Posted on 05/17/2016 12:34:22 PM PDT by kingu
Yeah, you have to really think about who the trip to D-land is for. If the child won’t benefit, what is the point? Your friend is the Saint. Adopting abandoned kids from Russia is extremely hard. Our neighbor adopted two, and the younger son is doing fine. But his older brother tried to kill them a few times, and set their house on fire. He is in prison now and they are glad for it.
I’d only adopt the very young from Russia after hearing these stories of RAD kids (reactive attachment disorder, unable to attach or love).
And then there are the families who decide 2 weeks before that they want to go celebrate New Year's Eve at the parks and are livid when everything doesn't immediately fall into place. I think Disney does a fantastic job in many of these situations, but it really is a two way street - you have to let them work with you. Commanding service - well, it will almost always fail in ANY customer service situation.
I would not say that you should not go to Disneyland but as the federal court ruled, with the Disney program, disabled folks are getting as good if not better experience than other guests. Disney has made a reasonable accommodation and if that does not work for you situation, maybe Disneyland is not the place for you t travel. I do think you water down your argument when you say there are "may be occasions when he does not want to stand in a long line" because most people including children don't want to stand in long lines but that is what is necessary at an amusement park.
We took our boys ONCE in the early 90’s, they had no special needs. It was crazy then. I can’t imagine spending another hard earned vacation standing in line, fighting crowds, and spending each day driven to exhaustion. It is way overrated and overpriced IMO. Children will grow up very nicely without Disney. Unless not taking your kids to Disney is now grounds for child abuse; skip it. There millions of other ways to enrich their lives.
True we expected nothing more than we had paid for and never expected to even get him on a ride. When he saw Mickey for the first time ( his emotional age is 4 or 5), he was so excited. We started to get in line for a photo and the other people in line stepped back and the photographer took his picture right away. The photographer was teary eyed as were several in line. His joy at seeing Mickey was so apparent.
I’ve heard some very heartwarming stories of some incredible magic done by cast. One particular one I love was a child who needed external life support equipment. She really wanted to experience Pirates and this little 8 year old was extremely proactive in getting what she wanted.
She wrote a company that had designed a portable battery pack which would work with the equipment she needed - it would only give her about 6 hours of limited mobility, but she promised to take very good care of it if they could loan it to her but one day.
Long story short, she wrote and cajoled until she finally got what she wanted, to be a normal 8 year old who got to ride on Pirates of the Caribbean with just her family beside her in the boat (along with two seats of medical equipment and techs.) She arrived before park opening, waited with some extreme patience as the boat was prepared, rode it, and excitedly chatted with her parents while undergoing the transfer back out of the boat.
She passed on two weeks later, but spent most of those two weeks describing in detail her great adventure, and so far as I know, one of her drawings of Captain Jack is still in the cast break area at Disneyland.
I keep typing comments to you and then deleting them, so I’ll just post this: I’ll pray for you.
Just go off-season.
Just be sure to avoid “Gay Week” and the “Gay Cruise”
Seriously, those “gay” events happen - unofficially (http://www.wdwinfo.com/disney-gay-days.htm), and WDW will not tell you if gay week is scheduled at the same time as your planned visit.
My son worked at WDW and reported many instances of perversions and such things happening during gay week—WDW actually brings in additional lighting to ensure there are NO dark corners, anywhere.
Just more reasons to avoid WDW. I really feel WDW has no socially redeeming value. Over-commercialized hype. We took our kids to smaller local amusement parks when they wanted to be ‘amused’. We preferred family camping, trips to the beach and when they were older, to Europe, they loved Switzerland - the value of those times were priceless. I bet we spent less than a dozen trips to WDW.
Good for you and your family.
We took our son 4-times, each time stayed on the park and it made quite a difference.
Enjoyed it.
I was not being snarky, to be clear.
To each his own. We found staying on the park made a huge difference. You can get in early. You can stay til it closes if you wish and not be fighting traffic to get out of the parking lot, and avoid traffic back to your I-drive hotel.
You also can take time out in the day to go back to the hotel and relax, shower, and take a nap if you wish, and still return to the park for additional activities/dinner if you wish. Helps out this old body and also refreshed my son (and his friends).
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