Autism and Merlin RAP

[Perzival]

I think it's fair to say that the amount of people diagnosed with autism has increased by a huge amount compared to the amount of people who were diagnosed with the separate conditions prior to the change in the diagnostic manuals and people with a dx can vary between being a doctor and having a family, mortgage, social life etc to requiring 2:1 24 hour support with very limited communication.

This week Merlin that own Alton Towers, Thorpe park, Chessington and Legoland have decided to not give their ride access pass to people who struggle in crowds. This has caused uproar within the Merlin/ theme park groups as the majority of people who have this struggle have autism.

For those who aren't aware, in order to get a Ride Access Pass (RAP) you have to give evidence of your disabilities to a company called Nimbus who then decide what type of issues you have and give you a card with various icons on that you can them submit to venues for reasonable adjustments.

Throw in the commentary around the SEND white paper and the government review into why so many people are being diagnosed and i'm wondering if this is a more general move and one which is becoming more acceptable.

As the diagnosis has gone from previously representing mainly boy/ men with quite complex needs to representing a vast array of differring presentations and with an ever increasing amount of people being diagnosed, aibu to think that this is just the start and more venues/ places will limit or remove reasonable adjustments for this group of people?

AIBU= No, there isn't a push back against the autism diagnosis and adjustments made for the dx

AINBU= yes, more venues will start to remove or reduce adjustments for those with Autism

To avoid drip feeding I have a ds with profound autism and would imagine he will likely always get various reasonable adjustments (still gets RAP) etc.

I've been waiting for a thread about this. I think it's disgusting what they've done.

Nimbus say that the crowd symbol represents difficulty with queues but merlin have ignored this. Instead stating that pre visit info packs, a sensory room, flash cards and visiting on quieter days are the reasonable adjustments they will offer.

Oh and a free carer, but we already have that.

They haven't got a clue and are very close to the discrimination line I think

I'm very angry.

I don’t have anything useful to add other than it must be exhausting for parents and carers having to constantly battle stuff like this to get the support needed for their children!

…I say this as a parent of an ASD child … the problem is that people are taking the piss. Not all ASD diagnosis, is “struggles in crowds”, and people who don’t need them, are getting them, as they can’t be arsed to queue.

Maybe Nimbus need to do their job a bit better.

I don't know, from a business point of view, if you're too accommodating and offer a lot of back queue access then you will ultimately become more attractive as a place to visit for those who require these adjustments.
This in turn raises the (perceived) queue time for those who do not qualify for the adjustments and perhaps make it less attractive.

I guess it's about a business trying to balance legal compliance and business decisions.

I totally understand what you're saying though, as I have a child with AuDHD who has the UK access card with the queueing symbol and we have qualified for the Disney version of this previously, and I'm worried for the day they randomly decide we no longer qualify.

But I guess we just have to deal with it when it comes.

We’ve had Merlin annual passes for 22 years, and cancelled them yesterday. The parks are no longer accessible to my family. Such a shame. We’ll stick to paltons and Drayton manor.

I think quite a few places do this already. Latitude Festival, for example, take a similar approach to their 'accompanied carer' ticket. Not saying it's right, just that i don't think that many places are really that inclusive to begin with.

I vividly remember having an argument with a member of staff at a local farm who insisted that I needed to 'find' a special activity pass that I'd purchased but which got lost while I was dealing with an almighty meltdown with my daughter. All because she 'looks and behaves normal'. 🙄

I think this sort of scheme works better with a low enough ratio of people needing the passes compared to other guests. If more and more people qualify for these passes then it won't make as much of a difference having one.

Rightly or wrongly I think it is human nature to be cynical about anything which was once seen as quite rare becoming more common. It's very unfair on people who need these adjustments to be caught up in this though.

I think it's bad they have brought this change in with no advance notice. Families may have purchased annual passes and they aren't now getting what they expected.

It's also worth pointing out the ride access pass isn't a queue jump. If the queue is 40 minutes the RAP allows you to book the ride but you must still wait 40 minutes before you can ride. You just get to do your waiting elsewhere in the park rather than in the queue.

It's all a bit of a mess by Merlin.

My child has a RAP and still qualifies for it even after these changes. If they didn't though we'd no longer go to a Merlin park because the day would be unmanageable without it.

The issue is that too many people have the passes now, people quite capable of queuing. My dd has autism, diagnosed at 2 24 years ago before it was as prevalent as a diagnosis (so not new) and it’s never occurred to get a pass because she’s quite capable of waiting, if you want to ride you queue end of. She’s in the higher functioning for lack of a better description group. If we are with dsd we have a pass, she is profoundly disabled. I know people who brag about never queuing and how to get passes, it got out of control and some people will miss out who genuinely needed them because others abused their diagnosis who could queue (asd is not a one size fits all diagnosis

My Ds still gets RAP and got the DAS at Disney World as he does have complex needs and it isn't hidden. I do think something had to change with RAP due to the increase in people wanting it.

My bigger concern is that this is a sign of things to come as while my ds isn't impacted at this moment it could be that changes to how autism is viewed and accomodated could impact him in the future.

I wonder if part of this is the "different ability not disability" and "autism is my superpower" crowd or those self diagnosing. I'm wondering if it's being seen as if you can opt in to the diagnosis is it really a disability? For some autism is an absolutely devasting disability, i'd happily remove it from my ds or cure it if I could so can't imagine self diagnosing something like that.

Btw if you genuinely hate crowds, why go to a theme park? Genuine question. We have been off peak and dd did ok but she’s been brought up in cities and no two autistic people are the same

I do wonder this too.

Could it be that as the parks are heaving in peak, Merlin are taking the stance that being in a queue is the same as just walking around the park due to the number of people, then if you go off peak when it's quiet to combat this then the queues are less so RAP isn't needed?

I think we’ll start to see more of this, it was inevitable. With the massive increase in diagnoses and If these conditions are hereditary, which I think has been proven?, then the balance of NT and ND will shift enormously and things like not liking crowds will be ‘normal’ and therefore not catered for specifically. I do agree with other posters though - why would you go to a theme park if you don’t like crowds, noise, queuing and then expect everyone to bend over backwards to accommodate you!

We have never been to Disneyland with the kids. We discussed it with them and they decided they didn’t fancy the sound of it. My husband was delighted.

I did suspect the autism diagnosis needs some refinement / better catagorisation - it covers a wide range of people and I don’t think restricting diagnosis to only the more serious cases is the right approach

and when the numbers get large and people can “see normal people” using special access it will cause trouble

I don't know what the answer to this is. My brother has very profound autism and loves thrill rides but can't understand the concept of queuing.

The RAP has gone from a 5 minute wait to sometimes 30 mins (there's even a '30 minutes from here' sign in the RAP line for vampire on Chessington). This clearly isn't fit for purpose.

Ofc you can't tell ability by looking at someone buy there are an awful lot of folk in the RAP lane who appear to be happy to wait quietly. I think it's likely some are exaggerating their need to get the pass.

That said, I do wish Merlin would put less of their business model on fast passes. It makes the peak queues ridiculous which will be an incentive to try and get the RAP. When we go to paultons park we don't need to bother with a RAP as all queues are less than 10mins.

There’s two sides to this, reasonable accomodation should always be made to those who need it, changing places facilities, quiet rooms, reduced sensory input. BUT this has to be balanced with the rest of the population, particularly when the venue is a leisure based attraction.

if you have a child who hates crowds and queues, then taking them to a theme park, notorious for both, is counterintuitive. I have an invisible disability, but only access support when it’s required, too many people take the piss. Great example being The Radford family, they have an autistic son who they take to Disneyland, get an access pass, and use it to queue jump for the entire family (25ish people!). How is that fair?

I think its fair enough. We are an autistic family, more than capable of queueing, as are many autistic families. If we want to jump the queue due to having a bad day we would see our DLA / PIP as a legitimate use for a fast pass. It is there to cover the extra costs of being disabled, and this is one of those costs.

I have recently got Merlin passes for my family and have started following Merlin influencers or whatever and Facebook pages. I have noticed a lot say that sometimes the RAP queues can be just as long as the main queues. I can't give an opinion as we haven't been in peak season yet to witness anything. But, if this is the case, then how does it benefit people that can't queue? I'm surprised that RAP users aren't complaining that the RAP queues are just as long. If this is a problem then it makes sense that they are trying to do something about it. Seems hard to solve though if all of these people genuinely needed the pass.

But if this is the case do they need 3 queues? One for physical disability, one for problem queuing and one for everyone else? Disney has this really. For a lot of rides anyway. Maybe UK parks need something like this? But probably won't solve the problem if the problem queuing queue is just as long as main queue!

"Great example being The Radford family, they have an autistic son who they take to Disneyland, get an access pass, and use it to queue jump for the entire family (25ish people!). How is that fair?"

That's not fair. Merlin RAPs are for a maximum of 4 people though, including the person with the disability. I think that's a fair number as it allows families to, mostly, ride together.

DS has an Asperger's syndrome diagnosis, we used to have Merlin annual passes but he was able to queue so never considered a RAP.

Unfortunately since then they lumped everyone in under the ASD umbrella in the name of progress, inclusiveness and spiky profile or some such nonsense. I always thought it was a stupid idea, there's no comparison in the struggles between someone with Asperger's and someone with classic autism, that's not to say of course that people with Aspegers sometimes don't have serious struggles - but they are completely different. High functioning doesn't mean you're always absolutely fine but it does mean you're likely to be able to cope with a lot that a child with classic autism can't.

Disneyland hasn’t changed their priority pass system. If you have a nimbus card or certain documentation you will get a pass, it doesn’t matter what symbols you have on the card.

I meant that Disneyland doesn’t appeal to my very ASD family.

There have always been high functioning autistic people, I.e. people with autism but without learning disabilities such as global delay. We know this because the Nazis wanted to figure out which autistic people could be put to work and which not. Many prominent people who excelled in their fields have it, including mathematician Alan Turing who helped win us WW2. Thats why the current diagnostic criteria makes room for people like this. I say this because the statement that anyone seems to be autistic now, including doctors and successful people, has always been true.

I think this action by Merlin is disgusting. Instead of making parks easier for people who struggle, they've decided to go the other way and say they'll accomodate less people. Totally the wrong direction, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

However as a high functioning autistic person, I would absolutely give up any access I might have to accommodations in favour of someone with higher support needs. I can just choose not to go!

Why should children who struggle in crowds due their disability have to miss out on going to places like a theme park if there are accommodations which can make it possible for them, such as the RAP?

People are aware you don't just say to Nimbus "I'm autistic, can I have an access card please?" aren't they? We have one for one of our kids and we had to provide evidence by way of her autism diagnosis report that crowds are an issue for her.

The ableism in some of these comments is infuriating. People with a neurodevelopmental disability should just not go to places with crowds, when there is a way to accommodate them so that they can? Really??

We went to Disneyland Paris a while back, we had a priority pass. If a queue for a ride was short, we joined the normal queue. If it was long, we used the access queue. We took ear defenders, fidgets, snacks. We found quiet areas in the park to sit in when needed. We booked a hotel on site and went back there for a while each day so she could have some quiet time away from the park. It was her best holiday ever. Yes, it was crowded and noisy but the steps we took and the Disney priority pass meant she could still enjoy it.

And yes, some autistic people struggle with crowds, others don't. I'm autistic and I can manage in a queue. My child can't.