Has anyone else had issues with ADA/handicap passes? I’m not sure how other parks work, but mine requires guests who need a pass to bring a doctor’s note to guest relations to get a pass. Guest relations will then give them a little brochure-type pass with the wait time stamped on it (or pre-authorized for autistic guests) and space for us to write our ride’s name, the next time they can ride, and initial it.
Once when I was at the shoot-the-chutes water ride, we had a group come up with a pass, they get on and ride, no big deal. When the boat comes back, everyone else is getting off, and they stay on, I’m at enable, which controls the loading gates. I tell them they’ll have to get off. They say something about how they get to ride again because of their pass. I give a questioning look to my coworker at panel and say, “No, the only thing I know that lets you get double rides is the highest level of the [virtual line holding system, called fast pass at Disney parks, I think].” They do get off, but grumpily. I started thinking where did they get that idea? Did guest relations tell them that?
One time during our Halloween stuff, I get moved over to the drop tower, which I had just gotten trained on at the beginning of the month. I’m put 1st on one of the 2 enable positions, the one closer to the exit gate, so I’m responsible for closing it, as well as taking care of the ADA pass people. On my first cycle of the night, I go to close the exit gate, and this woman is there with a pass and asks me if I’m the girl that turned away her daughter with the ADA pass. I tell her I just got there. She leaves, and I (foolishly) think that’s the end of it. Now, when I got there, the only other workers I saw were a female supe, a male supe, and a male team member/lead (don’t remember exactly, just that it was another guy). So, as long as there wasn’t another girl working that I missed, it was probably the female supe that had talked to the woman’s daughter and her friends. A little bit later, the woman is back with her daughter & her friends. The mom gives me the pass. I look at the wait time and the last time they rode and what it was. I was a coaster on the other side of the kiddie area. I tell them that they still have 15 minutes of the 45 minute wait. The mom then goes on to try to convince me that the wait time was ONLY if they tried to ride the same thing twice in a row. I kept trying to tell her no, that’s not how it works. She asks to talk to a supervisor. Now, we had the 2 aforementioned supes working the ride, plus our other area supe who happened to be at the ride at the time. They were all by the panel, and I said as I was walking over there that I needed one of them. (At that point, I was happy to hand the group over because the mother seemed to be at the point where she wasn’t going to listen to me regardless of what I said anyway.) The extra supe who was there, who is actually the head supe of the area, talked to them, and eventually told the person who was grouping to leave a space open for them. I really hope he straightened them out while he was talking to them, though, like a “She was/they were right, but I’ll let it slide this once” type of thing. Besides, if the kids had talked to another girl before I got there, they probably talked to the female supe, who would have known what she was talking about. While I was talking to the mom, it did sound like that’s what guest relations had told her about the pass. I really wish guest relations would get it right because when they tell the guests something wrong, they’ll assume it’s right because it’s guest relations, they must know what they’re talking about. Then when we tell them something different, we’re the ones that look like idiots.
oh boy ADA my park had a somewhat similar system? but without a wait time we just couldn’t let people ride multiple times in a row, and the amount of people that show up in a little scooter but with no ADA pass demanding to be let in the exit is astounding ! idk people get upset about ADA systems everywhere but i think yours and ours is pretty good we’ll let pretty much anybody on anything unless a safety/medical issue prevents it.. i think guests get confused though because every park runs it differently so if they go to amusement parks a lot it’s hard to keep up lol
