So you have booked your vacation to Disney World, but you’re now not sure where to start in preparing your child with autism, cognitive disabilities, or sensory sensitivities. Perhaps you’re not sure how your child will be able to handle the flashing lights and loud music on the rides. Or maybe it’s the fear of whether your child will be able to wait in line. Maybe you don’t know how to explain the Disney World trip to your child.
First and foremost, Disney’s website is incredible and a great resource. They have an entire section of their website dedicated to planning for guests with disabilities, including a 16-page detailed resource guide specifically for guests with autism and cognitive disabilities.
But as with every other aspect of planning your Disney World vacation, the amount of information on their website can be overwhelming.
This is where we hope to help with our top four tips for preparing your child with autism, cognitive disabilities, and sensory sensititives for your Disney World vacation.
Our Top Four Tips
1) Watch YouTube videos
2) Use visuals and countdowns
3) Practice being in crowds
4) Practice waiting in line
Let’s go into more details.
Tip 1 – Watch YouTube Videos
Disney World is all about stimulating your five senses, whether it’s through beautiful visuals, playing well-known sounds and songs from movies, pulling you in with the smell of all the good eats, and so much more. Disney Imagineers do an absolutely amazing job to stimulate your senses to create a magical experience that helps build life-long memories.
Some of these stimuli that the Imagineers have built into Disney World may not be so magical for our children with autism and sensory processing issues. For example, the rides are full of bright, colorful visuals that might overstimulate some of our children. The music on the rides, in the parades, and in the night shows are also very loud. And the characters can be scary and intimidating for all children.
This is where YouTube can really help.
YouTube videos can help prepare you and your child in many ways, including:
- Helping your child prepare for what to expect when you’re there
- Acclimating them to the visual and sound stimuli
- Allowing you to figure out what your child may or may not be interested in
- Most importantly, helping your child understand “What is Disney World”
You can find YouTube videos on all aspects of Disney World, including tours of the resorts and hotel rooms, point-of-view walkthroughs and “ridethroughs” of all the rides, all the shows including parades and firework, and so much more. We highly recommend creating a playlist of what you would like to introduce to your child keep your child engaged by avoiding having to fumble through the search results.
As you figure out which activities and rides your child is interested in, have your child watch those videos a number of times before your trip. We recommend introducing your child to the videos at least 4-8 weeks out. This gives you and your child enough time to watch the videos enough times to start getting them used to everything, while also allowing for plenty of days where they don’t watch any videos. You don’t want them to get bored before you get there!
Keep in mind that the music and sounds in Disney World can get pretty loud. If your child is sensitive to sounds, we recommend first starting with the volume at a normal level. As your child gets used to the visuals, start increasing the volume each time you watch the videos. By the time of your trip, you will want the volume to be pretty loud, especially if you’re watching videos of the fireworks. If your child wears noise reducing headphones, have them practice wearing headphones while watching the videos.
There are no magic numbers for how far in advance to watch these videos nor number of times to watch each video. You know your child best and will want to adapt our recommendations to your child’s needs.
Tip 2 – Use Visuals and Countdowns
If you’re looking to help your child understand the concept of Disney World and what to expect, visual schedules and guides can be very helpful. There are many ways to create your visualizations. Disney’s Guide for Guests with Cognitive Disabilities contains a great example of a visual schedule to help your child.
We personally use a photo album to create a picture flipbook for our child. We include images of everything she will see and encounter on our vacation. We also try to place the pictures in order of our expected timeline.
For example, one of the very first pictures we have is a picture of our vehicle to help her understand that we have a long drive to get to Disney World. We then include pictures of the hotel and resorts we’re staying at, everything from pictures of things we’ll see around the resort to pictures of the hotel room to others of the pool. We then include pictures of the monorail and Cinderella Castle to create the association to Magic Kingdom. We also include pictures of various features and objects from the rides that we plan to take her on.
We have come across a number of options to help your child understand how many days are left until your vacation. These ideas also be used to help with managing your child’s excitement. There are pre-made countdown calendars as well as printable calendars. If you’re crafty, you can create your own countdown calendar or countdown chains. You can find many options for these countdown calendars and DIY crafts by googline “Disney countdown calendar” or “Disney countdown chain.”
Tip 3 – Practice Being in Crowds
For anyone who has been to Disney World in recent years, you already know about the crowds. For those who have never been to Disney World, it is important to be prepared for the sizable crowds you will encounter there. Like other tourist attractions, Disney World is busiest around holidays and when children are off from school, especially spring break. Disney World also sees an increase in crowds during their Halloween and Christmas celebrations. The parks also vary in crowd sizes depending on the day of the week.
You can find a number of resources on the internet to help you understand when Disney World is most and least crowded.
The crowds can be overhwhelming for some of our children. To help our child prepare for the crowds, we purposefully brought her to places with larger crowds during the month prior to our vacation in effort to prepare her senses. Some options include malls, stores, and restaurants. If your budget allows for it, local attractions, such as zoos, are also a good option.
Tip 4 – Practice Waiting In Lines
Waiting in lines are part of our everyday lives… waiting in line to checkout at a store, waiting in line to order or pick-up your food, waiting in to wait in line.
Disney World, like any amusement park and tourist attraction, has lines. Looooong lines. Disney World offers an add-on feature known as Genie+ (formerly known as FastPass) to help minimize the wait time. FastPass used to be free, but Genie+ is now a service you must pay for.
Disney World also offers a service known as Disability Access Service, commonly referred to as DAS. Our children with Down syndrome or autism all qualify for this service. We highly recommend that you look into information about DAS on Disney’s website. We also will provide more details about this service in a future article.
There will still be a wait in line even with these two services, though the wait will be significantly shorter.
Look for opportunities to practice waiting in lines. It could be waiting in line for the slide at the playground or picking out and paying for a special treat or dessert. Explain to them why you’re waiting in line and don’t forget to make it fun for them, even if it’s distracting them by being silly or telling jokes. Your child will be rewarded when they get to go down the slide or get their special treat, but also be sure to recognize and praise them.
In Summary
This may all seem like a lot of work. The hope is that by doing all this hard work before your trip, you, your family, and especially your child with special needs will have a magical experience during your Disney World vacation.
