a solution to make the disabled person ask for their needs to be met at every attraction,” she said.

Chip Byers, who chairs Orange County’s disability advisory board, is particularly focused on the distinction between the accommodations required by the Americans with Disabilities Act — often reduced to wheelchair ramps and whatever else a business deems necessary to ensure equal access — and “appropriate accommodations.”

Appropriate accommodations address the specific needs of each person with a disability, Byers said. They can’t be boiled down to a list of qualifying conditions, or a smattering of generalized accommodations, as large corporations like Disney often provide.

The problem extends beyond theme parks like Disney, Byers said. He’s working with legislators on a state bill that would require businesses to work with guests and employees to find appropriate accommodations for each person. He hopes it will be considered in 2026.

“What I am trying to do is give an individual with a disability a right for them to determine what would be an appropriate accommodation for them,” he said. “Being a person with a disability is tough … because of the way the world treats you. You are constantly having to fight for yourself.”

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