The bottom line is that
DAS is too appealing to both disabled and cheaters. The current DAS system is honestly amazing and has made touring with our 6 year old so much better! Less than 5 years ago, 2 different groups of people could skip the majority of the "in que wait" for free. Now they can charge upwards of $160 (not including the Individual Lightening Lane costs) for a family of 4 to do the same thing OR the same family can qualify for DAS (whether honestly or not) and get a "superior" product for free.
We have 3 children with a 5 year age gap between the older 2 and the younger (12, 11, 6). We went to Disney for years with the older 2 on FP alone and made it great. I learned how to work the system well, they were both neurotypical kids and we had a great time. Fast forward to my now 6 year old with autism. We have paid for
Genie+ and it has worked well on several trips as he was too little to ride the bigger rides anyway. So my bigs would either wait in line with a parent, use rider switch, etc while the youngest one and a parent went off exploring and doing other things (or pulling the stroller cover down and escaping) for a few minutes. Or there was times when one parent would take an older child to one park to rope drop, while we stayed in until DS was ready to go. I wasn't even aware of how DAS worked, until a recent trip when someone suggested we try it for him. It was getting to the point on Genie+ that I couldn't get all the "rides" in and he would see them and flip out not understanding that we couldn't just ride. Our last trip was with DAS and it was a night and day difference. Our day flowed so much smoother, we saved so many steps walking/not criss-crossing the park, there wasn't near the begging to go back to the pool bc DS6 was "done". I would most definitely pay for the DAS pass over paying for Genie any day. I think the reason so many of us are upset is bc we LIKE and realize that if they change DAS, there's not much way to make it better for those of us using it. The fact that we could sleep in on an AK day, schedule a DAS when we walked in the park for FOP, go due to gorilla and tiger trails, maybe eat lunch and then walk on FOP for free of charge is in no way comparable to Genie+ or $LL. With that service I would have needed to be up at 7am and charged for it, hoping that the time I wanted was available. While in the pre shows for FOP, I can now select Safari and even if it's 60 min out. 20 min of that will be spent in the pre shows and riding FOP. So by the time we are off, look through the gift shop, stop for a bathroom break or a dole whip and all of a sudden we are walking on Safari. Now, I understand that the reason this service is available is bc my 6 year can be extremely difficult to deal with and yes, if he has a complete meltdown, our day is shot. Or take for instance, HS. We've have done the morning race to RotR. Sometimes it's been successful, others the ride has broke down and we've had to shift gears. None of it was pleasant for us or our DS. And in recent years, we've just sucked it up and paid vs. doing the rat race. The fact that DAS allows us to do the same thing as $125 $LL (family of 5), even I don't think it's "fair," although my son definitely qualifies and benefits. Do I want to lose what we currently have with the DAS? Absolutely not. Bc it makes our days SO MUCH better and saves us nearly $600+ plus on an average trip as a family of 5. Bc yes, even my neurotypical kids greatly benefits from it. They are your average pre-teen... they still get tired, hot, cranky, impatient...all the things. Disney is our happy place bc everyone kind of gets a 'break'.
We CAN make Disney work with just Genie+. It may not be like it was with DAS and my kids may not get to ride everything they want, but thats life and sometimes it doesn't always go as we planned...those with disabilities and parents with kids with disabilities know that all too well. If we purchase Genie and DS totally flips out on us, and we have to leave it would be very unfortunate. But thats where as a parent, DH and I would just have to decide how we were going to handle it. One parent stay and ride with the bigs, all of us leave and just talk to Guest Services about a refund, etc. It is only Disney's job to provide "reasonable" accommodation, not make our day the very best peachy experience possible. When someone is winning, someone else is losing...it's just a fact of life. Taking a kid with autism to a theme park, or an adult with IBS, or any of the things, is just a risk you take. No one is forcing us to Disney. Somehow we are all driving for hours, getting on a plane for hours, etc to get there and have made that process work for us. This may just make us rethink "how" we will do Disney. We recently went to a MLB game. It was part of a choir trip bc my oldest DS was singing "God Bless America" and we paid for our DS6 a ticket. By the 2nd inning, he was squirming on my lap asking to go home. By probably the 6th inning, he had moved to his own seat with a blanket over his head watching Youtube
I didn't "expect" the stadium to do anything, we brought him bc it was a family event and we wanted him to come, knowing full well it wasn't going to be his favorite day. I hope Disney can come up with a solution that is helpful for everyone, but we must keep in mind, that it's still our choice each day whether we vacation here or not. Obviously, there's some people caught in limbo with this upcoming change. We are potentially in that group. We have a
Disney cruise scheduled for May 20-24. We were thinking about tacking on a couple Disney days after that, but we are going to wait and see how it plays out first.
