You know what they say about making Assumptions right?

Considering that I have a spinal cord injury and use a wheelchair you would be right to assume when I have booked tickets online to go to the movies I click the person in a wheelchair option for the seating, expecting to get the disabled seating option being the space where there are no chairs in the cinema. Fair, enough right?

Now every time I have done that the ticket that I have been given was usually for the seat next to the empty space for the wheelchair, as you can imagine this is one of my pet peeves about going to the cinema. Though that being said I would always usually have a place off of the floor to place the bag I always carry with me. Now just recently it was pointed out to me that to get around this little inconvenience you should call up the cinema and when you are booking your tickets you should tell them that you don’t want to transfer out of your wheelchair and you will be given the empty space instead of the chair that might be surplus to your requirements.

Now due to what can be delicately described as a chronic lack of fitness due to a self-imposed beer barrel figure I am the type of person when transferring out of his wheelchair needs a little of extra room so that he can get the job done and that amount of space is usually a little more than that what is given in the row aisle between chairs at the cinema. So, due to the size of most chairs in the cinema a ‘front on’ transfer is out of the question. I’m not sure about you but in Canberra I have found that the armrests in the chairs next to the wheelchair space in most cinemas don’t move up and down making it hard to transfer. The alternative path by going over the armrest when you have a beer barrel figure like me by going over the armrest, well that’s just going to end in disaster.

It is nice and comfortable not sitting in the same chair that you sit in every day, but if you going to assume that every single person in a wheelchair is going to want to sit in a cinema seat then make sure that people in wheelchairs can easily get into those seats.

“Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME.”