Have a special needs child? I wrote some tips about a trip to Disney World.

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We spent 6 days at Disney World. Not new to us, as we are frequent Disney visitors; however, it’s new to us that our daughter has serious medical issues and is considered a special needs child. We have traveled to Disney when she was diagnosed with some medical conditions, but things have gotten worse since then. I wanted to share some tips with you that we learned along the way in hopes that this will help another parent out.


Tips For Special Needs Children At Disney World

Hotel rooms on Disney property have a variety of accommodations for all of their guests. Need a wheelchair accessible bathroom, rubber sheets, a room without chemicals or scents? Fill out the Special Needs Reservation Request Form while making your online reservation or even after you have that completed. It must be filled out and emailed within 30 days of your reservation. The earlier the better.

Guest Assistance Passes are available for children with special needs, even if that need is invisible (autism, narcolepsy, arthritis, etc.). Also known as a GAC, this card will enable your child to be seated while waiting in line for an attraction or to use a special entrance that may allow no waiting or a shorter wait. You can also speak to cast members at each attraction about your needs to see if your child can be helped in other ways. Some children get more time or alone time with characters, seating near an exit or seating in the front row. The Guest Assistance Passes are available at each park’s Guest Relations where you can explain what you will need help with. These needs may be added to the card to save you time at the attractions, but always ask for help at any time in the parks.

Medical care is available at each park as well. The First Aid Centers can be used for emergencies, but always contact a Cast Member if your emergency is life-threatening, or if your child has been seriously injured. They also provide over the counter medications, bandages and other items. You can store medication there, especially anything that needs to be refrigerated, and use an area for medical procedures such as tube feeding, or a quiet place for your child to calm down, etc. Baby Centers are also available, but use First Aid for older children. Instant contact can be made with EMT’s if needed as well.

Special diets can be accommodated at all restaurants in the parks and hotels. It’s best to call in advance if possible. You can bring in any type of food you need too.

Wheelchair as Stroller Stickers can be used if necessary. These can be a time saver if your medical stroller does not look like it is a medical device. This allows your child to remain in his stroller even when attractions don’t allow strollers. Note: not all attractions are equipped for strollers, wheelchairs or ECV’s. Those attractions are noted in the Guests With Disabilities Guides for each park, which can be downloaded. These guides are also available at each park.

A hotel room on Disney property can make it much easier for children with special needs to enjoy the parks. If your child would fare better after a nap or a break from the parks, being able to get to your room more easily than to a hotel off site, can make your time at Disney much brighter. You still need to use transportation, such as a bus, monorail or boat to get to your room, but it can be a lot faster than going to your car and driving to your hotel off site. Also, if you decide to stay at your hotel for the rest of the day, you still have the Disney atmosphere, with themed restaurants, pools, shops and arcades. At some resorts you can see and even hear the fireworks from Magic Kingdom or EPCOT.

Disney provides accommodations for children with hearing and visual disabilities, besides mobility issues. Service animals are always welcome at all areas of Disney World.

Expect to make changes in your plans. Visiting Disney World with the though of being flexible will make you and your child a lot happier. It’s great to plan by learning about Disney in advance and even making some reservations for meals. But, watch and listen to your child’s cues if she is starting to feel tired, unwell or overwhelmed. Disney Cast Members can be very helpful in times like this. Allow them to give your child a sticker or to wave at her with a Mickey Mouse hand! But, if it’s time to leave, take a break, or to get out of the heat, go for it. You will have happy memories when your child is happy.

We’ve traveled to Disney World hundreds of times. I am disabled and use an ECV (or a scooter), get a Guest Assistance Card and have needed to leave the parks suddenly. I’ve had to visit First Aid and have blood work done at a lab outside the park. Now that my daughter has sever medical issues, we use my experiences and tailor them to her. It’s worked for us. I hope my tips help you prepare and take that magical trip!

With a special needs child, you may feel that going on a trip to Disney Word will be overwhelming, but Disney makes it as easy as possible. Often times, you just need to ask someone and you’ll get the help you need and more.

Hotels sprucing up after years of no improvements USAToday.com - Hotels are spending more to spruce up rooms, lobbies and workout facilities after three years of holding the line. Spending by U.S. hotels on improvements will increase 30% to $3.5 billion this year, New York University's Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management newly estimates. It's the first increase since 2008 and is driven by a recovery in customer demand and a push from national chains, the research says. Hotels spent aggressively in the years leading up to the 2008 recession. They installed amenities that have since become standard at even midprice chains: thicker beds , Wi-Fi Internet access, flat-screen TVs and redesigned lobbies. The estimated $5.5 billion spent on improvements in 2008 was an industry record, says Bjorn Hanson, NYU professor and author of the study. But capital investment swooned quickly when the recession kept travelers at home. Capital spending on improvements fell 40% in 2009 and an additional 18% last year, Hanson says. Many hotels are ripe for investment, Hanson says. "They are getting to the point where travelers are starting to notice," he says. "Carpeting, wall covering, upholstery — they're starting to show their wear. So now is a good time." Greg Mount, president of Richfield Hospitality, says spending on improvements has increased at about half of the 30 hotels he operates. "You're seeing those dollars that should have been put in the last three or four years," he says. "There's a lot of deferred maintenance." Keep reading: http://travel.usatoday.com/hotels/story/2011-09-08/Hotels-sprucing-up-after-years-of-no-improvements/50327328/1

Yet another new tool from Google... ___________________ Google offers new tool to shop for airline flights USAToday.com - Google introduced a search tool on Tuesday for shopping for flights that pits the popular search engine against sites such as Travelocity and Kayak. Travelers can search for flights at google.com/flights and filter their flight queries by price, airlines and routes. It also has a bar chart showing which travel dates are more expensive to fly. Google has been offering flight schedules since May. Google's move has been expected since it bought flight-data provider ITA Software for $700 million earlier this year. Online travel agencies and so-called meta-search sites such as Kayak vigorously lobbied federal regulators to block the deal, fearing it would pave the way for the tech giant to seamlessly integrate flight searches into its other products and dominate travel shopping. Google's entry into flight shopping will fundamentally change customer experience, travel technology analyst Norm Rose predicts. "This is only the beginning of the transformation of general search into travel search that will save the consumer steps in the travel planning process," he says. Keep reading: http://travel.usatoday.com/news/story/2011-09-13/Google-offers-new-tool-to-shop-for-airline-flights/50394280/1

The world's top 10 tourist attractions By Kitty Bean Yancey, USA TODAY What is No. 1? It's New York's Times Square, according to a just-released survey by Travel + Leisure magazine. How was the list compiled? T+L used data from attractions, government agencies, industry reports and "reputable" media outlets. As for Times Square, The Times Square Alliance estimated that 80% of the 49 million tourists who visited New York in 2010 came to the city's bright-lights, JumboTron hub. "Tourist attractions" were deemed to be "cultural and historical sites, natural landmarks, and officially designated spaces," the magazine says. So that's why Minnesota's Mall of America— which counted 40 million visitors a year — did not make No. 1. The list is controversial. For one thing, 9 of the top 10 are in the USA (Niagara Falls also includes Canada). One might think tourist spots in populous China or India might have been up there, or the Champs-Elysees in popular Paris. Is Washington's Union Station really more crowded than O'Hare, Atlanta or Heathrow airports? Anyway, here is the top-10 list. 1. Times Square (39.2 million) 2. Central Park in NYC (38 million). 3. Washington, D.C.'s Union Station (37 million) 4. Las Vegas Strip (29.5 million) 5. Niagara Falls (22.5 million) 6. NYC's Grand Central Terminal (21.6 million) 7. Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston (18 million) 8. Disney World's Magic Kingdom, Orlando (about 17 million) 9. Disneyland, Anaheim, Calif. (about 16 million. Disney never gives attendance figures, so both these are estimates.) 10. Grand Bazaar, Istanbul (15 million) What countries get the most tourists? France is No. 1, the USA No. 2, and China passed Spain last year to rank No. 3 according to T+L, based on World Tourism Organization stats. See the article: http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2011/09/the-worlds-50-top-tourist-attractions/549231/1

Airlines’ Holiday Tidings By MICHELLE HIGGINS AS the holidays approach, many people are finalizing their travel plans and bracing themselves for the usual crowds, long security lines and inevitable delays. This season, planes will be even more tightly packed as airlines continue to cut capacity through the end of the year and into the next, even as more passengers take to the skies. But thicker crowds aren’t the only differences that holiday travelers can expect this year. Some changes, including modified security screenings for children, will be welcome, others won’t. Below, some of the most notable changes that have been introduced over the last 12 months, as well as a few new options to help avoid long lines and luggage fees. Airport Security The big news this holiday season is that children 12 and under can leave their shoes on when going through security. The policy change, which began as part of a test in August by the Transportation Security Administration and became official last month, also curtails, though doesn’t completely eliminate, pat-downs of children. Now, children may be sent through detectors or image machines multiple times or hand swabs may be used to check for traces of explosives, in lieu of a pat-down. Adults must still go through the usual drill of removing shoes, jackets, belts and watches; taking out laptops and cellphones; and making sure their 3.4-ounce tubes of toothpaste and shaving gel are safely sealed in a quart-size plastic bag. The T.S.A. has also installed new software on certain body scanners designed to improve privacy by replacing the virtual nude images of passengers, previously used, with a generic, computer-generated outline. Passengers are now able to view the same image online that the security officer sees on a computer screen as they pass through security. This fall the T.S.A. plans to test the same software on full-body X-ray scanners, which still use actual images of passengers that show the contours of the body and reveal foreign objects. Currently, there are nearly 510 imaging scanners at some 90 airports nationwide, with additional units planned for later this year. Passengers willing to pay for access to expedited security lines will find that more airlines are offering the service as an add-on. In June, JetBlue introduced Even More Speed, which offers passengers who, depending on the flight, pay $10 to $65 extra for a seat with more legroom, as well as a spot in an expedited security line at 15 airports, including Newark Liberty, San Francisco and Kennedy. United has been selling expedited security and preboarding (from $9) for a couple of years now. And American has been expanding its Five Star Service program to more airports including Boston and San Francisco, which offers expedited security lines along with other V.I.P. services like lounge access, preboarding and assistance with things like check-in, bags and airport connections for $125 a person. Boarding Compounding confusion at the gate, a couple of airlines have changed their boarding procedures this year. American, which used to board back to front, now randomly assigns travelers without elite status to boarding groups. Coach passengers can buy their way into the first group, behind first class and elite frequent fliers, for $10. The carrier says the revised process, which it introduced in May, has improved boarding times 5 to 10 percent and reduced the number of bags checked at the gate. United, which had switched to boarding by row from back to front, returned to window-middle-aisle boarding zones this summer. It will switch its Continental Airlines unit, which boards back-to-front, to window-middle-aisle next year. Read more: http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/travel/an-update-on-holiday-air-travel.html?hpw

Ever left something on an airplane or in a hotel room? It happens all the time! ______________ Travelers leave millions of belongings behind USAToday.com - Frequent business traveler Joyce Gioia forgot more than $20,000 worth of jewelry in her hotel room in Italy last year. Luckily for Gioia, the jewelry was in a room safe, and staff at the Rome Marriott Grand Hotel Flora shipped the items to her home in Austin. "I had done such a dumb thing, and I was very happy to get the jewelry back," says Gioia, a management consultant. Travelers annually leave millions of personally important items such as wallets, keys, cellphones and eyeglasses behind in hotels, airports, airplanes and rental cars. Fortunately for the forgetful, many belongings — including very valuable and unusual ones such as Gioia's jewelry — are returned. Many, however, aren't, and they are given away or sold if their owners don't retrieve them or their owners cannot be found. Gioia and other travelers scold themselves for their forgetfulness, but psychologists say it's commonplace even among the most veteran of travelers. "When traveling, people tend to have lots on their minds, and there are often many unexpected distractions," says David Meyer, a University of Michigan psychology professor. "The combination of too much to keep track of, limited attention for doing so and being in relatively unusual circumstances outside familiar work and home locations promote forgetting about the small stuff being carried along the way." USA TODAY contacted several airlines, airports, hotels and car-rental companies and, among other things, asked how many items are left behind by their customers yearly. Read on: http://travel.usatoday.com/news/story/2011-11-08/Travelers-forget-everything-from-passports-to-false-teeth/51124844/1

Thanksgiving travel to hit a record this year ATLANTA – When J. Kevin Powell set out with his wife and 3-year-old daughter for the 11-hour drive from Atlanta to Baltimore for Thanksgiving in 2008, he figured he was ahead of the game. They left in the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, timing their trip to miss rush-hour traffic in cities along the way. That plan quickly collapsed. "The first few hours were smooth sailing," says Powell, 32, owner of the men's self-improvement website BurgundyMag.com. "Then just north of Charlotte, we pretty much hit a standstill. We ended up going 10 or so miles in an hour and a half." They got off Interstate 85 at a mall to give little Kaylee a break, then hit slow traffic again between Greensboro and Raleigh in North Carolina. The back-ups got worse in Virginia. The trip took 20 hours, almost twice as long as usual. "It was really awful," Powell says. "Now, if I can't fly up to visit the family, we just stay here." For millions of homeward-bound Americans, the trek to the family Thanksgiving gathering is difficult enough, with shrieking kids in the car, uncertain weather possibilities, the looming specter of Aunt Maisie's oyster loaf and the prospect of spending time with that least-favorite in-law. What could be worse? How about having to navigate congested cities with the USA's worst drivers, or through some of the nation's worst speed traps? Or trying to traverse cities with the most traffic cameras or heaviest congestion, or states with the worst roads and the highest speeding fines? Millions of Americans will drive to the annual holiday gathering next week — about 38.2 million, 90% of the 42.5 million expected to travel during the Thanksgiving week this year, according to AAA. That's a 4% jump over 2010 and the first significant increase in travel of at least 50 miles for any holiday this year, the auto club says. Read on: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-11-17/thanksgiving-traffic/51276056/1

$99 rates and other Thanksgiving hotel deals USAToday.com - Trying to avoid staying at Aunt Beverly's house on Thanksgiving night? A number of hotels across the USA are ready to accommodate, so it's worth shopping for discounts or value-added packages. In case you're headed to New York, Philly, Washington D.C. or San Diego, Hotel Check-In rounded up a few, select deals that haven't been widely publicized so you still stand a good chance of taking advantage. Philly: The most urgent of the deals is a $99 call-in rate at Philadelphia's Sofitel hotel is offering that you must book today by 8 p.m. The rate's a good 50% off what you might otherwise pay that night, and it also includes Wi-Fi. A hotel executive shared it with me via Twitter. The non-refundable rate's good for any night from Sunday, Nov. 20, through Monday, Nov. 28. Book it by calling (215) 569-8300. Continue reading for more deals: http://travel.usatoday.com/hotels/post/2011/11/sofitel-hotel-philadelphia-99-thanksgiving-deal/567871/1?loc=interstitialskip