I just think it's interesting - wonder if other GF guests have had that happen.
My friend and I have had this exact bit of direction from a resort CM at most of the resorts.
Electrical outlets in the hall are not for guests to plug things in to. They are for the cleaning crew and maintenance men to use for vacuums and other equipment.
There's no need to leave the ECV outside the room, and the outlets out there are for the Mousekeepers to use.
Well someone needs to tell that to the Resort Management. Like most hotels, WDW resorts do not put a lot of easily accessible AC receptacles. What's available is usually like a desk or nightstand outlet on a cord to a receptacle. More often than not, when asking where we might find an 11Amp rated AC circuit for my friends powerchair we've been told the outlet in the bathroom is rated for the hair dryer but if that obstructs the exit we can park in the hall if we prefer.
That maneuver in the room is only going to affect the person with the ECV. Leaving it out in the hallway affects everyone. It's also much easier to move one of those housekeeping carts (which are meant to be pushed) than to move an ECV out of the way, especially if you don't know how to put it into manual/push mode. If people parked their ECVs in the hallway, what do you do if there are two right there and another ECV or stroller can't get by?
Better to sacrifice a handicapped in the event of a catastrophe than ask people to make due with a 6 foot wide hallway instead of an 8 foot hallway for two strides? I'm not saying anyone should leave a scooter parked in a 5' hallway. I'm saying that in many hallways, the 24-30 inch width of a parked scooter does not reduce the corridor width to be smaller than code requires. In those cases, it's just not a safety issue.
And since it was brought up... where would you move a housekeeping cart that wouldn't create more chaos during an emergency? Like, there's an alarm and everyone is told to evacuate and as you're trotting down the hallway it seems to make more sense to pull maid carts off the wall and push them somewhere rather than just use the other two-thirds of the hallway?
I can't imagine how low you would have to go to blame the rudeness of leaving personal items in the hall on my disability. No one should be leaving things in the hallway of a hotel. Just because you use a mobility device does not mean that you are allowed to make a mess and clutter up hallways.
Well there's three arguments against this that I can see. One is concern of theft or vandalism. Which is a fair point. Another is that it could obstruct hallways. To which I say that in cases where leaving an ECV in the hall presents an actual safety hazard or inconvenience to others, one should definitely find another solution.
But to these concerns we should now add that parking a cart makes the hallway look messy? That it's rude to leave that thing you need for your vacation but that also will not fit safely in the room (at least while charging) outside the door in an extra wide hallway ... because other guests may not like to look at it?
The "housekeeping carts" argument is not relevant - those carts do not sit in the same spot in the hallways for 8+ hours at a time.
I think it's a fair comparison. Those carts occupy some place in the hallway for 8+ hours at a time. They are roughly the same footprint as an ECV and in an emergency they are roughly the same obstruction, albeit one that moves 50' every 90 minutes or so rather than staying put.
Additionally, they are moved through the hallways during a time when the Resorts are largely empty, and all the Guests are in the theme parks.
And an ECV in the hall spends most of it's time there at night when all the guests are asleep.
And unlike a housekeeping cart, shortly after any event that requires evacuation, a mobility device parked in the hallway will become occupied by the disabled person who put it there and used to evacuate.
The very fact that to come up with a safety argument against the practice one must envision a raging fire filling hallways up with smoke. In reality, you're more likely to get injured by a car in the parking lot.
With the exception of ECVs/Chairs parked in narrow hallways, what this complaint usually comes down to is ... "I don't like it."
Right? Because you can decide not to do it yourself because there is a risk that vandals and meddlers will screw up your gear, but someone else deciding to take that risk isn't putting you out. But people still don't like to see it ... So they come up with an improbable situation in which that ECV, for the minutes it's there before being ridden away by its owner might some how keep other guests from using the other 5 or 6 feet of hallway width. Out of all of the fears people have about being injured by an ECV at WDW this one is the least justified... by several orders of magnitude. Near as I can tell, you're more likely to die by drowning in a building fire than by anything relating to an electric wheelchair. I've actually found a case where that happened.
I think the most honest argument so far is that people don't like to see the powerchair in the hallway. It disturbs the theming of the Disney property. It looks messy. It makes their trip less Magical. Another is that, like a lot of things relating to ECVs, some people see it as getting something that the rest of us don't.
The rest of us don't get our own line for the busses. We don't get a nice seat for the fireworks. We all make due without stealing 12 sq.ft. of hallway.