Here's what I experienced personally today. I'm reserving my opinion / editorial for after this weekend, once I've visited again with people with different needs than those of the people I was with today. I want to have a better understanding of the process for a variety of disabilities, and check on some things that occurred to me during this visit. It was raining on-and-off during my visit, and I had other obligations, so I wasn't able to check everything I wanted.
The DAS card itself is issued at either the Chamber of Commerce (DCA) or City Hall (Disneyland). They had marked extended queues with tape outside both today, so they were clearly prepared for a line.
City Hall line around 11am
DCA line around 10:30 am
The process for getting the card starts out the same - you explain to the CM the accommodation you need, and they offer their suggestion of how Disney can meet that. If you are issued a DAS (which not everyone was, I'll go into more detail below), they take a photo of the cardholder to whom it is being issued, and print out the pass. The cardholder or guardian have to sign the pass (which I know at least one parent did under protest), which has a bunch of terms and conditions on it.
Once you have the pass, you can go to the Guest Relations kiosk nearest the ride you want to ride and get an assigned return time. I know that in at least two instances, the DAS was issued at City Hall with a ride already "loaded" onto it, saving that initial trip to the kiosk. As previously discussed, the return time is being written for the current wait time less 10 minutes - in the photo below, you can see Dumbo had a 20-minute wait, so the return time was 10 minutes from then.
The green-bordered card is the DAS; the red card is a new readmisison pass introduced with this change.
Once you ride, you can return to the kiosk for your next return time. If the ride has a standby line of less than 10 minutes, there's no need to get a return time, which makes using a wait time app (Disney or unofficial) really useful.
List of Guest Relations kiosks in DCA
List of Guest Relations kiosks in Disneyland
There's a second piece to this program I hadn't seen discussed elsewhere - a new red readmission card. Usually readmit cards are issued in the event of ride breakdowns or guest recovery (customer service) situations, and they have a blue header. These have a red header, and verbiage which indicates they must be used with a DAS. Two families I spoke with were issued these from Guest Relations - one got them at City Hall, the other got them in Fantasyland. These seem to be the alternative to "loading" the DAS with multiple rides - the put one ride on the DAS with a return time, but then issue additional readmits without a return time. In both situations, these were issued to families with autistic children who were not able to spend the whole day at the park, so I believe them to be an example of the "alternate accommodations for guests with cognitive disabilities" mentioned in the letter Disney sent to the Autism Society of Los Angeles. (Post 86 of the previous thread)
The Tomorrowland Kiosk
As previously discussed, guests who only have a mobility impairment and use a wheelchair do not need or even qualify for a DAS - they simply use the wheelchair-accessible queue for each ride. This caused some complaints from people who have previously received a GAC and use a wheelchair. There was one couple in particular who raised quite a stir because the husband said he was denied a DAS. However, I'm not entirely certain what he asked for, or why he was denied. The husband uses a personal ECV, but said he prefers not to take it into queues because the stop-and-go nature of even the wheelchair-accessible queues is tough on him. He prefers to use the ECV to navigate between attractions, but then park it and walk into the attraction. He said he didn't understand why he couldn't get a return time using a DAS - he didn't want to "skip" the line, he wanted to avoid navigating an ECV through it.
I see his point, and wonder if a different conversation with a different CM would not have yielded a different result.
These are my factual observations. I've spoken with a number of families who visited today, and am expecting to hear from even more over the next few days. I am encouraging them to come here and share their factual experiences as well.
I'll also note that there was a huge managerial presence in the parks today, which I have to assume was at least partly because of this change. I think that helped diffuse some situations, and I continue to ask people to please not take their frustration on this new program out on the front-line CMs.
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