Those who have been to any Disney (DIS) park lately will know that the crowds and accompanying lines are the primary thing that will get in the way of one having a magical experience.
While there are several ways one can shorten the wait by paying extra, a regular ticket during the park's most popular periods could often have one waiting up to two hours for popular rides such as Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and even young children's rides such as Peter Pan's Flight — a situation that pushes some to look for less-than-honest ways to get to the front of the line.
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As a result of growing numbers of passengers saying they have a disability they do not actually have, Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California jointly updated their policies for obtaining a Disability Access Service (DAS) pass for those who have a condition that makes it difficult to wait in lines for an extended period of time. The parks' policy now explicitly states that those who give false information in order to obtain one and are then discovered will be slapped with a lifetime ban.
Mariah Wild/Disney Parks via Getty Images
'Any previously purchased tickets will be forfeited and not refunded'
"If it is determined that any of the statements a Guest made in the process of obtaining DAS are not true, the Guest will be permanently barred from entering Walt Disney World Resort and the Disneyland Resort, and any previously purchased Annual Passes, Magic Key passes, tickets and other park products and services will be forfeited and not refunded," Disney says in the question-and-answer section of its DAS information page.
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The parks also reiterated that the accommodation is meant for a "small percentage" of visitors with serious disabilities rather than as a way to bypass lines one does not want to wait in or have a better experience in the park just because one wants to.
Those who require these accommodations need to apply for DAS at some point between two and 30 days before their park visit and have the guest for whom the accommodation is being made be present during the time of registration and park entry.
Here is who is eligible for Disney disability accommodation (and why you definitely shouldn't fake one)
Disney does not provide a definitive list of disabilities eligible for DAS (on the site, it explicitly names only "developmental disability like autism or similar") and explains that the decision on whether or not to grant it will be made by park workers on a case-by-case basis.
"DAS doesn’t provide immediate access to experiences, but rather allows Guests to request a return time for a specific experience that is comparable to the current standby wait," the company specifies.
Airlines have also been dealing with a similar problem of people faking disabilities to be given early boarding.
"I saw it recently while I was getting on a flight from Montevideo, Uruguay, to São Paulo," USA Today's travel columnist Christopher Elliott recently wrote for the paper. "A man with a cane cut to the front of the line, exclaiming, 'I have a cane!' [...while] I wondered why he hadn't pre-boarded with the other passengers with disabilities."
