Hi you guys,
I haven't posted in a long long time but have been lurking and keeping up with DS news and the daily episodes you guys are doing.
My husband and I went to the Fest on Saturday. I mostly wanted to see friends, hear the presentation on time travel, and then enjoy watching Jonathan Frid and the cast reunion.
The last time I went to a Fest was in 2001. If I'm not crazy, I seem to remember that there were volunteers to help meet the needs of disabled fans. Am I nuts or did that happen? Well, anyway, my DH and I both have spine issues now and both of us need surgery. We are still ambulatory but can't stand for more than a few minutes at a time.
Anyway, I saw some of my friends and that was wonderful. Both my hubby and I totally enjoyed the time travel presentation. We left our seats (in the back) and went to get lunch and visit the merchandise room. We got back around 2. I knew the room would be crowded because of Frid and then the reunion. But what I didn't figure on was that there wouldn't be a single seat left, not even way in the back, last row. People are standing up all over, packing in like sardines. People in wheelchairs aren't in the front, like I thought they'd be, they're all over. Some people in the chairs are asking the standees to please move because they can't see. There's also no volunteers around.
Hubs and I went from back up to the front searching for friends. There's lots of chairs empty except for purses or programs—you know “saved for others” seats. There's also a bunch of “reserved for Marcy” seats, most are empty. One of my friends tells me, if Marcy's volunteers all don't show up, maybe we could sit there. So Ted and I sit. A woman (a volunteer I recognized from before) leans over right off and says, “You can't sit here.”
I say, “My husband and I are disabled in that we can't stand. Can we sit here and see if all the volunteers show up?”
She goes, “Well, then they'd be for the stars.”
About she also didn't say, listen, let's go find two chairs for you. I don't care if we sat in the back of the room up against the back wall. All we needed was to sit down. But she said nothing.
Ted and I went back out to the table where people had originally registered us. I thought, okay, maybe on the original online form there’d been a place to indicate you needed accommodation as a disabled person. So I asked the one guy. He didn’t know, referred me over to Anne. So I asked Anne the same question. She didn’t answer my question but she did say, “You need to find a volunteer and tell them you need to have a seat.”
I said the only volunteers I’d seen were sitting down in the front and there weren’t any chairs in there. Anne goes, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Guys, I was shocked. She repeated herself, like maybe I was deaf.
So my husband and I left. We didn’t see Jonathan Frid nor the cast reunion. We’d driven over two hours to spend the day and had spend only three hours there. I mean, I might have been able to manage sitting on the floor but not my husband. There was no point in staying.
I looked on the registration form at the website today and I’m seeing that there IS no place to indicate a person is in a wheelchair/needs a chair/needs any accommodation. ?? ??
I figured I would write to Jim Pierson or whoever’s in charge of the Fest now and suggest they add that to the form. Then wouldn’t they consider having a place set aside for people who need it? You know what else? There *are* deaf fans of DS out there because they can get captioned versions of it now…but deaf people sure can’t come if there’s no interpreters and no way to request them, right?
I did enjoy spending time with my friends, though. That part was good.
