The Plus-Sized Ride 'Testers' Making Theme Parks More Accessible—At Their Own Risk

When planning a trip to Walt Disney World in 2022, Stephanie Lanciani couldn’t wait to try out what was then one of the theme park’s newest rides: Avatar Flight of Passage. Her only concern was size: Lanciani is plus-size, and the ride involves sitting on a vehicle that looks like a motorbike, so it’s a tight fit—especially for those with larger busts, calves, or thighs.

But when Lanciani tried to find any information on whether or not, at her size and dimensions, she would be able to fit on the ride, she came up empty. Disney only lists restrictions for height, not weight, for its rides, and the little she could find online on the topic didn’t necessarily help either. After all, “plus-sized” is a very blanket term. Some plus-sized people are bigger than Lanciani, and others are smaller, which means that even if one plus-sized person was comfortable on the ride, another might not be.

And so, she decided not to chance it and skipped Avatar Flight of Passage altogether on her Disney trip. She did vow to herself, however, not to keep missing out on such experiences, which is why she and four other plus-sized friends created Plus Size Park Hoppers, a group of ride and experience testers who share content online in the hopes of helping other plus-sized people navigate the challenges of travel.

In one of their first viral videos, the women, who Lanciani says range in size from 2X to 5X, tested out TRON Lightcycle Run, a coaster in the Magic Kingdom that features a motorcycle-like seat that’s not dissimilar from Avatar Flight of Passage’s. When you straddle the motorbike, you press your knees and calves into a pad and pull the handlebars forward. If the metal bar restraint can’t reach a 90-degree angle to lock properly, you can’t ride. But as the Plus Size Park Hoppers show in their video, those who cannot ride the motorbike have the option of riding in a chariot-like seat in which you simply sit and pull down a restraint across your lap. Even better, the restraint is a glide-and-lock bar, meaning it doesn’t need to reach a particular position to lock.

Jason Vaughn, the 40-year-old behind Fat Tested Travel, has a similar story to Lanciani and the Plus Size Park Hoppers. Because of his size, he spent most of his life afraid to try theme-park rides, particularly roller coasters. For years, he told himself that he’d visit a place like Walt Disney World when he lost weight. “It’s like, ‘Well, when I lose the weight, I’ll start living life,’” he tells me. But he found that the exact opposite ended up being true: All he was doing was putting his life on pause.

That attitude isn’t uncommon for plus-sized people, which is something that both Vaughn and Lanciani often hear from their viewers. On the day I spoke with Lanciani, she had received a message from a long-time viewer, who told Lanciani that her videos had encouraged her to go on a Disney World trip with her child for their Make-A-Wish, even if she was worried about her size. In the end, she had an experience of a lifetime.

There is, of course, negative feedback, too—from outright body-shaming, to people suggesting the Plus Size Park Hoppers lose weight “for their health,” to those telling the women that they should be embarrassed of themselves. But it’s easier to bear given the many positive comments. For instance, on the Plus Size Park Hoppers’ TRON Lightcycle Run video, a commenter wrote that the video made them feel more comfortable about trying the ride after having gained weight due to medication. Another explained that a C-section scar made any pressure on her stomach hurt, so the video helped her better understand if the ride would cause her pain. A third said that the video convinced her to ride it despite suffering from Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and the joint pain it brings.

The more fundamental problem as Vaughn and Lanciani see it is that we’re not necessarily moving in the right direction when it comes to accessibility at theme parks. “What most places are building are roller coasters,” Vaughn says. “You’re not seeing a lot of slow rides anymore. All the theme parks want to be the biggest and best, but they’re not making them as accessible as they could.” (The same goes for air travel, with its lower seat width and less legroom not only affecting plus-sized people but people with a variety of disabilities.)

For Lanciani at least, part of the answer is just speaking up. “People will ask me, ‘How do you get over the anxiety of asking for a seatbelt extender [on a plane]?’” she says. “And I’ll tell them, ‘It’s just about safety. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’ But if you asked me a year ago, before Plus Size Park Hoppers, I would’ve said, ‘I don’t know, I’m so embarrassed, too.’”

So maybe as much as anything else, the videos have helped Lanciani find space for her voice.