Amputee Ride restrictions Question

david1

Earning My Ears
Joined
May 30, 2006
Messages
25
Hi all

I am a below knee amputee pirate: and as my daughters are starting to get older they want me to go on some of the bigger rides :eek: with them. But I noticed on our last vacation that most of the bigger rides or rides wear your legs just hang have restrictions not allowing me on.
I know and totally understand and agree with the ride restrictions as I would never put my self in a situation wear my leg might come off and god forbid hurt someone.

So my Question is
Am I allowed to take off my leg leave it at the start of the ride and at the end put it back on??

All comments suggestions personnel experiences please let me know

Thanks
David
 
So my Question is
Am I allowed to take off my leg leave it at the start of the ride and at the end put it back on??

All comments suggestions personnel experiences please let me know

Thanks
David
There is no specific information on any websites or from Disney. They basically just give the warning and it's up to you to decide whether or not to ride. No one in your situation has posted here before, but hopefully someone who is just lurking (and hasn't posted yet) will 'de-lurk' and come to your aid.

I don't know why what you are asking would not work somehow.
If you are planning to remove your leg to ride, you would need to board at the exit. If you are using a wheelchair or ECV, you will automatically be boarding at the exit area for those attractions where people board and exit at different spots. There is more information about that in the disABILITIES FAQs thread.
If you are not using a wheelchair or ECV, you would probably be needing a GAC (Guest Assistance Card) to board in those places. Some of the attractions also may not have a bench or chair for you to sit in while you put the leg on and off. You would also ned to explain to the CM what you are doing, because it's probably not something that happens real often. I'd also suggest talking to the CM at the entrance to the ride queue to find out whether or not removing your leg would be necessary. For many of the 'roller coaster' type rides at WDW, your legs don't hang freely; there is a floor. The only 'dangling ride' I can think of it Soarin'.
 
For a lot of the rides, there may be room for you to store the leg in the ride car with you, though, as Sue said, it's unlikely that you'll need to remove it for many rides.

Have a great time :goodvibes !
 
Soarin' is the only "dangling" ride I can think of, but you wouldnt have a problem on that - its not a roller coaster, there are no jerky or violent movements.
 

here is something that might help you.
It's pictures of ride cars from the allearsnet site. They were mostly taken from the viewpoint of people who are larger size, but you can see that most of the ride cars have floors.

Another ride I would probably avoid is Primeval Whirl. That is like combining a roller coaster with the teacups (as my Tag Fairy tag says). My youngest DD who has CP had trouble sitting up on the since she couln not brace herself with her legs.
 
Does your prosthetic go over your knee and are you able to bend the knee joint? If so, with the exception of Soarin, as SueM mentioned, I’d think you’d be ok on the other rides. Keep in mind leg room can be tight on some of the rides, so if you are not able to bend your knee in your prosthesis, you might want to remove it. I have a coworker who is an amputee (just below the knee) with a prosthesis that extends above the knee, but his knee joint doesn’t bend. As such, when he sits, his leg remains straight, and needs to take it off in limited leg room situations (such as driving). His wife works for (dare I say it?) Six Flags and when they go to the park, he brings along a pair of foldable crutches to get around on when he has to remove his leg. If you think the foldable crutches might be something you’re interested in, he said they are very light weight and can be packed in a suitcase (great for traveling) or carried in a backpack for a day at the parks.
 
Just a quick thought, there are restrictions on using a prosthesis in the water parks. The WDW disability pages on the web say:

"Certain restrictions apply to Guests using a prosthesis at some of our water slides. A separate information sheet is available at Guest Services to provide information specific to these needs."

You may be able to get a copy of the sheet they refer to mailed to you, if you wanted to know what you can and can't do in advance.

Have fun :thumbsup2 !
 
Hi all

Firstly sorry for not getting back to you all sooner as my cable modem stopped working after I posted my question on the board and I have only just got it fixed.

I have looked at the various parks Disney, universal and SeaWorld that we will be visiting and I don’t think I would have a problem with most of the rollercoaster type rides at Disney apart from the lack of leg room that I have noticed on our previous vacations in Orlando as I can’t fully bend my knee.

Having a look at the seating for the ride while I am in the queues allows me to assess the leg room and ask to be seated wear I think the most leg room is. Sitting at the front row doesn’t always give you more leg room as sometime the second row has a space under the seat in front of you that allows for more leg room.

So my Questions will no doubt be aimed at universal and SeaWorld sorry.

===================
from Universal website

Any guest with prosthetic arms or hands will be required to satisfactorily secure the limb and grasp the ride restraint. If you have any questions, please ask a ride attendant or visit Guest Services.

Guests must remove prosthetic limbs before riding Dueling Dragons or Pteranodon Flyers to prevent hazards or loss due to ride forces.
===================

Do you think these rides will have a seating area close to the ride boarding point? )

Also

I don’t use a wheelchair only a folding walking stick that I carry in a backpack that I use when I feel the need and as such have only once used a disabled entrance and even then that was because the cast member at the entrance to Haunted Mansion seen us standing looking at the 50 minute queuing time seen me using my stick asked if I had a GAC and I said yes and she very kindly showed us to an area with lots of empty wheelchairs as people wear just going in a side door.

Am correct in assuming that not all rides have a disabled entrance and do people with GAC but not in wheelchairs use these entrances wear available?

And is it expectable to use the fast pass line to enter a ride using my GAC when there are no fast passes available for the time we are in the park?

I don’t like to jump the queue or be seen to be as I don’t use a chair as a result we try to use the fast pass as much as possible but most of the time we tend to give the bigger queues a miss unless it’s a ride one of us really wants to go on that inevitably results in me being in a lot off discomfort or me sitting waiting for the wife and kids to go on the ride. On our last vacation the kids waned to go on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad there was no fast passes available and it had a 30 minute waiting time so we decided to just wait in the queue we ended up queuing for 1 hour 10 minutes needles to say I was in need a seat after that one and had a knock-on effect for the rest of the day.

Thanks again
David
 
A large number of Disney rides now have mainstream queuing (meaning wheelchair users and their parties go right through the normal queue and, in the case of rides that exit somewhere different from the entrance, are pulled off at the last minute to board at the exit), but some (mainly those in MK and some EPCOT ones) have a separate wheelchair entrance. If you got a GAC allowing you to board at the wheelchair entrance, you could use these separate entrances, but it wouldn't do you much good for those attractions with mainstream queuing (unless you were planning to remove your leg and leave it, in which case you'd need to board at the exit, so you didn't end up in a different place to your leg).

You may be able to get a GAC to allow you to wait in an area separate from the queue, but Disney normally likes people with mobility problems to use a wheelchair or ECV. Have you considered getting a folding camping stool, or a walking cane seat to perch on while you're in longer queues. They can be surprisingly light, and might just give you the rest you need.

Good luck and have a great time :goodvibes !
 
Having a look at the seating for the ride while I am in the queues allows me to assess the leg room and ask to be seated wear I think the most leg room is. Sitting at the front row doesn’t always give you more leg room as sometime the second row has a space under the seat in front of you that allows for more leg room.
WDW used to have a FAQs thread on the official website. One of the questions had to do with which rides had more leg room for someone with a leg cast. They took that off their website a few years ago and I have not been able to find information about it.
[/quote]from Universal website

Any guest with prosthetic arms or hands will be required to satisfactorily secure the limb and grasp the ride restraint. If you have any questions, please ask a ride attendant or visit Guest Services.

Guests must remove prosthetic limbs before riding Dueling Dragons or Pteranodon Flyers to prevent hazards or loss due to ride forces.
===================

Do you think these rides will have a seating area close to the ride boarding point? ) [/quote]
If you have not seen it, there is a downloadable "Rider's Guide" for people with disabilities on the Universal website. It is actually much more informative than Disney's guide for their parks.

For your specific questions, you could ask on the Universal Board or try emailing Universal if you don't get an answer here.
Someone posted this contact information for Universal on another thread:
guestservices@universalorlando.com Or call guest services at: 407 224-4233 Press option 9 to speak to a Guest Service Coordinator.
Am correct in assuming that not all rides have a disabled entrance and do people with GAC but not in wheelchairs use these entrances wear available?
As was already posted, you are correct.
For the Disney parks, AK and the Studio were built with Mainstream Lines, so at those parks, people with wheelchairs are pretty much in the same lines with everyone else.
MK and Epcot are older parks and have some attractions that were not able to have Mainstream lines. Some of these are because the line itself is not accessible. In some cases, it's because the attraction has the entrance and exit at different places and people using wheelchairs or other assistive devices will need to board at the exit so that their assistive device is waiting for them when they get off.

Universal was built after Mainstream Lines were common and their attractions pretty much have Mainstream Access.
And is it expectable to use the fast pass line to enter a ride using my GAC when there are no fast passes available for the time we are in the park?
All the Fastpass lines are accessible, but some of the regular lines are not at Epcot and MK. In those cases where the regular line is not accessible to you, you would be able to use a GAC (Guest Assistance Card) to access the Fastpass line if there are no Fastpasses left. You may be taken right in, or given a card with a handwritten return time (usually similar to the wait in the standby line).
That should also be the case with the situation you mentioned for Big Thunder Mountain RR. If a handwritten fastpass is not offered in cases like that (and they just tell you to go in the standby line), you could try asking for a return time. (Also, by the way, there is a wheelchair boarding area for BTMRR. We have never used it because it would not be safe for DD to ride that, but I people have posted about it).

I know people have used cane/stools like this one. It would not work as a plce to sit to take off your leg and I'm not sure if it would work out for you as a place to sit in line, but it might be worth a look.
 
Hi all

I had thought about getting a walking cane seat or similar to use in the parks for queues and parades but they all look rather bulky. I was thinking more along the lines of this
Pack Away Saddle Seat Stick

Or this
Fold-Away Flipstick Green

But with my luck someone would accidentally kick the stick right out from under me :rotfl2:

Thanks again to you all for all the information and suggestions

All the best
David
 
Hi all

I had thought about getting a walking cane seat or similar to use in the parks for queues and parades but they all look rather bulky. I was thinking more along the lines of this
Pack Away Saddle Seat Stick

Or this
Fold-Away Flipstick Green

But with my luck someone would accidentally kick the stick right out from under me :rotfl2:

Thanks again to you all for all the information and suggestions

All the best
David
That might work if it opens and closes easily and quickly.
One thing with line is that in many of them, you are not standing still for long periods; it's more of a slow movement forward, then stop for a minute or 2, then move forward again.
It would work for some of the places like shows or rides that load in 'batches' of people. For some of the shows where they pack people into a preshow area, if you stayed off to a side and had members of your party kind of screening you from other guests, it help prevent people from maybe kn ocking into you.
 
Any recent updates to this information? My BIL is a below-the-knee (ankle) amputee and has done Disney and other theme parks / fair rides before. If it's a dangling ride, he simply takes his leg off. The only place he's ever had a problem was at Disney water parks 4-5 years ago. A CM pulled him aside after he'd been enjoying the slides all day and told him that prosthetics weren't allowed. lol
 
There have been posts on amputees and the parks would not have a problem with your BiL. the only thing they restrict is people who cannot ride safely or if a cast or prosthetic device could impose a danger to CMs and/or guests.

As for water parks I have never heard of the restriction. Cheshire Figment is a CM and will come by later and he or Sue should be able to answer you about water parks.
 
If there is exposed metal it is not allowed on a slide as it can damage the slide. But this also applies to swimsuits.
 














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