Disneyland's got a guest complaint on its hands, and it's not about churro prices.
A woman who visited the park says a cast member at Indiana Jones Adventure refused her the accessible queue, told her she'd be fine without it, and then laughed at her when she asked for his name.
Here's how it went down, according to her.
The Setup
Some background first, because this one doesn't happen in a vacuum.
A few years back, Disney tore down and rebuilt its Disability Access Service program. Eligibility got narrower. The way accommodations work in the parks has changed. And the reason wasn't a mystery: the old DAS was being worked over by people who had no disability at all. Loopholes got shared. A medical program turned into a line-skip trick.
Disney shut it down. Hard to argue with that part.
But the fallout hit the people the program was built for. Guests who used to move through the parks without a second thought now describe park days that start with dread. Some have quit riding altogether. The ones who still ride often have to walk up to a cast member at every attraction and explain their disability out loud, again and again, to a different person each time.
It also dumped the decision-making onto cast members standing at the front of the line. Which brings us to Indy.
What She Says Happened at Disneyland
The guest, posting on Threads under cantchangefayet9, uses a cane for back and knee disabilities. She requested the accessible route through the attraction exit.
The first cast member let her through. The second one, she says, did not.
“He said we could enter the normal queue and I said no, I need the straighter accessible queue because of my disability,” she wrote. “The twisting queues at Indy really mess up my knee. He said ‘No, you'll be fine this way.'”
She tried again. Same response, she says, this time with an edge to it. “No! You'll be fine this way!”
View on Threads
Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions about what she was after: the accessible path at Indiana Jones isn't shorter. She said so herself. “It actually takes longer than the normal route but it's not twisty.”
She wasn't cutting anybody. She just needed a path that wouldn't wreck her knee.
She gave up, took the regular queue, and spent the wait in pain.
Then Came The Kicker
After the ride, she went looking for his name so she could report the whole thing at Guest Services. She says she's had trouble at Indy before.
That's when he allegedly turned it into a punchline.
“See! You made it through! You're totally fine!”
She says he laughed. She walked off. Her friend told her afterward that he kept talking and kept laughing. She didn't catch it. She was already crying.
“I started crying and needed to stop for a bit,” she wrote.
Guests standing behind her in line apparently clocked the whole thing and asked whether she got his name. She did. She reported it.
“I have never been humiliated or mocked like that anywhere in my life and for it to happen at Disney is mind blowing,” she wrote. She says she's staying away from one of her favorite rides for a while.
And the line that got shared the most: “I may look fine but that doesn't mean I am. Everyone will end up disabled at some point in their life whether from age or injury.”
Other Disneyland Guests Piled On
The replies turned into a receipts thread.
One commenter, thatpoindexternerd, offered the script he's memorized: “I need to speak to your shift lead, please.” His follow-up said plenty. “I'm sad I know that, but my wife is disabled, and we've spent time in City Hall too often for my taste.”
Another, greenmeggsandlamm, said a cast member took her DAS pass while she was pregnant and with a toddler, told her pregnancy isn't a disability, and said they were cracking down on “people like me.” She says nobody ever asked what her actual disability was. She let her pass expire and hasn't been back.
Then a few people brought up Paris, and it stung. Commenter heatherj9603 noted Disneyland Paris offers disability access plus a discount for the guest and a companion, and takes a disability parking registration as proof. “I don't mind proving my disability if it makes my life easier,” she wrote.
The original poster confirmed it from experience. “It was so easy,” she said of the Paris trip. “They seem to actually respect people over there!”
Bottom Of It All
Disney sells the idea that somebody's got your back while you're inside the berm. That's the product. That's why a story like this one moves.
The DAS crackdown made sense on paper. What replaced it leaves a lot riding on whichever cast member happens to be standing at the entrance, who then asks disabled guests to plead their case all day long. Until the training catches up, expect more posts like hers.
