These posts are all over the board with all sorts of accusations and insinuating being foolish is hard to digest.
1. Dead Horse???? If you had been honest and said MOST of the "service dogs" you see at Disney World are fakes because their owners lied so they could bring them into the parks was merely an opinion and not posted as if it was fact I would not have asked for Fact Checking and Source. If you stated it was an opinion with the above post I wouldn't have asked for a source of that claim. But you stated that you had sources but didn't have days to retrieve them. If you hadn't said it was friends and social media similar to your postings, non sourced I wouldn't have kept asking for your source and fact checking. So saying Dead Horse when you painted yourself into a corner and only came clean that MOST Service Dogs was just an opinion not proven fact...you lost your credibility on this topic. If you look at your own wording in the above post there is nothing in your post that says OPINION only.
2. DAC and GAC are totally different subjects and was handled well without social media. Seems to be working, seems Disney handled it well and has held up to law challenges. Disney investigation into tour guides and solution demonstrates they can handle and investigate fraud without social media. I have faith that Disney can continue to be open minded and support service dogs without social media.
3. The need to qualify social media as a better sourcing for determining what dogs and their behavior and execution of being of service to their handlers or Disney is concerning. As acknowledged there is no specific way a dog executes their service to their handler. Some are on harnesses, some are on leashes. Like all guests dogs included their temperament changes due to their surroundings. An over crowded situation, extreme heat on their paws, not handling heat and humidity well, dogs and humans very. We humans might act differently under changing conditions and sleeplessness and dogs too have changing coping skills for days that are not typical to them just like we do. A diabetic dog in an owners home likely can roam freely as they don't need to be by their side on a tight leash to preform their duties. A stress disorder dog doesn't need to guide their person like one does for a blind person. So expectations for dogs all to be on a tight leash to be considered trained for all disabilities is a high expectation for a dogs with different duties. Disney obviously has educated themselves to this.
4. Interesting you pointed out that we as a school board could remove a service dog from a school. That point keeps resurfacing, from fake, to strollers, to how taught a leash must be. Reasons dogs shouldn't be. My board has never focused on how to toss a dog. Our focus is on the student and how to make it work not reasons why a dog should be removed. If the approach is intolerance sure we could keep spewing negatives. With our approach of the positives for the student we don't have to nitpick to find reasons to remove a dog that is doing a genuine service to the student. Depends on the results one wants. To be of service or a hindrance. We choose to be supportive and that also supports our Mission Statement: to Service every student to the very best of our abilities for the best education possible. So yes I know we can remove the students dog if we went to listing all the Cons but we choose to be positive and forward thinking so we go for looking for all the attributes and the success of the student over looking for reasons to remove the dog.
5. I have empathy for you and your children. I can understand wanting to provide your child with a dog that would benefit that child as you said with them being on the spectrum. I understand that $20,000 is a no small amount to provide to help your child and can only imagine it is frustrating that it has yet to happen for your family. As I have spoken to at length in a Chit Chat thread one of my kids was born with a disability that took a great deal of therapy to overcome. It took not only an IEP but extras that I had to provide that didn't come cheap but I did it. Then between 2 kids 5 years apart we had 9 years of college education to contend with. As I posted we went to Disney World for many many years for extended trips. Yet there came the time when Disney went on Hiatus for years as a family. Those funds had to go to the best educational experience that I could provide and that trumped Disney. No regrets. We all do what we have to do to provide the very best for our kids that we can so our kids can succeed. I can understand how frustrating it can be for you to see others with service animals and knowing a $20,000 dog would help your child. I hope you can do that someday. The service dog in our school was earned by the entire family of the student. They went to fairs, craft shows, festivals selling home made fleece dog toys strong enough for tug of war. The older sister of the girl on spectrum made all the fleece toys so her younger sister could have the service dog she needed. They found a great deal of support from communities as it was stated a service dog was their family goal. It was awesome to witness them reaching their goal. So no after watching the family with such a positive attitude trying to earn funds for a dog no way am I ever going to try and nitpick ways to toss it from our school district. We work for solutions not exclusion.
All I'm asking is for you to look at the history of the abuse and the many indicators that point to there being a decent-sized number of fake service animals in the parks. Disney handled the situations of abuse in the past, but only after the abuse got to the point where it was out of control. They are unable as of yet to handle the situation with fake service dogs because the law basically ties their hands and the people abusing the law know it. My suspicion is that many of the people abusing the rules have therapy or support dogs that are NOT covered under the ADA laws. This is not a matter of me being petty because other people have service dogs and we don't - my youngest son isn't ready for a dog yet anyway, and with a move in the not too distant future, we're better off not having a dog until afterwards. The reason I brought up the cost of training a service dog was to illustrate how prohibitive it is, which in and of itself should indicate that we should expect a smaller number of dogs in the parks than we currently are seeing. The reason I mentioned that it is reasonable for disruptive service dogs to be removed from premises is because Disney isn't even doing that, which would be within their rights, based on the complaints I've seen.
As I stated before...I'm harping on this so hard because it really angers me to see people abusing a system that was put in place for people who REALLY need services like it (nevermind the fact that crowded, loud places like Disney can be stressful for many dogs). I would complain just as loudly about people improperly parking in handicapped spaces, damaging the braille on ADA signage, or making fun of someone who has a disability. My biggest fear is that abuse of the ADA service animal laws will lead the federal government to swing too far in the opposite direction when they do finally update the law to close the loopholes, and that new changes would impinge on the services that are so valuable to those with disabilities - it would be yet another case of bad people ruining something that was meant to do some good.
As a matter of fact, if you refer to the thread about dogs now being allowed in 4 resorts, you'd see that even though the program just rolled out, there has already been a report of someone toileting their dog in an inappropriate place. Humans are inherently selfish and will break rules both because of laziness and if they see some inherent personal benefit to breaking them.
I'm glad your schools are so helpful to your students. I'm also happy for you that you are able to turn a blind eye to how horrible humanity can be - it's really a blessing that I wish we had in common. At this point, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.
To get back to the point of the thread...
The only resorts allowing dogs at this point are:
- Ft. Wilderness
- Port Orleans Riverside
- Yacht Club
- and Art of Animation.
POR is limiting dogs to four buildings and (I believe) only specific floors (I am unaware of what the policy is as far as buildings/rooms, etc. at the others). So far, if you look on the thread dedicated to the roll-out of this program, it's been confusing, with some lack of consistency in the answers people are getting when they call with questions and/or change-of-resort requests.
There have been a couple of reports of people seeing dogs at POR, but only one complaint of a dog being toileted where it wasn't supposed to be. I'm hoping the instance was reported and that it is dealt with properly.
We've all likely stayed in rooms that have had a service animal in them. The big difference here is that instead of having a dog in them maybe once or twice a year, now there will be dogs in them far more often, and with bathing dogs in the rooms prohibited as well as dogs prohibited from the pool areas, I'm not sure they'll be able to keep dog smell from eventually permeating any textiles in the rooms. (My MIL is a very neat, clean person, but the rug in her den absolutely reeked because her dog had some skin allergy that made the dog itself smell horrible. Even having the carpet cleaned couldn't get rid of the stink.) Perhaps Disney may need to provide a way/place to bathe dogs in the future?
I'm willing to bet that people have stayed in hotel rooms where dogs have stayed and not even realized it. We've stayed at many a hotel, from "motel 6"-type places to fairly swanky places and all were clean, no odor, etc. My only concern is that WDW tends to have a much higher guest turnover rate that will likely want to bring their pups along. From what I've read, it seams they only have certain buildings where they are booking these guests.
