Prior to August of this year, I had never wanted to go to Disneyland. I was there once as a very young child from which I have only a vague memory of feeling nauseated on the teacups. I have not taken my own kids (they are 13 and 16 now) and it just has never been on my list.
To be clear, it’s not really Disney’s fault I didn’t want to go — I don’t like any amusement parks. I have a crappy spine and unreliable joints, so I can’t ride roller coasters and that makes me sad because I used to freaking LOVE roller coasters. I’m generally misanthropic and introverted, and the crowds make me think of sweat and germs and money. And I’m just too GenX-y to be able to march around a giant parking lot wearing mouse ears like everyone else. I have a hard time with school spirit, a healthy distrust of authority, and conflicting feelings about Capitalism, so yeah, not your typical Disney customer.
But here we are at this middle stage of life and it turns out my boyfriend LOVES Disneyland (he obvs didn’t get the whole GenX memo). For two years, he’s been talking my ear off about it. He’s a filmmaker and a storyteller and he is obsessed with the details of the place, the storytelling intention built into every aspect of the park, its history, and the ingenious and technologically amazing light/film/sound shows. Oh, and StarWars land.
So last month when he had a shoot in LA and my kids were on vacation with their grandparents, he invited me to come with him for the shoot and to meet his California cousins, and so he could finally take me to Disneyland. I agreed to go reluctantly like a petulant child, as if him dragging me there was akin to me doing him a favor. I was a complete and total snot about it.
(Don’t worry — I told him he could take this piece as my apology, and he’s standing behind me as I type with a smug I-told-you-so grin on his face).
Cinderella’s Castle
Source: Aubrey Odom on Unsplash
Because yeah, well, to make a long story short, I loved it. I loved it for all of the reasons he talked about and for the one revelatory reason he couldn’t have known: Disneyland is the most accessible place on earth. It’s not just accessible, it is outright and intentionally welcoming to people in wheelchairs in a way that shows (rather than tells) the profound difference between tolerance and belonging. People in wheelchairs are not just tolerated at Disneyland, we’re welcome there.
I am an ambulatory wheelchair user, which means I can walk. I use my wheelchair in a place like Disneyland because I am physically unable to stand for more than a few minutes and because I can’t do all the slow walking that’s required to move around in crowded places. It’s sort of counter-intuitive — the only time I can’t walk is if I’ve been sitting too long in an upright chair. So, most of the time my wheelchair gives me a way to be in places where I’d have to sit or stand for a long time. Because of the way I use my wheelchair, people get confused and aren’t always nice about it.
One time, I was at a march for women’s rights in my chair and when I got up to stretch, a person in my group rushed over urgently to tell me to sit back down because it embarrassed her to be with a person in a wheelchair who “didn’t actually need it.”
Another time I used it at the funeral of my dear friend’s father. Later that night at the shiva (a Jewish gathering to support the family) I didn’t have it because I could sit comfortably on the couches in their home and the rabbi teased me that I had used it during services to “steal the attention.”
Then there was the time I took my wheelchair to a work conference in Florida. When I got off the flight I couldn’t walk so my friend/helper and I made our way to the conference hotel with some difficulty only to find there were five stairs up to the check-in counter, and a further five steps up to the bank of elevators. It was easy enough for the clerk to come down to me to check me in, but we couldn’t get me and the wheelchair up the stairs. After much confusion, we found the manager who knew that the “accessible” service elevator was around the back of the hotel, through a seeping, mildewy, and trash-filled alley, and up a ramp that, it turned out, was blocked by 50 cases of tonic water that we had to wait 20 minutes for the bar staff to clear away.
Most days, that’s what being in a wheelchair is like. You have to plan ahead for every move, people don’t know how to deal with you, and most of the world ends up being out of reach.
Disneyland was the complete opposite of all of that. Wide aisles and corners leading up to the rides, space in every single restaurant and restroom, every corner of the park was created with wheelchairs in mind. Every single staff member was trained in welcoming people in wheelchairs, asking things like, “can you walk the 14 steps from here to the ride?” They’d take my wheelchair at the start of the ride and it’d be waiting for me at the end. And I could ride those rides because they were so well made, well maintained, and well marked for their risks and dangers that I could tell which ones would work for me. I even rode an impossibly smooth roller coaster that made me feel like I could conquer the world.
On the second day (yes, of course I went back for a second day) we noticed all the little girls with perfect princess hair and tiaras and we followed their trail of sparkles back to the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique, where the six year old inside of me wanted to touch every piece of satin, crinoline, and sequined lace on every princess dress being sold at the front of a hair salon where staff was doing the perfect princess buns. Then, right up front and center, I noticed a special stand selling accessible princess dresses made for little ones in wheelchairs, complete with a kit to dress your chair up like Cinderella’s carriage. I started to cry.
After my initial surgeries, as I searched for a diagnosis for my pain and failing joints, and as I became increasingly immobile, I resisted the wheelchair I obviously needed. But in doing so I found myself missing out on everything from my kids’ soccer games and elementary school plays, to parties and concerts. I realized I was missing out on so many sources of joy, I was basically missing out on life. I finally got the chair so I could have more options and be a little more free. And it does that for me, but it also has a cost. Psychologically, socially, physically, when I’m in my chair I feel and am often treated like I’m the “other.”
But that wasn’t true at Disneyland. I didn’t feel different, I wasn’t a pain, I wasn’t embarrassed, I didn’t have to explain myself to anyone.
Admittedly, I still couldn’t bring myself to wear the mouse ears. I mean, those two days didn’t change who I am at my core. And, I had a really strong urge to watch Fight Club and swear a lot. But you can bet your bippy I’ll go back to Disneyland any day of the week and I’ll bring my kids.
Even more than all of that, I’ll carry with me the idea that it is entirely possible to make this world a more accessible place. It takes a little forethought, a little training, but it might just change our small world after all. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
