Fright Night: The Right to Be Frightened

These are services often deliberately designed to make customers uncomfortable. Darkness, confined spaces, sudden noises, smoke, strobes, uneven floors, disorientation, actors appearing unexpectedly and crowds may all be part of what people have paid to experience.

So what happens when a disabled customer needs an Essential Companion to access an 18+ event? Can an attraction put a limit on an adjustment because it can only be provided safely to a certain number of people? And perhaps the most interesting question: what happens when the adjustment being requested would remove the very thing the customer has bought a ticket to experience?

Access to the scare

One policy is worth checking before Halloween tickets go on sale: “This is an adults-only event, so companion tickets aren’t available.”

Being an adult has very little to do with whether somebody needs disability-related support. An Essential Companion is not a hand-holder. A disabled adult may be perfectly capable of deciding that they want to spend an evening being chased through a darkened building by someone wielding a fake chainsaw, while still needing another person to help them access it.

A blind customer might need somebody to guide them through an unfamiliar and deliberately dark environment. Someone with mobility or balance difficulties might need assistance through a maze. A Deaf customer may require communication support. Someone with a learning disability might need help understanding instructions. Another customer might need assistance with orientation, regulation, medication, personal care or evacuation.

In some Halloween environments, the nature of the attraction may make that support more important, not less.

Does the companion have to buy another ticket?

There’s no blanket provision in the Equality Act 2010 saying that every disabled person is automatically entitled to a free companion ticket. That isn’t really the legal question.

Service providers have an anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. Where somebody can’t reasonably access a service without another person providing disability-related assistance, facilitating that support may form part of the reasonable adjustment. Calling something an adult-only event, premium experience or special event doesn’t switch that duty off.

The London Dungeon provides a useful real-world example. Its published information warns customers about low lighting, loud noises, flashing lights, strong smells, uneven flooring and jump scares. It also provides a free carer ticket for eligible customers and specifically recognises that someone with a visual or hearing impairment may need a carer, personal assistant, support worker or interpreter. If you deliberately make an environment harder to navigate, you should at least consider the disability-related support somebody might need to navigate it.

The full article examines capacity limits on reasonable adjustments, what happens when the adjustment itself would remove the thing the customer came for, and the Equality Act analysis for fancy dress and costume requirements.