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.

Ah. DS liked Legoland but didn’t like the rides. He liked the Lego 😀. He particularly didn’t like getting wet during the Viking flume thing. Since we weren’t going on rides, we weren’t queueing.

My son is ok in crowds infact i'd go as far to say he loves being in the middle of everything but crowds and the public in general don't much like him. He flaps, stims, vocalises, will push on walls etc among other behaviours. People can be very cruel and not just teenagers, grown adults sometimes think they can make comments which they should keep in their head. He has the crowd symbol (with most of the rest, he doesn't have the audiotory one but should) but because his behaviour impacts others. He's happy as larry in crowds.

Only if you don't really hate crowds that much.

I'm not sure this change is going to have the desired effect. For example if you have profound autism and don't understand queuing then presumably you will qualify for the difficulty standing icon. If you have ADHD you may not be able to safely or comfortably stand in a queue. All 3 of my autistic children have co-occurring conditions that make standing difficult.

It’s tricky isn’t it. I have a lot of conflicting and complex feelings on this as an ‘autism parent’. My son is quite developmentally delayed (he is 10 but working at reception/year 1 level at school, and speech/language is also about that of a four or five-year-old), stims constantly, lots of meltdowns and sensory issues. He has to attend a special needs school. Sometimes (and I know this is probably completely unfair) Im a bit weary of some of the parents I see on social media or in RL who make a big thing of having ND kids but said kids are academically and socially fine in a mainstream school, no developmental delays and they appear to be able to go out on normal family days out/holidays abroad/resturaunts… basically their lives just look a lot like any other family with typical children and I just don’t relate at all to their experience of parenting. However I’m also very aware that there are parents of far more severe autistic children (non-verbal, nappies, needing wheelchairs etc) and that is also a very different experience to mine.

He'd love the Lego discovery centre!

My child is ‘high functioning’ asd, highly intelligent, socially awkward but otherwise relatively ‘normal’ but cannot cope in crowds at all. So if we were to go to these places she’d need a crowd pass even if she appears to not really struggle in life.

We don’t go because that’s not really our sort of thing. But I also can’t really be bothered ‘claiming’ for things either.

"Im a bit weary of some of the parents I see on social media or in RL who make a big thing of having ND kids but said kids are academically and socially fine in a mainstream school, no developmental delays and they appear to be able to go out on normal family days out/holidays abroad/resturaunts… basically their lives just look a lot like any other family with typical children"

I do see your point, but do bear in mind that people always share the most "normal" and positive things on social media - not the hard bits. I find it hard to believe that a ND child would not have any academic or social difficulties in mainstream school - you have to provide evidence from school for an assessment and diagnosis. I also think a family with a ND child may be able to manage a day out or a holiday abroad or a restaurant visit on occasion and with adjustments; it doesn't mean it's not difficult or stressful for them, but maybe they want to share the good bits? We have one ND child who struggles massively and one NT child who doesn't; we did attempt a holiday abroad last summer because why should 3 out of 4 people in the family not get a holiday? And sometimes DS surprises us. As it is, he did enjoy bits but he also struggled so there's no way we'd do it every year and certainly not easily.

If the child actually has a diagnosis I expect it's not all as "normal" as it looks. And if the child doesn't have a diagnosis I would take the ND talk with a pinch of salt.

But why? You don’t jump the queue, you still wait the same time, and from what I can remember from the 1 time we used it, there is a delay of 1h between two ‘bookings’.
So people without RAP are not waiting for longer, they just don’t see some people physically in the queue ahead of them.

Very good comment from a PP:
So, an ordered, respectful queue, well spaced and patient, where she knows what will happen - she can do that all day. She'll mostly just get her book out and read.
But a queue where there are people jumping around, shouting, kids are whining or crying, groups of teenagers are being loud and egging each other on, waving cameras and phones around, loud music, where 'traps' her in, by switching back on itself, or if there are personnel barking instructions or she has to be separated from us, answer questions independently or has to comply with something unexpected quickly - nope. She can't do that

Coming back to this cos I'm still annoyed.

I've never applied for DLA for my son as we're lucky enough to have a good income and we can get anything he needs related to his disability. I'm now considering it as it seems more and more we're moving to a culture where there is no/very low expectations that there should be any adjustments for him. This is not good enough in 2026.

At over£100 for a day most families are likely only going for a few 1-4 days a year.
The fact that almost 50% of those with season tickets are getting RAP says a lot.
That other people dont want to spend that to Q all day.
Possibly that those on DLA are spending that money on theme parks .
That its a lot more pleasant for all going to a theme park if you dont have to q
Soo many with season ticket rap will be affecting the queues at all theme parks every day.
But also could explain along with the DLA the explosion in diagnosis.
Overdiagnosis is clearly a huge issue and theme parks are really only a minor part.
The waitlists for assessment being 3+ years here. So its not about self id but about crap nhs.
Other kids in the year group got to the top and got diagnosed of whom a couple are clearly misdiagnosed.

So i do somewhat agree with the op re different levels of issues. If they can live a normal life with no issues at school they are not in the same category of what i would call level 2 where they dont sleep, cant make new friends, cant work in a team or join an activity.

we have largely stopped going to theme parks due to the queues. Mine seems able to q. And we do but can be arguing with sibling and suddenly slap them so we keep them apart. Overall it has been better for them to manage to wait as life is full of it. Especially travelling. Even travelling by car is a challenge so is similar to a Q and at least you can stand between the kids.

I dont see that those with tourettes should skip the q in case they swear - as adults could be doing that intentionally or teens, but also the person with tourettes has to go all sorts of places where they may bump into young kids - the park, shops, public transport etc

Our bigger issue with so much overdiagnosis on the minor end is that so many have had extra time in tests that theyve changed process for that.

I think the issue is whether people really needed the adjustments that were offered.
I was on a train and a teenager was talking about it with her family and she was saying her friend is autistic and had a pass to go on the rides and that she should get one too because she also had autism. Presumably her mum said to her she didn't need this because she could stand in the queue and didn't have the same needs as her friend.
I thought this was quite honest and refreshing, and while it might be an unpopular view, I expect there were plenty others claiming the need for a pass when they didn't really need one for the needs of themselves or their child.

It’s a difficult subject. One the one hand you have a lot of people who have a genuine need for this service who may now not be able to use it. On the other hand you have an ever increasing number of people who are getting these cards on behalf of their children and using it to ‘skip’ the lines. You only have to go on a Disneyland Paris group to see the abuse of the system there. It happened in the USA as well and WDW made huge adjustments to the availability of their equivalent.

The more people who qualify, the longer those lines will become and the people who really need them, then can’t benefit. I think they are doing it for the right reasons but unsure on whether the way they have done it is fair/considered.

i don’t know anyone with a Nimbus Card but historically before this change, have some symbols been easier to obtain which has opened the system to abuse perhaps?

But overall yes, I think lots of places will now start pushing back because it is very clear that a lot of people are abusing the system and unfortunately genuine people will get caught up in it.

Even in parks that run the system how you describe, there are well known 'hacks' that Ride Access users do that means that having a large percentage of them in the park at any one time can cause all sorts of issues.

Firstly, there is the obvious advantages where people start their queue time as soon as they have finished another ride. This can mean that they cut all the time that people would ordinarily use to walk to the attraction and join the queue. It might not seem a big deal but in some parks this can be 20 mins. They also virtually queue over lunch or during shows. There are videos on YouTube encouraging people to do this and get the most of their passes. It obviously means that they are getting on far more rides than the average theme park attendee.

Secondly, those that can queue to some extent often physically join queues for other attractions whilst they are waiting for their virtual queue to tick down. They often target less busy rides so can do a few of these whilst the Ride Access Pass allows them to queue for the big attractions at the same time.

You will have seen on this thread the fact that queues are now ridiculous and guests without extra passes are struggling to get on many rides at all. If you have almost half of guests with Ride Access Passes and a lot of these potentially 'hacking' the system then you can see how this causes issues for other guests.

You think parents are getting their children diagnosed to skip their park queues?

I think you are right here. It’s people minimising the condition and in some extent making it a ‘trendy’ thing to have. For any of us who have a child, sibling or family member with it, we know that’s not the case. I do wonder whether at some stage the government will start to categorise diagnosis into very specific types, and depending on what category you are in will determine your entitlement to benefits etc with only the most severe being entitled. Anyone able to seemingly go about a normal life will not be.

In my opinion, I think this is the exact angle they have gone down to justify their changes.

We had merlin passes because my children struggled with friendships and it was something they enjoyed enormously (the vestibular stimulation etc). As they got older and went to send secondary schools, other kids in their class had them too for similar reasons. A lot of families with disabled children are like this. The passes are heavily used, especially if you live near a park like we do.

Merlin are in danger of losing a load of customers with this move.

Legoland calm sensory space was so busy and stressful that it actually caused my autistic child to have more of a meltdown! We put up a sensory tent in a corner outdoors and hid in it instead.

I think autistic people who can't manage crowds and queues should certainly be allowed a RAP. The cost of getting into a park assumes you are there all day and going on lots of things. Without the pass we would have had to go home after one ride and disabled people shouldn't have to pay more to access the same thing.

Even with the pass it's pretty gruelling but she puts up with it as she loves the sensory experience of the rides. Many autistic people absolutely love roller coasters and similar. Just because they can queue a bit, in more discomfort than the average person, doesn't mean their access should be removed.

Yes agree @Arran2024 - arguably autistic people are the main audience for vestibular stimulating things!! Why cut them out!

The simplest solution would seem to be that everyone queues remotely, enjoying the play areas, shows or quiet areas between rides. Unfortunately, the business model is built on a number of people being “absorbed” in the queues and so they couldn’t introduce that.

But equally, people who aren’t eligible for these passes are also going home only riding a couple of rides because too many people are using RAP, so there has to be a balance for everyone. Everyone in the park is a paying customer after all.

The play areas, shows and quiet areas would be absolutely rammed then though and you would essentially need to build a lot more these which would be totally commercially unviable. Ultimately this is a huge reason why people want Ride Access Passes as you can enjoy all the other aspects of the park whilst waiting for a ride instead of being stuck in a pretty awful queue. You also do get to go on more rides and just have a better overall experience.

I think the only way to truly fix this without withdrawing access for some is to make sure that people get absolutely no advantage from the passes other than making the rides more accessible. This would be almost impossible as would involve people basically finding a boring environment without any ability to do anything else to wait out the queue time like the people in the queue are doing. Ultimately it would certainly weed out the chancers though

I guess merlin will find out pretty quickly how many people really couldnt access the space without a card as visitor numbers will drop a lot if that many people had them before.

On the bigger issue of will larger numbers a broader diagnosis impact on reasonable adjustments generally, i dont know. I think there will be increasing push back on what's reasonable and what's substantial and increasing pressure for evidence.

I don't think they will lose money with this. If you think the plat pass is £230 at renewal for 12 months and most people with rap will have one or two free carers so two or three passes for a year and free parking plus other benefits or cheaper if you go for one of the other passes.

When rap wasn't used as much- years ago. We would go a lot more and take our own food. So because we went so often because we could we spent less in the parks. Now rap isn't as good we spend more to enjoy the visits we have.

This is reflected in the groups with people talking about hotdogs in a flask and in the parks with all those cart things you see people towing around.

The parks will open regardless of how many people visit, i'm sure merlin would rather have day guests who spend more with the added extra's.