Originally Posted by
BrerGnat
I'm going to assume this man remained in his wheelchair, and used an accessible boat (the one that you can just roll onto). You have to be able to transfer from your wheelchair in order to ride the "regular" boats, and I assume a quadriplegic could not accomplish this, nor remain safely seated in the regular boat seat.
So, if he was still in his wheelchair, onboard a special boat, how is that any different than just sitting in the wheelchair while doing any number of other activities. That is, if he's confined to a wheelchair anyway, doesn't he spend more than 40 min at a time sitting in it all day long?
On IASW at Disneyland, the boats run in a trough. There are several areas of the ride where you would not be able to evacuate easily, because you are in a "transition room", and there is no floor platform even with the boats to step out on. If you get stopped in one of these areas, they have to evacuate the boats in the front first, so they can then move them forward to an area that is easier to evacuate from. If this guy was in his wheelchair, and he was stuck in an area where they could not conceivably place a ramp for him to safely roll off, that's really not Disney's fault. I can see how it would take 40 min to evacuate and move enough boats so that a boat could move into an appropriate location to exit.
Now, in the event of a serious emergency, like a fire, most able bodied people would simply be able to jump out of the boats and walk along the trough to the numerous emergency exits along the route. I would guess that in a truly dangerous situation, the CMs would go to to the aid of anyone who needed special assistance first.