DAS and a service dog mini trip report

[JillyBean1899]

Since there has been some debate over the "security" of the kennels at rides, I'm keeping track of them here

Our group has 2 vision impaired and 2 normal vision people. One of the vision impaired people has a guide dog, the other uses just a cane. We are on a trip through the community college, so we've been limited in FP options today, but tomorrow will be better.

We went to AK this morning and picked up our DAS for the weekend. Good news is we could get it for the whole weekend so we only have to stop there once. Th bad news is they wouldn't do it for 2 groups of 3, so on rides where one of the DAS users doesn't want to ride, we will have to split up and one person go through the standby line, which I think is stupid. That's definitely going on the "need to change" suggestion e-mail that gets sent to Guest Services.

We went to Kilimanjaro Safari and got a return time, then headed through the walking trail next to it to kill time (30 min return). When we went back we had about a 5 minute wait to get on because they needed a wheelchair truck to accommodate Rusty. They used a separate tie-down leash to station him in the truck so he couldn't jump out, but reminded us that it is the handler's responsibility to keep him seated and still. He was fine during the ride, even when someone behind us yelled "SQUIRREL!!!" A few of the bouncier times he picked his head up, but most of the time he just chilled.

We headed to Dinoland next, grabbed a DAS return for Primeval Whirl (20 min) and got in the standby line for Dinosaur. We waited about 20 minutes there, which wasn't bad since it was inside. After the orientation video, we were taken down an elevator to the unload aide where the kennel was set up (between the wall and the wheelchairs). There were 2 supervisors that stood there "guarding" the kennel while we rode. After picking him back up, we took the elevator back up and into the gift shop.

We went back to PW, and right up to the load platform. They don't have a kennel, but they have a "penalty box" on the platform so we did a dogswap. They are able to stop the vehicle for you to get on and off if you ask.

Next up was the Finding Nemo show. We sat in the front so Rusty had room, but they weren't ideal seats because you can't see anything up on the second level.

We grabbed a DAS return for Everest (20 min) and went to eat. We had about a 5 min wait again, and there is an empty area between load and unload (gates on each side) where the kennel was set up. An employee stood near the kennel the whole time we were on the ride, and it wasn't an area guests walk thru anyway.

We're heading to EPCOT now, I'll update again later

 

[SueM in MN]

Thanks for the information - especially the details.

There is another person using a Service Dog who also posted about their experiences. I will combine the information and add a post about this to the disABILITIES FAQs thread.

 

[JillyBean1899]

Thanks for the information - especially the details.

There is another person using a Service Dog who also posted about their experiences. I will combine the information and add a post about this to the disABILITIES FAQs thread.

Sounds good.

Saturday morning we went to MK for opening. Yes, at 35 I saw my first RD at MK We headed to Jungle Cruise, Pirates, and Small World (Rusty rode them all ... was fine on Jungle Cruise, the small dip and the "battle" in Pirates gave him a slight startle but he was OK, and he *LOVED* Small World). There's a service dog area next to the exit of Pirates, so we went ahead and snagged a DAS return time for it just in case it got busy by the time we were done with Jungle Cruise. Jungle Cruise was a walk-on; Pirates had a 15 minute wait by the time we got back over there, but that's it.

Next up ... Frontierland! Splash Mountain had a 10 minute standby wait, so we rode that next, and they took us directly to the exit so we didn't have to use the stairs in the queue. No kennel there, so we dogswapped at the exit. Would have preferred a place to sit, but there weren't any benches that were in the shade. And I can confirm that "Andy's coming!!" no longer works on Woody and Jessie (they were near the Splash exit while we were waiting, and a group of kids shouted it and nothing happened). Oh, and unload got backed up after we got down the last drop, so I took a waterfall to the face because of course my boat stopped right next to it. I got wetter there than I did on the rest of the ride. We then went to Thunder Mountain and got a return time (standby was 40 min) so we could do an "empty/fill break" (empty what's full ... bladder ... and fill what's empty ... water ) and a sunscreen break, then headed back to ride. They directed us right up to the exit ramp, and we dogswapped again. Apparently they do have a kennel, but the CM that gave us our return time said they only use it if you use a dog and you're by yourself (um, ok ... so if there's only 2 of us, you're going to have the blind one walk onto the ride by themself? Yeah, that will work, I'm sure). Anyway, we were able to ride without trouble, but obviously would have preferred to ride as a group.

After that we decided to head over to Haunted Mansion. They had a 10 minute posted wait, we walked all the way to the end of the graveyard area and stood there for about 30 seconds until we went into the library and stretching room. They had us hang in the back of the room so they could send us to the unload platform to load on. Rusty was able to ride this one, but I don't recommend it for large dogs, and definitely take the harness off, because he was kinda scrunched up against our legs. They slowed the walkway down and not having anyone in line behind us was fantastic, because we could take our time and get ready to get on the walkway without people pushing behind us.

Small World's queue was about 10-15 minutes, so still not bad. Nobody in the group really cared much about the rest of Fantasyland, so we headed towards the back real quick for 2 of the group to ride Dumbo (15 min queue). After that we headed to Cosmic Ray's to eat ... *BAD IDEA*, even at about 2 PM. Wow, that place was just a mess. The "queueing" system for tables was great, because when I explained that we needed a table next to a wall for Rusty they actually let me go down before the rest of the group had gotten their food because a wall table had come available. It seemed like the line was moving pretty quickly, nobody was standing with food once their whole group was together, but it was still a little difficult with only 2 people that could carry trays both guiding another person and having an SD along. After that we left, and on the bus back to the hotel I set up FP for us to do stuff in Tomorrowland on Sunday.

Sunday morning we went straight to Space Mountain first thing for a FP. Yeah, we probably didn't need it, but I wanted to make sure we'd get in, and all we were doing was Tomorrowland because we left that afternoon. This one was difficult. The queue itself was easy, but no kennel so we had to dogswap. This involved walking down the employee walkway ramp from the load platform to the unload platform, but then we had to walk back up it to get to the ride when it was our turn. And then we had to take the moving walkway out. I had forgotten how *LONG* that walkway is, and how many times it goes up and down. We created quite a bottleneck behind us because there wasn't enough space to walk by Rusty easily (and we didn't want to cram him against the wall because we didn't want his feet to get between the belt and wall). We then headed over to Tomorrowland Speedway (another FP, good thing because the line at 9AM was already 45 min long). Rusty was able to ride this one, too, but again, take the harness off so that your SD can get comfortable on the floor easily (they turned the engine off so that even though he squished the gas pedal while he was getting situated, we didn't move). I had to hold onto his collar while we rode (J drove ... and he did pretty good, up until the area with lots of turns, once he bounced off the guiderail it was hard to recover, so we looked kinda like we were drunk), and Rusty *LOVED* it. I could just hear his thoughts OMG CAR RIDEEEEE!!!!!!!. We had some time to kill so we did the PeopleMover, which was again difficult because of the moving walkway ramp to get up to it, but they slowed down the platform (and actually ended up stopping it), and they let us ride through twice without getting off. They asked if we wanted to go again, but we decided to hop off and do the Carousel of Progress before our Buzz Lightyear FP time. We got a seat on the end of the row so Rusty had plenty of stretching space, and he just chilled again, although he perked his ears up every time Rover barked. Buzz Lightyear was another dogswap, because we knew how crammed the car was at Haunted Mansion, but like HM we got on at the unload station, which was nice, although the CM there had some trouble initially understanding what we wanted to do (I don't think English was his first language, and I'm not sure he was terribly fluent in it, which is a problem we ran into on a number of rides).

Overall, the parks were pretty accommodating for ways to work with/around Rusty. We did, however, have a few problems with the bus drivers. Leaving the resort one day, we stood in the handicapped loading box like usual, and when the bus unloaded we started to go in the back door like we'd done all weekend. The bus driver shut the door actually *ON* one of the girls, and when she hollered, the bus driver yelled "you can't enter there, that's only for disabled", to which she responded "2 of us are blind, don't you see the canes?" The driver was really huffy and said again it's only for disabled, and we had to enter up front. Of course, by this time everyone else had boarded, so people had to move for us to be able to sit. This happened a second time, except the bus driver didn't open the back doors because nobody was on the bus, and we had to wait for people to rearrange themselves to make room for us to get a seat and for Rusty to get under it. Early mornings were the best, because there was an extra employee at the bus stops at the hotel that would keep people from getting on the bus until the driver had seen us and lowered it for us to get on, but during the day it was basically a free-for-all.