Now Kevin and I go when I come home for my longer visits, so usually twice a year. That's really all he and I need. We have a pretty regular routine when we go due to some access issues...and some Kevin issues.
Don't get me wrong, Disneyland is great for wheelchairs as far as I'm concerned. They were one of the first theme parks to make an effort to work out an alternate entrance for wheelchairs, before the ADA laws even went into effect, I believe. Usually we'd just go in through the exit of a ride bypassing the long lines, but in the past we've gone through janitor's side entrances/closets, service elevators, and kitchens. Some of the alternate entrances weren't necessarily up to the Disneyland standard of the facade they usually maintained for guests, but if it would help get someone in a wheelchair into an attraction, they did it. Plus for regular Disnoids like us, it was fun to go where the regular public wouldn't see.
Because of the Park's age, there are some attractions that just can't be adapted, and that's OK as far as I'm concerned. But over time, they've added special boats to it's a small world and the Jungle Cruise. And special seats and ramps for the Carousel and the trains, things like that. Now, they've designed so many of the new attractions to have special wheelchair accessible cars in neat little special loading areas. The only bummer is that newer queue areas have to be built to be accessible, so we have to wait in lines again! If we go on those rides, anyway.
We tend to stick to the classics, so we have our own entrances and special lines to wait in, so we can usually do what we want easily in a day's time. We're in no hurry, so we'll go to shows and we'll visit with people waiting in line with us. And there's an instant rapport with the other groups who have family member in a wheelchair, particularly because you will run into each other a lot during the course of a day: in lines, in the special areas along the parade routes, or the wheelchair seating at Fantasmic.
If we're talking with other regular visitors, we'll exchange notes on recent or upcoming adaptations, and swap little tips such as making sure that the line attendant at small world knows if you can transfer or if you need to stay in the wheelchair and use the special ADA boats. On that ride the special boats (nicknamed the Yellow Submarine and the Pink Cadillac) move with the flow of all the others, so if you miss one, you have to wait the full length of the ride for it to come around again. So, in our already short line -- which has gotten longer in recent years -- Kevin and I will still often get to cut ahead.
If we chat with tourists, we'll point out the other adapted rides and tell them about the "secret" bathrooms, as Kevin calls them. We'll chat about wheelchairs and the best times to hit an attraction when you're in one. Or when to stay away because the pedestrian traffic will be so crowded, it would be too hard to negotiate a chair.
Several years back, we discovered, quite accidentally, the specially equipped boat for wheelchairs to ride on the Jungle Cruise. Kevin hadn't been on that ride in probably 15 years. When he was younger, we could carry him down into the boat pretty easily, but as he got older, he just would spaz out (literally), and it became way too difficult to get him in and out of the boat. But we rode the Jungle Cruise that day, and although Kev was a little shaky and clutched the bar of the ramp with all of the strength that left arm would muster, he had a nice time. And he wanted to tell someone official that he liked it. So on our way out, we went to Disneyland City Hall, so Kevin could let them know. I told him that he was the one who had to talk. There was a brief wait, but when it was our turn Kevin rolled right up to the counter and told the host that it was "really, really good" that there now was a wheelchair boat for him to use.
As we headed out to get back to the car, Kevin said to me, "I think they were glad I told them that."
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