In all honesty, it would be as easy for her to minimize her risk as it is for someone allergic to various pollens, insects, peanuts, and many other airborne allergens. She would jsut prefer not to, and instead wants to ban latex balloons from the property, which is pretty much impossible as people bring them in from other attractions to their rooms, and not all rooms require passage through a central lobby to reach.
I have a host of allergies, some more serious than others. Some are airborne, others food based, and still more are critter based. I have had endless successful visits to WDW, I just use common sense to avoid my allergens. I don't expect WDW to do anything other than tell me what foods I need to avoid, and provide a non-smoking room when applicable. Otherwise I take responsibility for myself.
Disney restaurants are for the most part volumnous. By the posters admission, latex outdoors isn't much of a problem, but it is if it's near her inside it could be. I suggested some very sensible mitigations, such as making sure restaurants managers and hosts were aware of my situation and seating me at a far end of the room, and keeping anyone with any balloons away from me. I also suggested contacting special services about having the room "special cleaned" before my arrival, and using my own car rather than WDW's transportation.
IMHO there is no way to completely eradicate exposure to latex. What about someone at the next table giving their baby a bottle with a latex nipple? Or someone who uses a latex (I call them) "roundtuit's" to open a jar of baby food? People who have other latex items on their person, be they for medical devices or anything else have just as much right to be there!
Instead of asking for a complete ban, she should instead be asking herself what can be done to minimize her risk--thus taking responsibility for herself. I do'nt ask WDW to remove the trees I'm allergic to. Instead I try to visit when they are less likely to be pollenating. People with peanut allergic kids don't ask for peanuts to be eliminated from the entire 47 mile property. Instead they notify restaurant managers who seat them as far away from others as possible, choose restaurants where there are no or minimal peanut products on the menu, dine early when restaurants are less likely to be crowded, travel during very off-peak times, and keep an epi-pen handy.
Reasonable accomodation is just that. Reasonable. it doesn't mean that anyone has to bend over backwards to accomodate every last need and whim of every person with a disability or medical condition in the world. It means that they need to make reasonable efforts to make their premesis reasonably barrier free (and barrier can more more than a physical barrier to free movement) so that a person with a disability can have a reasonably similar experience to anyone else.
Personally I feel that WDW handles allergies better than any other place I've ever travelled to. They bend over backwards to accomodate. But they shouldn't be expected to completely take responsibility for managing people's allergies. That is an individual responsibility.
As I said in my post on the other thread, if WDW took everything out of their parks and resorts that any given person could be allergic to, what would be left? Air. Water. That's about it.
While I certainly empathize with her, the tone of her post was very much that she expected the world to change because of her, and didn't want to take any active role in safeguarding herself. That tone is probably what put a lot of responders hackels up, and frankly I can't blame them.
Anne
