Theme park fans might soon have an easier way to register for disability accommodations before they visit a park.
Theme parks have developed a wide range of accommodations for their visitors with disabilities. But getting access to special accommodations can be a hassle. A new online Accessibility Card may eliminate the need to wait in long lines as guest services by allowing people to preregister for access at home.
The International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards (IBCCES) introduced the card today the IAAPA Expo in Orlando. The card had been tested this past season at 27 parks, including all Six Flags parks in the United States as well as SeaWorld's Sesame Place park in Pennsylvania. More than 35,000 families enrolled in the pilot program.
"We developed this program to help streamline the accommodation requests at amusement parks and other attractions. It's an online, pre-arrival screening process that helps ensure those who need accommodations receive them," IBCCES Board Chairman Myron Pincomb said.
"Guests comes to your park with their accommodations already identified. That makes it a lot easier for your guest services staff to take care of that accommodation."
The IBCCES Accessibility Card (IAC) does not guarantee any specific accommodations, as those will vary by park. But the free online application process through accessibilitycard.org allows persons with disabilities or their caregivers to sign up in privacy at home, rather than answering questions at the head of a potential long line in the park. The application process asks for a statement from a health care provider so that the park can identify the appropriate accommodation while also weeding out attempts at abuse.
"What we found from the 27 parks that have gone through the program is less than 3% of people who signed up using our program were attempting to abuse it," Pincomb said.
Visitors get their IAC via email, but IBCCES will be introducing a mobile app option as well. While the IAC program is in place at Six Flags and one SeaWorld park already, IBCCES is working with other SeaWorld and Merlin Entertainments parks on its Certified Autism Center program, which uses the IAC for pre-arrival eligibility. Becoming autism certified is not a requirement for the IAC program, and IBCCES is at IAAPA to market the program to other theme parks around the country.
"According to the CDC, 26% of the population has a disability. So pick those numbers, and 97 million of the 375 million guests who go to amusement parks every year have some sort of disability. That's one in four people who have a disability."
IBCCES officials said that the IAC could help educate visitors with disabilities before they visit about the accommodations available to them.
"If there's pre-arrival materials that we want to send, based on the parks that they sign up, or if there's other customizations or things that folks need, we can add that over time. It's very flexible," IBCCES President Meredith Tekin said. "We want to make it easier for visitors and easier for attractions."
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They are assuming that the theme park visitor population is uniformly distributed to the US population, which given its size, might not be too far off. It's possible that some accessible theme parks actually could have a visitor population that skews toward *more* visitors with disabilities than the overall US population.
I know their assumption, but I will also assume their assumption is very incorrect.
Unless there is some data out there, I'm unconvinced that there are theme parks of any significant numbers that have more than 26% of their guest populations that needs accommodations for a disability. Granted, the term "disability" can be used in a wide variety of cases nowadays, but even in some of those cases, there is no need for special accommodations in a theme park.
Presumably elderly people are more likely to have a disability than younger people, and younger people are more likely to go to theme parks, so I do agree with TwoBits. The average theme park goer is less likely to have a disability than the average person. For example, I suspect a higher proportion of over 80s have a disability compared to under 20s. But a higher proportion of under 20s go to theme parks.
It’s worth considering that’s not all disabilities are physical (it appears that’s where this “people under 20 are less likely to have a disability” thing is coming from) and that the people running operations at theme parks know where their operational pinch points are … accommodating guests that can’t use the standard queue is a huge one.
Would it be much better for everyone if parks paid to train and staff associates instead of offloading this labor on guests who need more assistance? Yes! But welcome to the new economy, baby! Just don’t call it inflation. It’s innoflation, and you’re footing the bill!
Jacob, I did consider that not all disabilities are physical. And in considering that, those guests would not need accommodations for getting on a ride or seeing a show in the park.
I like the idea of pre-qualifying people with special needs, both so they can get straight to the fun in the park, and also so that parks can educate those guests to set reasonable expectations before their arrival. (Yeah, I was the one who asked the question that Tekin answered.) I also like the idea of one, industry-standard pre-qualification process so that you don't have to go through this hassle for every park you wish to visit.
The number of people who may or may not need this is irrelevant to me, so I hope we will stop discussing that issue. (Spoiler alert: The industry doesn't really know these numbers and everyone is guessing.) But the concept here is needed, which is why I chose to cover it today.
I sincerely doubt that one in four theme park guests is disabled. I even more sincerely doubt that one in four theme park guests has a disability that justifies skipping lines. I’d be very frustrated if a quarter of guests started getting to cut straight to the front of the line due to to a disability that may or may not preclude them from waiting with the normal people. The system is bad enough as it is
Also keep in mind that people with a disability trends to travel a Lot less outside of thir Home Town, if going around a theme park is complicated think about going around airports or very long drives, getting in and out of hotels, etc.
But i do agree that planning ahead and having the disabled guest preidentified
Makes the process a lot smother and safer for all involved. Sounds good to me!!
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"According to the CDC, 26% of the population has a disability. So pick those numbers, and 97 million of the 375 million guests who go to amusement parks every year have some sort of disability. That's one in four people who have a disability."
I don’t know who their statistician is, but just because 26% of the population has a disability does not mean 26% of theme park guests have a disability! To further illustrate why, consider this statement:
"According to the CDC, 26% of the population has a disability. So pick those numbers, and 146 of the 562 Americans that have went to space have some sort of disability.”
Now that isn’t to say that this plan won’t increase the number of disabled guests that go to a theme park, but the developer is definitely overselling their product with those stats.