By 2002 EuroDisney had now become Disney Resort Paris - http://www.disneylandparis.com. With addition of more attractions and re-branding of entire theme park complex, to better appeal to European tastes, Walt Disney Company finally announced their first annual profit for park. Disney had at last found right balance between implementing such a strong American brand on foreign soil without diluting local culture. However, time it had taken to find balance ensured that Disney has not achieved domination in European market that many predicted.

At present time UK theme park market seems to be going from strength to strength with continued investment in their facilities. For example, Drayton Park have spent over £2 million in time for new season upgrading their entry and ticketing facilities, while ever inventive Alton Towers are launching their new ride ‘Spinball Whizzer’ which has carriage as focus of ride rather than actual track!

With volume and popularity of parks increasing all time in UK, demand for accommodation in surrounding areas has also expanded. Last year Alton Towers opened its second hotel, Splash Landings, which boasts an exciting all-weather water park, ‘Cariba Creek’. In addition to this companies such as UK short break specialists Superbreak.com – http://www.superbreak.com – have a number of excellent package deals with parks such as Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Aulton Towers and Legoland near Windsor which has over 50 interactive rides, live shows, building workshops.

Overall future seems bright for theme park industry across UK and Europe as a whole. The slow progress of Disney Resort Paris has allowed other parks to get on an even footing and with continued investment in rides and general infrastructure competition should continue to be fierce between major parks – which can only be good news for consumer.

With millions of people in need of accessible travel options, and with our Baby Boomers (almost 25% of our population) starting to reach retirement age as well now is time to start thinking about improving marketing efforts to include people with disabilities and about better overall accessibility in general. By educating business owners on benefits of marketing to people with disabilities and educating travel agents who are fighting a losing battle with internet, we can begin to focus on this new target market.

If you want to take advantage of rapidly growing adaptive travel market, get started now! I recommend hiring an expert to get your business rated and start removing barriers to access as soon as possible. Think about accessibility anytime you’re planning a remodel or addition. These improvements will benefit everyone, not just people with disabilities. For those of you who have already taken steps to improve accessibility, start bragging about it.

Craig Kennedy is a published adaptive travel author, accessibility consultant, and motivational speaker with almost ten years of adaptive travel experience and more than 15 years of tourism and service industry expertise. He specializes in resort business growth and customer attraction through better overall accessibility, education, and marketing, and works with businesses who wish to become leaders in accessible travel and accommodation.

Craig P. Kennedy, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, CK Consulting: Setting Standards for Accessibility www.CKConsultingonline.com. * Please visit our Web site to take a FREE accessibility quiz to find out if you are on right track.