I will admit that I too would have been shocked to see him get up and left his own wheelchair. I fully understand and even know people who use wheelchairs to help them manage a full weeks vacation in the parks,who are able to get around perfectly fine during normal every day activities at home. I think anyone who has ever been to WDW knows that the amount of walking and standing at one day in WDW exceeds what most of us do in an average week at home. I have absolutely no problem with those who feel they need a wheelchair, bringing or renting a wheelchair.
Yet, everyone on this thread has to admit that there are people who abuse the privileges that go along with the need to use a wheelchair. For instance, why should they, and their entire party, get to skip a line to get on first if the waiting area is big enough to accomodate the chair?
My DD has Arnold Chiari Malformation Type II. It is a rare condition, so to make the explanation very short, this is a neurological condition which has as symptoms weaking of the muscles and fatigue upon exertion. I was told that if I had a form completed by her doctor, we could move to the front of the lines. I did not do this. First, she will be living with this condition her entire life. She needs to learn to pace herself so that she does not exhaust herself. She needs to learn what her limits are because she will not always be someplace where she will get to skip to the front of the line. Second, it would not be fair to all those people who have waited so long if we just walked right up and got on with no wait at all. I did rent her a stroller although she was much too big for it so that we were guaranteed that she would have a sit when she needed one. Also, she sat in it during parades and the castle stage show, etc. On our next trip, I will probably have to rent her a wheelchair, because there is no way she can use a stroller now. However, I can assure you that we will not use the chair to get out of standing with the rest of you.
Now everyone can go ahead and flame me, but the bottom line is that it may not be my DD's faught that she has a special medical condition, but it's not all those other peoples fault either. Those people don't owe her any special privileges and neither does life. We had to go during off season to avoid the major crowds and we may have taken more breaks than everyone else, but we mananged to ride every ride at WDW, all four parks, and we waited our turn to do it.