Autistic Child Allegedly Bullied at Disney

Mother blames Disney - but is Disney really to blame?

- by Bob McLain, February 17, 2011

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I can't report this story as fact because all we have is one side's account, but here is what they say happened:

On New Year's Eve, Amanda Broadfoot was seated with her family (consisting of ten adults and four children, one of them her autistic son, four years old) at the ABC Commissary in Disney's Hollywood Studios.

According to Amanda, a group of 'rude, aggressive' teenagers were at the next table.

Some of these teenagers repeatedly blew their holiday noisemakers because (she claims) they knew it agitated the autistic child. They were asked to stop. They didn't. A Disney manager was involved. She asked them to stop. They still didn't. The manager, according to Amanda, said there was nothing else she could do and left, apparently having concluded that the behavior wasn't egregious enough to involve security.

The teenagers never made contact with the child. They allegedly just kept blowing their noisemakers to torment him. Or else they just kept blowing their noisemakers because, well, that's what they wanted to do, and the discomfort of an autistic child was unimportant to them.

It's not clear how long the behavior continued until the parents or the teenagers left. At no point did anyone call Security, nor demand that Security be called. I'm not entirely sure that Disney could force the teenagers to stop blowing their noisemakers - even though, by every measure of decency, they should have stopped what they were doing once they knew it was harming an innocent child.

(Actually, Disney can do whatever they want: it's their property, and if they want you to leave, they'll make you leave. But not too often. And only if you're really pissing them off.)

When Amanda arrived home, she sent a complaint by e-mail to Disney. She got the standard boilerplate response. That, of course, made the situation worse, because to Amanda it appeared that Disney had trivialized the situation.

But the Disney representative did give Amanda a telephone number and invited her to call. It's not clear whether she called. She did, however, reply by e-mail - and of course, printed all of her communication with Disney on her blog.

I don't want to be insensitive. If Amanda's story is accurate, I feel badly for her child.

But the teenagers were entitled to do what they were doing. It was late. It was New Year's Eve. You have to expect noisemakers. None of the ten adults at Amanda's table did anything more than 'politely' ask the teenagers to stop because there was nothing else they could do. Were they going to wade into a pack of 'rude, aggressive' teenagers and confiscate their noisemakers? Not likely.

And that's why it is wrong to blame Disney. If Disney security had become involved, then they'd have to become involved whenever one guest's perfectly legal behavior upsets another guest. I'm sure that's why the manager didn't escalate the situation. The teenagers showed lack of compassion, lack of decency, lack of manners - for which, maybe, we can blame their parents, but not Disney.

So what should Disney do? They acknowledged Amanda's complaint, they offered to speak with her about it by phone, and that's about all Amanda should expect. Disney can't promise a perfect park experience, and they can't regulate the rude behavior of guests unless it passes a certain threshold.

For Amanda, obviously, the behavior passed a certain threshold. Had I been in her shoes, it would have passed my threshold, too. I wish it hadn't happened. I wish her child hadn't been exposed to it. But Disney is not the culprit here.

Don't stop there! More Tidings Await...