Guest Claims Disney Made Child Sick After “Interrogation”

Disclaimer: Please note that the story outlined in this article is based on a personal Disney parks guest experience. No two guest experiences are alike, and this article does not necessarily align with Disney Dining’s personal views on Disney park operations.

As many disappointed Disney fans know, on May 20, major changes to its Disability Access Service (DAS) at Walt Disney World Resort were enacted. One month later, those same controversial changes were enacted at Disneyland Resort. For years, guests with most disabilities were able to use Disney’s DAS program and wait in a shorter line. However, these new changes excluded most guests, only being for those with developmental disabilities like autism.

Related: Disney Just Told Thousands of People With Disabilities That They Don’t Count

Since Disney announced the changes back in April, the company has been dealing with a constant barrage of complaints and criticisms from guests, some of whom have threatened to sue. Some guests with serious medical conditions have shared their devastating stories of being denied a DAS Pass, even though they clearly need one.

Prior to the changes to its disability program, all a guest would have to do was talk to a Disney cast member and explain what would happen to them if they waited in a conventional queue. Now, however, talking to a cast member is just a first step.

Related: Guests Seethe as Disney Makes Highly Controversial Change to Disability Services

After speaking to a cast member via live video chat, that cast member will then decide if the guest is eligible to move on to the second part of the process. That is when the guest speaks to one of Disney’s medical team members. That person will then decide if the guest is truly eligible for a DAS pass, before sending them back to the cast member.

While the interview process might not sound that difficult, for someone with autism, it can be a very stressful experience. That is even more true if the guest in question is a child.

One guest recently took to Reddit to speak about just how disturbing the interview process had been and how it had a terrible impact on her 14-year-old autistic son.

According to Reddit user 85years, the whole process was more like an interrogation that actually made her son sick.

My 14-year-old son has autism and has been a DAS user since he was little. We’ve been on about 10 Disney trips, each time we got a DAS without any issue in the parks.

Yesterday, we completed the new online DAS approval process. I wanted to share some info on the experience, since it was stressful and you might want to prepare for that.

(Side note – we’re from the UK and discovered we cannot complete the video call from outside the US. This is really not clear on the Disney website. So we had to wait until we were in-country to do the video call).

Firstly, on the plus side, the online system worked well for us. After a slightly confusing text chat, we got into a video call quickly (almost no wait). This was mid-afternoon on a Saturday.

The cast member (CM) was friendly, but inquisitive. She asked why we needed an accommodation. I explained my son gets stressed by the prospect of queuing and wouldn’t attempt to ride something if he knew he would wait a long time. I explained he has autism and has been a DAS user for years.

I remember thinking – OK, that should do it. But I was wrong. This was just the start of our conversation, and I soon felt really stressed. What would happen if we weren’t granted the DAS accommodation that made the whole trip feasible?

The CM asked for more specifics, and explained a diagnosis is not relevant for the conversation. She suggested all these questions were to determine the correct accommodation for our son. She asked what happens when my son is in a long queue. I explained we deliberately avoid those situations, so I don’t have a lot of data points to go on. That wasn’t a good enough answer, so I explained he would probably get very agitated, stim a lot, and ultimately demand to leave the queue.

It seems I levelled up for using the word “stim”. The CM then asked for what my son’s stimming behaviour was like. I objected that this surely isn’t relevant for getting DAS. I can’t recall her exact response, but she wanted an answer. To her credit, she suggested I might want to answer that question in another room away from my son.

After describing his current stimming patterns, she said she would need to bring in a health care professional (HCP). At this point, I was feeling really stressed and my son wasn’t loving the experience either.

After a very short wait, another friendly face appeared, and the HCP wanted to hear everything again from scratch. She asked lots of specifics about how we cope with long queues. She specifically asked how we cope with airport queues, and I explained we use a sunflower lanyard to go down the shorter disabled queues.

She then asked my son how he feels when he is queuing. She got a couple of very short words as a response, since a) my son is 14, and b) he has social challenges.

I think at this point we passed some kind of “he actually has autism” test, and we were granted DAS. The HCP left the call, and we completed the final steps with the original CM.

At no point did our answers get beyond “it stresses him and he stims”. I think the questions were probes to conclude we really do live with this condition.

My son felt sick after the call because it was so stressful for him. The cast members were polite and friendly, but we’ve never experienced this level of interrogation before. It’s no fun having to detail symptoms in great detail to strangers over the Internet. All the while worrying you won’t qualify for an accommodation that you desperately need to complete your holiday.

Good luck to everyone who is about to go through this. Be prepared for a stressful experience (i.e. don’t plan amazing adventures just after the call).

To Disney: I’m not sure what the answer to DAS fraud is, but this isn’t it.

As noted in the Original Poster’s (OP) last sentence, Disney said that they were forced to change its disability program due to a large uptick in fraud. However, guests argue that depriving people of the service who really need it because of certain medical conditions is not the way to change it.

Many have cited the system used by Disney’s biggest theme park competition, Universal Studios. Universal uses a third party that requires applicants to submit a note from their doctor. After the note and other required information are submitted, the guest speaks to a team member for final verification.

Related: Disney’s Own Greed Destroyed Its Disability Program

A lot of people have accused Disney of cracking down on its DAS pass not because of rampant abuse, but because they want guests to purchase its Lightning Lane MultiPass. The MultiPass is fairly new, recently replacing the controversial Disney Genie+ system. Lightning Lane MultiPass costs around $30 per guest per day and allows them to make ride reservations so they can wait in shorter lines.

Despite the backlash, Disney has made no indication that it plans on changing its disability program to include more guests with confirmed medical disabilities.

Do you think Disney needs to change its disability program? Let us know in the comments!