The wheelchair loading policy did not change.
The number of guests with the wheelchair did (not really, the number of guests allowed to board through the back doors was set at 6 total guests months before)
You still wait in the wheelchair loading area in resorts that have one or in/near the painted box. We will still load you first if there is room for you. 5 other guests in your party will be allowed to board with you, any other guests will need to use the standard queue. You may choose to wait until the rest of your party will be in a position to ride with you. We will not move them ahead of other guests to make sure they ride with you.
If you come up to a bus stop and we are already loading the bus and there are still guests in line, I will ask you to wait for the next bus. That is being fair. If I stopped loading the guests that were waiting first, that's not fair to them and probably not safe, either. That would be providing preferential treatment.
As far as the rule SueM was referring to, that was the policy at one time, but it was not mentioned at the training we had on the new policies, so maybe that has changed. From a fairness standpoint, I would agree with that rule but from a practicality standpoint, if I can squeeze several standee guests on a full bus, I think that I should be allowed to. If I load standee guests but cannot load a wheelchair, I will call my coordinator for a bus to come and pick up the wheelchair.
This happened at Riverside this weekend, a 3 wheelchair party was not able to board the bus running the route, the driver called it in and I happened to have a 3 position bus that was empty. I was dispatched directly to Riverside East depot to pick up those guests.
I'll bend over backwards to help out those who are in a wheelchair (and me bending over backwards is not a pretty sight!) but I need for you to be understanding that I'm trying to help all guests equally.
The intent of the rules is to allow equal access, not preferred access.
Oh, and by the way, the way we are inspecting buses does not have any effect on the wheelchair policy, it really did not need to be brought up in this thread.