Water park meets visitors’ special needs
SAN ANTONIO — Judy Rhoads scanned her surroundings. She paused to look at her daughter, Cindy Dolder, who drenched her sun hat and striped shirt in a spray of water, and summed up the scene around her in one word.
“It’s freedom,” said Rhoads, 70. “I mean, look at her!”
Dolder, 40, grinned and shook her head as water trickled down her face, before she moved her wheelchair to another spigot in the water park.
The mother and daughter had tried going to water and amusement parks before, but often the list of restrictions is so long that Dolder, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, can’t participate.
“It’s just impossible to get a wheelchair person on a ride,” Rhoads said Sunday. “This is like a dream come true.”
Morgan’s Wonderland, the only large amusement park in the world designed for people with and without special needs, opened in San Antonio on April 10, 2010. Over the weekend, the amusement park’s founder, Gordon Hartman, added a $17-million water park called Inspiration Island. In addition to tweaking its attractions for people with special needs, it also provides specially designed wheelchairs — including a cutting edge, air-powered and waterproof one.
More than 600 people attended Saturday’s opening of Inspiration Island. Since its opening, Morgan’s Wonderland, a nonprofit, has had more than 1 million visitors from at least 66 countries.
In many ways, the water park is like any other. Between its five sections, spigots of water burst from large sea horses and islands of tired-looking starfish. Two large buckets overhead slowly fill and spill heaps of water. An eightminute boat ride takes people through a jungle with fake snakes that hiss and cougars that roar.
There are some key differences. The grass is artificial in some areas so the clippings don’t get caught in the water filtration systems. The drainage is important because all of the water is filtered and recirculated. There are no deep pools of water, only at surface level from splashing.
Waterproof wheelchair
Before the buckets dump water, a ding rings out across the park, notifying those who can’t see that it is about to occur. Soon, Hartman said, a whirling signal will be up for those who can see but can’t hear. There’s also a pool with 92-degree water for people with muscular conditions who require warmth.
And everywhere, people of all abilities splash and play together. With the barriers that most people with special needs typically experience removed, suddenly everyone is the same — or at least, similar in their difference.
“We’re not a specialneeds park; we’re a park of inclusion,” Hartman said. “Every child, everybody in San Antonio ought to come to these parks. There’s something that’s different here, and it’s a positive difference.”
Hartman named the $35-million amusement park after his daughter, Morgan, who was born with disabilities. After he retired from his job as a land developer in 2005, he started The Gordon Hartman Family Foundation.
To accommodate people who use battery-powered wheelchairs, his organization collaborated with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh to design a substitute called the PneuChair that is still powered on its own—without needing to be pushed— and can go in water.
The four wheelchairs run on compressed air and weigh about 80 pounds, compared with the typical 400 pounds for batteryoperated chairs. The prototypes are the only ones of their kind, and Hartman said they expect to develop six more with upgrades.
Shaileen Rodriguez, 18, of Freer, said Sunday she wished there were more places like these for her brother, Roman, who uses a wheelchair.
“There’s not just people like my brother here; there’s people like this everywhere,” she said. “And there’s a lot of kids that feel like they’re segregated from everyone else because of who they are and what they were born with.”
‘They soar’
Tara Wilbanks agreed. Her family was in a car accident about a year ago, and her son Carter, 12, experienced severe body and brain injuries.
Wilbanks said she wished more people understood what it is like to be a person with special needs.
“When you have a healthy kid, you’re removed from that world,” she said. “But when you’re going through it, it’s just, so much.”
Carter’s recovery has been dramatic. Just a year ago, Carter was 66 pounds, non-verbal and dependent on a feeding tube. Now, he’s in a wheelchair and is engaged in life, laughing and still hanging out with his best friend.
From the sidelines, Hartman grinned. This is what he lives for. Even in building Morgan’s Wonderland and Inspiration Island, he took great care in the design and symbolism in its construction.
There’s the lone palm tree he found on the land before they built the first park. He took painstaking efforts to preserve it and build Morgan’s Wonderland around it. The palm tree now sits near the entrance, a testament, to him, to inclusion.
There’s also the recurring image of butterflies painted on the buildings — and at the entrance to the park, there’s a large sculpture of two hands reaching out, a butterfly just touching the tip of a finger.
“Many of our special needs guests are doing things they thought they couldn’t do here,” Hartman said. “They fly. They soar. Like a butterfly.”