Yep.
Of course, someone will have to sue, and lose, too. It's the American way.
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New DAS System at Walt Disney World 2024
- Thread starter AEfx
- Start date
Of course, someone will have to sue, and lose, too. It's the American way.
ConfettiCupcake
Well-Known Member
I’d argue that people with disabilities being able to tour without DAS would actually point to good design and adequate capacity.
The park being unmanageable without using DAS all the time is the failure IMO. The goal should be to have to give it to the least amount of people possible, because the implication of that is that most can be accommodated in some less drastic way, no?
Fido Chuckwagon
Well-Known Member
Those with disabilities that require DAS because no other reasonable accommodation will work should absolutely get DAS.
And I'm going to add that claiming an accommodation doesn't work just because someone doesn't want to split up their party really isn't valid.
Chi84
Premium Member
I think it comes down to practicality. If Disney is expected to meet that standard with line-skip accommodations then that type of accommodation probably won’t be required.
DryerLintFan
Premium Member
Are there any anecdotes coming out?
ditzee
Well-Known Member
At WDW, the new DAS rules do not take effect until June 19th or 20th.
There are a lot of angry anecdotes about people being denied DAS but it’s been strangely quiet here lately and I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone posting about AQR.
Chi84
Premium Member
Some people here are also posting on the disboards. I’ve seen more anecdotes there.
For AQR?
SingleRider
Premium Member
DAS interviews started under the new rules for WDW on May 20. Any DAS issued June 19th or before was under the old rules and expires 30 days after issuance. We should see most if not all of these expire on or before June 20th.
Splash4eva
Well-Known Member
None should be close to expiring. For another say 2 weeks. Im there until the 19th and my window was open 3 days prior to the new rules. The entirety of your trip is covered under the old rules. So in theory people with trips starting on the 17th still will be grandfathered in so say trips last 5-7 days. I dont think anyone can make any real assessment until the week starting 6/25th
Chi84
Premium Member
Not yet. But many more on DAS approvals and denials. There’s a dedicated thread for AQR but you know how well that usually works.
SingleRider
Premium Member
But more and more each day are expiring until there are no more left. Some who got approved in early May would already be expiring.
Angel Ariel
Well-Known Member
They also wouldn't be in the parks anymore as their trips would be over, so they wouldn't be adding to lines anyway. Unless you're solely talking about the local AP holder/DAS population. But WDW has always been more of a visitor park than a locals park compared to DLR.
SingleRider
Premium Member
According to other posts I've read, local APs make up a significant number of DAS users.
Angel Ariel
Well-Known Member
Summer being slow also isn't something new just happening. It was noted all last summer too, when the prior form of DAS was still very much in effect. It seems very premature to be trying to tie wait times to DAS changes.
This one was written before the pandemic (and therefore before closures) in 2020, talking about how the previous few years had had slow summmers also, and how 2020 was expected to be slow as well
www.disneytouristblog.com
This one was written before the pandemic (and therefore before closures) in 2020, talking about how the previous few years had had slow summmers also, and how 2020 was expected to be slow as well
Summer Is Not Peak Season at Disney World.
Summer crowds have been low at Walt Disney World the last few years, which bucks conventional wisdom that it's peak tourist season in Florida. Summer 2020 is likely to be the least-busy stretch of the
www.disneytouristblog.com
I would assume the main group that still has DAS beyond next week are APs/CMs plugged in enough to know that changes were coming and they should plan a trip in early June (which I believe will keep DAS until 30 days later, as late as mid-July)—but if you have the ability to visit the park year round, why would you want to go in this brutally hot weather? It wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few groups with more flexibility who chose to move their summer trip to this week or next to avoid the uncertainty of not qualifying after the unknown, unspecified changes…but that’s hard to do for most families. I would assume there’s going to be a gradual decrease from late May until mid-July, at which point there will be none of the old system users left (but I would also expect an uptick in more successful abusers by then as people learn to work the new system).
Henry Mystic
Author of "A Manor of Fact"
If you’re actually wanting to make the parks more equitable but also not break due to capacity issues and rampant abuse, while also understanding that DAS literally makes trips possible for people it otherwise would not be, it might be worth considering different approaches. I’m not saying that these are the only paths forward, but they are genuine options.
I’m going to be spitballing, a ton, so I’m not saying every idea needs to be implemented, but a lot of it can and should.
The problem with DAS was it was FAR too overpowered. It had to be massively changed both in its capability AND because of its overuse. Giving out 2 free return times should never have happened either.
The first step that should be taken is ensuring you can only queue at one ride at a time.
You should not be able to have a DAS pass for an attraction while queuing elsewhere, and that is how most people use DAS. I think it’s on Disney to just close the loophole.
Restaurants, shows, shops, benches, walking around, fine, but not rides, or at least any ride that has a Lightning Lane attached. I’m sure the issue with implementing this is the standby control though, as how do you verify people with DAS?
One way could be potentially on peak days only, maybe only at certain attractions, or checking sporadically so you never know if you’ll be able to or not, and given a strict enforcement policy, it would mean forfeiture of the pass if people are abusing it, but they would have to make this system exceedingly clear. If at any time you could be asked to verify you aren’t waiting on a DAS return time, that fear that you could be caught cheating it, would hopefully mean people would actually use it as it should be, or at least on the margins it would help.
The abuse of the DAS system is the #1 problem with queue capacity at the parks presently. Even if you added 2 new E-tickets to every park, DAS would still be clogging up every Lightning Lane and backing up standby lines to a significant degree. I don’t think people understand how bad it is, and charging to skip the line obviously gave people a greater incentive to abuse an already heavily misused system.
Secondly, any DAS system should not be far more powerful than any paid line skipping service (from Genie+, to Universal Express, etc.) to such a degree it makes it obsolete. Disney’s is far more unbalanced than Universal by this metric.
People on average can do about double the amount of rides with DAS over Genie+, which is already significantly more than non-Genie+ users can (which people can actually do a surprisingly large amount of top attractions, even for “uneducated” visitors), which is actually pretty great if you know how to use it.
Paid line skipping is actually “more” equitable in an expensive vacuum like Disney or Universal because it means if you have shorter or longer trips you can prioritize how much you want to wait in line with a large degree of flexibility, and the capacity for that isn’t going to groups who don’t need it as much. Genie+ is a no brainer for a one day stay at the parks, for instance, but for a 10-day trip, there’s less of an incentive to.
Who would be best served by shorter standby lines (which come through giving out less Lightning Lane entrances to those that don’t need it as much) than those once in a lifetime visitors?
Who would be best served by being able to have line skipping capacity go towards people who go all the time or for a while, or those that go on shorter trips or less often?
Genie+ really isn’t that much more than a single day ticket to the Magic Kingdom since it’s the same cost per day no matter how long you want to use it for. That per day nature (and not bundling it down like long lengths of stays do with ticket prices) means that in practice, besides the very limited number of passholders that can justify using Genie+ every weekend or are splurging, generally means those 1-4 day guests are going to use Genie+. That also makes it easier to vacation and better for those guests.
It’s actually a very smart move to shift to this strategy beyond just the unrealized profit that was being left on the table.
Disney not charging for Fastpass never, ever made sense to me (even if the OG Fastpass did help with park ops) because those aspects can be realized through paid “Fastpass equivalents” as well.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have to like Genie+’s current system, but it’s one that tries to be more accessible than Universal or Disneyland Paris’ while also not being as overpowered given its much cheaper price. Though, obviously it’s frustrating from the guest perspective. Disney was wrong to begin charging for said system while slowwaking. I went to WDW during Summer of ‘21 after I got vaccinated back when there were still COVID restriction in place and it was probably the best Disney trip I have ever had (outside of the mess that was HWS). Beyond the minimal standby queue times, not having Fastpass at all was honestly a breath of fresh air, but the queues would spill out into the walkways even with short wait times and no social distancing because having two queues does massively increase the capacity of said queue which is essential to park ops.
And locals don’t need to skip the queues either because that massively inflates wait times for people who are already in the demographic that is riding more than everyone because they understand the parks better than anyone else. It makes no sense to take away capacity from people staying a shorter amount of time or going more infrequently. On paper, it doesn’t seem like it ends up that way, but in actuality, all line skipping services function similarly.
Honestly, parties should be limited to the user plus one person as well, which was DLP’s system for a while until Disney took over I believe, and people should not be able to be in two “parties” at once if multiple members of a party have a need for DAS—this needs to go first. While I understand it’s not ideal, this would legitimately allow people who need the service to use it, while those that don’t wouldn’t likely see the point to go out of their way to try to game the system.
As it is, most larger parties already split up for different rides at some point in the day generally. If there are a couple exceptionally long waits, using DAS for them wouldn’t be a big deal, where as it wouldn’t likely mean it would be abused because it isn’t ideal to have to split parties in queues like that, but that’s more so a last resort… let’s see how the new 4-person party size rule lasts.
But again, no person should be able to be in two separate DAS “parties.”
One size fits all accommodations are part of the issue as well. I think you can make exceptions, which I’ll elaborate on, but treating it as a “one size fits all” is inherently excessive.
For instance, wheelchair users should not automatically need a DAS pass. They would only need accommodations to be able to use wheelchair accessible queues. In no world does being in a wheelchair mean they cannot wait in a queue, but if there is an obstruction there, a separate accommodation can be issued.
That’s a bit easier said than done to address as the Lightning Lane queues are largely ADA accessible while most standby lines are not, but making it on a per ride basis and modifying queues where possible would move the needle more than you’d think. It’s all on the margins. Nothing is ever perfect but you can get closer, step-by-step.
Capping rides to 1 return time per individual attraction per day to prevent repeat abuse of top rides is another change that should be made, in general. Re-rides should be a thing of the past with DAS for most people.
The sign-up process needs to be very standardized, simple, and direct with this information. My largest concern are for international visitors that don’t speak English or first time guests. In those cases, exceptions, albeit within reason, can be made, especially if their stays are shorter. As it stands, for multi-day guests, even if you don’t get Genie+ the first day, you can right that mistake the second day. You couldn’t really do that with Fastpass+, which was by far the most unforgiving system in general for first-time guests.
Obviously exceptions should be made, but it should be the exception, not the norm. And I don’t mean a random doctor’s note that says “they can’t wait in line” but instead “X condition affects Y person in this way” and then Disney is able to respond to the specific needs accordingly, but there has to be a very thorough system. Universal outsourced this (though it’s not as extensive or clear as what I am suggesting), but Disney seems to prefer to do it in house for whatever reason.
One example of an exception could be a specific case of Autism which causes hyperfixating on one ride. Great, allow repeat rides for that DAS user. You need to have seriously well trained Cast Members for these positions that actually understand how all the various accommodations work, alongside being able to make grey area judgements if something does not fall into the extensive standards put in place.
Now for someone with something like Crohn’s disease? No, they should not be able to re-ride Rise 5 times with DAS.
Another exception could be for party sizes if there are say 1 adult and 2 children.
I’m less caught up on the 2-person DAS party size, but I think that could be the direction that’s needed to move toward if the other options don’t do it enough.
Etc.
There is absolutely no world where Disney should be denying people with disabilities like Crohn’sDisease DAS, for instance. I don’t know if those stories circulating online are true or not, but for the people in general that think it’s not literally the most valid reason for DAS, you haven’t been around someone with the condition. Knowing people with it, if there’s a flare up, there’s no way you could enjoy rides without DAS.
Return to queue has to be the worst implemented approach they could have done. Not inherently a bad idea—though you’d need “solo” DAS accommodations if you are traveling alone, but that’s not a big deal in terms of park capacity so that’s an easy exception to make if they go that route.
But returning to queue could be setup like:
You leave the queue.
You go to the attraction entrance Cast Member and say you are wanting to return to the queue. They then give you a a Return to Queue Pass dated with that day already printed on it to prevent abuse and to make the process effortless for the Cast Member instead of wasting time filling it out like the old DAS did and how Universal presently does it.
Use the restroom, if that’s what was needed.
Once ready, you then go to the Lightning Lane queue entrance and present the “Return to Queue” Pass when you can get back in line.
You pass to the merge point attendant, so you can be reunited either by walking back to them or waiting for the party to queue, and only able to return to said queue if your party is there. No false accusations of line jumping, no actual line jumping. Win-win.
It really is totally reasonable to expect an accommodation similar to DAS for debilitating conditions like Crohn’s, panic disorder, PTSD, among others. There are many conditions that could not only benefit from DAS but is the reason someone may even be able to ride rides, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to have the exact same accommodations, and that also doesn’t mean it should be overpowered.
I do think medical documentation should generally be necessary, though. Let’s be real, Disney’s clientele is already going to be able to afford medical records if it affects their life in such a significant way that they would need DAS in 99.9% of cases, so in general that excuse (not always but mostly) by people are who want it to be too easy to get because it’s how it is presently abused.
Sometimes, doing what’s harder is the only way to make sure something is still available at all. People will ruin good things if you let them which has already happened.
Anyway, just throwing out some ideas. Interested to hear competing thoughts.
I’m going to be spitballing, a ton, so I’m not saying every idea needs to be implemented, but a lot of it can and should.
The problem with DAS was it was FAR too overpowered. It had to be massively changed both in its capability AND because of its overuse. Giving out 2 free return times should never have happened either.
The first step that should be taken is ensuring you can only queue at one ride at a time.
You should not be able to have a DAS pass for an attraction while queuing elsewhere, and that is how most people use DAS. I think it’s on Disney to just close the loophole.
Restaurants, shows, shops, benches, walking around, fine, but not rides, or at least any ride that has a Lightning Lane attached. I’m sure the issue with implementing this is the standby control though, as how do you verify people with DAS?
One way could be potentially on peak days only, maybe only at certain attractions, or checking sporadically so you never know if you’ll be able to or not, and given a strict enforcement policy, it would mean forfeiture of the pass if people are abusing it, but they would have to make this system exceedingly clear. If at any time you could be asked to verify you aren’t waiting on a DAS return time, that fear that you could be caught cheating it, would hopefully mean people would actually use it as it should be, or at least on the margins it would help.
The abuse of the DAS system is the #1 problem with queue capacity at the parks presently. Even if you added 2 new E-tickets to every park, DAS would still be clogging up every Lightning Lane and backing up standby lines to a significant degree. I don’t think people understand how bad it is, and charging to skip the line obviously gave people a greater incentive to abuse an already heavily misused system.
Secondly, any DAS system should not be far more powerful than any paid line skipping service (from Genie+, to Universal Express, etc.) to such a degree it makes it obsolete. Disney’s is far more unbalanced than Universal by this metric.
People on average can do about double the amount of rides with DAS over Genie+, which is already significantly more than non-Genie+ users can (which people can actually do a surprisingly large amount of top attractions, even for “uneducated” visitors), which is actually pretty great if you know how to use it.
Paid line skipping is actually “more” equitable in an expensive vacuum like Disney or Universal because it means if you have shorter or longer trips you can prioritize how much you want to wait in line with a large degree of flexibility, and the capacity for that isn’t going to groups who don’t need it as much. Genie+ is a no brainer for a one day stay at the parks, for instance, but for a 10-day trip, there’s less of an incentive to.
Who would be best served by shorter standby lines (which come through giving out less Lightning Lane entrances to those that don’t need it as much) than those once in a lifetime visitors?
Who would be best served by being able to have line skipping capacity go towards people who go all the time or for a while, or those that go on shorter trips or less often?
Genie+ really isn’t that much more than a single day ticket to the Magic Kingdom since it’s the same cost per day no matter how long you want to use it for. That per day nature (and not bundling it down like long lengths of stays do with ticket prices) means that in practice, besides the very limited number of passholders that can justify using Genie+ every weekend or are splurging, generally means those 1-4 day guests are going to use Genie+. That also makes it easier to vacation and better for those guests.
It’s actually a very smart move to shift to this strategy beyond just the unrealized profit that was being left on the table.
Disney not charging for Fastpass never, ever made sense to me (even if the OG Fastpass did help with park ops) because those aspects can be realized through paid “Fastpass equivalents” as well.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have to like Genie+’s current system, but it’s one that tries to be more accessible than Universal or Disneyland Paris’ while also not being as overpowered given its much cheaper price. Though, obviously it’s frustrating from the guest perspective. Disney was wrong to begin charging for said system while slowwaking. I went to WDW during Summer of ‘21 after I got vaccinated back when there were still COVID restriction in place and it was probably the best Disney trip I have ever had (outside of the mess that was HWS). Beyond the minimal standby queue times, not having Fastpass at all was honestly a breath of fresh air, but the queues would spill out into the walkways even with short wait times and no social distancing because having two queues does massively increase the capacity of said queue which is essential to park ops.
And locals don’t need to skip the queues either because that massively inflates wait times for people who are already in the demographic that is riding more than everyone because they understand the parks better than anyone else. It makes no sense to take away capacity from people staying a shorter amount of time or going more infrequently. On paper, it doesn’t seem like it ends up that way, but in actuality, all line skipping services function similarly.
Honestly, parties should be limited to the user plus one person as well, which was DLP’s system for a while until Disney took over I believe, and people should not be able to be in two “parties” at once if multiple members of a party have a need for DAS—this needs to go first. While I understand it’s not ideal, this would legitimately allow people who need the service to use it, while those that don’t wouldn’t likely see the point to go out of their way to try to game the system.
As it is, most larger parties already split up for different rides at some point in the day generally. If there are a couple exceptionally long waits, using DAS for them wouldn’t be a big deal, where as it wouldn’t likely mean it would be abused because it isn’t ideal to have to split parties in queues like that, but that’s more so a last resort… let’s see how the new 4-person party size rule lasts.
But again, no person should be able to be in two separate DAS “parties.”
One size fits all accommodations are part of the issue as well. I think you can make exceptions, which I’ll elaborate on, but treating it as a “one size fits all” is inherently excessive.
For instance, wheelchair users should not automatically need a DAS pass. They would only need accommodations to be able to use wheelchair accessible queues. In no world does being in a wheelchair mean they cannot wait in a queue, but if there is an obstruction there, a separate accommodation can be issued.
That’s a bit easier said than done to address as the Lightning Lane queues are largely ADA accessible while most standby lines are not, but making it on a per ride basis and modifying queues where possible would move the needle more than you’d think. It’s all on the margins. Nothing is ever perfect but you can get closer, step-by-step.
Capping rides to 1 return time per individual attraction per day to prevent repeat abuse of top rides is another change that should be made, in general. Re-rides should be a thing of the past with DAS for most people.
The sign-up process needs to be very standardized, simple, and direct with this information. My largest concern are for international visitors that don’t speak English or first time guests. In those cases, exceptions, albeit within reason, can be made, especially if their stays are shorter. As it stands, for multi-day guests, even if you don’t get Genie+ the first day, you can right that mistake the second day. You couldn’t really do that with Fastpass+, which was by far the most unforgiving system in general for first-time guests.
Obviously exceptions should be made, but it should be the exception, not the norm. And I don’t mean a random doctor’s note that says “they can’t wait in line” but instead “X condition affects Y person in this way” and then Disney is able to respond to the specific needs accordingly, but there has to be a very thorough system. Universal outsourced this (though it’s not as extensive or clear as what I am suggesting), but Disney seems to prefer to do it in house for whatever reason.
One example of an exception could be a specific case of Autism which causes hyperfixating on one ride. Great, allow repeat rides for that DAS user. You need to have seriously well trained Cast Members for these positions that actually understand how all the various accommodations work, alongside being able to make grey area judgements if something does not fall into the extensive standards put in place.
Now for someone with something like Crohn’s disease? No, they should not be able to re-ride Rise 5 times with DAS.
Another exception could be for party sizes if there are say 1 adult and 2 children.
I’m less caught up on the 2-person DAS party size, but I think that could be the direction that’s needed to move toward if the other options don’t do it enough.
Etc.
There is absolutely no world where Disney should be denying people with disabilities like Crohn’sDisease DAS, for instance. I don’t know if those stories circulating online are true or not, but for the people in general that think it’s not literally the most valid reason for DAS, you haven’t been around someone with the condition. Knowing people with it, if there’s a flare up, there’s no way you could enjoy rides without DAS.
Return to queue has to be the worst implemented approach they could have done. Not inherently a bad idea—though you’d need “solo” DAS accommodations if you are traveling alone, but that’s not a big deal in terms of park capacity so that’s an easy exception to make if they go that route.
But returning to queue could be setup like:
You leave the queue.
You go to the attraction entrance Cast Member and say you are wanting to return to the queue. They then give you a a Return to Queue Pass dated with that day already printed on it to prevent abuse and to make the process effortless for the Cast Member instead of wasting time filling it out like the old DAS did and how Universal presently does it.
Use the restroom, if that’s what was needed.
Once ready, you then go to the Lightning Lane queue entrance and present the “Return to Queue” Pass when you can get back in line.
You pass to the merge point attendant, so you can be reunited either by walking back to them or waiting for the party to queue, and only able to return to said queue if your party is there. No false accusations of line jumping, no actual line jumping. Win-win.
It really is totally reasonable to expect an accommodation similar to DAS for debilitating conditions like Crohn’s, panic disorder, PTSD, among others. There are many conditions that could not only benefit from DAS but is the reason someone may even be able to ride rides, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to have the exact same accommodations, and that also doesn’t mean it should be overpowered.
I do think medical documentation should generally be necessary, though. Let’s be real, Disney’s clientele is already going to be able to afford medical records if it affects their life in such a significant way that they would need DAS in 99.9% of cases, so in general that excuse (not always but mostly) by people are who want it to be too easy to get because it’s how it is presently abused.
Sometimes, doing what’s harder is the only way to make sure something is still available at all. People will ruin good things if you let them which has already happened.
Anyway, just throwing out some ideas. Interested to hear competing thoughts.
Mem11
Active Member
Not exactly, the new rules came into effect on 5/20/2024 and one of the rules was that you could no longer go to guest services to get approval for DAS.
I'm sure there have been some who tried to go through GS since 5/20 and where told they would have to call and do a video chat. Some would have been rejected, others may not even have made the effort.
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