[Travelandtourism] NFB Travel & Tourism Division makes a visit to Walt Disney World

[cheryl echevarria]

Good morning all:
This story will be featured in a future Braille Monitor, but we want to make sure all our members get to read it first hand. It will also be posted on our website at www.nfbtravel.org
Also I have have found a video you can hear Greg Johnson, technology coordinator for the Assistive Technology device, who was one of our guides on the Walt Disney World trip we had, it also has Larry Goldberg, director of Media Access Group at WGBH in Boston; and Jeanie, a visually impaired guest at Walt Disney World in it, who was not with us, but is in the video.
It is here: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifYwwYS-mqA&feature=player_embedded#at=273

I first and to thank our Secretary, Margo Downey for taking the notes of the whole day.
NFB Travel & Tourism Division makes a visit to Walt Disney World withMark Jones, Manager, Domestic Services for Guests with Disabilities, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts and his staff to learn about accessibility during the National Convention
The NFB Travel & Tourism Division was started in 2001 and has just celebrated 12 years. We are not just about leisure travel. Our division wants to achieve equality, opportunity and security for the blind in all things travel. We also work with people wanting to go into the travel industry; as either travel agents, or how to get ones foot in the door of employment with places like Disney Corporation.
We have monthly teleconference meetings and we resume meetings on September 30, 2013 at 8PM Eastern Time.  Please check the www.nfbtravel.org website for more information.
About a little over a year ago, Cheryl Echevarria, the President of the Travel & Tourism Division got in touch with Mark Jones, who is the Manager of Domestic Services for Guests with Disabilities for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. His job is all about accessibility at all the parks such as Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL; Disneyland in Anaheim, CA; the Disney Cruise Lines which have many different ports throughout the world. As well as the new resort Alunai Resort in Hawaii and the International Parks in China and in France.
Mark has been a friend ever since, she brought him on the phone at one of our board meetings, and he also had an interview with Cheryl on her radio show on the WTOE Network, www.thruoureyes.org, which airs the first Wednesday of each month at 8pm.
A little personal information on Mark Jones, he is a child of both parents and a brother who are all deaf. So he has grown up in the household as being the interpreter and one of the jokes he has always said to us is that, until he went to school, he thought all kids did that for their families.
Below is the experience the officers of the NFB Travel & Tourism Officers experienced at Walt Disney World on July 1st.
Participants:  Cheryl and Nelson Echevarria, Milt and Jo Taylor, Margo  Downey, Anahit Labarre, Mark Jones (Manager, Domestic Services for Guests with Disabilities, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts),  and Greg, Nicole, and Maureen (cast members that are part of Mark Jones’ Team for people with disabilities) these people are the ones, who make the changes and take the advice on our needs, and we were happy to have them with us, and can call them friends of the National Federations of the blind.
At 7 a.m., those of us leaving from the hotel took a town car from the Rosen Center and disembarked at the Magic Kingdom Ticket and Transportation Center where we waited for Mark Jones to take us in a van to the actual park.  Along the way in the town car once we got onto Walt Disney World’s property, we passed many of the Disney resorts and other properties, such as the kennels, firehouses, medical emergency centers and ESPN Wide World of Sports. You see Walt Disney World is not just the parks, it is a whole community of resort hotels, theme parks, water parks, which means they have to have all the other things onsite to make it run like a community.
While waiting for the van, monorails (they are trains that go from the ticket center of the Magic Kingdom, to the resorts and also takes you to the Magic Kingdom Resort.) came by overhead to bring people to the park.    If you are just going to EPCOT or one of the other parks, you need to be at the right theme park ticket center.  There are also buses and a ferryboat service that bring visitors to the parks.
Here are some terms to know:
Backstage:  areas that provide services so the guests have a smooth, happy time at Disney.
Onstage:  areas where guests ride rides, eat food, go to attractions, etc.
Cast Members:  the employees at Disney are called Cast members.
When we reached the actual Magic Kingdom Park, we disembarked in what they call the backstage area.  This is the area that guests don’t see which is the support services area where food delivery, paper products, cleaning crew and more come from so that guests have a pleasant and magical time at Walt Disney World.  
While in the backstage area, our audio devices were set up and distributed to us.  We were told to hold the devices so the buttons are to our right. 
The buttons are different shapes kind of like you’d find on an NLS player. There are two volume buttons, there’s an audio menu with the four arrows and a center select button, a repeat last update button, and a help button.  These devices are audio for the blind and also can be set up to do close captioning for deaf.
The device has an outdoor feature and attractions feature.  The outdoor feature describes where you are located as you walk through the park and this will be updated soon to give more specific information.  The Attractions part describes the attractions you’re involved with at a given time.  Greg, the cast member who talked with us the most about accessibility, knows a lot about it.  WGBH in Boston has done the descriptions that are narrated on these devices.  
The audio menu gives you more detailed information.  You can find out in general what the various restaurants serve, where bathrooms are located, and other sorts of details.  In the future, the items on the audio menu may be read to us in synthetic speech like our screen readers use.  This way, these menus can be updated in a more-timely manner, rather than sending it off to WGBH and waiting for descriptions.  WGBH will still handle things that are more suited to attractions, entertainment, etc.  
The device hangs around your neck via a lanyard and you can request either a single-piece earphone or a double-piece earphone. There is also an option to use your own headphones, since it is a universal design to use any earpiece. 
When you come to the theme park of your choice and you would like to get one of these devices you need to ask and head to guest services after you paid your ticket, and make sure they let you try it out and play with the device before leaving guests services, they are trained to make sure that you are using the service that fits your needs, like you need the audio because we are blind. Also at any given time it stops working, just head back to the guest services area, and exchange it.
All of the Disney parks have the same accessibility features, meaning Walt Disney World is not just the Magic Kingdom, there are 3 other parks such as EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, Animal Kingdom, and MGM Studios, as well as, 2 Water Parks, and ESPN Wide World of Sports, Downtown Disney for shopping area, and a few 18 hole golf courses, and so much more, plus resort hotels on property.  
They all have the above-mentioned devices, they have Braille guide books, they each have a large tactile map, and the accessibility team is working on portable maps, so visitors can take with them during their Disney park travels.  I want to mention that the devices and guide books are for each park so you need to get a new set of accessibility items at each park.  For the device, there’s a $25 refundable deposit when you return the device. If you take it to one of the other parks without returning it, it will not work in that park, so you have to get a new device. They are working on if you are staying as a guest onsite at the resorts, that you can have it for the time you arrive until the time you leave, but right now that is in the works and no time frame, as to when this will happen. 
Guide Dogs are allowed at all the parks and resorts in all the areas, there are some that they give you a warning about, but none of the sites are restricted. In fact, Mark Jones spoke at both the NAGDU meeting and also the Travel & Tourism Meeting at the Convention.
If you want to ride the roller coaster type rides with your family and not have to have someone hold your dog for you, just ask before you get on, that you would like to put your dog in the portable kennel, it will take a few minutes, so be patient, you might have to let other riders go ahead of you until they set it up. But this keeps your friends and family together, so you can ride with them and not sit it out. This is one of the new offerings at all the parks for people with service animals
The dog relief areas are now inside the parks.  They are boxes kind of like the ones we have at National Convention.  We gave the feedback that trash cans need to be next to the areas. Mark Jones had mentioned that there was a can there and someone must have moved it. So they are looking to see if it can be permanently put there, but you need to clean up after your dogs, so remember to bring relief bags for your dogs.  Disney policy states that, if our dogs need to use a grassy area in the park to let them do that as well.
So, what did we actually do?  Well, as we walked from the backstage area which was very quiet we walked into Tomorrowland, I mean literately there was a wall, and all of a sudden you heard the music and sounds of Tomorrowland, it was amazing. Some of the attractions in Tomorrowland that the device picked up was it first said on the Device “Tomorrowland” and then it gives you the option of listening to what is in Tomorrowland, like Space Mountain, or the Carousel of Progress Ride, it also lists bathrooms, and food and souvenir shops. Quite wonderful to hear it all.
>From Tomorrowland, we moved into Fantasyland, again the GPS was right on point, it said you have now entered Fantasyland.  Fantasyland has had a new part added which opened in early 2013, and some of the rides are still being worked on, which will be opened in 2014.
We rode the New Ariel Under the Sea ride, in the new part of Fantasyland, which tells the Little Mermaid movie story.  By the way, Cheryl Echevarria’s dog, Maxx, and Margo Downey’s dog, Arrow, rode on all the rides with us.  The description was great and we could hear it as well as the music and sounds around us.  The dogs didn’t mind the ride, including the slide backward under the sea and the slide upward to the surface again.  There is no water, it was just the description and feeling of being under water and then to the top again.
We also rode the Hundred Acre Wood Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride, which is part of the original part of Fantasyland.  The description was even more detailed on this ride.  Maxx and Arrow enjoyed this ride the best and didn’t really mind when we went bouncing through the woods with Tigger.  That ride has a T-bar locking mechanism and Disney wanted to test to make sure our dogs would still fit comfortably on the floor after that bar locked us into the ride, and they did fit just fine.  Arrow and Maxx were reluctant to get out of that ride—I think they wanted another round of that one. 
We had our pictures taken with two of Cinderella’s court, and had several photos taken by Cinderella’s castle.  We also met a very nice princess, Tiana, from the Princess and the Frog.
Nelson Echevarria, was our photographer for the day, and these pictures will be available on our website www.nfbtravel.org and our Facebook page, NFB Travel and Tourism  
We then walked to Liberty Square to ride the Haunted Mansion ride.  Let us just mention that at Disney, there’s music and other auditory sounds that one can use as great landmarks for orientation.  Liberty Square was an interesting one, because on one side of you could be heard screams and ominous sounds from Haunted Mansion and then the lively, happy-go-lucky music of the riverboat ride on the other side, which is Frontier Land, it was quite a contrast.
The description on the devices for Haunted Mansion varied quite a bit, some people got the whole description, some got most of it, and some got it quite a bit into the ride.  Greg and the staff will figure this out.  It was still a lot of fun and the dogs didn't get scared even when the ghosts came in to sit with us hoping for a ride home.  Again, this ride is a Disney version of scary, it is for everyone, and it tells a fun story, and lots of laughs as well. We don’t want to scare any of those little ones that want to go to Walt Disney World in the future.
A the end of our adventure, we watched part of a Main Street U.S.A parade and talked about our tour with the cast members.  
We were asked whether an app would be better than the device, so people could bring their own devices to use.  We told the Disney folks that we think both are good.  Some people don’t use IDevices and some people don’t want to take the time to learn to use an app, but would rather use the device.  The devices are only with them as long as they’re in a park, so, it’s not the same as learning your IPhone, your NLS Player, your Victor Stream, etc.
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and felt welcomed by Mark Jones and the other Cast Members.  We thank them for their efforts and for their eagerness to listen to our input.  



Disabled Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 of NY StateLeading the Way in Independent Travel!
Cheryl Echevarria, Ownerhttp://www.echevarriatravel.com631-456-5394reservations@echevarriatravel.comhttp://www.echevarriatravel.wordpress.com
Affiliated as an independent contractor with Montrose TravelCST - #1018299-10 FL CST T156780Your old car keys can be the keys to literacy for a blind child.  Donate your unwanted vehicle to us by clicking https://nfb.org/vehicledonations or call 855-659-9314.Echevarria Travel has partnered with Braille Smith. http://www.braillesmith.com for all her braille needs.Gail Smith is the Secretary of the NFB of Alabama