No matter how many times one visits Walt Disney World property, there always seems to be something new to be learned. My most recent trip involved taking my 93 year old mother to Downtown Disney and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Mom uses a walker to keep steady on her feet, so a wheelchair was in order for both visits. I’d gotten pointers on renting and using wheelchairs from several people on the DisneyWorldTrivia.com forum, but actually making this all happen was a bit more.
We first took Mom to see the Osborne Spectacle of Dancing Lights at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We were not alone. About 20 thousand of our closest friends from the Orlando area and their families and friends, who were visiting them for Thanksgiving, also decided to do the same thing. Who would have thought that so many people would want to visit the park three hours before the park closed?
After creeping through the backed up traffic to enter the parking lot, I was directed to turn left. I had the handicapped ticket in my windscreen, but I was still directed to turn left; away from the park entrance. I crossed my fingers that all would be well, but I ended up leaving the park instead of moving to a parking area. Determination set in now, so with Mom in the jump seat and my sister and brother-in-law assuring me that we really didn’t HAVE to go to the park, I rejoined the same line of traffic I’d just left, and headed back into the parking lot. This time, as I reached the cast member, I told her the situation and assured her that my husband was standing in the handicapped parking lot and there were spots available. By the way, this was true. My husband was waiting for us there, while my daughter picked up a wheelchair inside the park. Cast members get a bit testy if you need to take a wheelchair out of the park, but without a courtesy wheelchair in the parking area, we had no choice but to take the rented wheelchair to Mom.
Once we were parked and Mom was ensconced in her chariot, we headed into the park. It was crowded, but not overly. We found that the wheelchair worked well, and that most stationary people did move aside when we were trying to get past them.Returning the wheelchair was easy since we were allowed to leave it in the handicap parking lot. There still were no courtesy wheelchairs available.
Our trip to Downtown Disney on Saturday evening was a bit more traumatic. Since we were eating at Fulton’s Crab House, I tried to find a parking area close to the restaurant. The closest spot was near Planet Hollywood in Lot H. I had done some research so I knew that we could rent a wheelchair in Downtown Disney, but I wasn’t careful as to exactly where that would be.
I now know that there are three locations. There are two locations in the Marketplace: Guest Relations near Team Mickey and in the Memory Shop at the far end of the Art of Disney store. The third is in West Side, where wheelchairs can be rented in DisneyQuest Indoor Interactive Theme Park.
We had planned to do a bit of shopping before dinner, but Mom only made it as far as the Lego Imagination Center when we realized a wheelchair was going to be a necessity. My sister and I went to Guest Relations to get a chair. Not surprisingly, the chairs were all gone, but a cast member called ahead and found that the Memory Shop still had wheelchairs. Because Downtown Disney is an open area, a $100.00 deposit is required to keep wheelchairs from, as the Australian’s say, “Going on walk about.” We made sure that we could return the chair to Guest Relations when we were leaving since that was a bit closer to where we were going to be at the end of the evening, or at least thought we did. Although we were told we could return the wheelchair to Guest Relations, we found out the hard way that while we could have returned it to West Side, we could not return it at Guest Relations and we had to go back to the Memory Store. Those two locations are on the same system. Guest Relations, for some reason, is on a different system. The crowds were so heavy that evening that once we put Mom in the car parked in Lot H, it took us an hour to walk from parking Lot H to Guest Relations, and wait to speak to a cast member, and then get to the Memory Store, and then back to Lot H.
So my experience taught me that: if one can miraculously find a parking spot in Lot “A”, then rent a wheelchair from one of the two locations in Marketplace. However, if this situation comes up again, I think I’ll park in Lots “J” or “K”, which are closer to the Virgin MegaStore, and get a wheelchair from the Westside location. I would expect the crowds to be lighter at that end of Downtown Disney and returning the chair there should be easier.
If the situation arises again where I need to rent a wheelchair when the parks are expected to be busy, I think I’d send a scout ahead to make sure there is still a parking spot available. Then I’d make sure the cast member in the parking lot understands that I really NEED to at least drop off my guest in the handicap area. I’m just grateful that there were wheelchairs available that evening. We really would have had to cancel our visit to see the lights without a wheelchair.
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